FYI I’m not downvoting you, I’ve been enjoying the conversation.
I think the “few actually use the scientific method” statement might misunderstand my point.
If someone is saying “here’s a new scientific theory” no one has to take that on faith. If it’s not true then there is an incentive for other scientists to disprove it. I think most scientists are following the scientific method and not really making the case that your average layperson should be reproducing the paper.
Now I do think a lot of science news and laypeople are too willing to accept a single paper that no one has reproduced as some major breakthrough.
I tend to agree with you about human nature. Humans are tribal, we want authority figures, we are lazy. The freeing thing though is that if you don’t judge these things moralistically but just accept them as facts of the species you can account for them.
I’m not the biggest fan of capitalism, I think it’s kinda shit. But the reason it endures is because instead of building a system for our aspirations, it builds a system about reality. It doesn’t propose a system that would function if everyone just isn’t too greedy, instead it says “people are greedy shitheads, that’s fine, the system works in the presence of greedy fucks”. Doesn’t seem like they put enough effort into figuring out what happens when a few greedy fucks get everything, but we are all getting to find out first hand together.
If you know that people are inclined to be tribalistic, to look for authority figures, to be lazy, to fill in some other trait we would normally condemn then you can build systems that operate in the presence of that reality.
FYI I’m not downvoting you, I’ve been enjoying the conversation.
I think the “few actually use the scientific method” statement might misunderstand my point.
If someone is saying “here’s a new scientific theory” no one has to take that on faith. If it’s not true then there is an incentive for other scientists to disprove it. I think most scientists are following the scientific method and not really making the case that your average layperson should be reproducing the paper.
Now I do think a lot of science news and laypeople are too willing to accept a single paper that no one has reproduced as some major breakthrough.
I tend to agree with you about human nature. Humans are tribal, we want authority figures, we are lazy. The freeing thing though is that if you don’t judge these things moralistically but just accept them as facts of the species you can account for them.
I’m not the biggest fan of capitalism, I think it’s kinda shit. But the reason it endures is because instead of building a system for our aspirations, it builds a system about reality. It doesn’t propose a system that would function if everyone just isn’t too greedy, instead it says “people are greedy shitheads, that’s fine, the system works in the presence of greedy fucks”. Doesn’t seem like they put enough effort into figuring out what happens when a few greedy fucks get everything, but we are all getting to find out first hand together.
If you know that people are inclined to be tribalistic, to look for authority figures, to be lazy, to fill in some other trait we would normally condemn then you can build systems that operate in the presence of that reality.