I am a technorealist. That means I am not against science, like a Luddite would be. But I examine the usefulness of technology to not just see the advantages, which are always promoted very clearly, but also the negatives. In our society we make great mistakes in dealing with science because we are born and raised in a technocratic world where science is the dominant arbiter of what is real or not.

Technorealism should get more attention and should be part of any technological progress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorealism
http://technorealism.wordpress.com/

That is a good place to start.

Technology causes problems. It is not neutral to our lives. It often tries to solve problems it created itself. Often it is used to solve problems that do not exist. I think mobile telephony is such a thing. I live a happy life without a mobile phone. These days you can't see anyone without one in their hands. School kids can be seen with such a thing glued to their hand. In the schoolyard they twitter with friends on the other side of the yard.
It created a whole industry, which governments like because they have a paradigm of economic growth.

There is a Trias at work here. Science is in bed with governments and the economy. Science, through the capitalist open markets, create patterns from findings which are sold on these markets by licensed businesses, that create work, which is what governments desire because through taxation of labor they can redistribute the wealth according to what society decides it needs.

Unfortunately every new service or product that is derived from scientific research costs a little bit of climate and environment.

This is my big problem with science. It will not allow itself to be scrutinized or held accountable for anything. Science throws a scientific discovery, like a stick, in a hen's house making the hen's fly in panic all over the place, then walks away saying that it is up to the hens and their leaders now to decide what to do with it. And yet the hens are not to question the scientists throwing the sticks.

I think this is folly. Science is not neutral. Everyone who looks around them can see that.

In my perfect world there would be committees that study what the goal of some research is, what problem it would actually solve,, if that solution will not create new problems and if it is ecologically sound, so that it respects the finite nature of our world.

Such committees would be comprised of people from all layers of society, like scientists, politicians, economists, ecologists, cultural anthropologists, psychologists but also lay people.

There would also be a change in law, so, the government side of things. I would like a technorealistic constitution. That means it takes into account the finity of the planet and its ecological maximum limitations. That would work out so that business cannot produce in ways that destroys natural habitats and also grants rights to future generations who need natural resources.

If science is held on a leech, there will be less junk to produce for businesses, combined with an Eco-constitution it will significantly help to stabilize our climatological issues.

Science should helps us improve our relationship to this world. We lack technorealism in the field of demographics, which is rarely used to steer society in a direction. And where it is sued, it is used to keep up the status quo of this Trias I mentioned, to predict we need more workers in the future, or that we need more care facilities for a greying population.

What we should be doing with such science and analysis is to decrease population of this planet to more sustainable levels. On this I will post something I hope you will enjoy.

Comments very welcome!

I love trees and old growth forests.

I also love the city and my mobile phone, and would be angry at anyone trying to take it from me.

I do not perceive technology as "controlling nature". Man is only able to get to know nature, understand her likes and dislikes, and work from there. This is technology. It is all part of nature.

This does not mean it's part of an environment that is suited to us and other earthlings as we have evolved to exist. If we don't understand nature right, and try to put our hand up her skirt too soon, she will kill all of us

But the only way to know her better is through the scientific method.

The chances of being killed violently today if you live in a major metropolitan city in europe are WAY less than essentially any non-state/tribal society anywhere ever. Steven Pinker, Harvard professor, recently released a book titled "The better angels of our nature: Why violence is on the decline" which goes deep into exploring violence in different societies through time.

The scientific method is by far the greatest tool we've found for scrutinizing things, including scientific theories. Now people's greed and tendency toward ignorance and violence, combined with control over scientific knowledge due to capitalist systems in serious need of reform, and tyrannical madness in other countries, is a great threat. People's ignorant ideas of what science means, is also a gigantic threat.

Essentially I agree with you. Technology must be used in a moral fashion, for the progression of society, for the well-being of all living things. Anti-scientism will never provide this however, in fact it is one of the forces which maintain the status quo of immoral & short sighted usage.

There are likely other forms of "knowing things", but for the human rational mind, science is by far the only method that will not kill us all without doubt.

I would encourage you to study what "the scientific method" actually is, how it developed over time, where it came from, etc. You will find yourself surprised at the extent to which it is people's ignorance of it which creates the ridiculous notion of "science" which is spread around the news etc. The scientific method is an incredibly beautiful thing, and inspiring to read the history of. Someone who deeply understands the scientific method, will not claim it is capable of knowing everything there is to know. Only ignorant people think this.

Ignorance and lack of compassion are the problem, as they always have been for humans.

