"is It Adequate To Understand The World Scientifically?

[Fweethawt]

The cheese, or my butt?

[NorthenSun]

I guess my question would be, "How significant a difference must there be before there is "unreal" understanding of the world?"

 

It would depend on the specific case.

 

People will overlook something and reach a wrong conclusion, it happens frequently. Someone can fail to see a stop sign and proceed through an intersection without stopping. Their mind was probably occupied with something other than focusing on their driving task. For a moment they had an incorrect view of reality. Perhaps they were lucky and did not hit anything, or maybe a disatrous consequence befalls them. In the end though, it does not seem likely that they would arrive at the conclusion that the stop sign was not really there at all. The mind errors, at times, but I do not think it errors in a continual systematic way to produce a false reality, as a result of selective data filtering.

 

If that means we should be more cautious in our actions, I would agree with that.

[chefranden]

I'm digesting Sun. Your words that is, not my supper.

[chefranden]

NorthernSun

 

Thanks for the work you have put into this.

 

The brain does indeed operate on many levels, and much of its activity is hidden from the conscious mind. Basic brain anatomy always starts out by describing how various parts of the brain control different activities, ranging from autonomic type responses in the brain stem up to the higher level thinking in the cerebral cortex. [1] Much of the sensory input provided from the body’s nervous system is filtered out from the conscious mind. The sentient mind probably does not have enough physical circuitry to be aware of every sensory input, or every sub level of mental activity all at once. It works out well for the stomach to signal the brain that there is a need for food, but no need to provide every bit of information on how the digestion of the most recent taco supreme is proceeding though the gut. The conscious mind does not need to be notified that insulin production is being raised or lowered to control the level of sugar in the blood stream. Only when there is a failure of a bodily system, such as in a diabetic, does the conscious mind need to assume a role in monitoring blood sugar levels. At times the body even acts to reduce sensory input, such as in the endorphin reaction to defuse the amount of pain resulting from an injury.

 

No argument so far.

 

The question is, does the individual suffer because of this lack of conscious awareness, or ignorance as you label it? Perhaps at times, but in general the answer would seem to be no. If the mind produced a mental world picture which was vastly different from the outside world, it is difficult to see how any organism would survive for a very long.

...............................................................................................................

It cannot be established that by operating in a selective input (ignorance) mode the conscious mind results in developing a world view which is radically different from the ‘real’ world.

 

I don't mean to imply that the individual suffers from it. I mean to point out that this is the way the mind/individual comprehends the world in which it finds itself. That is that its comprehension of the world is directly related to its physical structure and somewhat indirectly the environment that shaped its structure including, but not limited to, nutrition, toxins, family, neighbors, culture, education, skills learned and circumstances experienced.

...........................................................................................................

I'm not trying to establish that the mind is not dealing with the real world. I'm trying to establish how the mind that is not apart from the real world actually apprehends the real world.

 

This is a bit misleading of course, because the idea of apprehension usually assumes consciousness. I am, in part, trying to show that consciousness is only a small part of how bodymind finds itself in its environment. That does not mean that consciousness and perhaps the science that takes its shape from it is not useful, only that it cannot be all encompassing. That means that if we intend to rely on solely or chiefly on science for survival, we will fail, because we are attempting ignore most of the faculties Mother Nature gave us to live where she put us. (I will personify the processes of evolution as Mother Nature, because it is a good short hand, and because it helps me grasp in consciousness that which seems to me to be beyond consciousness.)

 

[1]Does this filtering, or ignorance, in the conscious mind act in such a manner that our mental construction of reality is fundamentally wrong? In other words, from the data which does get through to the aware mind, are we building a false picture or model of the ‘real’ world. Certainly we see that mentally ill people construct a different world view based on either incorrect filtering, or on incorrect assembly of the information. [2]But are the ‘normal’ healthy people also building a similar distorted illusion of the world, and how can we find out if this is true? …

 

1. Not exactly. Consciousness is a tool that is useful in some contexts or it would not have evolved, but it is not the whole tool box that this culture supposes that it is. We treat consciousness as if it was what Mother Nature was aiming for. It is something like, after having developed the thumb, the hand regards the rest of the fingers as primitive and largely annoying stumbling blocks to what the hand wants to achieve.

 

[2] Yes. We have a distorted view of reality. The main distortion that has come from this is that we are above nature, that we are in charge of nature, or at least ought to be. We may have thrown out God but we did not at the same time throw out God's command: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." It isn't hard to see evidence of destruction that this has wrought. We, the normal, are frelling insane.

 

...Thus for the rest of us, the prudent path would seem to be that of the skeptic. The meditative experience has clearly not provided a competitive alternative reality to that of the ‘normal’ view of reality. To date, there is not a repeatable, reproducible alternative reality view which would allow us to conclude that the filtering (ignorance) mode of the conscious mind is producing a false reality.

 

I don't think that if meditation is about bringing power to the conscious mind by force of will or something, it will work. There is a view of reality that works for humans, or I should say worked for humans since there are very few who know it any more. That is the view that knows that the world was no more made for man than it was made for male peacocks. That view worked for most of our 1.8 million years until we got the notion that we could take over about 10,000 years or so back. It has taken the culture of take over all that time to accomplish that feat. Now that we have done so, it doesn't look like that great of an idea.

