[Godstud]

No. Nothing is really "uncontrolled" and most people fear any kind of change. We can't limit progress because of people's fears.

I remember all the fuss about the Hadron Collider and that it'd trigger another Big Bang. Such is the unreasoning fear of most people.

[The Immortal Goon]

Ummm, yeah.... It's a tu quoque type of ad hominem fallacy.

Oh alright.

Also, I'm not sure where he's demanding anyone to do anything. So you might want to add straw man fallacy in with that, as well. I think he was advancing a legitimate argument, and instead of rebutting his points, you went after him personally. That's all.

Can we please collectively get past all of this Hobbesian momma's boy crap and realize that we simply CAN'T collectively improve on nature, and that we'll collectively kill ourselves if we collectively try?

All the scientists who dedicated their entire lives to the study of nuclear science, gave us the Fukishima disaster and nuclear weapons. They sacrificed their lives to give us poison. Please criticize alternatives to this lifestyle taking this into account.

Wow, it's a shame I didn't really get in to deconstruct such an amazing retort to absolutely nothing that I argued!

---

Fine, if you want to go bit by bit into his absurd argument (you're apparently new here, you'll notice if this goes long enough he'll resort to facts being irrelevant):

Here, you're fetishizing the Enlightenment by calling the period that came a few centuries before it "dark." Meanwhile, the Renaissance gave us Machiavelli and nice statues.

1. "Dark Ages" is a standard definition of the age in which we were speaking.
2. The Enlightenment is not the Renaissance
3. Life expectancy, height, and average wealth rose dramatically in the Renaissance—we know this because it was noted that it collapsed when the Renaissance ended. To write this all off as, "statues," is an obscene argument that fails to take anything in particular into account.

Apparently, the natives were far healthier than the Euros when they arrived in the 16th Centuries

The natives were not a single homogenous bloc, and neither were the Europeans. You are wrong in not separating agricultural communities in the Americas (in the Mississippi Valley, or Mexico City for instance) from agricultural communities in Europe. Were you to acknowledge that the Natives had an urbanized and agricultural civilization, the data would be skewed dramatically. However, even this is problematic in certain fertile areas like the Northwest, where the Chinook had enough salmon to not need agriculture, even though they knew about it, and had an urbanization process to the extent that slavery was common. This is a problem with your broad generalization, because Europe itself was as diverse as the Americas in this regard.

So, sure, as long as you make up a crude caricature of Native Culture, you can say whatever you want. But, in reality, the Natives did not live in the kind of Eden that you conceptualize and that we later apply to them on a broad basis.

We have been taught to fetishize every gadget that our corporate elite decide to sell us.

This is a broad generalization used to make an incorrect assessment of technological innovation. New technologies have always been popular, at least since the Acheulean tools, items found virtually everywhere that we think might not have even had a specific physical purpose.

This, of course, predates the corporation, and invalidates the idea of an, "elite," tricking us into liking something. The fact that people, "fetishize every gadget," if we are to use such loaded terminology, is more of a human instinct when we examine history. Few things travel faster than new, "gadgets." This ranges from stone tools, to ipads. To pretend that this did not exist before corporations, is simply untrue.

And your description of the simple peasant lifestyle looks like it came out of a Hollywood representation of the "bad guy." It doesn't mention, for example, that many more Europeans converted to wood's dweller voluntarily than wood's dwellers converted to peasant serf of the king (who considered himself and his domination of others as "natural" just like many people seem to think scientific progress is "natural" and thus, sustainable.)

I, in no way, defended feudalism. To imply that I did is absurd—you, in fact, defended it.

Can we please collectively get past all of this Hobbesian momma's boy crap and realize that we simply CAN'T collectively improve on nature, and that we'll collectively kill ourselves if we collectively try?

This argument has nothing to do with any argument that I was making. Unless we take the broadest possible scope, I argued that technology will continue to grow no matter what we do and there is no specific reason to fear it. If this is the argument that you're refuting then:

1. It is totally wrong to imply that I said we are trying to, "collectively improve on nature."
2. I have no idea what, "Hobbesian momma's boy crap," is supposed to mean. It is certainly not an argument that's helpful.

All the scientists who dedicated their entire lives to the study of nuclear science, gave us the Fukishima disaster and nuclear weapons. They sacrificed their lives to give us poison. Please criticize alternatives to this lifestyle taking this into account.

The first person that picked up a stick killed billions of people as that advance was used to create clubs, spears, arrows, and everything else. To take only the negative aspect of any technological advance, no matter however basic, and then dismiss the perceived positive is wrong for two reasons:

1. It's not a real argument as it is deliberately muddying the waters and not actually answering any kind of argument
2. Nature, including the atom, has no specific moral alignment. You, for some reason, assume that it does when used by man—but, as you yourself even point out, one cannot escape nature as we are part of it. Just because you assign a moral alignment to nuclear science, does not mean that atoms are bad. Just that they exist, and being ignorant of this does not necessarily make people better or worse.

