Scientific Progress

[Tom]

> 	I never said "science is the enemy" - I do say that
> 	technicians working for the establishment and pretending to be
> 	'scientists' are the enemy. The claims are related, but not
> 	equal. 

Ok, makes sense.

> 	Thanks for providing a reason why your view of the
> 	establishment can be biased. You like what they do regardless of
> 	where the funding comes from.

If I can learn something new, does it really matter, who paid for it?
 
> 	You like astronomy? Fine. Do astronomy with your own money.

Yeah, I'll build my own orbital telescope and count galaxies :)

> 	"Upper Paleolithic humans may have hunted cave lions for their
> 	pelts" 
> 
> 	Really?? But they also may NOT have hunted cave lions, right?
> 	Don't you see anything wrong, even with the wording of the
> 	'scientific' 'fact'? Do you think that suggesting a possibility
> 	and providing very flimsy evidence for it is 'science'? 

I see. This particular example might be the wrong one. The problem we'd
need to discuss here are the media. Of course, if one study says
something "might have happened" this is no fact. However, media
immediately report about such singular studies as if it were.

Also, somewhere else someone stated, that science is about finding the
truth. But this is false as well. Science is about theories and
confirming evidence, experiments and studies. However, they remain
theories. This is the core of science: a serious theory must be
falsifiable. That is, even theories as the "theory of relativity" or
"global warming" might some day fall apart when someone finds evidence
which contradicts it. But in the meantime science works with the
consensus (we had this point already in the climate thread), since you
must work with something.

So, did humans hunt cave lions? I don't know. But I know one thing: we
humans are the most dangerous species on this planet, so why not? We
kill everything, including our own fellow humans.

> 	And are there people who feel curious about what happened to
> 	lions 10,000 years ago anyway? Fine. Let them waste or devote
> 	their onw resources to find out. 

I am curious about this, but we digress :)
 
> 	How could any sane person deny that fucking NASA, which is
> 	nothing but a branch of the US gov't and more precisely of the
> 	pentagon are not parasites? I assumed you knew that by
> 	definition gov't employees and contractors are parasites. That
> 	is a 'scientific' truth.

I don't deny this. However, the knowledge they acquire is good for all
of us, wether you're interested in astronomy or not. I understand your
point but I cannot reject all NASA does just because they are government
backed.

> 	Do you realize that your 'beloved' scientists are sceaming
> 	"We are gov't funded parasites" ? 

Yes, I do. The question is, who shall fund them instead? Corporations?
That's just the same shit. Crowdfunding? Will never happen. There'd be
no science at all without funding. We'd still be hunterers and gatherers
:) 

> 	Again, I'm  not talking about science if correctly defined as
> 	an unbiased search for truth. I'm talking about the people who
> 	claim to do science, the vast majority of them being paid with
> 	stolen money, to 'research' completely irrelevant stuff like
> 	'paleolithic lions', or to 'explain' how central banking is the
> 	source of civilization and progress.

Ok.




Tom