[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

[j.martin.pedersen]

Interesting!

How, I wonder, do you suggest to address the extreme inequalities that
exist in the world and which are maintained as they are in great deal
through the use of science and technology by people like Ridley? How
will our lot be improved when someone like Ridley has been born
immensely rich and continue to be so, while speaking about improving our
lot, yet sitting in his mansions?

In other words, how can science and technology become emancipatory as
long as it is in the hands of the few, without some ideals other than
status quo are worked on? The elite is hell-bent on killing anyone that
tries to take away even the slightest piece of their cake. That has been
the case for hundreds if not thousands of years and they continue to use
science and technology to maintain their position, suggestiong to me
that the path dependency in science and technology (not per se, but de
facto) is one of inequality and domination.

Where is the transcendence?

Where is the promised improvement, beyond the misleading rhetoric
forwarded to blind the masses?


On 25/05/10 15:55, Ryan Lanham wrote:
> 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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