veganthinker

[veganthinker]

Any factor that will create distance between the subject and the victim, will lead to a reduction of strain on the participant and thus lessen disobedience. In modern society others often stand between us and the final destructive act to which we contribute.

Obedience To Authority - Stanley Milgram

[veganthinker]

It’s time for a new give away! 

“The Martian” is an epic science fiction book of survival by Andy Weir. “Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.”

“Neurocomic” is a remarkable collaboration between neuroscientist Dr. Hana Roš and neuroscience-PhD-turned-illustrator Dr. Matteo Farinella, which explains the inner workings of the brain in awesome illustrations, covering everything from hallucinations to memory and emotional recall to consciousness.

The best-selling science book ever published in the English language, COSMOS is a magnificent overview of the past, present, and future of science. By the one and only Carl Sagan.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s beautiful book, published in October, “You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station" shows Earth in all of its glory.

To win the book you want, reblog this post and follow Sci-Universe! The first winner will be chosen at random on 25th June. Have your ask box open so I can contact you!

[veganthinker]

A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose printout he cannot read. He does not know whether his programing is true or false, right or wrong wether it's set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts, blind to the world around him and to his own inner world, unnable to grasp reality or his own motives. [...] Emotions are not tools of cognition, the men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently. They are most helplessly in it's power. The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb it's principles from the cultural atmosphere around them, from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc...

Philosophy Who Needs It? - Ayn Rand

[veganthinker]

Intellectual dishonesty and moral relativism

Why do the effort of constructing a valid argument or change your mind when presented by an argument stronger than your own, when you can hide behind the veil of moral relativism? “Hey I respect your choice to eat plants, respect mine to eat dead animals parts”, of course never mentionned is the fact that the person has no respect whatsoever toward the non-human animals suffering and being killed to provide those body parts. But beyond moral consideration there is a deeper consequence to this intellectual dishonesty, a consequence to the cognitive well being of the person holding the rationalisation. Here the person is surrendering his own mind by saying that reality or at the very least moral reality is only relative, except that this proposition his a contradiction in itself, effectively this amounts to saying “all moral claims are relatives, except this one, this one is absolute”. The person is, in order to attenuate his cognitive dissonance, holding a view which implicitly say that the content of his mind ougth to be random and that reality is unknowable, therefore he is either deceptively dishonest with himself or accepting (wheter he is conscious of it or not, most likely not) that he can’t trust his own mind since it’s of no use in a random unknowable subjective universe, which ultimately cause discomfort, in either case his self-esteem will be affected since he either accept that he is a liar or that his own mind is not trustworthy. The subconscious keeps track of our actions, good and bad, our estimate of ourself is affected by those, regardless of what we pretend and of how grandiose we try to make our pseudo self-esteem.

The alternative choice would be to accept humbly that he was wrong, and however wrong he was, he also (again consciously or not) implicitly accept the idea that the content of his mind can be changed according to new evidences and arguments to be closer to reality. This attitude of being humble means that you accept that reality exist objectively and that you can make an accurate and useful model of it, while accepting your shortcomings you practice your intelletual honesty which leads to the knowledge that your mind can be trusted and used to grasp reality. The consequences are not obvious to most, but a habit of tuning out one’s own mind or lying to oneself leads to uneasiness with oneself, reactiveness towards other, being on the defensive towards other and hostile towards reality itself. You cannot abandon your own mind, betray it and expect it to work for you.

[veganthinker]

Random tought

It’s hard not to get agressive or at least upset when almost everyone around you is completely unconcious, when you’re surrounded by a bunch of mindless zombies going throught life in a sort of semi awake state, never thinking deeply about anything meaningful, never engaged in rational endeavors, only preoccupied by mindless emotional and oftentime childish whims, of course you can’t call them out on their non-sense, their blindly followed irrationalities, because they’ll accuse you of being intolerant or agressive, which of course make it even more frustrating.

[veganthinker]

In their zeal to protect something precious, people sometimes decide to dig the moat too far out, thinking that it is safer to defend too much than risk defending too little. The result is that they end up trying to defend the “indefensible”, clinging to an extreme position that is only vulnerable because of it’s exaggeration.

Daniel C. Dennett, Feedom Evolves

[veganthinker]

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspective is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.

Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism

[veganthinker]

My fundamental perspective is naturalism, the idea that philosophical investigations are not superior to, or prior to investigations, in the natural sciences, but in partnership with those truth-seeking enterprises, and that the proper job for philosophers here is to clarify and unify the often warring perspectives into a single vision of the universe. That means welcoming the bounty of well-won scientific discoveries and theories as raw material for philosophical theorizing, so that informed, constructive criticism of both science and philosophy is possible.

Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves

[veganthinker]

Interstellar by Christopher Nolan

So I finally watched the movie last night and I have to say I was quite impressed. Definetly one of the best if not the best movie I’ve ever watched. The images and the music by Hans Zimmer are amazing.

The scientifc accuracy of the movie impressed me alot. The producers made alot of efforts to keep as close to the scirnce as they could and for that they consulted with the physicist Kip Thorne. Now I know what you’re thinking “but there’s lot of stuff in the movie that doesn’t make much sense or is improbable” you would be right that stuff like flying from Earth to Saturn in only two years is far fetched and the whole black hole stuff at the end an exemple of where the movie lacks credibility but there’s no instance where the known laws of physics are ignored and overall I found it to have the perfect balance between a respect for the facts of science and stretching the facts and theories to keep the suspense alive and make the movie more interesting overrall. The most striking thing on that aspect is the way Einstein’s theory of relativity is carefully worked into the plot of the movie with such accuracy is impressive.