*No offense meant with sexual references, only play.

Peace and Love

You have given me many points to grab onto for a reply. In your post I see several issues that I have with science.

First of all, I do understand what the scientific method is. So it is not ignorance on my part that would cause me to dismiss science. Like I said, I like science, but what I dislike is something that seeps through in your post about science, that is, that the only way to understanding is science. I find that a very cartesian way of thinking. And quite surprising for someone who explores altered states of consciousness and subscribes to a forum about that. It seems strange how you balance the paradigm of science as the only judge on the exploration and study of nature, the only way to get to understand her and at the same time seek understanding from the psychedelic experience where you can find answers in a different way.

My problem is that there is no balance between both methods. Science is the real of rationality. But humans are not just rational beings. We are rational because we are born into and indoctrinated with science as the primary mode of thinking, boosting our rationality over intuition. Even our laws are aimed towards that. For this reason the psychedelic experience is largely forbidden. Governments vehemently protect law and order because the rational mindstate allows you to work, pay taxes and consume. And as you know, consumption is the force that drives economies. And economies destroy nature.

If science and technology causes such problems, how can anyone defend science as the only way to understand nature, that same nature it destroys? You write you don't want your cell phone taken away. As if that gadget is some unalienable right to have glued to your hand. I do not understand this. What about your personal responsibility for the planet?

What more does science seek to understand when the IPCC is already the biggest scientific consensus on the planet telling us based on their scientific methodology that our climate is changing because of our behavior? And this behavior is...consumption, which is coming out of scientific and technological 'progress'.

I am not anti-science or anti-scientism. But let's talk about something you mention: violence. I am not sure why you bring this up. Apparently, this book you mention made an impact on you and you think that violence is something bad that needs to be avoided. That is fine, most people agree. What I detect is that you go from nature killing us to violence. Do you see nature as violent? If so, why? A strange connection, but an interesting one.

You see, let's talk about medical technology. In our world we strife to live as long as we possibly can. Sometimes medical technology and pharmacology and medical techniques help us past the point where we even want to be alive anymore. All the joy at that point is sucked out of life and these very old people practically beg for it to be over, parked away in old folks homes, bed-bound and just having nothing left except staring at a wall, soiling themselves. And no matter how loving the care might be, which it isn't around here, every single last drop of life society demand must be pressed out of them until the person finally dies.

I find this quite inhuman. People should have the right to leave this world if they seen it all and are fine with moving on. But our paradigm is that we want to extend life and we do so by the use of medical science. It is quite a violent way of dealing with death.

So what I mean is, science as a paradigm and value system has its limitations. Now go to the Amazon and see how people do not have access to all sorts of medicaltechnology. A spider bite might kill you. But are these people more unhappy? Are they dissatisfied with their shorter life expectancy? I do not think so. Science cannot replace empathy. So to live in a less 'advanced' civilization does not mean you won't be able to accept your death. You will be surrounded by your loved ones. The meaning of life cannot be found through science at all. Like I described, here we let people rot in care homes because they just gotta live! What kind of value system is connected in science? Science facilitates the tech and the values of society provide a cover for this atrocity. Talk about violence!

The difference between reaching 102 years of age in the western world or 55 in a jungle is not very big if the life you live is about community and appreciation of every moment and then when the time comes, to let go in peace, surrounded by your community and family. And if the pain is too great, a decent euthanasia method.

So here science is not your friend. And that is just medical technology. The result is that as a species, who lives longer and longer, we use ore and more energy. In summer elderly are kept cool, in winter very warm. We do not co-exist anymore and do not accept the boundaries of life on earth and death. There are reasons for that, I mention Ernest Becker here and his book.

Anyway, science as the only worldview, the only paradigm, that only rationality may provide us with answers is folly for sure. That is why I am here, aren't we all, to explore our consciousness.

Even today a Dutch party wants to prohibit hash now in coffeeshops. The repression is on fellows. They WILL NOT tolerate the expansion of our minds because it flies in the face of economics, based on scientific discovery: the scientific paradigm is what rules us, we are 80% rational and 20% intuitive and that needs to change to a 50-50% situation.

The problem is that scientific and technological progress changes ideas into patents, that get produced by workers in the economy, that are consumed by the same workers and that is the eternal loop we are in. Governents want infinite economic growth based on finite resources and energy. But growth means you need more people to fill that work places. That means we need population growth. That means pressure on eco systems and our climate. But that climate and our eco sphere is finite in its capacities. You won't let anyone take your phone away.

