What Socrates' 'I know that I know nothing' wisdom can teach a polarized America

Recommendable!

The wisdom of Socrates is always refreshing and very deep and profound! Socrates did not flee to escape his death sentence although his friends implored him to escape and hide with their help. The man drank the poison so his convictions and quest for seeking truth would survive the ages!

"But each dilemma usually comes down to polarized deadlock between two competing visions and everyone’s conviction that theirs is the right one. Perhaps this white-knuckled insistence on being right is the root cause of the societal fissure – why everything seems so irreparably wrong.

As religion and philosophy scholars, we would argue that our apparent national impasse points to a lack of “epistemic humility,” or intellectual humility – that is, an inability to acknowledge, empathize with and ultimately compromise with opinions and perspectives different from one’s own. In other words, Americans have stopped listening.

So why is intellectual humility in such scarce supply? Of course, the quickest answer might be the right one: that humility runs against most people’s fear of being mistaken, and the zero-sum view that being right means someone else has to be totally wrong. ...

Despite relative old age, Socrates immediately embarked on a journey to find someone wiser than himself and spent many days seeking out the sages of the ancient world, a quest Plato recounts in his “Apology of Socrates.”

The problem? He discovered that the sages thought they knew more than they actually did. Eventually, Socrates concluded that he himself was, in fact, the wisest of all men, because at least he “knew that he didn’t know.” ...

Take Euthyphro, for example, one of Socrates’ principal interlocutors. Euthyphro is so sure that he knows the difference between right and wrong that he is bringing his own father to trial. Socrates quickly disabuses him of his certainty, famously debating him about the true meaning of piety. ..."

What Socrates' 'know nothing' wisdom can teach a polarized America

About the Socratic Method as a tool to help improve your critical thinking

One of Socrates perhaps most famous quotes: I know that I know nothing. Unfortunately, too many humans past and present live by the pretense of knowledge (Friedrich Hayek's Noble Prize lecture 1974)!

Scientists Are So Blind

Posted: 8/28/2018

Trigger

Just read 3-D Cell Environment Crucial for Divvying Up Chromosomes – Find Could Help Explain Cancer Hallmark. It is very hard to believe that scientists only now realized that cell division (mitosis) does not function well in cells grown in a flat Petri dish as opposed to cells inserted into a living tissue. And this after more than 100 years of intensive research!

Similarities And Synergy

This reminds me that I recently blogged about following, similar discoveries:

1. Cell organelles have contact sites and tether together (here)
2. Human fascial system from head to toe (here)

It almost appears that scientists finally discover that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts or that by drilling down into ever more minute details obscures the view of the bigger picture (not seeing the forest for the trees).

Subatomic Particle Physics

Just today (8/28/2018) I read following news from Brookhaven National Laboratory: LHC Scientists Detect Most Favored Higgs Decay Scientists now know the fate of the vast majority of all Higgs bosons produced in the LHC. Quote: “Today at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider collaborations ATLAS and CMS jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson transforming into bottom quarks as it decays. This is predicted to be the most common way for Higgs bosons to decay, yet was a difficult signal to isolate because background processes closely mimic the subtle signal.” (emphasis added)

Yes, there was lots of excitement in 2012, when scientists at the  Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN were able to detect the existence of this crucial particle. However, what are we actually dealing with here:

1. The all so important Higgs boson has a mean lifetime of about 1.6×10−22 s.
2. “Higgs bosons are only produced in roughly one out of a billion LHC collisions and live only a tiny fraction of a second before their energy is converted into a cascade of other particles.”
3. “Since its discovery in 2012, scientists have been able to identify only about thirty percent of all the predicted Higgs boson decays.”

To me, it appears that particle physics is going down a dead end. I have previously written some critical comments on particle physics (see e.g. here, here)

Like the once astonishing recognition of the duality of particle and waves, scientists have yet to make sense of the ever growing and more bizarre zoo of subatomic particles. Are they too missing the forest for the trees?

