14flash
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Post by 14flash on Sept 15, 2017 13:55:17 GMT
Yes. Get off this forum and get to work.
This is another one the Mike mentioned as wanting to do. Link to the docs discussion.There's mention of utilitarianism versus altruism, that is, should we be trying to help as many people as possible without regard to other concerns. Also a mention to perhaps art tells us why to live as opposed to how to live. Also a good idea about how art and science might inform each other and need each other to continue advancing. |
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Post by macecurb on Sept 15, 2017 14:24:53 GMT
There's definitely an episode to be had about this, but my worry is that it could very easily get into the weeds of ethical philosophy - which, if we're not careful, could be very unapproachable.
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ngnius
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Post by ngnius on Sept 15, 2017 14:27:08 GMT
Its actually quite funny how technologies interact and end up helping each other. For example, refrigerators use the same science as what's used to create cryogenic fuels in space craft (broadly - each requires refrigeration, one to a much larger extent than the other).
You could argue that utilitarianism is actually altruistic because you're helping society as a whole advance technology (by helping a company make money to develop tech, by directly developing tech, or by creating competition so another company has to develop better tech). For example, I'm sure I'm helping (probably not much) by working for a grocery store, so they can make money to develop better grocery tech (if that's a thing), which will probably eventually help bring down costs or something, which could lead to food being more affordable for poor people, which is good for them. Or at the very least, I'm helping the company (and the people with better wages than me) make money to invest in other companies that develop tech.
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Post by heresanidea on Sept 30, 2017 18:00:39 GMT
Let me argue against the question like an angry youtuber who comments before watching the video, and then we can figure out what theory we can use to refute these hot take arguments:
This question just doesn't get how humans work. It's as good as asking "wouldn't it be nice if we all just got along?". Nice, but how?
Alright.. well how is it practical, is a question we might have to answer or at least address before excluding from the scope.
Anyway, I think these questions could highlight the altruism versus utilitarianism angle:
Imagine you see a person have a bike accident, by their own fault. You would run to save them and what would your thoughts be at that time:
1) Altruistic- Oh God they'll die if I don't help them. I must go.
2) Utilitarian- Oh God, society will lose a young economic contributor. Considering that the time and effort I'll spend isn't as costly, I must attempt to minimise the chances of that net undesirable outcome.
- of course it's option one.
Or, in terms of our topic- you won't think "let's save this person so that they can heal and get back to contributing to the cause for curing cancer".
Another one:
You are a scientist and know that you can only work and cure one of two kinds of cancers in your life-
Type Rich- affects only rich people.
Type poor- affects only poor people.
What type should you choose?
Assumptions to get minor arguments out of the way-
- all people are equally good and are contributing in whatever way they can to curing cancer. Of course the rich contribute more since they have more means.
- Both types are equally painful. The rich type costs more and poor type costs less, so both types cause equalizing physical, psychological and socioeconomic pains.
1) Altruism- Shouldn't really matter. Both types are equally bad. Choosing any should be fine.
2) Utilitarianism- obviously the rich guys! They'll contribute more to cancer cure!
And here again you see how altruism is the more human decision.
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Post by heresanidea on Oct 1, 2017 5:39:31 GMT
I would say, let's hold on to this topic until later.
It'd be awesome if we could get Olly from philosophy tube to help us with it.
But we'll need some more Street cred before we approach him
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14flash
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Post by 14flash on Oct 4, 2017 3:09:53 GMT
I think cancer isn't the important part of this; it was just used as a surrogate for science as a whole. The original question that Mike posed was whether art was worth the effort when we could spend that effort on science to make life better (source: youtu.be/3Z3hla4WztM?t=10m4s). From this angle, I see art as something which is used to transfer experience. New experience provide different outlooks and ideas not just about life but about everything we do and think. Those new perspectives are usually necessary for invention and innovation. |
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Post by heresanidea on Oct 4, 2017 14:40:34 GMT
Oh... Well the Google doc makes much more sense now
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Post by heresanidea on Oct 4, 2017 14:59:29 GMT
It might be interesting to contrast art and craft here. Both are kinda related but you think more about utility when you're engaged in crafting, but not really while making art.
Like you expect the craft to get you something even after it's done. But for art, the process itself is the reward, you can do art for art's sake.
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Post by bythebookis on Oct 6, 2017 11:29:33 GMT
I would like to offer a different perspective (this is my first time posting, hi!).
Science is what enables art. Technology to be exact. Sure, natural processes and animals can create beautiful structures and patterns, but is it really art if there is no one to appreciate it? Humans can appreciate art because of our intellectual capacity, but also because we can afford to. There is no time or means for art, if you are worrying of dying from predators of from lack of food.
Art and technology are not opposites. People use technology so people can live more comfortable lives thus enabling arts as an option. The question then becomes "Are we at the point that science has advanced enough, so we can have people not contributing anything to the well being of others?". The answer is complicated because depending on your perspective we are or aren't.
If you look at developed nations, people can obviously spend their whole life making music and living more than comfortably and being more than accepted by the society. If you look at the world as a whole, there are children starving so we are not in the point where everyone lives good enough to enable arts.