And so we are doomed. And science is at the heart of the problem.

Actually, the reasons for the idea to prohibit hash is that they don't want to support criminal activities in other countries anymore, for the production of hash many (for us) ethical rules are broken. See it as not wanting to have your shoes and cloths made by child labor anymore.

It's true though that they don't see the more elegant solution: make production of hash legal in The Netherlands and you will completely ban the foreign hash, this because locally made Dutch hash will become way cheaper and of a higher quality than the foreign one. So as you see, true rational would have made the hash legal while underbelly feelings based on irrational data and fear want to bannish it.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

"I support my local Taliban"

Sorry for the off topic, I like your point of view Visty.

Thank you kindly Sim

What Traveler said is very true too. The whole point is as follows...wait. First let me try to connect it to the topic at hand. Which is technorealism. Now, this is warping the parameters of my own topic a bit but...

Why do people enter into the business of producing hash? To make money obviously. Why would one want money? To be able to buy nice junk. In other words, to participate in the economy of junk material goods. If I plead for more technorealism, I do so because all this junk we buy harms the world we live on.

So the drug trade is a result of materialism, in this case, by selling mind altering substances, which are declared illegal, because they, imo, affect the way we look at the world and they open our eyes to the vision that life as we are living it is unsustainable. Since it is all a house cards anyway, as we can see with the financial crisis we are in, drugs are one of the primary enemies of the state.

Realism, in any field, would dictate that subsequently we would allow people the right to alter their minds. Because if you look at how people react to the idea that science should be on a leech, they come with statements that they don't want to give up some aspect of their life made possible by hyper consumerism and materialism. McKenna's idea that we need chemical intervention I find to be very interesting.

We cannot change and change if it happens, happens too slow. We consume more energy and oil, keep buying junk and are generally addicted to our lifestyle. So how you change that? What a mind job! And that is what it should be! We should change our minds to the good course of action by using mind altering drugs.

I think that would amount to realism, don't you think? If we become less addicted to junk, to our hyper-consumerist lifestyle, then hash suppliers would be either out of a job, because they too don't need their BMW so much...or they are producing that hash legally, to supply the masses with chemical intervention.

Of course, just a dream. I think no such course can be taken if people aren't forced to give up western modern life so that it becomes sustainable. The only way I see happening is that the house of cards crashes into itself. I am sort of hoping for it. And the sort of is in the fact I too am addicted to my junk.

So, technorealism has to do with science and technology, that provides us with gadgets and all sort of junk people do anything for, including committing crime. We know the discussions on the 60's when the Man stepped in and a period of mind exploring came to an end. People started having throughts and ideas that were found to be detrimental to the house of cards.

So there I warped it all to stay on topic :-)

As much as I love nature and all of the earth's beauty.... why are you protecting them?

Eventually, one day, billions of year's from now, the Sun will stop burning. At that point we will be on a planet which will completely die, unless we have the technology to do something about it.

Even without the technology to prevent it's death or turn it into some mobile space ship of some sort, we could still use technology to allow our own escape.

Unless you believe that we should die with our Sun?

Until then, we should preserve nature, because it is incredibly useful to us. Many just don't realize how useful it truly is, and destroy it for a quick buck. However when push comes to shove, kill the plant and make a spaceship to get off this rock, lest we die with it all.

Or turn it into one... that'd be just as interesting. Heating/insulation might be an issue though.

Right, because surely no one spends money on food, shelter and clothing these days. That would just be silly.

If this Technorealism is an attempt for a synthesis, or an equilibrium point between technophobia and technophilia, I am cool with that. Worshipping technology unconditionally is irresponsible. Bashing technology unconditionally is stupid. Once again, the most beneficial mindset is somewhere in the middle. At least when it comes to define a theory to work from.

However, Visty, there is something I don't quite understand in your arguments. According to the wikipedia definition you shared, technorealism is "a continuous critical examination of how technologies might help or hinder people in the struggle to improve the quality of their lives." That means technology will be judged according to what it brings, or to what it promises. Disregarding how difficult this diagnose might be in some cases, I see no problem with that principle. But when reading your comments, what I mostly find are harsh judgements about science itself. You even say this:



No, I cannot

I think you are mixing things up. You are blaming science for the flaws and evils of our social system. Of the global financial structure we live in. No matter how many times the establishment has used (or abused) science, no matter how often scientists have ganged up with corporations or governments for dubious purposes, science is only a methodology. Science is a tool. Even if you consider that, nowadays, there are more negative or pernicious impacts of science and technology than positive ones, claiming that is science's fault is a mistake. You are talking about the same science used by Albert Hofmann, by Sasha Shulgin or by the McKenna brothers. What makes a difference, returning to your starting point, is the purpose, the process, the result. Whether "technologies might help or hinder people in the struggle to improve the quality of their lives." Harmful technology comes after wrong reasons, wrong ethics, wrong purposes. Not because science or technology are evil. And in any case, the technology in a cellphone is not more evil than the computer you are using to discuss ideas with us, here in the Nexus.



