The Myth of the Noble Scientist

Not sure what you hope to prove, here. I think it's clear that MR puts scientists somewhere below used car salesmen and real estate agents.

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Your hatred of scientists is right in line with your affection for ghost hunters.
The Scientific Process is the very antithesis of believing in ghosts.
You've made your choice.

[ EDIT ] Huh. Look likes exchemist made the same interpretation I did.

 

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I probably would too, if 'above' simply means objectivity. Keep in mind that these categories can often overlap with scientists.

Plumbers.

Plumbers figure out why things aren't flowing properly and then they fix it. They know the properties of piping, air hammering and all kind of relevant things. They interact with reality as they encounter it.

And they don't speculate nearly as egregiously as scientific theorists so often do. They don't try to spin their hypotheses into cosmic metaphysics. And they aren't idealized by a large portion of the public as the paradigm of human cognition. Plumbing is a more modest profession, which might arguably be a good thing.

The point being that plumbers seem to inject less of themselves into their work product. Plumbing doesn't produce celebrities and stars the way that science does. (Einstein! Feynman!) Plumbers are more faceless, more interchangeable that scientists. It doesn't matter as much which one we are talking about. They just get the job done.

I think that I might put many of the skilled trades above science on the objectivity scale.

 

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In the context of comparisons with other practices / professions, why should a negative reaction against science (or at least an over-glorified effigy and misconception of it created by some of its idolizers) even be so unexpected? Any collection of skills and jobs that has been lumped together under a general label, and promoted by some of its groupies and practitioners themselves as a replacement for traditional avenues of critical review and prescription making -- should not be surprised to likewise become a target of abusive propaganda. Just as those traditional customs and institutions had been for centuries (either covertly or publicly).

A variety of cultural and political factions come flocking to the shores of science to wrestle with it, due to its [anti-folk, anti-humanities, etc] proponents projecting this image of overarching authority upon it. Cults of creationists, for example, buy into and tweak that overarching authority perception as meaning that "science" is the new god on the block, and in response devise their own rival pseudoscience and misrepresentation of evolution to challenge the latter. As if here is yet another heathen or infidel agency that must be overcome in a long historical stream of them. Rather than regarding science (or subset of it) as a specialized class of work activities that could otherwise be as much ignored by them in their own internal communities as metaphysical, ethical, and social proclamations issued by welders, carpenters, hairdressers, bankers, etc.[*]

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[*] Even Philip K Dick during the last half-century indirectly tossed religious fundamentalists a double-conception view of his own which could allow them to get along with science's depiction of the past. If they take the book of Genesis to be literal in the first place, then how could any "Can't we all just get along?" approach / offering get too outlandish for them?

 

Plumbers and other skill trades are absolutely essential, and respectable trades.

But what a plumber has to think about, test, etc when compared to what scientists have to think about, test, etc...is like comparing kids liitle league to professional baseball.

 

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"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.........Doughnuts!"
-Homer

 

I see MR is all out of arguments.

 

Did he ever really have any? A question for the philosophers, I suppose...

 

From IceAura Post #30

The above remark is insulting. Why the bias against scientists?

Perhaps because they are more intelligent than you? Perhaps because you do not understand science?

Did you go to college? If so, was it one offered courses in science?

The liberal academics are in Departments like

The scientists are in departments like

BTW: Is liberal academic redundant? I think so!

 

Why do you consider "liberal" to be an insult? Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

 

Do you mean the opposite: that liberals have a reality bias? All passionate people of any type have anti-reality biases, whether liberals, conservatives or Magical Realists.

 

I read it that way too, at first.

I believe he meant Reality as in: MR, as opposed to reality.

Read it again as a Proper name.

 

I was more referring to http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberal_bias

 

Yes, but what about the word Reality?

 

The word reality?

Um... the opposite of pseudoscience and woowoo? "Reality" is what science is all about understanding?

 

how is that insulting most academics out side of some things like economics, history, statistics and some of the behaviorial sciences tend to be liberal. do you mean liberal arts? cause that still covers the sciences.

 

OK. I misunderstood. I actually thought you were saying "Magical Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

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