Saw this meme on Facebook last week with undoubtedly adulation in all the wrong places:
Neil Ty, Science Guy, says:
I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.
Okay, they’re all in caps, but you know some people hear The Truth capitalized. Which leads to some interesting speculation here: What is the truth? After all, science is not the answer to science; it is a process for testing hypotheses against reality via experiment to see what proves repeatable. Science has no answer to the ultimate truth; it only produces our best current approximation. I mean, real science does that. Social science does whatever it wants, however it wants.
Some classes of people, not scientists, often have an idea of Truth which comes through revelation or introspection or some other means of receiving that Truth, and yet I don’t think people who dig Neil Ty or post memes about f-n loving science really want people shaping their polity based on those beliefs, ainna?
And politics are not about truth; they’re about how to live together amongst people of differing opinions and worldviews without slaughtering them. It’s supposed to be about compromise and reaching consensus (someone said, and I forget who said it recently). It works best with a limited, localized government with more space to live and let live.
Because, to be honest, those whose politics dictate what they think is true have had their sway recently, and with decidedly poor results, ainna?
