Theme: Deception

[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.

[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.