[Beal]

No. Nothing is really "uncontrolled" and most people fear any kind of change. We can't limit progress because of people's fears.

I remember all the fuss about the Hadron Collider and that it'd trigger another Big Bang. Such is the unreasoning fear of most people.

In general I agree with your sentiment, but as for the LHC ending the planet, I think the fear was over their creation of microscopic black holes. I am not sure such fears are completely unreasonable. Perhaps wrong, but not unreasonable. My understanding is that until relatively recently (1974), traditional scientific thought was that a black hole would always continue to accrete mass since nothing could escape the event horizon. It wasn't until Hawking's work that opinions started to change on that.

I guess my point is that I could see fairly intelligent, even well-read people being apprehensive about artificially creating mini black holes.

[QatzelOk]

2. The Enlightenment is not the Renaissance

Really? Seriously, T.I.G.?

And you think I thought these were the same because.... I used them in the same paragraph?

Um... you're too close to the text and you can't read metaphor, so you shouldn't be writing so much as reading this thread.

[Americanroyalty]

Are you only going to address one of his points Qatz? I don't see how him potentially getting one thing wrong makes the rest of your argument valid.

[QatzelOk]

I guess my point is that I could see fairly intelligent, even well-read people being apprehensive about artificially creating mini black holes.

We should all be apprehensive about all new technologies.

But there is always some interested party who can make a lot of money off of black holes who will pay a marketing company to produce lots of "facts" that dupes can use to defend their commercial proliferation. This commercial culture (which enables suicidal technologies) has penetrated our logic to the point where people often waste their own intelligence stringing commercially-planted memes together into some kind of "defense" of the indefensible.

[mikema63]

There was literally no chance of black holes being produced, that was just a total stunt.

[Beal]

Ummm, yeah.... It's a tu quoque type of ad hominem fallacy.

It may or may not have been argumentum ad hominem, but that doesn't make it a fallacy. Ad hominem is only a fallacy if it is irrelevant to the point under discussion. Qatz's apparent unwillingness to live the lifestyle he claims is better is, by all means, relevant to the point under discussion. If he is unwilling to live that way, how can he possibly believe it is a better way to live?

There was literally no chance of black holes being produced, that was just a total stunt.

I think that a lot of theoretical physicists would disagree with you on that one. The fact that they are trying to create them kinda indicates they think it might be possible.

[mikema63]

Possible that the large hadron collider would have produced one and destroyed the world.

I followed the large hadron collider and no it wasn't possible, the only physicists that disagree with me are the two of them in France who wanted to shut down the LHC by claiming it.

The LHC doesn't produce the power necessary to create a black hole, the power required would be orders of magnitude more than the LHC could produce.

[QatzelOk]

Qatz's apparent unwillingness to live the lifestyle he claims is better is, by all means, relevant to the point under discussion. If he is unwilling to live that way, how can he possibly believe it is a better way to live?

An Australian friend told his friends it would be better if Australians, Japanese, Indians and British people drove on the right because it would lower the cost of car production and allow for more international competition.

Then some troll said, "Yeah? If driving on the right side is so good, why don't you drive on the right side?"

This is "gotcha" argumentation that has been learned from mass media - which dumbs us down. Yay, that technology for popularizing so many types of stupidity.

[Beal]

Possible that the large hadron collider would have produced one and destroyed the world.

I followed the large hadron collider and no it wasn't possible, the only physicists that disagree with me are the two of them in France who wanted to shut down the LHC by claiming it.

The LHC doesn't produce the power necessary to create a black hole, the power required would be orders of magnitude more than the LHC could produce.

I agree, unless String Theory is correct, in which case it might indeed produce enough power to create microscopic black holes. This is why, once again, physicists keep searching for signs of them at CERN. You don't search for them unless you think it possible to create them at those energies. Their formation would provide evidence for String Theory and their decay would be the first observation of Hawking radiation.

Search for Quantum Black-Hole Production (conducted at CERN)
Some physicist at Princeton explaining that black holes might be produced at lower energy levels than previously thought
NASA acknowledging that these experiments "might create microscopic black holes"
Another article describing the search for black holes at CERN

These guys are spending a lot of time and money looking for what you are apparently sure cannot occur.

Then some troll said, "Yeah? If driving on the right side is so good, why don't you drive on the right side?"

In what way is turning off your electricity and growing everything you eat akin to driving on the wrong side of the road?

[The Immortal Goon]

Also, I'm not sure where he's demanding anyone to do anything. So you might want to add straw man fallacy in with that, as well. I think he was advancing a legitimate argument, and instead of rebutting his points, you went after him personally. That's all.

