Neil Tyson: We need more scientists/engineers in politics

[sjw]

Movie version: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059183

Shayne

[caroljane]

Movie version: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059183

Shayne

Um, Shayne, that's fewer lawyers not less.

Carol

interim pedant

[sjw]

Um, Shayne, that's fewer lawyers not less.

Carol

interim pedant

I don't see the point of the less/fewer rule. Do you?

Shayne

[caroljane]

Um, Shayne, that's fewer lawyers not less.

Carol

interim pedant

I don't see the point of the less/fewer rule. Do you?

Shayne

Weelll..I see its point in the ever-evolving artifact that is English grammar. For some reason we distingish between countables and noncountables, and mark the distinctions for reasons lost to time. But usage-wise, I think it probably is on the way out. But not in my classroom!

[sjw]

Weelll..I see its point in the ever-evolving artifact that is English grammar. For some reason we distingish between countables and noncountables, and mark the distinctions for reasons lost to time.

So, you think the rule is bullshit. Me too.

Shayne

Last time your correction was right, this time you're just bringing out the rebel in me ;)

[Selene]

Weelll..I see its point in the ever-evolving artifact that is English grammar. For some reason we distingish between countables and noncountables, and mark the distinctions for reasons lost to time.

So, you think the rule is bullshit. Me too.

Shayne

Last time your correction was right, this time you're just bringing out the rebel in me ;)

Rebel without a cause clause? ;)

Edited August 8, 2011 by Selene

[Reidy]

Tyson's analysis misses at least three points: Jefferson Davis, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, engineers all.

Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science is interesting in this connection. It explains how totalitarianism originated in an argument that, since engineering is such a success and such a paradigm of rationality, we ought to model society on its methods. Comte was not the first to talk this way, but he may have been the most influential.

[sjw]

Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science is interesting in this connection. It explains how totalitarianism originated in an argument that, since engineering is such a success and such a paradigm of rationality, we ought to model society on its methods. Comte was not the first to talk this way, but he may have been the most influential.

Yeah, Rearden, Dagny, Galt, don't listen to them, they're engineers and would set up a totalitarian government.

Shayne

[Martin Radwin]

Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science is interesting in this connection. It explains how totalitarianism originated in an argument that, since engineering is such a success and such a paradigm of rationality, we ought to model society on its methods. Comte was not the first to talk this way, but he may have been the most influential.

Yeah, Rearden, Dagny, Galt, don't listen to them, they're engineers and would set up a totalitarian government.

Shayne

Actually, they would set up no government at all. Galt was offered the job of "economic dictator of the nation" and turned it down, choosing instead to be tortured. As for Dagny, when her idiot brother James said something to the effect of (paraphrasing, because I don't have AS in front of me) "You can't run the national economy according to your convenience", she replied (again paraphrasing), "I don't want to run the national economy. I want your national economy runners to leave me alone!". Neither did Rearden or any of the other heroes of AS exhibit any desire to have anything whatever to do with government. This is among the attributes that made them heroes to Rand. Galt's Gulch was itself an anarchic society with no government and was portrayed as Rand's idea of utopia.

Had any of them decided to try to take over the government, they would have been no more successful than the band of idiots who were actually running it. Noone, no matter how brilliant or talented they may be, is fit to govern others.

Martin

[sjw]

Actually, they would set up no government at all. Galt was offered the job of "economic dictator of the nation" and turned it down, choosing instead to be tortured.

So, because he didn't want a dictatorship, then he wouldn't want a government based on individual rights? You make absolutely no sense. Let me guess -- you're an anarchist? (I base this guess on the fact that you make no sense, not on the (wrong) statement that they would not set up a government).

As for Dagny, when her idiot brother James said something to the effect of (paraphrasing, because I don't have AS in front of me) "You can't run the national economy according to your convenience", she replied (again paraphrasing), "I don't want to run the national economy. I want your national economy runners to leave me alone!". Neither did Rearden or any of the other heroes of AS exhibit any desire to have anything whatever to do with government. This is among the attributes that made them heroes to Rand. Galt's Gulch was itself an anarchic society with no government and was portrayed as Rand's idea of utopia.

Had any of them decided to try to take over the government, they would have been no more successful than the band of idiots who were actually running it. Noone, no matter how brilliant or talented they may be, is fit to govern others.

Martin

Government, in Rand's sense, is an institution for the defense of individual rights. So yes, her heroes/heroines would institute that kind of government if they had the chance. There's nothing wrong with going after criminals, indeed, Ragnar's profession seems a perfect fit with a rights-respecting government. He was a policeman.

Shayne

[Reidy]

As long as we're on the subject, I would point out that Danneskjold's day job was academic philosophy, not science or technology. This is not a call for more academic philosophers to enter politics. That is one of few schemes that make Tyson's look good.

[sjw]

As long as we're on the subject, I would point out that Danneskjold's day job was academic philosophy, not science or technology. This is not a call for more academic philosophers to enter politics. That is one of few schemes that make Tyson's look good.

A decent philosopher understands cause and effect like a trained engineer or scientist does. Of course, a decent philosopher probably IS a scientist or engineer, and is just building upon what he already learned about a systematic study of cause and effect in his narrower field of study.

Shayne

[Reidy]

No, a philosopher does not understand cause and effect as an engineer does. A philosopher questions and explains, at a quite different level of abstraction, what an engineer takes for granted.

