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Originally Posted by loquitur
Let me expand past Rand. The French Revolution purported to enshrine Reason at the center of society. Two years later the revolution was devouring its devotees in the Terror. Karl Marx claimed to have scientifically analyzed society. We know where that led, too.
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You can't blame Marx for what Stalin did. I'm not saying that Marx's conclusions were necessarily perfect (if there is such a thing in economic and/or governmental systems), but somehow I can't imagine Marx liking the idea of a dictator using propaganda to elevate himself to the position of near godhood in his communist society. I can imagine Marx getting pretty pissed about that, actually.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Logic and rationality ex ante don't necessarily provide you with good road maps of how society can be organized on a macro level.
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Yes, this is a perfect explanation as to why I tend to think of governmental systems from a hunter-gatherer standpoint (which is why I might seem more socialist). When I look at human organization and give it a real historical context—a context that stretches back tens of thousands of years—I see the massive inherent flaws in such crowded societies today. It's why I tend to reject outright pure capitalism. But I don't want to get into that too much.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Yes, they are useful in making individual small-bore decisions, but even then things break down because humans are complex and unpredictable. Logic and rationality will help you with societal organization ex post - once something happens and you see how people react, you can evaluate why and figure it out. But trying to predict it is a hit-or-miss affair.
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I think it's useful.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
That's why I'm a big believer in the scientific method: quantitative analysis and experimentation. The only way to know what works is to test it and see what happens, then test it again, then test it again -- just like any scientific experiment. If it's replicable consistently and the result is roughly what was sought, then it "works." To my mind this is the way rationality should work, because it recognizes both the possibilities and the limitations of reasoning.
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Don't you find that the scientific method is rational/reasonable? I try to fit science in most of my perceptions of the world:
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Originally Posted by Willravel
I "believe" in science, reason, and logic.
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Is there another name for this that I'm not aware of?