 

...Without more verifiable evidence for the existence of other senses beyond the standard five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, & feeling, it is only prudent to dismiss any extra sensory perception capacity in our minds at this time.

 

I'm not arguing for extra sensory perception, which under the rubric of science would have to be consciously controllable to be of any use. I don't have much to say about it.

 

My conclusion is that there is not sufficient evidence or reasonable argument to support the position that the selective filtering (ignorance) mode of operation employed by the conscious mind produces a mental reality picture which is significantly different from the ‘real’ world reality.

 

I could be a smart ass and just say that then I guess you haven't read the news lately.

 

At the risk of sounding like a religionist, I say that the evidence is all around you and you ignore it. Most of us ignore it. I ignore it for the most part. You don't ignore it out of stupidity. You ignore it because it is part of the background of your life, and because Mother Culture tells you it is not important. It is something like city dwellers not really hearing the noise of the city -- unless it changes. It is no skin off my nose if a few more thousand Iraqis die. It is no skin off my nose if Salmon go extinct. That sort of thing is of no importance to me -- I have a computer, chainsaw, electric oven, vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, dishwasher, Big Mac, Viagra, and an Ionic Breeze!

 

Scientific thinking involves data filtration, but so does any conscious mental activity.

Yes, I know. That is what I said.

 

The historian does not need to interview every person who lived through the Vietnam War to provide a good summary of what happened there. If a lack of awareness, or ignorance of brain processes, makes us Homo Ignoramus, then we operate ignorantly when conducting any conscious mental discipline that humans pursue.

 

As a person that knows that there is no god, you know for all intents and purposes all the processes of the universe take place without any conscious control, that includes human consciousness. It may be the case that science will soon be able to explain the process of consciousness, but nevertheless the process that produces consciousness will still not be conscious. You may be able to explain the workings of your cells, but you will not be able to control/operate/maintain/etc. your cells via consciousness. Consciousness is not up to the task. That is why we attempt to make most of the operation of a jet fighter or airliner automatic (i.e. unconscious). Yet we suppose that we will be able via consciousness/science control/operate/maintain/etc the Earth if not the whole dang universe.

 

... Science cannot be singled out or invalidated because it engages in the reductive process of data simplification. Data filtration is a normal brain function.

 

I'm not trying to invalidate either science or consciousness. I am trying to point out that science is an inadequate long term survival strategy.

 

Data filtration is normal conscious brain function asking something like, "what is standing out from the background that I should pay attention right now?" I can ignore the background because the background takes care of itself, or used to. For some reason I've gotten the notion that background should be brought under conscious control, perhaps so that I'm not presented with problems like a stalking lion or temporary food shortage. I don't know. I don't know why our culture wants to do this, but it does.

 

Now, if you want to argue that we tend to see what we want to see, that is a whole other topic. Science has been in the forefront of noting that the planet is warming and we are jeopardizing our future. It is our lack of political will to make the required sacrifices which is keeping us from confronting this problem, and other environmental issues.

 

Perhaps you haven't chosen to see that science has brought us global warming in the first place. You may consider that science is an amoral institution and therefore has nothing to do with bad outcomes.* Humans, however, are moral animals. Whatever actions they may take with whatever tools they may use will have moral consequences. Science is a human activity therefore it cannot be amoral, even if the facts it finds are amoral.

 

*If this is the case science also has nothing to do with good outcomes either.

[Asimov]

So then I will say that science is no more an adequate way of understanding the human/world relationship than is religion.

 

What method is adequate? I don't know yet!

 

Your thoughts and flames will be greatly appreciated.

 

Um...science describes what we observe in the world, and that is all.

[chefranden]

So then I will say that science is no more an adequate way of understanding the human/world relationship than is religion.

 

What method is adequate? I don't know yet!

 

Your thoughts and flames will be greatly appreciated.

 

Um...science describes what we observe in the world, and that is all.

 

Umm... Christianity is a relationship, and that is all.

 

Sorry I couldn't resist.

 

Well, I just don't buy this innocent science thingy. Science is not destroying the world; it is that evil Technology.

 

The scientific understanding of the world gives us technology. Is a biologist working in the government's bio-warfare research a technician or a scientist. Is the scientist just trying to describing how anthrax disperses from a bomb because that description would be interesting, or because the government wants an antrax bomb. Is a chemist working for DuPont getting paid to find new chemical compounds in order to avoid toxicity in the environment?

 

Science is supported by government and industry in order to aquire power and profit. This support is justified in the propaganda as some version of "science for better living." I'm sure there are some wonderful civilian spin offs from cluster bombs and DU weapons even if I haven't heard of them yet. I wonder if explosives have saved more lives then they have taken? If science was practiced as just courosity about nature it would have to be funded the way any hobby is funded.

 

We are told that Science is the way to end hunger, disease, poverty, global warming, war, and toejamfootball. It is the new savior to most westernized people whether or not some people like me or you may say otherwise.

