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@atmoz
Created October 9, 2012 14:40
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Longer comment on science and society
Ref. https://twitter.com/atmoz/status/255077724740276224
and the following discussion.
Quote: "The foundations of society should be built in the same way buildings
are – with scientific methods, not by voting for political parties."
First off all, by "foundations" I mean, for example (but not limited to), the
basic understanding for human needs and how to satisfy them. To expand my
analogy of buildings: we use science to determine the foundation before placing
walls. We need to know how much material we got, and calculate and distribute
the expected weight, to determine how the foundation should be made. Setting
aside the obvious, what's important to notice is that we do not use science to
decide what color, form, style or even the content (like decorations, etc.) of
the building. This relates to society by how we live, what you use your time
and energy on, aka. freedom.
When I say that we should use scientific methods and not just voting; I mean
our common human needs is not determined by our votes, but by our DNA and the
natural laws. To better meet our human needs, we should first understand
exactly what they are, and that's where the scientific methods comes in.
Our current society is structured in a way that is not entirely based on
science, but mostly by tradition and old beliefs. In many ways, by trial and
error, we have managed to survive. It's all one big experiment, nobody knows
the outcome.
Our current way of doing **fundamental socioeconomic decisions** is to vote for
political parties. I'll stop there, as there is a lot to say about that, and I
don't have time to elaborate just now. Let's just say that our way of doing
things today is light years away from any scientific methodology.
Luckily, we are basing more and more of our solutions on science
(because it works). What I want to accomplish with my tweets is to accelerate
this paradigm shift.
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