As Entropymancer said, believe or not it, there is a vast majority of people that want money to be able to live. To have a roof, and food, and (sadly) education for their kids and health care. So the drug trade is not a result of materialism. The drug trade is a result of prohibition, of poverty, and if you want, of basic human needs - such as altering our consciousness. In any case, the drugs that move more money around the world are not gateways to a higher awareness. They are remedies for pain, or vehicles to escape from a reality that is too grey and frustrating.

In any case, our society -should- certainly be less adicted to junk, and seriously review priorities and goals. In that we completely agree.

Peace, and thanks for the thread.

Visty,

Thank you for your thoughtful response, and for your deeply beautiful intentions which glow from your post. I resonate precisely with them, and there we are saying precisely the same thing

First, I will say I made an error of communication when I stated science is the only way to know nature. I meant that, as far as the limited human system of rational thought goes, science is the only way to know.

I DEFINITELY believe there are other forms of knowing for humans to experience, and I believe likely forms which are outside human ability to experience. But, anything which involves words, essentially is rational, and the scientific method is the best form of rational thought.

I'll expand on this soon, I'm short on time at the moment but wanted to give at least a short response right now

Love and Peace

You guys make some good points. I value the feedback.

Of course we want to clothe ourselves and have shelter. The question is what the limit should be of luxuries. Should we be allowed to buy more clothes than we really need? And live in bigger houses, that require more energy to heat/keep cool? At what point does luxury harm our world? It seems to come down to the mouldy 'ole dough, eh?

Well, what is at the root then of our social systems? What drives it? What facilitates it? I'd say the fear of death if you wanna go deep fundamentals. To avoid thinking about our own demise, we fill our lives with transference symbolism. Religion, politics, maybe the psychedelic experience too. Then there are ideologies and of course economics. Economics is all about consumption. We use junk to fill our homes, our lives for status, to satisfy our ego showing others we 'made it'. We hoard like dragons. And still we die. And what have we accomplished?

There is a documentary that shows you what you did in a lifetime. It shows how many all sort of statistics, like how much waste you produced etc.

Science is a transference symbol in our world too. We lift it up to the point where people respond to concerns about our climate. e.g., with 'Science will find a way to fix it!' But science is a major factor in the problems. I cannot regard science as neutral in this. Call it a tool if you like, but a chainsaw is a tool too and it kills a tree. Some tools have an innate ability to do harm.
Maybe on the scale from Luddite to technocrat I am not entirely in the middle. What I do see is how science has become elevated above question and doubt.

But I notice you seem to believe that drugs are self medications for pain and an antidote for a grey existence. To some yes. But we know there is more to it than that. For the rest I am not sure we need money at all. Not even to buy clothes and shelter. There are other ways of living. I have some ideas. But that is for another post and time.

Peace to you all and thanks for the exchange of ideas.

There's other ways of living, amen to that.

Regarding "drugs", in general, if there is such a thing at all, I just meant that the black market has been mostly feeding on substances that either deliver cure for pain, or escapism, or raw energy to feed pleasure and ego. We know specially about other substances that deliver much more than that. Or simply substances of a completely different nature, that maybe do not even deserve the "drug" tag, soiled as it has been.

See you around, brother.

Yes, what you are saying could be described as a subset of technorealism, perhaps biorealism. Or Ethnorealism. Or Ethnopharmalogical realism.

I tend or try not to use 'drugs' as a word because of the taint and the inclusion of entheogens that clearly fall outside of the scope of the word drugs as it is used in society by most people.

Hello Visty,

I have tried to put a thoughtful response together for you. The length got out of control lol, but this is a topic my heart drives me to discuss, and putting my response together is connected with me refining the message. After the second break in my response, I'm not looking for you to continue lol. I was just not going to post it, but would have felt that I did not respond to some of your statements respectfully.