Well, I for one, am stunned that Qatz addressed no points, acknowledged nothing I said, and instead tried to attack me for assuming that the initial dependent clause of his argument was not superfluous to the meaning of the argument.

That I may have mistook his use of the Renaissance as an absolute clause instead of an integral clause.

In other words, he accused me of reading English when he wrote:

Here, you're fetishizing the Enlightenment by calling the period that came a few centuries before it "dark." Meanwhile, the Renaissance gave us Machiavelli and nice statues.

I should have, apparently, known that either him talking about the Enlightenment was completely random nonsense that had nothing to do with anything, or that talking about the Renaissance was completely random nonsense to be discarded.

But I didn't decide that a bunch of his words were meaningless groups of letters put down for no apparent reason. What an asshole I feel like now! He sure advanced his argument! I sure am glad I sat down and carefully addressed his argument. We sure are better people now that I didn't dismiss outright the logic of someone that argued everyone else should to the exact opposite of what he does.

And your, "wrong side of the road argument," is fucking stupid, as you yourself say. Mostly because nobody, even in your pointless little story, said that people should drive into oncoming traffic. You did, however, make a comparison to how we should live saying:

And your description of the simple peasant lifestyle looks like it came out of a Hollywood representation of the "bad guy." It doesn't mention, for example, that many more Europeans converted to wood's dweller voluntarily than wood's dwellers converted to peasant serf of the king (who considered himself and his domination of others as "natural" just like many people seem to think scientific progress is "natural" and thus, sustainable.)

That is to say, "a simple peasant lifestyle," is a good thing and we should follow these Europeans that, "converted to wood's dweller voluntarily," to avoid being serfs. Putting aside, of course, that this was a response to an argument that nobody was making, it is pretty clear where you stand on the idea. There are places in your own country where you can voluntary convert to a wood's dweller and live a simple peasant lifestyle. Instead you condemn everyone that doesn't do what you refuse to do. And then told a pop-culture joke about a car in order to try and explain this.

[QatzelOk]

This is the Jesus model for social change. "Do as I and driveth on the right, Aussie brethren."

Then he gets mowed down by a bankster driving a Mazerati.

In history, groups who voluntarily "adopted simplicity" have been eradicated by the less simple. Which is why the Jesus model is so useless to anyone but the master class.

[redcarpet]

Inherently all scientific research should be produced from a state monopoly with the government having exclusive copyright rights, etc. The public interest should come first

[QatzelOk]

Inherently all scientific research should be produced from a state monopoly with the government having exclusive copyright rights, etc. The public interest should come first

This only works if the government has the public interest in mind.

This isn't the case with most current Western governments who, rather than minding the public interest, use mass media to control the public's minds.

[Oxymoron]

If I became supreme ruler.

My first act would be to take anyone researching AI, Genetics, and Astro Physics round them up and put a bullet in each ones forehead.

[Joe Liberty]

This only works if the government has the public interest in mind.

This isn't the case with most current Western governments who, rather than minding the public interest, use mass media to control the public's minds.

Very similar to what I was going to reply. Do we really want the same clowns who run the government to direct scientific research and application? What we would get instead would be suppression, cronyism, and attempted social engineering. Already too much of that going on. See the politicization of "public" school curriculum as just one example.

[Quantum]

Elon Musk is a fool.

People who oppose technological progress will inevitably be on the losing side of history and will be enslaved, colonised and eradicated by those who embrace progress. It's nice to see the right opposing progress because it would place them in the losing group.

The rise of AI means that tasks that previously required human intelligence would be done by robots would increase productivity and reduce the need for human labour.

[Varax]

You can't just slow down technological progress with the flip of a switch even if you wanted to. And even if you did and westerners were foolish enough to torpedo themselves in such a matter they would just cede primacy to East Asia or someone else. More people are involved in R&D and technological advancement now on a global level than at any time prior in history.

We didn't just get from making simple tools to building nuclear reactors and jet engines overnight either - it is the culmination of millennia worth of accumulated knowledge, experimentation and productive achievements. Each step along the way we continued to further our technological progress because the tools it has given to us have use-value to us and we keep striving to make those tools and productive implements better. And now the Luddites on this site want to "stop" that process and deny us the rewards of that process.

Elon Musk is a fool.

People who oppose technological progress will inevitably be on the losing side of history and will be enslaved, colonised and eradicated by those who embrace progress.

This x 1000. I'm done with trying to argue with Luddites on this site, so I will make this simple for them. Go ahead and cut yourselves off from technological progress if you prefer. It will just make it that much easier to dominate you.

[QatzelOk]

Go ahead and cut yourselves off from technological progress if you prefer. It will just make it that much easier to dominate you.

Embracing some technologies - like television and automobiles - has actually made us much easier to control.