[ExI] response to dave

[William Flynn Wallace]

​*This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social
life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion,
punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of
course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was
invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it.
In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we
would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.*
(quote from Dave - not his)

Notice the similarity with what I said about the medical profession.
Notice also the similarity to religion and its treatment of heretics.

We expect gods.  And gods are never wrong.  Yet when a scientist says he
was wrong we become suspicious of him rather than laudatory.  But
scientists are wrong all the time, far more often than they are right, I
think.

Put any scientist before a Senate committee and he or she will be subject
to scorn if the evidence presented isn't pure and decisive.  "What are you
doing here if you are not the expert and know the truth of this?"  We can
imagine that being said easily.

​bill w
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160414/af148858/attachment.html>