I thought I would first comment on Terence Mckenna, as I spend a great deal of time listening/reading him as well, and consider him an extremely important piece of the entheogenic progression. Terence has made many important statements, but it's very important when listening to him to maintain awareness that he is usually speaking as a bard or poet. A lot of his statements are intended to create a way of feeling in the listener, or assisting the listener in overcoming their rational monkey mind , NOT a way of belief. As his brother put it (I believe you have read/listened to "True Hallucinations", and have some idea of how intimately their lives are woven together ) in this interview:



Dennis is not saying this at all in a mean or derogatory way, it's clear when listening, just an objective factual way. If you haven't listened to enough Mckenna to hear him contradicting himself multiple times, or completely switching his "belief" systems, I'd prescribe more Terrance .

I, like Dennis, wish Terence would have been a bit more responsible to his audience in this regard, but considering the amount of magic Terence's words generally carry, I think it was probably the better of two evils.

---

I want to respond directly to the big bang now. Terence goes over similar expressions a few times - "the limit case for credulity" "I've got a bridge to sell you" etc. in different places. I know it's in the tree of knowledge discussion but don't remember where else. This is one of those places that just makes me painfully cringe every time I hear Terence say this, because it shows without doubt that Terence either:

a) did not understand the big bang theory

or

b) was willing to misrepresent it in order to make a point.

Now the point made is a good one, someone believing that there was literally nothing (not talking about no-thing here ) which suddenly exploded into everything for no reason, is non-sensical. Some people do sub-consciously believe this, and it's important to relieve them of this notion. Some people do believe science claims an explanation of where the universe came from, and should realize their error.

HOWEVER:

There is NO established scientific theory explaining where everything came from!!!!

This is very very important.

The theory of the big bang does not claim to explain where everything came from. Look it up for yourself. Let me say it one more time because it is very important -

THE THEORY OF THE BIG BANG DOES NOT CLAIM TO EXPLAIN WHERE EVERYTHING CAME FROM



All it claims is that - Judging from what's around us, it appears that at the farthest place we can trace back in time right now, everything we can observe was once expanding from the same place.

Here's a quote from wiki:


So why is this important?

Because - it is not the fault of the scientific method that people are bad at critical thinking by design.

The scientific method is misrepresented so many times in so many ways by so many people, it's mostly impossible for a human's piddly brain to get a deep understanding of what it actually is.

Part of the issue, is that the scientific method is a thing of such incredible genius, of such beautiful subtlety, of such incredible complexity in so many contexts of what it means for something to be defined, that the entirety of what the method is itself takes a great amount of time to deeply integrate.

So let me make one more important statement:

ALL OF THE LEGITIMATE PROBLEMS YOU ARE POINTING OUT, ARE THE PROBLEMS OF PEOPLE'S MISREPRESENTATION AND MISUNDERSTANDING OF WHAT SCIENCE IS, NOT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD ITSELF



Whew, sorry. Ok so why is this important? Because we don't need everyone and their mother adding 500,000 new words and causes to the language everyday to fix our problems. And anti-science /anti-intellectualism will only increase these problems.

Let me clarify - these ARE problems.

But the fix is better education of what the scientific method is, especially it's limitations. A large part of what you are saying is that science considers itself the final word of knowledge, the only source of real knowing, etc. But the scientific method does not consider itself this, the human difficulty in thinking critically is what considers itself (not the scientific method) the only source of real knowing.

---

If you are attempting to define what intuition is with logic and reason, you are attempting to reduce intuition to logic and reason.

Additionally, there are different forms of intuition. Or stated better, there are different things the word intuition represents, making it tricky to develop a proper belief structure around intuition. Here's a couple:

* Buddhist compassionate state
* Professional Satori
* Emotional responses
* Our Reptilien instincts
* Our Mammalian instincts
* Rational beliefs formed by limited abilities of perception

Spiritual people tend to get these and others all fucked up. Especially satori or Nirvana with evolutionary instinct. I don't understand how anyone thinks buddha's entire lesson was that we need to be aggressive and violent monkeys in a tree - but that's a whole other topic. Science is something which allows us to recognize where we are going about things wrong. Humans always intuitively perceive themselves as being at the center of the universe. In some senses, this is true. However, when we watch the "sunrise", our intuition is that it is a "sunrise" because of this and our limited ability of perception.

A good question for intuition is: "Why do you not make it blatantly obvious that I am on a giant sphere with electromagnetic shields flying around in indescribably gigantic nuclear explosion?"

