/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2923617
You should probably consider reading him before accusing me of misreading him.

Incommensurability of paradigms != relativism.

What incommensurability implies is that the traditional notion of steady scientific progress being justified by the empirical superiority of new paradigms is false. This doesn't mean (as Feyerabend was a fan of implying) that 'anything goes,' but it does mean that something more than a rigid, mechanistic 'Scientific Method' is at work.

The influence of culture and history aren't arbitrary, but they add levels of uncertainty into things which I consider it worthwhile to consider. I mean, Boltzmann committed suicide more or less because no one would take his atomism seriously and his work was always considered fringe. Now, it's fundamental.

>>2816476
I think fixing economic models is probably a good first step. I would be very surprised if a moralistic calculus is withing feasible consideration when an economic one still very much eludes us.

I've also always been skeptical of any form of aggregated happiness representing a good metric for moral calculation: I think it tends to lead to pathological solutions to problems.

Harris discusses those sorts of problems and tries to avoid them by saying we would need some rules in place to avoid them, which just strikes me as adding the usual element of naive morality in at the beginning.

Using science to inform our decisions is perfectly sensible, and I think in certain situations we may be able to develop models which can apply. Those models, however, are unlikely to have anything like general applicability.

It's just not anything that will be as simple as what Harris suggests.

This shit isn't funny. Come back when you understand something about both religion and geometric topology.

Feyerabend was a hack.

>>2494703
Good luck enforcing those wonderful moral precepts in a state of nature.