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From: gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Here, future future future ...
Message-ID: <522@odyssey.ATT.COM>
Date: 16 Mar 88 00:56:59 GMT
References: <2724@ihlpe.ATT.COM> <2885@sfsup.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Middletown, NJ
Lines: 34

> >As to the futurism aspect, I feel that the future will NOT be based on the
> >wishful thinking embodied in the pseudosciences (telepathic communications,
> >the world saved by noble UFO pilots, ones future foretold by ones birthdate,
> >etc.).  Rather, the future depends on applying our knowledge to the problems
> >at hand with undiluted vigor. [etc.]
>
> While I agree that the future will not be based on wishfull thinking, I
> would be careful about automatically labelling everything that does not
> fit into the conventional model pseudoscience.  ...

Gerry, you might do better to ask Rich just what are the problems of
the world!  I asked my AI program what to do about people breeding too
fast.  It said to exterminate them.  The only way to refute that kind
of reasoning is to introduce the human element.  What is the goal of
the human race?  And what does it do after it gets there?  In short,
what do WE want from the future?

The scientific paradigm can deal only with *repeatable* events.  Strictly
speaking, no two observed events are identical, for we change between
observations.  So repeatability is only a convention.  During the past
five centuries western culture has been investigating the repeatable,
to the neglect of the unique and human.  It's one of the glaring limitations
of scientific culture that it doesn't tell you whom to marry, or even how
to woo.  When people try to apply to these problems the abstract methods
they have learned from western culture, they usually come to grief!  (Look
into soc.singles if you doubt it....)

-:-
	"Would you eat a doormat that lives on bark and fungus?"

			"Wombats: A Pictorial Essay," in _Risks Digest_
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...!ihnp4!odyssey!gls