If you want to develop a belief structure about the value of intuition, you must be very careful about what the definition is you are using. Generally the word is used very lazily to mean many many vague things, and performing logical calculations based on a sentence will therefore create errors.



We are definitely NOT indoctrinated with science as the primary mode of thinking. I agree that intuition is looked down on significantly, but it is not science that is indoctrinated - it is dogmatic belief structures. WHICH ARE NOT SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dogmatic belief structures are the opposite of science. It doesn't matter if a famous scientist has dogmatic beliefs, dogmatic beliefs ALWAYS will be anti-science. Your lack of perception of this is where I obtain my confidence you do not have a significant relationship with the history of the scientific method.



The psychedelic experience is forbidden because of our anti-intellectual, anti-science culture. It is NOT the other way around. Do you have any idea the percentage of people in the US who believe evolution did not happen? And these tend to be the people who are religious, who despise the scientific method, AND WHO DESPISE psychedelics. The US has very strong puritan roots, and it is anti-science anti-education religious christian conservatism more than any other force keeping these things illegal there, and the US bullies other countries into following suit.



Nature cannot be destroyed.

Our environment can be destroyed, the earth can be destroyed, but man has 0 effect on Nature. Man vs. Nature = man learns what Nature wants in order for man to survive or Nature kills man.

I think you use the word Nature to mean environment at some times and big N Nature at others.

As Terence put it "we have burn't our bridges." There is no going back. Mankind must move forward. This is a birth process, and the notion that we have reached perfection and evolution has come to an end for man seems rather unimaginative, and possibly even disrespectful towards the greatness of Nature.

Misunderstanding, is one of the greatest instigators of war and violence and destruction. Communication, is one of the greatest instigators of understanding, compassion, and love. Cell phones with video allow peasants in egypt to immediately show the rest of the world immoral actions taken by would be tyrants, bringing in compassion and assistance.

Have you read Ghandi's works? A huge part of his political genius was ensuring that injustice was communicated as far as possible. "Technology" is nature, the idea that it's man made is a human-centric non-sequitur. The internet and other forms of strengthened communication are powerful forces in bringing about compassion and the abolishment of ignorance. It seems pretty clear Steve Jobs was motivated in large part through his life by psychedelic visions. Leary became an immense proponent of the internet and technology.





Do I see nature as violent? This is a difficult question, as both words being compared have multitudes of large and vague rational definitions and emotional connotations. I don't know if I could answer you without us spending great amounts of time "getting on the same page" for what these words mean relative to this question.

I generally see nature as being something far greater than my individual self, and far beyond my scientific rational mind's ability to understand. I also think of morality and violence as being relative to individuals, and I do not believe that nature is an individual, so it might be most accurate for me to say I don't think the question makes sense. I hope this is along the lines of what you're looking for in my answer.




For the most part I completely agree with this. This has nothing to do with valuing the scientific method however. Except -

If you want to argue that living that way is more preferable to another, it is a scientific, testable hypothesis. And unfortunately, the concrete observations of what tribal life is like matches up with our intuition about it about as well as the sunrise does. However I still consider the Archetype of the tribal society to be VERY important in social progress. But it's important to recognize that it is an Archetype.



If you wish to develop a rational, scientific, belief structure, which the quoted paragraph is doing, you must be very cautious and compassionate in doing so. You recognize that dogmas, ideas, beliefs, control, greed, are all dangerous things. But developing a dogmatic belief structure about the dangers of dogmatic belief structures is a bit, well dogmatic.

This quote correctly identifies problems with capitalism, government, economics, environment.

BUT YOU ARE USING SCIENCE TO POINT OUT THESE PROBLEMS AND ATTEMPT TO OFFER YOUR HYPOTHESIS FOR FIXING THEM



See, we both agree that science is the solution, not the problem


Very very much love and peace to you

I disagree with much of what you wrote...and yelled.

It is clear you are indoctrinated too. You are defending science as something that rises us out of the pit of hell, or the pit of violent apeness. You talk about McKenna. I am not sure why.
You talk about intuition. Then list things as if they are definitions. You say that people don't understand science. Or its methods. I do not think science recognizes anything, especially their own responsibilities.
You distinct between nature and the environment in a weird way. Not sure what you mean there.

Well, Leary was wrong. And so was McKenna on internet. His vision was that we would connect more and more and maybe culture would not be dangerous to the planet because it would be a virtual thing.

Internet is the infrastructure of our own enslavement. It is the ultimate divide and conquer.