[Fweethawt]

We are told that Science is the way to end hunger, disease, poverty, global warming, war, and toejamfootball. It is the new savior to most westernized people whether or not some people like me or you may say otherwise.

If this is true, then how come superstition runs rampant here in the states?

[jjacksonRIAB]

The cheese, or my butt?

 

When in doubt, synthesize

[chefranden]

Hey Chef!

 

I have come to a conclusion (sort of) that science doesn't have to strictly manage data more than it has to act as a mechanism to determine scaled factors and rank them according their performance within a system. I suppose that's more of a statistical or fuzzy measure, but I would think that a sustainable system that was scientifically managed would have to extoll redundancy rather than preventing it to ensure that the path of information is not obstructed.

 

I'm sorry jj, but I'm not getting this.

 

The odd thing is that sustainable systems have already been invented, by Mother Nature without the interference of conscious thinking. My hypothesis (from Daniel Quinn) is that systems became unsustainable via the application of the notion that systems would work better under conscious human control. By work better we mean that ecosystems would produce more food for humans. This is the core value of our culture.

 

One of the things that our consciousness missed is that sustainable systems are diverse. Another way to say this is that sustainable systems need all or at least most all of their parts to work. Another thing missed is that we were a part of the diversity not above it or outside of it as we assume today when talk about conquering nature in some fashion.

 

Management is what makes a system unsustainable.

 

I think we must be creative as well as analytical. If you jab too many toothpicks into a blob of jello it soon becomes too rigid to be manipulated, and you lose what you tried so hard to gain - an understanding of the nature of X. There is a science to thought. Maybe it's not a matter of it being too complex to understand - maybe it's just too simple to understand, but it has us fooled because it wears the guise of complexity. At first glance fractals, for example, seem very complex when in actuality they are a combination of simple systems -- when you see the complex system it's very difficult to pull the variables back out that created them; encryption systems rely on simple algorithms, but they take great effort to be reverse-engineered.

 

Isn't this sort of what the Theory of Everything is about? I see it as a quasi-religious quest for the one 2 inch formula that will give us the ability to stop making management mistakes. Then we will know the secret of the gods and have the ability to solve a problem without creating 20 others. We will have the Philosopher's Stone.

 

Science can give us a system to break things down, but it's going to be very hard to match the expressiveness of creative thinking -- in its derivation. Variables in nature act more like webs than straight lines. They are very difficult to analyse, and as such the tools to do so are still in their infancy; in the end I would not be suprised if they gain a reputation as being un-scientific.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by creative thinking.

 

Yes, nature is a web of relationships. Consciousness comes out of a small bit of that web, the web doesn't come out of a small bit of Consciousness as Mother Culture has pretended for many generations.

 

I hope I understood your questions right, but even my attempt at answers aren't adequate enough for me.

 

That means they were good questions ;-)

 

Thanks, jj. I apologize for overlooking a reply to you.

[chefranden]

We are told that Science is the way to end hunger, disease, poverty, global warming, war, and toejamfootball. It is the new savior to most westernized people whether or not some people like me or you may say otherwise.

If this is true, then how come superstition runs rampant here in the states?

 

I'm not trying to be a smart as here but I think that science is one of the superstitions.

 

That is, Science is not a great deal better at deciding "how shall we then live?" than is a pair of dice.*

 

Why does the question "how shall we then live?" even have any meaning to us? No other being on the Earth would ask it. They already know how, by "mere" "primative" instinct. For most of our 1.8 million years we already knew how.

 

 

*I appologize to those this insults. I don't mean to be insulting. I mean to be challanging.

[jjacksonRIAB]

I'm sorry jj, but I'm not getting this.

 

This is probably my lack of understanding, not yours.

 

The odd thing is that sustainable systems have already been invented, by Mother Nature without the interference of conscious thinking. My hypothesis (from Daniel Quinn) is that systems became unsustainable via the application of the notion that systems would work better under conscious human control. By work better we mean that ecosystems would produce more food for humans. This is the core value of our culture.

 

Yes, it is my lack of understanding and context looks fairly important here. I have never heard of Daniel Quinn, so I'll head out to the library later today and see if I can't pick up a copy of Ishmael. Maybe we can't micromanage a full system by ourselves, but what's wrong with tweaking it? Genetic modification of crops has produced more food, but I wouldn't say it's micromanaged as much as it is idealized for our use. Changing the starting conditions of a process has the effect of producing an invisible hand that guides it along the way without the necessity of our absolute control.

 

One of the things that our consciousness missed is that sustainable systems are diverse. Another way to say this is that sustainable systems need all or at least most all of their parts to work. Another thing missed is that we were a part of the diversity not above it or outside of it as we assume today when talk about conquering nature in some fashion.

 

Management is what makes a system unsustainable.

 

If you're saying complete human management with what I've seen so far I'd be inclined to agree. I noticed the underscore as well. I interpret that as the involvement of man (as defined) directly in the process. What I'm asking is isn't a system unsustainable by definition if it must be guided by man?