Like Gravity Or Synergy

Something is important is escaping scientists in their quest to further explain the universe we live in and beyond or life therein!

Guess, we have to wait for the next Galileo, Newton, or Einstein!

What Little Humans Know About Elephants!

Trigger

Just read article titled “The Science Is In: Elephants Are Even Smarter Than We Realized ”. Elephants scientists now figured out are much more smarter and empathetic than thought before.

Read the article! It is amazing stuff!

The Human Centric Viewpoint Got In The Way

Why was the intelligence of elephants underestimated for so long, scientists applied experiments suitable for humans or primates instead of investigating the natural strengths of the elephant.

The Unknown Common Fruit Fly

One Of The Most Studied Organisms In Science

The common fruit fly is one of the most scientifically studied model organisms in the world since the early 20^th century, a.k.a. Drosophila melanogaster. It still surprises us.

We Still Know So Little About The Common Fruit Fly

When I read this scientific news article titled “Fruit Flies Force Their Young to Drink Alcohol for Their Own Good” today (2/22/2013), I was stunned to read how much we still do not know about this so intensely studied object of science.

The article informs us that:

1.       “Adult fruit flies detect the [parasitic] wasps [“who are major killers of fruit flies”] by sight, and appear to have much better vision than previously realized Our data indicate that the flies can visually distinguish the relatively small morphological differences between male and female wasps, and between different species of wasps."”

2.       “The fly strains used in the experiments have been bred in the lab for decades. "The flies that we work with have not seen wasps in their lives before, and neither have their ancestors going back hundreds of generations," … "And yet, the flies still recognize these wasps as a danger when they are put in a cage with them."”

3.       “Further experiments showed that the flies are extremely discerning about differences in the wasps. They preferred to lay their eggs in alcohol when female wasps were present, but not if only male wasps were in the cage.”

4.       “Further experimentation showed that the fruit flies can distinguish different species of wasps, and will only choose the alcohol food in response to wasp species that infect larvae, not fly pupae.”

Wow! How do these until now considered to be stupid flies do all that?

Pretense Of Knowledge

Since Socrates we have to be keenly aware of the false pretenses by too many scientists. Global Warming alarmism by scientists who claim they can predict average global temperatures, sea levels etc. over a period of one hundred years from now should be laughed out of their tenured jobs financed by tax payers’ money.

Friedrich Hayek On The Mess Made By Economists

Trigger

Sheldon Richman of the The Future Of Freedom Foundation just wrote a very readable piece on Hayek’s acceptance of the Nobel Prize in economics 38 years ago titled “TGIF: Hayek’s Warning” (published 1/4/2013). But I am afraid his poignant observations will get lost in cyberspace not least because of the all too generic title.

Economists Have Made A Mess Then And Now

Hayek said on 12/11/1974 “On the other hand, the economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.” (Emphasis added. Source).

Had Hayek been alive today, he would have said the same about the recent financial crisis and the government debt crisis.

At the banquet speech in Oslo Hayek also wisely remarked “It is that the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. … But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally. There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe. One [a Nobel laureate in economics] is even made to feel it a public duty to pronounce on problems to which one may not have devoted special attention.” (Emphasis added). Both thumbs up!

The Pretence of Knowledge

Hayek’s lecture in Stockholm was titled “The Pretence of Knowledge”. It should be required reading for all the Bernankes, Krugmanns etc. of this world. Too many leading economists are pretentious, immodest ideologues full of hubris!

To give a very brief summary of Hayek’s contention: The macroeconomic theories and models developed by economists are seriously flawed. Economics has aspired to be like a natural science or like mathematics, but latter deal with matter, energy, and abstract concepts, while economics deals with living organisms with a brain and conscience.

In his life, Hayek wrote more on the subject of pretense of knowledge and economics. He is therefore a great successor of Socrates.