However, does this mean that the crafted chair has become more expensive? Maybe, maybe not. It only seems expensive compared to the cost of everyday household items. I bet a lot of the cost is because in `the old days' the craftsman didn't have his mind set on truck payments, a VCR, and a satellite dish.
It could be that the chair still costs a historically comparable fraction of the middle class paycheck, and it's just that everything else has gotten cheaper. This would take some rather careful historic research and manufacturing analysis. But I don't do science. I just worship it.
Anyway, after our discussion I outlined a fundamental difference in value systems that led to our differences. She values the care that a craftsman lavishes on his work and other touchy-feely new-age kinda stuff. I value technological achievement and excellence.
I personally believe that the purpose of science should be to make us happy. (I believe that the purpose of everything should be to make us happy, which is why I'm not hangin' with the Christians). Many religions make us happy by promising us happiness after death (and some religions spoil it by promoting misery on earth). How can science make us happy?
Well, medicine is a good starting place. Since medicine adopted the scientific method it has made great strides in improving and extending life. Things would be pretty shitty if we were still suffering from polio, measles, and smallpox. We're still fucked if Ebola gets loose, but give medicine a few decades, they'll think of something.
Physics has given us all sorts of gadgets, including the computer you're reading this on. I ride to work every day on my bike and wear my helmet to keep my brains in place and wear my gloves with gel palms to make the ride smoother. I eat food stored in a refrigerator.
I come home some days and swim in a pool which would be a green morass if it weren't for some fairly simple chemistry. A lot of my world is plastic (In one history class our teacher asked us to think of a world without glass. We thought about it for a while said ``It would be replaced by plastic''. She though ``OK, smartasses'' and said ``OK, that was too easy. What about a world without plastic?'' DOH!).
Science makes our lives better by explaining things that happen to us in our everyday lives. (Mind you, it doesn't explain everything, which is why some people don't like it. Tough shit.) I think the basic principle underlying science is prediction. A scientific experiment has to be repeatable. If it isn't repeatable, then you can't make predictions based on it ( it is for this reason that I think a lot of economics, psychology, and sociology are not very scientific).
I think most new-age stuff is a pile of crap. It's some normal (dumb) people trying to explain weird shit that happens to them. Since your average (dumb) person is pretty credible (a reasonable antonym for skeptical) they tend to fall for some pretty outlandish stuff. I'm not saying that all new-age crap is wrong(I did read Robert Anton Wilsons The New Inquisition), I'm just saying it's not repeatable.
If you tell me that ``when Venus is aligned with Alpha Centauri you can tickle a hippo with garden rake and she will fart insulin'', I will say ``Great. What the fuck am I going to do with that information? Start a theme park?'' (Insulin-farting Hippo Land! Open once every two centuries!). Even if it is repeatable in the broad sense of the word, it's almost, but not quite, completely fucking worthless. I'm gonna yank your grant and give it to a Hindu researching coal walking. At least we might commercialize that into firefighter training.
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Robert Forsman <thoth@purplefrog.com> Last modified: Tue Jun 6 22:58:04 1995