I won’t go into much details since I’m not qualified to juge the physics and other aspect of the movie authoritatively. I want to mention that some physicists like Lawrence Krauss (author of “A universe from nothing”) severely critized the movie, Krauss has even gone as far as saying it’s the worst movie ever, on the other hand Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson shared a much more ‘moderate’ view of the movie which I happen to share. The movie was interesting from start to finish and going beyond scientifc elitism of complaining that some details are not accurate I think the value of the movie is much more in it’s message and critique of modern society. After all the goal of a science movie is not to teach science. Interstellar shows a near future where we are stuck on a planet in which the environment is quickly degrading, crops are falling prey to various diseases an insects, there’s massive duststorms and the air is polluted with dust. The human species is doomed to die from starvation and suffocation caused by a blith that “eats” the nitrogen present in the air. Unlike other movies which happen in the future the society here is not scientifically more advanced in fact it has regressed, Interstellar portrays a society where science and especially basic science is almost forgotten and even repressed. People no longer have faith in science. This is shown throught the school system wants to produce more agricultors and discourage students from pursuing science careers. They go to the length of rewriting the textbooks to discourage students from develloping an interest in science. For exemple the textbook that Murphy’s brought to school to show other students and which the later edition is “revised” to portray the NASA as a tool for manipulating the Soviet Union into “bankrupting themselves pouring ressources into rockets and other useless machines”. In fact the NASA doesn’t even exist anymore, atleast not officially, they operate underground because the society froen so much upon the idea of spending money on science. They see scientists as fanatics that work only for their own twisted interests. Despite that grim picture that’s painted of our future. Interstellar share a positive message, the ehole.movie is an ode to science and reason as tools for saving ourselves and assuring that we have a bright future. The theme of space exploration is rightly choosen given the fact that our fate is inescapable, that is, if we don’t die out from wrecking havoc on the environnement or from other causes we will inevitably perish with the rest of earth in about 5 billions years as the sun expand into a red giant. As Stephen Hawking commented “the long-term future of the human race must be in space” he said he don’t think we will survive the nest thousand years if we don’t spread into space. This view is presented in the movie as the NASA work underground into a project for space exploration to potentially inhabitable planets. The movies fascinate us with the implications of space travel to far distances, it stretche our imagination with concepts like black holes, wormholes and Einsteinian time paradoxes. This is the value of Interstellar, not it’s concepts which are only superficially touched upon and at times stretched outside reality, but in the way science concepts are presented to fascinate the viewer, to create an interest in those unfamiliar to science. The movie is a praise to the scientific method and mindset from the star. From the star Cooper, the main caractor teaches Murphy, his daugther, to think critically and to apply the scientific method instead of believing in surnatural phenemenon. The movie show us that having a materialistic worldview is not only an essential tool for navigating the world we inhabit but can be a source of wonder. The movie also show us that we all are humans and that mean not being infaillible, that even the scientific elite can fall for emotional whims and cowardness like we see when after having been alone deprived of human contact for such a long time, Dr. Mann tries to save himself by cowardly sacrificing the other member of the mission. The movie preach intellectual honesty amd what I would call intellectual courage, this is mostly seen in the scene where Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) to convince the other members to choose Edmunds planet goes into her speech about how love is the only thing that trancend space and time, falling into irrational thinking. Unlike what you would expect from most movies, the main caractor doesn’t flinch and choose to takr the most rational decision based on evidences. In the end the human species is saved, not by love or courage even if they are central to the movie but ultimately by a mathematical equation solved by Murphy.

[veganthinker]

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

Ethan Allen

[veganthinker]

A summary of New Age beliefs

"There's no such thing as objective truth. We make our own truth. There's no such thing as objective reality. We make our own reality. There are spiritual, mystical, or inner ways of knowing that are superior to our ordinary ways of knowing. If an experience seems real, it is real. If an idea feels right to you, it is right. We are incapable of acquiring knowledge of the true nature of reality. Science itself is irrational or mystical. It's just another faith or belief system or myth, with no more justification than any other. It doesn't matter whether beliefs are true or not, as long as they're meaningful to you." Theodore Schick Jr and Lewis Vaughn, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age

[veganthinker]

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

[veganthinker]

The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is streched to it's limits in a volontary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. [...] For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow

[veganthinker]

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Christopher Hitchens - God is not great

[veganthinker]

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: science as a candle in the dark

[veganthinker]

It's hard for me to see a more profound cosmic connection than the astonishing findings of modern nuclear astrophysics: except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up - the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains - were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: science as a candle in the dark

[veganthinker]

Naturally people try various belief systems on for size, to see if they help. And if we're desperate enough, we become all too willing to abandon what may be perceived as the heavy burden of scepticism. Pseudoscience speaks to powerfull emotional needs that science often left unfulfilled. It caters to fantasies about personnal powers we lack and long for. In some manifestions, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for disease, promises that death is not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance. It vouchsafes that we are hooked up with, tied to, the Universe. Sometimes it's a kind of halfways house between old religion and science, mistrusted by both.

Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World : science as a candle in the dark