From: Sasha Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jul 08 1999 - 14:39:30 MDT
At 02:11 PM 7/8/99 , Daniel J. Boone wrote:
> "[According to Kuhn] The old
> scientists who became established within the dominant paradigm
> have to die off first: they will virtually never accept the new
> paradigm. Only the younger generation of scientists, who don't
> have the emotional attachment to the old paradigm will be willing
> to change their minds. As physicist Max Planck once said,
> 'Science progresses funeral by funeral.'"
If scientists - the people who are supposed to be best in subjecting
theories to rational unbiased scrutiny - are guilty of that, what can you
expect from the rest of humans?
>FWIW, and to stay on topic, I don't think SETI (nor seti@home in particular)
>are completely useless. Yes, the odds of a positive result are seem
>vanishingly small; and yes, the assumptions made in conducting the search
>are homocentric (how else can humans act?) which limits the value of a
>negative outcome. But there is no way to claim that, after subjecting the
>data to detailed analysis, we will not know more than we knew before. Deny
>the value of that and you deny the value of science, which I am not prepared
>to do.
The value of science is also in choosing the most promising theories to
pursue. The idea of God is also plausible, it just seems to be not
sufficiently probable, given available evidence, and thus not good
for investigation.
Why don't they support transhumanism if they want to understand what the
advanced intelligence may be, instead of looking for something they are
not likely to find, and not interested in understanding.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
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