Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 338 posts

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#271

Post by boomboomsubban »

ripsawridge wrote: post #222

The only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap. I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved. There is a clas…

Why are you so upset that an irreligious person has a small platform to discuss their views? They aren't forcing you to change your views, and the religious are still by far the majority that are pushing for growth at all costs. Yet you actively hope for a return to the time when irreligious views are silenced, seemingly just because they disagree with you.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#272

Post by FabHK »

memonkey wrote: post #193
JackFr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is merely a set of tools and processes, nothing more. Seriously, NOTHING more. Nonsense - that ignores that fundamentally science is a human activity. Because it is a human activity it is open to the same biases, self-deceptions, fads, groupthink and political pressures as any other human activity. Apart from that, implicit in your defense of science and attack on religion is a belief that true knowledge ca…

If anybody is curious about the work of Science being a fundamentally human activity, check out Bruno Latour. I'm sure there are others, but this is one I've recently discovered. NYTimes did a good article on him: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/magazine/bruno-latour-pos...

Discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18300187

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#273

Post by jimbokun »

all2 wrote: post #255
vec wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, per se, but you are parroting the fundamentalist party line. Maybe I've just got a unique perspective on the issue (I'm a Unitarian Universalist; everyone at my church respects my atheism as a sincere and personally fulfilling spiritual journey and a valuable perspective within the community at large), but I don't think science and religion are as opposed as the cultural narrative would suggest. Rel…

> but I don't think science and religion are as opposed as the cultural narrative would suggest. I agree. I take a fundamental interpretation approach to the Bible. I firmly believe that science must jive with my belief-set. If it doesn't, there are serious questions that I need to answer. Personally, this calls into question things like evolutionary theory, or creation theories that don't match what I can extract fr…

"Personally, this calls into question things like evolutionary theory, or creation theories that don't match what I can extract from the Bible."

It's not clear the Bible has much to say about these at all.

Fundamentalists insist that it does, but there are many other strands of Christian thought that disagree.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#274

Post by abrahamepton »

ripsawridge wrote: post #222

The only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap. I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved. There is a clas…

Always glad when HN discovers the existence of a learned scholar, atop their field, who's spent decades studying a truly hard thing and an HNer decides that, in fact, the True Thing They Needed to Understand was there all along, and it is in fact the kind of thing that most reassures the sayer.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#275

Post by FabHK »

camelNotation wrote: post #235
ripsawridge wrote: post #222

The only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap. I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved. There is a clas…

I like you. There's been a total over-correction away from religion and we've lost sight of why it evolved in the first place. Social scientists have long known that there is nothing rational about the decisions we make, and certainly not in groups. Religion may have led us to quite a bit of violence in the past and might not have given us self-driving cars, but simply understanding the universe is not going to be en…

> religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty.

Not sure how to put this politely, but it's the other way around. Religion offers certainty (though a false one). It tells you exactly why we're here, why we suffer, and exactly what we have to do to alleviate the suffering.

It is science that destroys that false certainty and replaces it with tentative truths and the obligation to find meaning.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#276

Post by Faark »

camelNotation wrote: post #249
louwrentius wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is not about certainty or uncertainty but about a higher purpose, about meaning. This life, this pain, this suffering needs to amount to something or why bother continuing? Religion doesn't seem the answer, it always creates more problems than it solves. It thrives on suffering. Because suffering creates a need for religion, it sustains itself this way. Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a w…

Religion does provide meaning and purpose, but that is hardly all it is "about." Religion also provides inclusion for those that would otherwise feel outcast. It provides social structure and identity. It provides a framework for you to build culture upon. It acts as a moral guide for behavior. It unifies communities around central goals. It uses myth to convey inter-generational wisdom. It teaches rituals that impro…

I agree with many of your points. Religion was a useful tool in the development of mankind. And we should replace it with something more useful, that doesn't suffer religions intrinsic downsides. Something that isn't built on dogmatic rules that cannot be adjusted to fit changing circumstances.

Again, I do see religion helping lots of people. But we could do better, and the only reason we don't are political. Try setting up a pastor-like support system for everyone. You will see capitalists complain, since they either don't want to pay for it or want to sell that service themselves. And you will see religious people complain, since will remove a justification for the existence of that organization they belief in.