Your second sentence is a biographical claim, and I'm not aware of much evidence for it. The pre-Socratics and Aristotle did scientific investigations before science and philosophy had become separate fields, but nothing that you could call engineering. Aristotle was a great biologist but notoriously wrong about just about everything in mechanics. Descartes designed machines; I don't know if he actually built them. John Locke was a lens-grinder. Wittgenstein studied aeronautical engineering and had a brief (one house) career as an architect. That's it, as far as I know.

The statement that a philosopher is "just building upon what he already learned" implies that these figures studied engineering or science before they got into philosophy. This is true of Wittgenstein but probably not of Aristotle. Historians, as far as I know, date his biological investigations to the middle of his career, after he had established himself as a philosopher.

Edited August 8, 2011 by Reidy

[sjw]

No, a philosopher does not understand cause and effect as an engineer does. A philosopher questions and explains, at a quite different level of abstraction, what an engineer takes for granted.

I'm going to guess that either you're not an engineer, or you're a very poor one.

Philosophy is not for philosophers, its for people who actually do things.

Shayne

[Reidy]

I'm in the software business. Call me an engineer or not, as you wish. Like many, I'm poorer than I was this morning.

Edited August 8, 2011 by Reidy

[sjw]

I'm in the software business. Call me an engineer or not, as you wish. Like many, I'm poorer than I was this morning.

Engineer.

Philosophy underlies all legitimate disciplines and as abstractions arise from concretes, is likewise informed by them. It does not dictate to them per se, it integrates basic observations from them. It the science that integrates all sciences, including engineering science -- the science of building.

Shayne

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm in the software business. Call me an engineer or not, as you wish. Like many, I'm poorer than I was this morning.

Engineer.

Philosophy underlies all legitimate disciplines and as abstractions arise from concretes, is likewise informed by them. It does not dictate to them per se, it integrates basic observations from them. It the science that integrates all sciences, including engineering science -- the science of building.

Shayne

Which particular philosophy is scientific. That is which particular philosophy produces testable (therefore potentially falsifiable) conclusions?

Is it the metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle? If so, these have been reduced to smoking ruins hundreds of years ago.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[sjw]

Which particular philosophy is scientific. That is which particular philosophy produces testable (therefore potentially falsifiable) conclusions?

Is it the metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle? If so, these have been reduced to smoking ruins hundreds of years ago.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I wouldn't swallow a philosophy whole as you suggest it must be. It's not that I think one couldn't in principle be formulated as whole/complete/true, it's just that there isn't one yet. Most of the competent thinkers nowadays do something other than philosophy as a profession, so no one has, so far, created an integrated philosophic system that you could accept as a complete, systematic whole.

On the other hand, a rational metaphysics is relatively easy. Both Rand and Hume laid down some good thoughts there.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Which particular philosophy is scientific. That is which particular philosophy produces testable (therefore potentially falsifiable) conclusions?

Is it the metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle? If so, these have been reduced to smoking ruins hundreds of years ago.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I wouldn't swallow a philosophy whole as you suggest it must be. It's not that I think one couldn't in principle be formulated as whole/complete/true, it's just that there isn't one yet. Most of the competent thinkers nowadays do something other than philosophy as a profession, so no one has, so far, created an integrated philosophic system that you could accept as a complete, systematic whole.

On the other hand, a rational metaphysics is relatively easy. Both Rand and Hume laid down some good thoughts there.

Shayne

Objectivism and science share the same metaphysical/epistemological/axiomatic base. On this level the philosophy of science and the philosophy of Objectivism are the same. Rand, however, wrote not one word I'm aware of, that has improved scientific methodology. For that, we consider Popper. Now, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology may improve non-scientific reasoning, but that's a separate case.

--Brant

[sjw]

Objectivism and science share the same metaphysical/epistemological/axiomatic base. On this level the philosophy of science and the philosophy of Objectivism are the same. Rand, however, wrote not one word I'm aware of, that has improved scientific methodology. For that, we consider Popper. Now, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology may improve non-scientific reasoning, but that's a separate case.

--Brant

Objectivism doesn't share the same epistemological base. It shares the same epistemological spirit. But good intentions don't count here, so we have to count Objectivism's epistemology as deranged.

We shouldn't think of "scientific methodology" as being different from "rational methodology"; there's no dichotomy between the way a rational child thinks and the way a rational scientist does, there's only increasing sophistication.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Objectivism and science share the same metaphysical/epistemological/axiomatic base. On this level the philosophy of science and the philosophy of Objectivism are the same. Rand, however, wrote not one word I'm aware of, that has improved scientific methodology. For that, we consider Popper. Now, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology may improve non-scientific reasoning, but that's a separate case.

--Brant

Objectivism doesn't share the same epistemological base. It shares the same epistemological spirit. But good intentions don't count here, so we have to count Objectivism's epistemology as deranged.

We shouldn't think of "scientific methodology" as being different from "rational methodology"; there's no dichotomy between the way a rational child thinks and the way a rational scientist does, there's only increasing sophistication.

Shayne

What I am talking about is reality and reason--only. I can't even say true critical thinking is actually a part of formal Objectivism. There is Barbara Branden's Principles of Efficient Thinking, which according to Rand is part of Objectivism (plus Nathaniel's work: BPO is official Objectivism, not Peikoff's OPAR). But Barbara's work seems to be an outlier or exception. It's just that simple. Then Objectivism seems to get off the epistemological rails, while science does not.

--Brant