[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Principles: absolute, or guiding?

[Terry W. Colvin]

Steven Goodridge wrote an excellent commentary upon guiding principles and 
such. I recommend that readers read it again.

However, there is a bit more to add.

Traffic engineering and highway traffic operation is not a "hard science" 
such as physics and chemistry are. It is a combination of some features of 
hard science (the physics of acceleration, braking, turning, hill climbing 
and hill descending, etc.) and physiological science (reaction time, spread 
of mental concentration, vision, etc.) and social science (laws, which side 
of the road, following behavior, class distinctions, etc.). Therefore, 
while Newton's Laws of Motion strictly apply to the strictly physics 
aspects, there cannot be a traffic operating law that applies to all other 
aspects of traffic operation with the same degree of rigor. There are bound 
to be blurred edges, marginal conditions in which the degree of conformity 
is less or even non-existent. Therefore, to pretend that such a law has 
been created is absolutely false; such cannot be created.

Much of the discussion herein, and elsewhere, also. about bicycle 
transportation, is based on the false and impossible assumption that 
bicycle transportation is based on rigorous logical principles. This type 
of discussion is that appropriate to classical philosophical argument, or 
to the discussions of social activities that use similar methods, such as 
religion and communism. That is, starting from verbal assumptions to 
produce a logically consistent description of the world. "I think, 
therefore I am," "God created mankind in His image," etc., etc. This form 
of deductive reasoning from assumptions that cannot be more than 
approximations to reality produces grotesque results, as modern 
philosophers have generally accepted.

Producing any accurate description of the world requires repeated testing 
against the real world, with either verification or modification as the 
result. The real world is complex and, in certain areas, apparently 
illogical, because we do not yet know the more accurate description that 
would explain the apparent illogicality. The further we get from the "hard" 
sciences, the greater the deviation from the simple and accurate 
explanations of the hard sciences. (And don't bring in quantum mechanics; 
that's a different kettle of fish that is both far too complex and largely 
irrelevant to this discussion.)

Those who are trying to turn advocacy of bicycle transportation into a 
philosophical system are doing so because they have particular assumptions 
upon which they want to base its structure, as if by doing so they could 
change the structure into one that supports their assumptions. That's all 
nonsense. Transportation engineering is not a logical philosophical system, 
but an empirical description of the real world, as near as we can produce 
such. It must be tested against reality at each step. While it helps to 
infer general principles that generally apply, such as the vehicular 
cycling principle, none of them can be assumed to be a complete description 
of the world, and even less cannot be supposed to command and direct the 
real world.

In short, just stop trying to argue about bicycle transportation as if it 
were a classical philosophical system. Those who do so disclose their 
intent to insist on incorporating their peculiar and probably inaccurate 
assumptions into its structure. While their intent is to have the system 
reflect what they consider to be the basic descriptions of reality, the 
result of the errors that are built into such an approach is inevitably to 
push the system into a grotesque cartoon of reality. Unfortunately, as we 
know from the editorial pages, grotesque cartoons have psychological 
appeal. Learning and applying the truths, piece by piece, has much less 
appeal than the supposed insight of cartoons, but it is the only accurate way.

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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