Young Master Smeet
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If peopel want to have a say, they can. if they want to have an opinion they can (and the opposite too, if they don't, they needn't). Exactly what happens now.
Socialism most certainly does not mean the domination of individuals, it is the precise opposite, it is the fullest extenion of freedom, since we can only be as free as we help each other to be (The freedom to be left alone is only the lowest level of such). It is a society in which the free development of each is the condition for he free development of all. The mechanism by which this will be enforced is not labour at gun point, but that when people act (together) the outcome will inevitably be socialised through the lack of enforceable mechanisms for individual appropriation. The actors can move around the stage as they please, the scenary will remain the same.Your comment about Mengele is ridiculous, there is a difference between the topics of science and the methods.Democracy is the means for ensuring that all individuals can have a say in everything that affects them, including science.
I'd have thought trust was an essential prerequisite for socialism. As long as the material interests of commonownership are in place, we don't need to keep watching each other, there is no mechanism/basis for domination. Or would we all tremble in awe of Steve Jones' comprehenive knowledge of snails?
I don't even think it's trust: people should be allowed to explore whatever ideas they want, that's freedom. The democratic control comes from deciding to make resources available for science. If someone really wants to pursue research to prove a racist theory, then they should be allowed to pursue it and publish their results, for example.We're both arguing that science should be practiced by the community, in collaboration and within a democratic framework. I'm only arguing that full democracy is more than voting, which is a small part of democracy – perhaps the least important part.
We only ever have acurrent finding, and we have to act upon that curent finding, but we have to be aware that we could be wrong (but zugzwang is a compelling reason to use findings, however contingent).I think your misunderstanding of democracy is the barrier here. Democracy mean rule by the people, not voting (in itself), so if we have a free people, going about their business together, and organising themselves and their own activity, that is democracy. Free association is essential to that, people have to be able to form organisations to promote (or oppose) views and seek to change the mind of the majority (and to go about their activities). Note, the point is the association, people coming together, it is a collective right.The freedom to sod off and set up a new Rome is the central underpinning of freedom proper and democratic control of the means of production.Society democratically controls science by enabling its members to practice science, and developing their intellectual and practical capabilities.
That's right, findings are produced by society, by an ongoing debate: there is no final finding, just a succession of opinions.There, so, I note Lbird's response to a direct question is a lot of questions. I believe I've answered the pertinent ones.So, I'll ask again. How does Lbird see the voting happening? Will everyone gather the data together? Will everyone analyse the data? Will everyone get a turn on the electron microscope?I'd counterpose genuine free association and democracy in action to Lbird's one sided closure of debate, which is simply undemocratic.
I have repeatedly laid out how I would expect democratic science in socialism to work: open access to information and libraries and scholarly communications, datasets shared as widely as possible, free association in learning societies, democratic allocation of resources to funding and democratic votes based on the information provided by scientific research. I'd throw in, importantly, a general (rule of thumb) reduction in the working week to about two days out of seven, which will free up more time for study and discussion. So science would become an ongoing debate for all members of the community who wish to join in, and freedom to pursue topics and research lines would be protected if not encouraged. Freed from position and possession, vested interests (liek professorial salaries would be ended, so the only object of science would be to be right.I'd imagine that juries may well sit in and discuss and come up with findings on particualr research areas, and peer review would also be employed to ensure rigour.There, that is science by the whole community, a genuine democracy of science, without having a vote on the findings. Your turn.
LBird wrote:It's simply because you think that physicists have a neutral method which gives them a truth not available to the common mass.This is something that no-one ont his thread has said, and I'm sure no one believes. The method of science is open to everyone, and can be made accessible to everyone. The technical language of science, and the detail of practice is no more than the technical notation used by musicians will the audience vote on the music?).You brush off any attempt to ask what about sorting and analysing large blocs of data, doing the routine work of science, operating the technical machinery, conducting the experiments. If we all have to do it, there'll be a hell of a lot of repetition.How do you see this voting happening? Or are you no better than the underpant gnomes:Stage 1: Vote on science.Stage 3: Communism!
Why would he weap? What a transformation: the block, the chisel, the muscles, the brain all turned into a statue.There's a fabulous line in Herzog's film about Antarctica: the universe sees itself through our eyes. We are part of the unfurling of the universe, and the only bit that sees and creates its potential (through our labour).
I'm not sure we're differing as much as you think. If I take a block of marble, a hammer chisel and some imagination, I am merely transforming the marble into a statue, nothing is created, but transformed into a work of art. The act of labour is an act of transformation. Criticism is transformation. With poetry, you study a text, and produce a different text, that is the criticism, it is a continuation of the poetic relationship.
Well, there's three points (maybe more) to any debate:To hone/refine and test the quality and expression of your own ideasTo seek to influence third parties/onlookers.To experiment and explore and maybe discover new argues or points of view that you may not have come across before or thought of for yourself.There's been many the time I've had what I thought was an unshackable argument, only to find it either being easily sidestepped or knocked out of hte park. I wasn't, obviously, wrong, but I still learned that I needed to put it differently and expect different responses.
It's simply a corrolary: information comes in, is transformed, comes out again and is shared with other meatbots. At the minimum the senses shape (or constrain) the information in and out. I'll admit to being a bit rushed and unclear around the word 'created', I'll re-iterate that information can only be a transformation of real events (or at least of their sensory manifestations, and thus ideas can only be transformations of previous information). Obviously, that means lots of new and interesting combinations of ideas (especially through the working of memory). In a way, ideas emerge from our 6th sense: the structure and mechanisms of our brains.
Yes, new information (and data) is created within the mind, but the only ways that can be got out is via the five and passed on to another meatbot in the same way. No information is ever created, it is merely transformed. The meatbots are the gatekeepers of discourse.
Lbird,there are only six ways information gets into the meatbot. Five are the senses, the 6th is DNA, that is the networks of information I mentioned, expressely, that is social. Remember, I don't exist, I'm just an emergent nodal point, one algorithm running in parrallel process with many others. This meatbot is an indivisible component of a greater network.
Been away, just to take a step back a little. To take a philosophical saw: lets look at a mug (I'll make a fair bet there's one within your view right now). You can see the rim, its depths, it's handle (mathematicians can give us a formula for the manifold of a mug, guess what they had on their desk when they should have been working). However, that mug you can see before your very eyes is a distortion. You are only seeing the light beams being caught by your eyes, the straight line from where you are to where the mug is. The process of making a hologram involves placing a cone of photographic paper over an object, so that light from all directions, in a complete sphere is captures on the film. If we could see an object in complete 360's around it, horiozontally and vertically, we in fact wouldn't see it, we'd just see a sphere of light.In many ways, it is a plaussible claim to make that knowledge is distortion, without reduction, contraction, abstraction, we only have the thing itself. I remember someone on another forum whose footer quote was: 'I have a fully functional model of the universe, unfortunately, it's life size'. In computing an important distinction is between data (lots of numbers) and information (useful data, formatted, etc.)This holds a great emancipatopry potential, if we are each of us. As we grow into our senses and our networks of information, we each become a focus for shaping our own world. If we are presumed to be wrapped up in ideology, we'd need priets to see us clear, but if we can each make up our own minds, as social beings making history in conditions not of our own choosing, then the possibility of acting democratically to change the world comes into view.