Today it looks like we have access to information. But this is rapidly changing. We have social media, google and websites that are customized to your interests, because you are being profiled. You see personalized advertisements on customized websites that show you headlines or content suited to your interests. Technorealism demands we look at what social engineering means on how to keep the people divided, how internet has become a lightning rod for discontent. In the meantime secreat services are profiling too, and inserting opinions in the right places to control your thoughts, by seeking our opinion makers and opposing them in their fora and social media.

In the meantime people lose any sense of what privacy means, how it is a principle human right. With privacy and the surveillance dictatorships we are entering into we lose autonomy. The internet is a huge dissapointment. All it does is scale up problems.

When the Nazi's came to my country, they were very successful in rounding up the Jews because they entered municipal archives and every Jew was registered as such. Resistance fighters burnt those files to save Jews. But now everything, including your identity, is filed in databases and in networks. It took many soldiers to lift a file cabinet, but with internet it takes one hacker and tens of thousands of people get victimized.
And once that information is out there, it is out there forever.

Welcome to the wonderful world of ICT!

Science was never a solution. It will never be. Solutions come from the synthesis of logic and intuition. Science sees only problems that do not exist and it tries to find solutions for it. Science is antithetical to nature. I don't see why it inspires people to defend it so. Surely it must be a deeply rooted believe in it.

I think this is one of the best posts I have seen on this board. Thank you for taking the time to explain yourself in detail.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Welcome newcomer Visty!

I think I share many of your ideas concerning technology, but let’s not confuse technology with science. They are very different things.

Science is truly neutral. It allows us to learn how things work. But it is technology – the application of science, that is the concern.

In your first post you used the analogy of a stick being thrown into a hen house. If I understood it correctly, the stick represents science, and the henhouse represents humankind. But the analogy is not quite as accurate as it could be:

Science tells us about the stick and its behavior: The physical properties of the stick, its dynamic interaction with gravity when an appropriate force is applied, etc. Science allows us to predict what might happen when the stick is thrown in the direction of the henhouse. But it is technology that represents the throwing of the stick.

Science tells us about how semiconductor materials behave, mathematics tells us how complex networks interact, etc, but it is technology that built the internet. Not science.

Science gives us knowledge. How we use that knowledge tells us much more about the nature of human beings than it does about the nature of science.

Hear hear, gibran2!

Often people confuse science with technology in the same way that we interestingly enough don't confuse a knife with the person using it to kill. Just as the knife is completely neutral, it's just a tool, so is science. As with the knife science can be used for a variety of purposes, but neither science nor the knife is to be blamed for what people do with it. This distinction is very important!

I think that is a sort of arbitrary distinction. Technology is based on science. It seems strange to keep science out of the wind and let technology take the blows.
I have nothing against and do appreciate the quest for knowledge. But I am a person who likes to go to the root of things. I like to peel of layers. Hell, we all know what that is like. Well, to me the psychedelic experience is about peeling away layers to the core, if there is such a thing. I entertain the idea of fractality more and more these days... But that aside.

Technology and science are not that separates as you might think. Think of the research into meta-materials. Bouncy balls, nanotubes, that sort of thing. This research requires a scientific understanding of...well..chemistry I suppose, optics, physics and so on and so forth. The machines like electron-miscroscopes are derived from earlier scientific breakthroughs. One thing leads to another. So it seems to me they are entangled, continuously basing their new applications on earlier research.
But technology also invents new things themselves. Or by trying to make something, like a better accumulator, discovers new ways of using the material. These finds can then be more fundamentally studied by science.



But that is not what science does. If it was studying these attributes to prevent disaster in the henhouse then it would be fine. But it invented the stick in the first place. That is the analogy I am making and that you steal away with.

Scientific study, chemistry, found a way to make plastics out of oil. It created the idea of nuclear energy. Today we are addicted and dependent on oil for everything you can possible imagine. And we have nuclear waste we do not really have an answer for. Now science is trying to find a solution for dealing with nuclear waste and the same chemists to made polymers, are now trying to make a better plastic that is not so harmful- I guess their friends in biology trying to create bacteria to help solve their mess now.

I think the point is very clear. If you go to the root causes, it is science that, without any sort of restraint or technorealism, beleives that we just shopuld research whatever we can, no matter what applications may come of it, developed by technology. It does not think ahead of what impact some technology has on society.

Another example is the microwave oven. Microwaves were discovered, then later they got a eureka moment. We can heat food with it. And a prototype was developed somewhere by some handyman in some lab or engineering facility, either in a university or in some corporate tinker toy room. And it was marketed.

