User talk:Ragesoss/Manifesto

Welcome to the discussion

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Maybe I don't quite understand this, um, essay (is it for historian of science?). But here goes: the problem that what one has to learn tends to overwhelm what one can learn in his lifetime seems an old one. That has also always been the problem, maybe except for philosophers of Greek time. What is a bizarre assertion the essay in the end (after digression to history of science) makes is that, basically speaking, wikipedia is the answer. Actually, wikipedia really doesn't quite add much value to the world. Just as the Internet facilitates communications, if in a historically unprecedented degree, wikipedia, despite its incredible success, is probably no more than a convenient tool to reach information that is already there. I mean, wikipedia strives to be such a tool, no more no less (e.g., no original research, verifiable statements beat truth). My background being in mathematics, wikipedia is quite boring in that I can't find any new idea or results, and I can only add stuff that doesn't excite me much anymore because I know them very well by now, and I can't add to wikipedia exciting new math knowledge I just acquired because my understanding on them needs refinement. I have too much respect for wikipedia to test my new knowledge. Wikipedia is supposed to be boring.

What interested me the most in the essay was actually my suspicion that each of us probably don't quite understand why we contribute to wikipedia at all. (Wealth of networks by, umm, whom?, is the closed thing to answer this.) I was expecting to see something along the line of why to contribute here. I don't know why I contribute to wikipedia. Like said above, Wikipedia is intellectually speaking, boring.

-- Taku 06:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. I guess I see it as just the opposite. So much interesting knowledge is out there that creating new knowledge, of the kind that you couldn't put into Wikipedia because it isn't already available somewhere else, is less interesting (because it's more specialized and matters only to the very few people who are experts in that particular area). It's like the complaint some scientists make that all the really big ideas have already been developed, and what's left is just mopping up. A lot of knowledge is out there, but Wikipedia makes it accessible (physically and intellectually) to people who haven't spent many years just learning how to understand one little bit. To me, just because someone else already knows something that I am learning for the first time doesn't make it any less interesting; old does not automatically equal boring, and new does not automatically equal interesting. That's why I like reading Wikipedia.

The reason I contribute to Wikipedia, beyond the enjoyment of it, is because I think distribution of knowledge, and not merely creation of knowledge, is a key to improving society. It's ultimately more of a political/humanitarian activity than an intellectual one.--ragesoss 06:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

My comments

I wish you were coming to the NYC meetup so we could have a formal debate. You represent, to me, the intellectual side of factions that I passionately fight against (this is meant as a compliment). I might rightly be called a reductionist, but I'm actually fairly post-modern in my way of approaching matters. I might at some point write a parallel manifesto to yours, but I'm not sure if I will. Here are my thoughts:

The Enlightenment was dead almost from the get-go as witnessed by the reign of terror in France. The problem with Enlightenment philosophers is that they assumed a Western chauvinism that inherently contradicted their own views on "freedom". Landed, white gentlemen were enfranchised to the detriment of all other groups. Pseudoscientific rationales were invented to segregate and insure against revolution. As colonialism became the way that Europe raped the world, its science and technology just served as another means to subjugate. However, I submit that ultimately these applications were pseudoscientific as they lack the critical eye that science has relied on throughout human history. What was forgotten was that science was not invented by landed, white gentlemen. It was, in fact, invented by the very people Europe was bent on subjugating and exterminating. Triumphalist science (that is scientism) was intellectually dead from the get-go simply because it adopted the lie that science was somehow white, male, Christian, etc. Atom bombs are just the logical conclusion of what happens when you let such contradictions run rampant.

I'm slightly amused that you think that Wikipedia is so noble: it is only the latest attempt at public education. Like all previous attempts, though, it is fundamentally flawed because it carries with it the same baggage that started this mess in the first place. What ultimately needs to be addressed are the fundamental inequalities inherent in our society; unfortunately Wikipedia and the internet are just as ensconced in the chauvinism of the West as all other Western educational institutions that preceded them. It is, as Cleveland Brown says, a game "you don't win. You just do a little better every time."

I edit Wikipedia not because I believe in the project (I actually wish it didn't exist on most days). I edit Wikipedia because it is popular with my students. The moment they choose a different fad, I'll be on that bandwagon as well.

ScienceApologist 23:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope to be at the next NYC meetup. Maybe we'll get the chance to debate yet; I've long viewed you in the same way.

