[FoRK] Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Lion Kimbro]

On Jan 10, 2008 2:01 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
<drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> On Jan 9, 2008, at 6:04 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
> >> Heck, I'll go further -- most of the "religious evil" problems Jeff
> >> is fond of complaining about can be traced directly to Surowiecki's
> >> list of failures:
> >>
> >> * homogeneity
> >> * centralization
> >> * divisions
> >> * imitation
> >> * emotionality
> >
> > Absolutely true, but the "systematic belief in completely
> > preposterous bullshit" aspect of things is a force multiplier for
> > all of the above. :-P ;-)
>
> That is the one area where we disagree, and I would _love_ to see you
> provide some empirical support for your position.

  It's just an anecdote, but there *is* FoRK.

  * homogeneity -- check  (geeks of various sort)
  * centralization -- check  (high posters regulating the scene)
  * divisions -- check  (high posters, middle class, and then the rare posters)
  * imitation -- check  (check;  watch a dog-pile in action, and you'll see it)
  * emotionality -- check  ("exotic cuties" in honor killing stories, and so on)
  * systematic belief in completely preposterous bullshit  -- check!
(religious atheism)

  Failure:  ongoing.

  We could also identify these elements within scientific establishments,
  companies, just about every single organization on Earth.


  I think we're facing a sort of "Scanner Darkly" situation,
  with Surowiecki's list of failures.

  When we see a group doing something we like, we say:
  "It's for virtuous reasons X, Y, and Z."

  And we see a group doing something we don't like, we say:
  "It's because they had negative traits A, B, and C."

  But those virtues and vices are present in all groups;
  We're not really explaining anything, just seeing a refection
  of our judgement.  (Scanner Darkly.)

  It's like saying someone's "not open minded," or something like that.
  We're all selectively open minded.

    http://communitywiki.org/en/SelectivelyOpenMinded


  We need some type of other analysis, if we're going to
  predict the good from the bad, rather than just performing
  post-mortems.