OT: Off-Topic Thread

[jkutswings]

Fundamentally speaking, science is all about questioning. The scientific method itself is based on trying to disprove a supposition rather than prove it. If you stop as soon as what you want to believe is manifested, that's confirmation bias. If you accept something without question, that's dogma. If you suppress the alternatives, that's censorship. Some of the first and a whole lot of the last three has been going on lately.

All good points. I think something that tends to get lost is humility. If you ask 100 people what humility is, most folks tend to paint a picture of hanging your head in dejection or somehow considering yourself less worthy or valuable than someone or something else. But actual humility is simply realizing the true nature of someone or something in the grand scheme of things.

For a VERY simple example, consider a hammer. There's nothing wrong with appreciating a hammer as a valuable and effective tool for either installing or removing nails. And yet it doesn't diminish the true nature of a hammer to say that it shouldn't be used for measuring the distances between atoms. It's just acknowledging that there are limitations to the scope of a hammer's purpose or effectiveness, and appreciating it within those limits.

Again, that's a very basic example, and with an extreme application outside of an intended purpose. But the same basic logic can extend to larger concepts, such as:

I can appreciate that science is a VERY logical tool and has a wide variety of applications. (More of a swiss army knife than a hammer, in a metaphorical sense.) But it's not a knock against science to also say that not EVERYTHING can be explained by it. It's just acknowledging that the notion of everything is an infinite thing, and science is a finite thing (even if it's quite the remarkable finite thing).

Stuff to ponder anyway. Something along the lines of, "the more we know, the more we realize how much we still don't know".