Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption Keywords: Sigmoid functions are boring Message-ID: <1579@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 23 Aug 88 09:51:04 GMT References: <19880820041348.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Lines: 45 In reply to two separate comments from Marvin Minsky in comp.ai.digest >Yes, enough to justify what those who "knew" that they were right did >to Bruno, Galileo, Joan, and countless other such victims. >More generally, let's see more learning from the past. Take care when there are trained historians on the net :-) It is not beliefs that kill, but the power to act on them. Where "scientists" have had power, notably in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, they have killed to suppress heresy, just as the religious leaders of pre-modern Europe killed the early scientists to put down particularly annoying heresies. Of course, you will say, these people in Germany and Russia were not scientists. As a trained historian, it is enough for me that they called themselves scientists, just as the Inquisition were undoubtedly Christian. But as a historian, I would exercise great caution in extending the facts of a previous time into the present. One thing one can learn from the past is that this went out of fashion years ago :-) The way to analyse what a scientist or Christian would do now, given the absolute power enjoyed by the Inquisition, is to examine their beliefs. Neither group are democrats, nor would they respect many existing freedoms. Note that I am talking of roles of science and religion. As these people live in democracies, the chances are that the values of the wider society will repress the totalitarian instincts of their role-specific formal belief systems. Do not take this analysis personally. The way to attack my argument is to demonstrate that scientific or christian AUTHORITY are compatible with a liberal democracy. Any scientist who believes in a society regulated by scientific reason (which would rule out the need for consultative subjective democracy) would, given the power, introduce gulags, mental hospitals and other devices for the control of the irrational and the heretical. If anyone finds this unreasonable, consider how scientists wield power when they do have it in academic organisations and funding bodies. Admittedly they only murder rival research rather than rival researchers. Stakes don't have to be made from wood :-< P.S. Sure, move this discussion somewhere else :-) -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs !ukc!glasgow!gilbert