Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (142302)	8/2/2004 10:12:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind. -- Napoleon Bonaparte EXCELLENT QUOTE...thanks for posting it.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (142302)	8/2/2004 12:34:02 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Do you ever read anything I write? I already said that I do not consider empire in the strict sense to be necessary to human progress. I have explained over and over the sense in which science did not exist prior to the 16th century. Science is the framework of investigation, with its own special protocols, which developed gradually during the modern period. There was philosophy, there was natural history, there was invention, before there was science per se. If you want to call those things "science", fine, but it is a wholly different enterprise than that which is characteristic of the modern period. Athens was an empire because it sent out and controlled colonies, much like Britain in the Americas. Actually, drugs are tested under rigorous protocols, with double blind studies and every effort to distinguish between pharmocological and placebo effects. Misdiagnosis has to do with the art of medicine, not the science, that is, somewhat like the difference between engineering and physics. Applying knowledge sometimes requires judgment, and sometimes people make mistakes. I did not imply that science and technology are the pinnacle of human achievement. I merely stated that we were better off with them, and therefore should be glad to live in modern times. Life expectancy is much higher now than it was even a hundred years ago. What makes you think that modern man is unhappier than his ancestors, who could expect to die young, or to have to bury children and/or a spouse before reaching 50? The worst pollution is not in the industrialized countries, but in the underdeveloped world, where it is hard to find potable water and the plague still exists. Yes, there are evils made possible by our technology, but more people, as a percentage of population, died of the plague towards the end of the Middle Ages, than died in WWII. How many people have we saved merely with modern sanitation and inoculation? I have spent much more time studying humanities than science. Of course, science is not a source of values per se, and we do not turn to it to understand how best to use it. Any sense that I said otherwise is wholly in your mind.