There is also the question of how do we know that we have progressed enough? Someone 200 years ago having the same thoughts might think the answer for his time is yes, but quality of life has increased exponentially since then so that we today could argue that he was wrong. Maybe the the true tipping point is when we have a world where everyone can live at least comfortably, most diseases are curable and people can't even die of old age. Then people can really focus on arts. But not all of people have the capacity to contribute to science, or don't have the desire to help advance the human race. That should be acceptable. They want to live good lives now. These people are also important too, because when we reach the tipping point, we want to have an identity and a history; we don't want to be just an animal that conquered the world.
So should we all be trying to cure diseases and advance quality of life? The sooner we reach the tipping point it becomes better for everyone. Even the people that are not altruists. It is much easier to be an egoist today that you are not worried about diseases and food so much.
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14flash
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Post by 14flash on Oct 10, 2017 2:45:38 GMT
Science is what enables art. Technology to be exact. Sure, natural processes and animals can create beautiful structures and patterns, but is it really art if there is no one to appreciate it? Humans can appreciate art because of our intellectual capacity, but also because we can afford to. There is no time or means for art, if you are worrying of dying from predators of from lack of food. I think science goes beyond just enabling art. Our view of the physical world provided by science is the basis for how we interpret and produce art. For example, after World War I the Modernist movement in literature started which provided a view that the humans are chaotic and irrational. This coincides with the period when scientists like Einstein and Schrodinger were publishing their seminal works. The world was no longer the predictable and rational place it was with the works of Newton and Laplace; an electron's position around an atom was only probabilistic, there would always be unknown measures of fundamental particles, and there was now a cosmic speed limit. Science directly influences how artists think about the world. As I mentioned before, I also think that art is responsible for influencing science, so I see this as science and art building upon each other. If we all went to working in science, we wouldn't move any faster toward curing cancer but if we all became artists our ideas would also stagnate. |
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Post by heresanidea on Oct 23, 2017 3:57:45 GMT
If someone can get hold of an Eric Kandel book, it'll be helpful for this art vs science thing
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14flash
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Post by 14flash on Nov 11, 2017 20:49:54 GMT
I'd like to point out a conversation that was recently had in the Discord which serves as an illustration of how art and science can be used together. The Compiler (aka heresanidea) was using McLuhan's "the medium is the message" philosophy to understand particle fields. He was using the metaphor that the fields are the medium and the excitations of the field (particles) are the message. He went on to apply the same idea to radio waves, showing that the high "frequency" portions of a wave are like excitations in the signal, thus that "the medium is the message" could be applied here, too. The point here is not to discuss whether this view of physics makes sense or is "right," but that we use idea presented in art to create ways to think about the world. We can then think intuitively on those simplifications of the world to find potential areas of discovery. This also works in reverse, where we use a model presented by science to consider how we view the world and use that new view to create new ideas.
As for Kandel, I think the book you're talking about is Reductionism in Art and Brain Science which based on the synopsis definitely sounds like what I'm talking about. (Most of Kandel's earlier works are about his studies of the physiology of memory.)
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Post by heresanidea on Nov 12, 2017 7:56:24 GMT
Oh I hadn't noticed the connection to this idea!
I think many of Kandel's books are on this topic, can't recall which one I was referring to specifically.
But I agree, this has promise as an early topic which we can then refer to when we build on similar "applying art to other academia" topics.
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Post by Oriana on Jan 5, 2018 3:26:32 GMT
My literature professor once told me that he and a chemist collaborated on a piece of work together, and at the end of it, the chemist concluded "so... I guess this means knowledge is socially constructed".
And my prof was so amused, because that's "such a first-year kind of thing to say".
As someone doing a BASc, I can tell you that scientists do philosophy all the time, and very often they do it really shittily. Philosophy advances (and to a lesser extent, other humanities' advances) kind of... skip steps that science gets to far far later (see: ancient atomists arrived at the idea of the atom using pure logic, it took thousands of years for people to prove it).
Things taken for granted in the humanities ("knowledge is socially constructed") are often "discovered" in the sciences and lent more legitimacy decades or centuries later. So perhaps it is worth asking whether the premise of this question (that artistic value is kind of nice but also useless while engineering breakthroughs are vastly more useful) is even all that coherent to begin with.
Also: Neil Gaiman's thing on China and Science Fiction.
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14flash
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Post by 14flash on Jan 25, 2018 5:10:50 GMT
As someone doing a BASc, I can tell you that scientists do philosophy all the time, and very often they do it really shittily. Philosophy advances (and to a lesser extent, other humanities' advances) kind of... skip steps that science gets to far far later (see: ancient atomists arrived at the idea of the atom using pure logic, it took thousands of years for people to prove it). I guess this begs the question, could philosophers make a break through in cancer treatment? I'm no doctor or biochemist, but I suspect the answer is similar to the "AI development should be done by neuroscientists" thread. We may be at a point where we know enough about cancer that in order to contextualize all the information about it and provide a new direction/solution, you'd have to become a doctor and would lose the outside perspective that we're so keen on. I have a feeling the question was a "bait and switch" all along. It is alluring in that we expect questions to be answered "yes," even if the real answer is a resounding "no." |
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