 

In human terms, I don't think nature's solution is sustainable either, given that it is statistically possible to prove we don't have the landmass to sustain the human population even if we planted food on every square inch of soil -- that's just one example. Nature is apparently more reliant upon ideal starting conditions that we are, because some places just don't have the basic ingredients for life. So far, nature has only been observed to be sustainable on earth and from what we know just a minority of the Universe. Even still, this is for an indefinite time.

 

Another question is where transhumanism factors into this narrow gap.

 

Isn't this sort of what the Theory of Everything is about? I see it as a quasi-religious quest for the one 2 inch formula that will give us the ability to stop making management mistakes. Then we will know the secret of the gods and have the ability to solve a problem without creating 20 others. We will have the Philosopher's Stone.

 

The goal of the Theory of Everything is simply to simplify. What is the minimal amount of information required to account for everything? I'm afraid that while mathematics so far has done much to distill and compress that information (in some cases), a world described by today's mathematics go the opposite direction toward indefinite expansion. We lack critical starting conditions. A theory right now that could describe even 90% of the universe without creating a complex mechanism is perhaps "good enough" in my esteem, even though it is only approximate.

 

Statistics are probably better-suited to managing numerous operations that occur in parallel. So far they have proven the best method for examining certain complex interactions and deriving formulaic expressions from them. Granted it is not micromanagement, but sustainability in human terms lends itself better to macromanagement anyhow.

[chefranden]

 

Yes, it is my lack of understanding and context looks fairly important here. I have never heard of Daniel Quinn, so I'll head out to the library later today and see if I can't pick up a copy of Ishmael. Maybe we can't micromanage a full system by ourselves, but what's wrong with tweaking it? Genetic modification of crops has produced more food, but I wouldn't say it's micromanaged as much as it is idealized for our use. Changing the starting conditions of a process has the effect of producing an invisible hand that guides it along the way without the necessity of our absolute control.

 

Every life form tweaks the environment, which might even be loosely defined as sum of all such tweaks. But what people from this culture do is destroy portions of the environment to gain relatively temporary increases in human food. It is more like killing the goose to get what ever golden eggs she may have now at the cost of giving up eggs all together. Nothing is sacred in this culture except us, our food, and the food of our food. Everything else is considered expendable if it interferes with the three.

 

If you're saying complete human management with what I've seen so far I'd be inclined to agree. I noticed the underscore as well. I interpret that as the involvement of man (as defined) directly in the process. What I'm asking is isn't a system unsustainable by definition if it must be guided by man?

 

Yes this is one way of putting it. The thing to question, IMHO, is the notion “must be guided by man.”

 

In human terms, I don't think nature's solution is sustainable either, given that it is statistically possible to prove we don't have the landmass to sustain the human population even if we planted food on every square inch of soil -- that's just one example. Nature is apparently more reliant upon ideal starting conditions that we are, because some places just don't have the basic ingredients for life. So far, nature has only been observed to be sustainable on earth and from what we know just a minority of the Universe. Even still, this is for an indefinite time.

 

Another question is where transhumanism factors into this narrow gap.

 

Doesn’t it strike you as the least bit odd that we can even consider planting every square inch of useable land with our few domesticated food crops. Were did we get this notion? Wouldn’t we think it odd if elephants did this? We wouldn’t allow any other life form to do this but think it is good if we do. What are saying is that all bio mass on earth and maybe in the galaxy should be human.

[jjacksonRIAB]

 

Yes, it is my lack of understanding and context looks fairly important here. I have never heard of Daniel Quinn, so I'll head out to the library later today and see if I can't pick up a copy of Ishmael. Maybe we can't micromanage a full system by ourselves, but what's wrong with tweaking it? Genetic modification of crops has produced more food, but I wouldn't say it's micromanaged as much as it is idealized for our use. Changing the starting conditions of a process has the effect of producing an invisible hand that guides it along the way without the necessity of our absolute control.

 

Every life form tweaks the environment, which might even be loosely defined as sum of all such tweaks. But what people from this culture do is destroy portions of the environment to gain relatively temporary increases in human food. It is more like killing the goose to get what ever golden eggs she may have now at the cost of giving up eggs all together. Nothing is sacred in this culture except us, our food, and the food of our food. Everything else is considered expendable if it interferes with the three.

 

If you're saying complete human management with what I've seen so far I'd be inclined to agree. I noticed the underscore as well. I interpret that as the involvement of man (as defined) directly in the process. What I'm asking is isn't a system unsustainable by definition if it must be guided by man?

 

Yes this is one way of putting it. The thing to question, IMHO, is the notion “must be guided by man.”

 

In human terms, I don't think nature's solution is sustainable either, given that it is statistically possible to prove we don't have the landmass to sustain the human population even if we planted food on every square inch of soil -- that's just one example. Nature is apparently more reliant upon ideal starting conditions that we are, because some places just don't have the basic ingredients for life. So far, nature has only been observed to be sustainable on earth and from what we know just a minority of the Universe. Even still, this is for an indefinite time.

 

Another question is where transhumanism factors into this narrow gap.

