From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 14:05:21 MDT
On Friday, April 12, 2002, at 03:14 pm, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I'm also looking for practical solutions -- but the process as described
> is compleat bogus. As quite a few processes proposed recently. I wonder
> what does make them pass even minor scrutiny, probably the press being
> clueless about physics.
There does seem to be a lot of pseudoscience lately, even on this list.
People just don't have enough basic science to evaluate whether
something makes sense or not. Most people just jump on an idea based on
their own desire for it to be true. I worry that most of our own pet
technologies promoted on this list are really bogus. We seem to have
more hype than real research. So many people are assured that this
stuff is inevitable that I wonder if we are really slowing down
progress. Most of what gets posted as "science" to this list is really
just armchair conjecture. Maybe real scientists don't have time to
participate. I'm not sure how to address this problem, but I am
beginning to believe that pseudoscience from within our own ranks is the
biggest threat to our future.
> Guess what? No one is doing this. Even if it would save money on the
> long
> run. Instead, people go for idiotic schemes like that Los Alamos
> thing. I
> don't see the point for going expensive hi-tech as long as the low tech
> options haven't been exhausted.
I believe this attitude is the root cause of the problem above. People
are so convinced that this stuff is already happening, that they don't
see any need to actually do any work themselves. There is an alarming
trend on this group to dismiss real solutions on the theory that the
Singularity will save us. I have seen people discount their own health,
space travel, cancer research, scientific experimentation, and other
"good things" on the theory that the Singularity will arrive first and
do those things for us faster than we could do it ourselves. They then
prefer to sit and do nothing and actively discourage these real advances
in favor of a faith-based future that may never materialize. This
really scares me, because it is the same religious attitude that
prevents cult-members for taking control of their own lives. They
expect the apocalypse or revolution to come before any realistic goals
could be met. To hear the old religious fallacies being repeated from
our own people is disturbing.
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