[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

[Ryan Lanham]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 8:22 AM, j.martin.pedersen <
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> I agree that post-this and post-that often tries too hard to sound
> clever, but I just filter that if the political arguments are useful to
> criticise the dominant elite and received wisdom  - and otherwise
> philosophically engaging.
>
> How do your ideals of technology and science differ from other ideals
> (which you reject)?
>

To my mind, idealism is the hope that there is an ideal...a best way of
living...a best that is attainable or worthy of directing oneself toward
(e.g. heaven, justice, truth, spirtual enlightment, etc.)   I don't much
care for that as a general worldview and see virtually all manifestations of
it as problematical.

That said, I think there are local optimums, local plans, local
possibilities, but that these are quite autonomous of any ultimate harmony
or purpose including "justice."  They are, in short, consensus.  Consensus
never lasts.

I see Nara Japan as a beautiful and functioning society, but my Western
views find many of its precepts flawed.  Does that mean my society is
"better"?  No.  It means we are different and have arrived at differing
views of local optimums.  Europe sits in judgment of the US regularly and
sometimes vice versa.  I see few differences really, but people have local
preferences and ideals.  Americans strongly prefer the US by and large, and
Europeans strongly prefer Europe in the main.  What can we learn from this?
People like what they know.  Culture is path dependent.  I like different
things about both of them.  When pressed, most experience people would say
the same.  Sometimes the things one person likes are mutually exclusive.

Science does not seek an ideal or a perfection.  Technology is meant to ease
a demand or need or to fulfill a desire.  Those are not grand ambitions to
my way of looking at it.  They are attempts to understand or live in a
pragmatic, local and useful way.  Science, to my way of looking at it, isn't
a "thing" or a philosophy.  It is the concept of the pursuit of better
answers where better means more evidential and compelling.  It is
specifically opposite to idealism which has an answer that if feels is right
and then tries to apply it...I call that metaphysics.  It is a system of
reasoning where reasoning itself becomes the deity.  Science is not about
reason but about more compelling conceptualizations.  It isn't "done."
There is no final answer.  It is more of a way of thinking...or a way of not
thinking that there is a single solution or an optimum body of knowledge.

Scientists who I admire are at best ambivalent about answers that exist even
in their own fields.  That is, they tend to approach things with a
skepticism about finality and accuracy.  Instead, they are all about the
unknown.  The problematic.  Engineers tend to solve problems with more and
more refined sets of solutions.  They are about "fixing" or solving.  It
uses science, but science is more about walking into the darkness with
minimal preconceptions other than that which is highly evidential.  Still,
it is tentative.

No engineer or scientist can "dream" a vision of an optimum.  That makes
them something else.  Science only allows doubt and the attempt to be more
evidential or factually compelling.  If you add "consensus improved" science
links to engineering, medicine, etc.

Markets are defined as the means by which people trade to achieve consensus
optimums at a local level.  Some lose in markets by finding their choices
sub-optimal or their starting points unsatisfying.  My own view is that I am
glad I am not those people.  Do I hope they will live better?  Yes.  Do I
work to make their lives better as a purpose?  Sometimes.  Compassion is a
useful part of our being.  But I do not envision systems where unfairness
and bias are removed by rules.  That seems contradictory to me with a a long
trail of failure to suggest it doesn't work.  Instead, I see a local problem
that requires technology (e.g. business and management solutions) or
science/engineering (e.g. improved means of understanding value-creating
outcomes) as more realistically pragmatic solution sources.

Capitalism and socialism are theories (metaphysics) about how markets ought
to work.  I doubt both of them have much long-term value but rather were
tenative social experiments whose flaws are now mostly evident to consensus
bodies.  If you follow Matt Ridley's ideas, he'd argue that only the liberty
to adjust and the process of continued interaction to arrive at various
stable consensus positions will improve our lot.  Mostly, that means science
and technology as I mean the terms.
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