 

Doesn’t it strike you as the least bit odd that we can even consider planting every square inch of useable land with our few domesticated food crops. Were did we get this notion? Wouldn’t we think it odd if elephants did this? We wouldn’t allow any other life form to do this but think it is good if we do. What are saying is that all bio mass on earth and maybe in the galaxy should be human.

 

I suppose in response to all of what you say I can only say that we have a very strong survival instinct. We can only decribe what's best for the environment in terms of what's best for ourselves. Even if we try to step out of that context to show compassion for the smaller creatures or the balance of the ecosystem, we can only do it positively in terms of what joy their existence serves us or negatively in terms of how useless we are to in serving them - not to suggest it's bimodal, but it seems more on either end of the self-serving/self-depricating scale.

 

I've read somewhere that we spend a lot of time creating the means to sustain ourselves with less effort, but those means we choose, lacking the ability to persist, compel us to delegate roles of increasing undesirability to certain individuals, consequently denying them the knowledge of how those processes operate at a human level -- mystical black boxes that rule our lives, all driven by a gut instinct that, in the literal sense of the term, leads us to equivocate our every endeavor with the search for food.

 

Conversely, nature is already more or less efficient at managing herself, but the result is not always to our advantage. Well it could be thought of as being to our advantage. Were disease or famine to wipe out a large percentage of the population, it would be beneficial to the survivors as well as nature, but we also have a herd instinct, a form of collective intelligence that exends well into the gut instinct. IMHO, it is not because we can accomplish more that we stick together, but it is because each of us as an individual gets to accomplish less (though now we can secure ourselves with a little planning and some clever gagetry). I think one reason for this is because we are ill-equipped from birth to handle the world around us and are dependant on others for a larger portion of our lives than other animals. Those two instincts probably account for most of our activities.

 

In the strictest sense, science itself is also a foraging activity, leading to the recovery of a precious grain of knowledge that should be used to make nature work for us instead of against us, and the applause and acceptance of the herd to whom we return it.

 

There is one issue though, and that is the issue of transhumanism. It is perhaps a simpler endeavor (though not obviously so) to change ourselves to suit our environment than chance our environment to suit ourselves. There are hardly any non-transhumans around. We operate tools, we wear glasses (binoculars, night vision, etc). We extend our range of hearing. We build exoskeletons though which we move. We kill at the press of a button. And that's just today. Tomorrow we may be eating arbitrary organic material (or converting non-organic material into energy) with the aid of an artificial stomach, extending our power to reason and recall by utilizing implantable biological computers, rendering all of our waste into a form that nature can immediately reuse, etc.

 

Somehow I doubt everything has been said.

[pitchu]

jjackson, it's great to see you posting here again.

 

When I read your comment on more food produced by GM crops, I went to the web to find the studies that show that actually less food comes from these crops; that farmers have sued Monsanto, et al, for loss of entire crops; that plants (food) which used to grow between rows of corn and which were consumed widely in parts of Africa have been mostly eradicated by the Round-up pesticide associated with GM crops. But I'll ask you to either take my word for the above or to search: "Genetically Modified Crops Fail" because, instead, I became tansfixed by the excerpted article below, which I think is more to the point of what's under discussion here.

 

What's in it for humans, even if they're only interested in humans, to cover the globe with "scientifically improved" crops which may kill human babies? (But at least now I know what bait to put in my mouse traps, since the little devils sometimes eat it and escape.)

 

GM: New study shows unborn babies could be harmed. Mortality rate for new-born rats six times higher when mother was fed on a diet of modified soya

 

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent on Sunday, 08 January 2006 - http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337253.ece

 

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests. The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight. The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage. And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.

 

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the World Trade Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.

 

The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn. The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soya and a third group was given no soya at all. She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at all. "The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing" said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."

 

Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary - they are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.

[Asimov]

The scientific understanding of the world gives us technology.

 

 

Yes, and the practical application of it comes from mediums other than science.

 

I don't disagree that power-hungry people use science for their own applications into warfare. I DO disagree that blaming science is the answer. It seems more like a monolithic scapegoat than an actual problem.

 

You need to focus on the actions of people who abuse science rather than on the concept itself.

[jjacksonRIAB]

jjackson, it's great to see you posting here again.

 

When I read your comment on more food produced by GM crops, I went to the web to find the studies that show that actually less food comes from these crops; that farmers have sued Monsanto, et al, for loss of entire crops; that plants (food) which used to grow between rows of corn and which were consumed widely in parts of Africa have been mostly eradicated by the Round-up pesticide associated with GM crops. But I'll ask you to either take my word for the above or to search: "Genetically Modified Crops Fail" because, instead, I became tansfixed by the excerpted article below, which I think is more to the point of what's under discussion here.

 

What's in it for humans, even if they're only interested in humans, to cover the globe with "scientifically improved" crops which may kill human babies? (But at least now I know what bait to put in my mouse traps, since the little devils sometimes eat it and escape.)