Why does the church have to teach mental and physical health and wisdom? Isn't teaching something we have schools for? Unless, of cause, you want this teaching to be done exclusively by or according to your church.

You complain about alienated corporate slaves. I see little difference to peasants and serfs in the middle ages. And they certainly didn't have a lack of religion.

You mention inclusion. You forget the cleansing of those with no or the wrong belief, that happened throughout time and still today. In the name of god, of cause.

Again, i understand religion can offer many benefits and does so in an easy to consume package. But why does it have to be something based on a two thousand year book that pretends to be perfect in every way by definition.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#277

Post by akkartik »

naasking wrote: post #117
gus_massa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is! I think that Bohm’s pilot wave theory is appealing to non technical people because it replace all the scary equations of quantum mechanics with a wave and a particle. The trick is that the wave has a scary equation, and the interaction of the wave and the particle has a scary equation, but you can hide the scary equations behind a nice animated graph of a wave and a ball. For a nonrelativistic particle, t…

I think you're unnecessarily dismissive of pilot waves and people who accept them. There are plenty of compelling properties of pilot wave theories, like a proper accounting of measurement. Even John Bell of Bell's theorem suggested that the greatest problem facing physics was integrating the non-locality of QM with relativity, and the fact that pilot waves place this non-locality front and centre is a feature not a…

A recent experiment actually seems to disprove pilot wave theories once and for all: https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot... (discussed a few weeks ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18198811)

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#278

Post by Retric »

mitchty wrote: post #252
Retric wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language changes over time, you can’t use an outdated 18th century term to refer to the modern linguistic meaning of a term. Now days we call the useless bits philosophy, 200 years ago back when people took Phrenology as a real thing that was not true.

> Language changes over time, you can’t use an outdated 18th century term to refer to the modern linguistic meaning of a term. Thats just it though, science is natural philosophy. Doesn't get changed by modern terminology at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science Your personal definition of science and philosophy don't override the overall usage of the terms. Feel free to encourage their use, but kn…

First the term Natural Philosophy is uses to separate it into it's on thing rather than just calling it Philosophy. The Greeks had a very different idea for what we translate as Philosophy than we do. Algebra is Math, but Math is not just Algebra. Further, the term Natural Philosophy had a different scope than Science much closer to what we would call "natural science" than how it's used in modern context. So while closely related calling Natural Philosophy Science is no more accurate than calling Chemistry Mathematics they simply refer to different things.

Anyway, it's really not my definition for Science, if you want to quote wikipedia: "Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge")[1] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[2][a]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science) Notice the last of specific implementation details, that's what I am referring to.

"The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 BCE" well before natural philosophy. The Greeks are given a lot of credit, but they the ideas are much older than them.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#279

Post by Miltnoid »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #257
mfoy_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Talmud is basically the collected notes on the study of the Torah, which was was supposedly (capital-R) Revealed by a supernatural authority on Mount Sinai. Just because people spent a long time debating the interpretation of their holy book (and accompanying oral tradition) does not make it any less grounded in the supernatural, at the end of the day. Followers still have to either b…

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Talmud is basically the collected notes on the study of the Torah, which was was supposedly (capital-R) Revealed by a supernatural authority on Mount Sinai. If you're Orthodox, both the written Torah and the Oral Torah (Talmud) were capital-R Revealed by a supernatural authority at Mount Sinai. Yes, the study notes for the book were revealed with the book . If you find this confusin…

And so it came to pass that Rudin Revealed both baby Rudin and big Rudin, and it was good.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#280

Post by ArchTypical »

louwrentius wrote: post #243
camelNotation wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like you. There's been a total over-correction away from religion and we've lost sight of why it evolved in the first place. Social scientists have long known that there is nothing rational about the decisions we make, and certainly not in groups. Religion may have led us to quite a bit of violence in the past and might not have given us self-driving cars, but simply understanding the universe is not going to be en…

Religion is not about certainty or uncertainty but about a higher purpose, about meaning. This life, this pain, this suffering needs to amount to something or why bother continuing? Religion doesn't seem the answer, it always creates more problems than it solves. It thrives on suffering. Because suffering creates a need for religion, it sustains itself this way. Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a w…

> Because suffering creates a need for religion

Life is suffering. There is always pain and sometimes joy, due to our biology. Which is why religion will always exist, even if it's just a lucky rabbit's foot.

Post reply on HN