03-17-2020, 09:06 PM
(03-17-2020, 07:22 PM)TheNomad Wrote: If the person has not dealt personally with the outbreak or contagion, if they have not personally been informed by what is happening, you're saying it is "reality" when they preach ABOUT it.
Back in my days at college, I took a philosophy course that featured Bishop Berkeley. One of his teachings was that elections, or anything else that you have not directly experienced with your senses, do not exist. At the time I was an electronic engineering major, and had been studying electrons for the last four plus years. I was writing a paper on semiconductor lasers, how semiconductors could be doped to create an electrical voltage difference that directly effects the wavelength of the light that is generated.
I came to the conclusion that the philosophy professor had not experienced all of the evidence, and did not know what he was talking about. He hadn’t a clue about how to build a radio, or a semiconductor laser. Should the philosophy department dictate to the engineering department how they should teach? Are my visits to the library under the MIT Great Dome to read journals on electricity and lasers be considered futile?
I’m afraid the opinion of the argument that you should not believe in anything you haven’t experienced with your own senses was pretty much set in that time. I learned enough about Bishop Berkeley's theories to feed the professor what he expected to hear and pass the test at the end of the quarter, but did not try in earnest to correct his ignorance.
We might die for passing on false information, but censorship and ignorance are not the answer either. There are certain scientific sources of information that one can and does trust. If so, you can state your source and pass on the information. There are other sources of guidance which are biased, like Trump, Fox News and Twitter. I don’t trust them, but people with different world views might. You just have to correct them as you can with the science.
I note on another thread that a good response to your censorship rant was to provide links to the CDC and WebMD. Looks good to me.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.