 

GM: New study shows unborn babies could be harmed. Mortality rate for new-born rats six times higher when mother was fed on a diet of modified soya

 

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent on Sunday, 08 January 2006 - http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337253.ece

 

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests. The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight. The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage. And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.

 

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the World Trade Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.

 

The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn. The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soya and a third group was given no soya at all. She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at all. "The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing" said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."

 

Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary - they are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.

 

It is preliminary, so I'll await the review. Makes me wish I had access to a lab so I could try it myself. I've read that their Soya yield is over 170% nominal yield.

 

Perhaps a better pursuit would be to make it more resistant to pests, minimizing or eliminating the necessity for pesticides that are known to cause problems such as these. After all, if you create a crop resistant to pesticides, the unintended consequence is that growers might see that as an invitation to use more pesticides, which could cause poor soil conditions and a lower yield, especially if it gained a weed status.

 

I'm not an expert though, so we'll see what happens.

 

Glad to be back, Ellen! ;-)

[chefranden]

The scientific understanding of the world gives us technology.

 

 

Yes, and the practical application of it comes from mediums other than science.

 

I don't disagree that power-hungry people use science for their own applications into warfare. I DO disagree that blaming science is the answer. It seems more like a monolithic scapegoat than an actual problem.

 

You need to focus on the actions of people who abuse science rather than on the concept itself.

 

 

I see what you mean.

 

It's like Christianity being good for the world, if it weren't for those pesky power-hungry people. The Christians that ran the Inquisistion were not TrueChristians™. The scientists the run our WMD research and the scientists that research for Monsanto are not TrueScientists™.

 

You must forgive me if I have a hard time telling the difference between them. I confess that I am unfamiliar with the Lab of the TrueScientist™.

[NorthenSun]

Chef,

 

We have little evidence of what daily life was like for our ancestors 10,000 years ago before the start of mass agricultural production. Certainly life was shorter, as there were few drugs, vaccinations, or medical procedures to prevent illness and reduce the effects of injury. It is likely that people were not bored, since they needed to spend most of their time hunting and gathering food. Tribal conflict or even war must have occurred from time to time, although nothing approaching the scale of later history. Man was closer to nature indeed, for their tools and clothes were made directly by the people using them, not purchased from Walmart and made in China. The meat cooked on the fire may have been eaten with the hands still splattered with blood during the chicken’s beheading. But life was not all hardship, for we have the remains of cave paintings and burial artifacts indicating there was time for play, story telling, games, art, ceremony. No need to worry about car maintenance, computer viruses, or insurance payments. Perhaps in some sense, man could be thought of as having existed metaphorically in a state that was closer to the Biblical concept of Eden.

 

What changed to alter this state of primordial bliss. Why did Eve eat the apple?

 

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

 

Eve disobeyed the command of God, but was it out of anger, spite or malice? It would appear that her primary reason for eating the apple was because she was curious as to what the apple tasted like. And she possessed a desire to gain wisdom, to know what God knows, to know good and evil. So even before the fall of man, man already had the God given trait of curiosity, of wonder. One could go so far as to say Eve could not have not eaten of the apple. It would have been against her human nature. Curiosity, the desire to know more, asking why and how; these are part of the essence of man, and they also lie at the heart of science. To reject science is to reject a part of our very human being. Eve could be labeled as the first scientist.

 

 

In the same manner, I believe primitive man of 10,000 year ago could not deny part of his very nature, his desire to know more. He asked the questions: is there an easier way to kill the wooly mammoth, to have more edible plants growing nearby, to predict when the days will grow longer and warmer and the nights shorter. Could man have acted in any other manner? I say that, in part, the man of evolution is the same as of creation: Homo Scientist.

 

And so Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, and in like fashion, primitive man from this metaphorical garden, because of science. But are we that much worse off, as you avert? More on this later.

[chefranden]

Why is it that Science likes to take credit for the latest new-fangled drug, but not the latest new fangled bomb?

 

Another word on "how shall we then live."

 

Most of us here got out of Christianity because we noticed what we weren't supposed to notice -- what we were told was out of focus with what we saw. Vain quasi-intellectual that I am, I like to consider that recognition smart.

 

Like my wife says, I just don't know when to stop. If my faith in God turned out to be a blind alley, perhaps my faith in Science may turn out to be a blind alley Even though Science has the advantage of actually answering a prayer on occasion, I notice that Science is also out of focus with reality.

 

Just like Christianity can produce a “better world” for a lucky few Science can also produce a “better world” for a lucky few. And that is what it does. Both result in consolidated well being for the few, at the expense of misery for the many.

 

Now we have found out that there is no super-conscious-human-intellect running things, but we haven’t given up the idea that a super-conscious-human-intellect ought to be running things. Even though we have discovered that the universe did not emerge from a super-conscious-human-intellect and that conscious-human-intellect in fact emerged from the unconscious universe we still suppose that conscious-human-intellect ought to run the universe. Why? Based on what evidence?

 

If we think it smart to have noticed that Religion gets us nowhere fast, why wouldn’t it be just as smart to notice that Science (methodized-human-intellect) is getting us nowhere even faster?

 

“But we must have progress” right? Progress to what?