And microwaved food is really unhealthy, Swiss scientists have found. But their research was banned by a judge by the power of the industry.

You are saying it is good we researched the Manhatten Project, nuclear energy, polymers, bouncy balls and nanotubes and microwave energy and that we should blame the engineers, who, either in corporate business workshops or at some university made their Doomsday/Pandora's Boxes.



You have not convinced me yet. All you do is put science on a pedestal, keeping it our of reach of judgment in some sense of a glory quest for understanding and knowledge. I am fine with that. But let's research stuff that actually is though through what we can do wrong with it before someone signs his hancock on an agreement for subsidy to study something.

If you look at your home, look around you. Really! That is what science helped made possible. The impact on scoiety is undeniable. And the fact of all that junk in your room is causing climate problems, environmental problems and helps indoctrinate babies in a materialist lifestyle.

Science should have researched the effects of mircowave radiation on food. It should have thought about how to make plastics that can be neutrally applied and not cause swirling masses of plastic waste in every ocean, to the point that in the remotest places of earth, on beaches, they find plastic granules. They should have considered that nuke energy would create radioactive waste. And now they should study if bouncy balls and nanotubes are not the modern equivalent of astbestos. They have no idea! And their friends in engineering are creating these new materials and there is NO idea on waste management of that stuff, like we now have for astbestos and oil waste.

But isn't it nonsense?

Science isn't done by god. It is done by humans. We are the carriers of it. Anything that exists, from automobiles to Zinc supplements is the result of human endeavors. Everything we make has a stamp on it 'made by humans'.

We always hear the example of the knife. But it seems to me that we humans of Earth have a bad side to us. We can do bad things. It seems quite unrealistic to throw the 'knife' in the mix and then hope there comes more buttered toast from it then murder victims. Sometimes I suppose a tool or product or application needs to be developed because of obvious advantages, despite the fact it can be misused. But an atomic bomb is not one of them.

The point is that we deny our own inner evil streak.

"A man with a gun thinks differently than one with no gun. The guns don't need minds, they use ours."
-- Joe P.

I think that is very true. A knife is an object with innate features. And innate potential for harm. To deny that seems folly. If innate attributes cannot be connected to bad human behavior, then why would you agree a society needs restrcitions, e.g. in gun law. In my country knives are prohibited based on blade length and attributes like it being a knife obviously not needed to butter toast. Most people agree stiletto's need to be regulated. A blade longer than the palm of your hand is illegal here. Exceptions are cooking knives of different sorts.

You cannot seriously maintain the position that knives do not have innate characteristics and that they are the result of human engineering, which is based on human science and that humans have an evil streak making it psosible for them to misuse whatever the product is of our imagination.

Technorealism in my opinion is a wide approach to examining the effects of science and technology on society. Science and technology are human endeavors and as such prone to human weaknesses and flawed thinking. Whatever comes out of them, will inherit these flaws.

It is our limited consciousness and our flawed attitudes towards nature, towards ourselves, we use the wrong paradigms, the wrong values. With these in heart and mind we invent and study and develop and the result is a society no one cares for if it didn't gives us junk toy distractions that we need as transference symbols because we deny our own mortality.

The result is we destroy our world and science and technology are the primary vectors with which we try to mask our own demise.

If we are to change and do better, we cannot hope to wander off into the fairy land of self-discovery. There are not enough guru's or mental couches to help individuals to accept their own mortality. That is proven daily in politics and society where we use more energy still, more oil and as people lack the strength or conviction or appreciation for this world to actually make a stand on doing things like decrease our ecological footprint, consume less goods, eat less meat. Drive less. We do not do what is needed.

So we cannot all go to an ashram or a guru or to church or take psychedelics. We can all enter the self help section of the local bookstores and practice meditation techniques, yoga and 'learn telepathy'. The UFO's aren't going to land to give us free energy and cure cancer.

So what do we do if we cannot change? We start with what we can take control of. Science and technology. The tools with which we allow ourselves to be spoiled with our plasma tv's and cars and electric knives and mobile phones and 3D digital picture frames.

We put science and technology on probation. We trick ourselves into becoming less materialist and once the rate of new scientific principles condensed as practical technological applications decreases, so will we change as a result.

So I think I hereby finally destroyed that age-old cry about the knife being a neutral tool. There are no such things because they are the results of human science and engineering, therefore of our flawed nature, our lack of better values and norms.