12-08-2016, 08:43 AM
(12-08-2016, 08:12 AM)Odin Wrote:(12-07-2016, 05:58 PM)taramarie Wrote: I prefer to not close the door on people if I can help it.
The thing with Libertarian extremists like him is that they are absolutist, black-and-white thinkers. A lot of them come from technical, engineering, and scientific backgrounds where such thinking is fine, but can lead to absurd conclusions when practically applied to human societies. Galen is basically trying to imply that since regulations will always have some issues with red tape BS there should be no regulations. It's bonkers thinking to anyone with a bit of common sense.
The absolute black-and-white thinkers of course ignore the complexity of human reality. STEM activities must act in absolute black-and-white choices as 'accept or deny', 'prove or reject', 'build or not build'. Science and technology typically inform big projects like dam construction and bridge building in which huge amounts of material and large numbers of workers are necessary and any failure can be catastrophic or at the least financially ruinous. The incrementalism in building a stretch of superhighway is best described as 'percentage of completion'. Many other things, like small businesses, can be expanded incrementally. A dam cannot.
Much of the rest of life, from art to human relations, requires some subtlety and tolerance for some ambiguity. Drama and poetry would fail if all meanings of words were cut and dried. Even something so basic as love remains more complex than an explanation of how stars generate electromagnetic energy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.