[chefranden]

from wikipedia Ishmael points out that the story was written by the Semites, and later adapted to work within Hebrew and Christian belief structures. Ishmael proposes that Abel and his extinction metaphorically represents the nomadic Semites and their losing conflict with agriculturalists. As they were driven further into the Arabian peninsula, the Semites became isolated from other herding cultures and, according to Ishmael, illustrated their plight through oral history, which was later adopted into the Hebrew book of Genesis.

 

Ishmael denies that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden of humans simply to test human's self-control. Instead, Ishmael proposes that the Tree represents the choice to bear the burden of responsibility of deciding which species may live and which should die. This is a necessary decision agricultural peoples must make when deciding which organisms to cultivate, which to displace, and which to kill in protection of the first.

Ishmael explains that the Fall of Adam represents the Semetic belief that once mankind usurps this responsibility--historically decided through natural ecology (i.e. food chains) -- that mankind will perish. He cites as fulfillment of this prophecy contemporary environmental crises such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental illnesses.

 

Sun,

This is the reading that I would give to the Genesis story. It is not mine. It is from Daniel Quinn. Ishmael does a better job of it then does this summery.

 

I don’t think that it is contra Quinn to view the Eve character as the first scientist. It represents the idea the human-conscious-intellect will now be in charge. That is the oops moment.

 

In the same manner, I believe primitive man of 10,000 year ago could not deny part of his very nature, his desire to know more. He asked the questions: is there an easier way to kill the wooly mammoth, to have more edible plants growing nearby, to predict when the days will grow longer and warmer and the nights shorter. Could man have acted in any other manner? I say that, in part, the man of evolution is the same as of creation: Homo Scientist.

 

What makes you decide this is a part of our very nature? Did our nature make a sudden change 10,000 years ago, meaning that it was not part of our nature for most of our 1.8 million years? Why then do people still exist that don’t live our scientific way? Why did these people most often resist our way even to the point of death. Why did/do we find it necessary to deal with them through genocide? Wouldn’t it be true to their very nature to be like “Oh my! Of course! What were we thinking,” when ever the conquistadors show up? Or are they a different species, like we basically treat them?

 

Having given up Abrahamic religion why do we still feel it necessary to compel people who know how to live with the land to come in from the high places?

[pitchu]

Chef:

Having given up Abrahamic religion why do we still feel it necessary to compel people who know how to live with the land to come in from the high places?

 

For the same reason we have to ostracize and villify Cuba: We can't afford to let such people and places stand as alternative examples.

 

Your link to the American Indian Genocide page discloses at what cost we eradicate competing models of How to Live.

 

jjackson,

 

I, too, await more info on that research.

[chefranden]

I suppose in response to all of what you say I can only say that we have a very strong survival instinct. We can only decribe what's best for the environment in terms of what's best for ourselves. Even if we try to step out of that context to show compassion for the smaller creatures or the balance of the ecosystem, we can only do it positively in terms of what joy their existence serves us or negatively in terms of how useless we are to in serving them - not to suggest it's bimodal, but it seems more on either end of the self-serving/self-depricating scale.

 

I suspect this is so for Taker Culture. Since we are Takers it would be difficult for us to see past it. (Does a fish know it is wet?) If I ate Salmon and lived by a Salmon river I think that I would have more than compassion for Salmon. I would have reverance for they come back every year in my lifetime and in the lifetime of my parents and of my grandparents without fail. Why would I do something to harm Salmon who has fed my people for as many years as anyone can remember. Would I be stupid enough to put a dam accross the river so that Salmon could not come back to me?

 

Yes, I would if I had the right attitude. Though research I find out that Salmon gives me 7 tons of meat/year, and I find out that if I take the water away from the Salmon and use it to irrigate the new grass from Europe I can use it to get 200 tons of grain/year as long as I cut down the forests that supplied supliments for what Salmon gave me. Wow! I'm rich! I've taken the Salmon's livelihood and turned it into wheat. My Attitude? "Fuck you Salmon! You didn't give me enough!" That is the Taker attitude.

 

 

I've read somewhere that we spend a lot of time creating the means to sustain ourselves with less effort, but those means we choose, lacking the ability to persist, compel us to delegate roles of increasing undesirability to certain individuals, consequently denying them the knowledge of how those processes operate at a human level -- mystical black boxes that rule our lives, all driven by a gut instinct that, in the literal sense of the term, leads us to equivocate our every endeavor with the search for food.

 

Is this suprizing? When you metaphorically run out of Salmon to rob, you have to switch over to robbing people. Taker Culture is based on Robbery. That is why it is unsustainable. Eventually you run out of things to rob. Every on knows that robbing Peter to pay Paul is a looser business, but we do it anyway.

 

 

In the strictest sense, science itself is also a foraging activity, leading to the recovery of a precious grain of knowledge that should be used to make nature work for us instead of against us, and the applause and acceptance of the herd to whom we return it.

 

What is precious about knowing how to make vinyl-chloride, or mustard gas or any other one of 1000’s of toxic chemicals? What is precious about F16s and cluster bombs? Nature was already working for us before we decided to fight her. What you mean, though you probably don’t know it, is that knowledge should be used to make nature work for us alone.