I'm curious as to why you are such a science apologist, given your views of the "scientism" and "Western chauvinism" of Enlightenment science. When did science shed these things to emerge as something worthy of your apologetics? As I see it (i.e., as I have been trained as a historian of science), science as an institution is the product of landed white Europeans, who basically created the modern systems of scientific research in the 18th and 19th centuries. Yes, the intellectual roots of science go much further back and owe much to non-white, non-Europeans. But I don't see how you can draw such a sharp division between "triumphalist science" and science as practiced today; the same currents that brought about the atom bomb are still around.

I also can't agree that triumphalist science as you describe it is intellectually dead; accounts of the Manhattan Project physicists are full of enthusiasm for the intellectual aspects of the project, whatever their retrospective judgments about the political and ethical dimensions of their bomb work.

To name only the most obvious example: putting research money into high physical theory and capital-intense colliders simply for the intellectual benefits of advancing scientific knowledge, when the world still full of so many social/cultural/political/economic/environmental situations that might be improved by the wise use of intellectual and technical powers of science...this seems to me the epitome of Western chauvinism and triumphalist science. But as I see it, socio-political decisions about science are the prerequisite for using science to help solve socio-political problems. This is why I think education about science, particularly from a humanistic perspective, is so important.

You seem to have a trans-historical definition of science; how much of what modern scientists do meets your definition? As the military-industrial-academic complex and the big pharma attest, science (in the broad sense of what people who claim to be doing science do) is not an unambiguous social good divorced from political systems that sustain social injustice and material exploitation.--ragesoss 23:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I see a very definite distinction between science as a process and science as an institution. Science as an institution I'm involved with solely because I believe it to have a lot of resources that I would like to see put to certain uses. Science as a process is something I firmly believe that every human being participates in. It is science-as-process which I defend. Institutional science is simply the place that has the richest, most fully-devoted scientists. Honing scientific skills is something which can be done in a great many ways, but ultimately it is easiest to do this in our society in a dedicated institution. I find it distressing that science-as-process is something that has become so wrapped up in political controversy as to be difficult to distill precisely. This is why I make the distinction so sharply; I think it has for too long been ignored or misinterpreted. Like all questions of demarcation, however, there are definite gray areas.

I have no problem parsing the science of splitting the atom with the Manhattan Project. In my mind, engineering an atom bomb represents a horrific endeavor to which the scientists involved unconscionably allowed themselves to be dedicated, but that project itself was not science. That it has come to be equated with science is the problem. Where the Manhattan Project scientists failed was in their blind acceptance of ideologically driven aims. Observations, data, and theories do not in-and-of-themselves encourage a scientist to build a device to kill hundreds of thousands of people: that's something that must be done in a different arena. The inability of the Manhattan Project scientists to see past their own prescribed roles was what led them to be duped and misused. As human beings they failed to consider the question of the other: those that weren't party to the Allied cause, those that weren't protected by an accident of history, those that weren't privileged to delve into the mysteries of the atom because they were forced to do something else. When a scientist only knows science, the scientist is easily made into a pawn that loses the connection to the process itself.

This is why I believe opposition to basic research in the name of social causes to be, quite simply, painting a false dichotomy. We don't have to choose between understanding the framework of matter, energy, and spacetime and feeding the planet. Likewise just because we understand nuclear physics doesn't mean that we must therefore have atom bombs. These are independent events. They can be done simultaneously, and some can be chosen while others are neglected. That this is made into a matter of political expediency is simply another example of political scapegoating. Take for example the Superconducting Super Collider which was tabled by an act of Congress and arguably set us back decades in particle physics. The arguments made for doing this were, on the whole, simply specious. They ranged from prejudicial to the downright absurd. The point of engaging in basic research is that we have no idea what we will discover when inquiring into the areas that are yet untouched. Assuming that we shouldn't pursue such questions simply because there are other matters which are also pressing is effectively stifling creativity and free thought. Yes, we can force particle physicists to dig ditches instead of building particle accelerators. But why? Just because you might value their ditch-digging doesn't mean that, as a collective, humanity values the ditch-digging of such people.

Certainly science is not divorced from the social world it inhabits, but it does not need to be treated as a monolithic entity within such a context. As a process, science is ultimately a way that humans sometimes think: and this way has had tangible benefits and has been abused to some effect as well. I respect the process because it gives so much information and enables such accurate predictions. It is truly an amazing organizational pattern. That's why I'm its apologist.

ScienceApologist 00:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)