[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Thank you. My only beef has always been one of priorities. America has always had a problem with priorities and values, we need to work in those directions. When we get our shit more or less together, perhaps then we can retool our focus on cool shit like Mars, but in the meantime, there is a lot of work to do. And yes, I bet analytical types like scientists would be WAY better than these sleazebag lawyers and business tycoons who masquerade themselves as politicians these days..

By the way its not my "religion" which somehow makes me "anti-science" because that is not the case, I am not against cool science, however my "religion" does push me towards humanistic values and priorities.

it's not that you're "anti science," it's that head-in-the-sand humanistic values often fail to grasp a) the scientific method, b) the scientific underpinnings of reality. it's like when you were arguing that apple charges too much money without understanding how prices work in a market economy. you see a "wrong" and demand it be righted without looking at the objective reality behind it.

postmoderns and poststructuralists claim there is no objectivity, no nature, nothing, and they have a point to a degree that our view of the world is in great part socially constructed, but by tossing the scientific method of inquiry overboard the humanities tend to degenerate into meaningless propaganda that degrades the level of intellectual activity in every sphere.

this is an educational plague that creates a preponderance of rhetoric over research-- and the reason the humanities become more and more irrelevant as they strangle on their tongue (hey, i'm a humanities graduate, i can see how wrong some of this shit is).

you realize mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music (yes, music was considered a a branch of mathematics) used to be part of the "liberal arts" along with all the verbal nonsense back in antiquity? nowadays humanities people are at war with the sciences rather than embracing them as a part of "natural philosophy" as proto-science used to be called.

anyway, er, hm, i forgot where i was going with this, but, hm, "knowledge, good", okay? ha ha ha ha.

and no, i'm not for giving technocrats the reins of society. fuck no.