 

Mother Nature is our creator. What is the point of being at war with her? Why are we angry that Mother provides for brother Salmon, as well as us?

 

There is one issue though, and that is the issue of transhumanism. It is perhaps a simpler endeavor (though not obviously so) to change ourselves to suit our environment than chance our environment to suit ourselves. There are hardly any non-transhumans around. We operate tools, we wear glasses (binoculars, night vision, etc). We extend our range of hearing. We build exoskeletons though which we move. We kill at the press of a button. And that's just today. Tomorrow we may be eating arbitrary organic material (or converting non-organic material into energy) with the aid of an artificial stomach, extending our power to reason and recall by utilizing implantable biological computers, rendering all of our waste into a form that nature can immediately reuse, etc.

 

Somehow I doubt everything has been said.

 

Transhumanism: not only are we not satisfied with the world we are not satisfied with ourselves. Killing at the press of a button is sooo cool. I guess we won’t be satisfied until everything is dead. Homo Genocidus?

 

Let’s hurry up and figure out how to up load ourselves into computers; then we can be dead too. Yeah!

[pitchu]

Listen, Chef, I'm ready to start. I was with you before you even began your series here. So I'm just going to jump in with a proposal.

 

We start listening to conscience and start insisting that the men and women with the fancy lab equipment do the same. We suggest that if one is undertaking a series of scientific steps which causes one's stomach to kinda flip and flutter and the corners of one's mouth to turn down, that one take off the lab coat and say to oneself, "Better to be a goatherd."

 

We start at the outer edges of the most extreme scientific endeavors which have the largest body of objections and objectors and proven mass destructive outcomes. We picket the universities where most of the grants go, and picket the FDA which is a big ole megaphone mouthpiece for mega-pharma and anywhere else -- like where they manufacture red buttons for a president's finger.

 

And we write and continue to write. We explain and entreat. We write to our representatives, to the editor, to every appropriate (and maybe inappropriate) forum on the web.

 

We continue to make our preparations for the aftermath of Peak Oil.

 

And we set the example.

[chefranden]

Listen, Chef, I'm ready to start. I was with you before you even began your series here. So I'm just going to jump in with a proposal.

 

We start listening to conscience and start insisting that the men and women with the fancy lab equipment do the same. We suggest that if one is undertaking a series of scientific steps which causes one's stomach to kinda flip and flutter and the corners of one's mouth to turn down, that one take off the lab coat and say to oneself, "Better to be a goatherd."

 

Sounds wonderful, except that everyone already listens to their conscience. Everyone believes that they usually act for the good of their sphere and themselves. In my former chef incarnation I cooked several species of fish that should be left alone to recover if they can. I did so with pride in my product and the knowledge that I was making a living for my family. Those sorts of things out weighed any thoughts I may have had concerning the lives of the fish.

 

I know that if someone had come along and said you may not make a living cooking these fish, I would probably feel that my rights were being stomped on. I might have been angry. I might have gone to war. All this in spite of knowing the plight of the fish.

 

We start at the outer edges of the most extreme scientific endeavors which have the largest body of objections and objectors and proven mass destructive outcomes. We picket the universities where most of the grants go, and picket the FDA which is a big ole megaphone mouthpiece for mega-pharma and anywhere else -- like where they manufacture red buttons for a president's finger.

 

And we write and continue to write. We explain and entreat. We write to our representatives, to the editor, to every appropriate (and maybe inappropriate) forum on the web.

 

Last time I went to a anti-war protest, last fall?, I realized that protest was meaningless unless we were breaking something. I was on the outside of the crowd, my usual place, looking at the same old faces and listening to the same old speakers saying the same old things. No one was paying attention, not even the cops who didn't even bother to come. I bet that since it was cold and rainy not even a FBI guy was around copying down licence numbers. I just started reading Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill. He's not very kind to us old hippie types.

 

We continue to make our preparations for the aftermath of Peak Oil.

 

And we set the example.

 

The last thing that I wish for these days would be that someone else should be like me. I know I'm Mr. Negative.

 

Here's the deal. Another program will not fix what is wrong. Programs are part of the Taker Culture. Programs justify the existence of the hierarchy and the elite of one sort or another. Programs never fix anything. If programs actually did something besides keep people busy fooling themselves we would all be in heaven by now, don't you think?

 

I am a Taker. I don't know what to do about it. I suspect that whatever good intentioned actions I take will still be Taker actions informed by Taker Culture. It might be time to Panic!

[pitchu]

I don't know that I believe everyone listens to their conscience, Chef. I think much of conscience is what gets socialized out of us, becoming background noise -- what the conscious ignores.

 

I remember seeing signs of conscience stabs in my toddlers, as probably you did too. They were visible manifestations and poignant. But I don't recall ever seeing, in any adult, the body go still and the face freeze in that clean look of instant recognition of wrongdoing.

 

Maybe it's time to re-learn, re-teach conscience.

 

Time to panic, too, of course.