robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
robbo203 wrote: “…LBird, Who socially produces scientific theories has ZERO RELEVANCE …”
Neither I nor Marx share that political opinion, robbo.
Once again, LBird, you misrepresent me
I didn’t say the question of “who socially produces scientific theories has ZERO RELEVANCE” per se
I said it has ” ZERO RELEVANCE to the question of whether scientific theories should be democratically voted upon by the global population.
Can’t you read properly? You are going from bad to worse
Marx did not argue that scientific theories need to be voted upon. This is entirely, and utterly uniquely, your point of view. You alone, as far as I know, are the only person probably in the entire universe to hold this crackpot idea
Yet you seem incapable or unwilling to defend it and have studiously evaded answering any question concerning this crackpot idea of yours
So (yet again), “‘who’ socially produces scientific theories and ‘how’ do they do so?“. Once we have the answer to this ‘perfectly OK’ question (the ‘who’ and the ‘how’), discussion about the ‘why’ (and the ‘whether’ and ‘should’) will progress rapidly. In fact, the ‘who and how’ answer will determine the ‘why/whether/should’ answer.
BS, LBird, Who socially produces scientific theories has ZERO RELEVANCE to the question of whether scientific theories should be democratically voted upon by the global population. You are warbling on irrelevantly to distract attention from the fact that you are incapable of explaining WHY such a global vote should be held or HOW it is even logistically possible to organise.
The really funny thing about all this is that you were the one complaining that the rest of us here don’t “engage” with your ideas but you have flat out refused to engage with the above point from the get go
Who precisely is involved in the social production of scientific theories is not of any great interest to me. I know I haven’t contributed anything to the development of string theory in astrophysics. I doubt if you have either. No doubt a number of people with some familiarity with astrophysics would have contributed to this theory. In that sense it is socially produced. The same would be probably be true of other scientific theories even if a different set of people would likely have been involved
But so what? Even if the entire global population was engaged somehow in the development of string theory , how would this justify the need for a democratic vote on it?
Now kindly answer this question and also answer the question I posed earlier: when did Marx suggest that scientific theories require a democratic vote by the global population???
Citations please and no dodging the question any more….
I agree, robbo, perfectly OK.
So, ” ‘who’ socially produces scientific theories and ‘how’ do they do so?“
LBird why do you point blank refuse to answer the point I made, viz
It is perfectly OK in itself to ask ‘who’ socially produces scientific theories and ‘how’ do they do so but what is NOT OK is to use the excuse that scientific theories are social products to justify the crackpot idea that these theories – tens of thousands of them – should be voted upon the global population
I am not so much concerned here with the academic question of who socially produces scientific theories as whether those theories should therefore be voted upon
Please answer my direct question as to why you think they should be voted upon – what purpose would a vote serve – and also why you consider Marx felt they should be voted upon as well. Citation needed
Your silence on this matter will finally confirm you haven’t got a clue about what you have been gabbling on about for so long….
I think ‘it is entirely acceptable’, and since we agree that ‘scientific theories’ are ‘social products’, to ask ‘who’ socially produces, and ‘how’ do they do so.
No LBird you are misrepresenting what I said
It is perfectly OK in itself to ask ‘who’ socially produces scientific theories and ‘how’ do they do so but what is NOT OK is to use the excuse that scientific theories are social products to justify the crackpot idea that these theories – tens of thousands of them – should be voted upon the global population
Contrary to what you claim, I have no problem with recognising Marx’s theory and practice are inseparable. But nowhere in Marx’s theory that, I am aware of, is there any suggestion that the scientific theories should be validated by a democratic vote of the global population. Democracy will of course be an integral part of socialist society but not to the ridiculous extent that you posit.
Once again you have dismally failed in your desperate efforts to substantiate your non-Marxist gloss on what you call “Marx’s theory” by failing to provide even a single citation where Marx suggested anything so daft as voting on scientific theories!
I’m trying to discuss Marx’s politics and philosophy, about our social production… whereas you want to ask ‘simple, straightforward questions’ which will supposedly require ‘simple, straightforward’ answers.
OK, LBird, since you are so obsessed with Marx, tell me then – when did Marx ever come up with such a crackpot idea that the global population should be enabled to democratically vote to validate tends of thousands of scientific theories? It is not acceptable to give as answer the fact that he considered (as do I) scientific theories to be “social products”, for reasons that have been explained ad nauseum. Citations please!
And while you are at , since you appear to be the only person in the whole wide world to endorse this crackpot idea, which you seem to want to undemocratically impose on the rest of us who see absolutely no need for it, perhaps you can at least explain WHY you think these scientific theories should be voted on (Ill leave the “HOW” to another time)? That is, if you deign to patronise us simple-minded proles with your elite knowledge in response to our simple-minded practical questions….
Not that I am holding my breath in expectation of getting an answer from you. You have an established track record in evading uncomfortable questions, haven’t you?
If only you and the others would engage with what I write, rather than your own illusions, and hidden ideology.
LOL LBird
We should engage with you, according to you,but do you ever reciprocate by engaging with us??? For example, by answering a simple straightforward question which has been asked of you over and over again such as how in practical terms do you propose to organise tens of thousands of global votes on scientific theories and what possible purpose would this serve?
Perhaps you consider that any such explanation that you might give would be too abstruse and complex for us plain speaking proles to comprehend and should be considered only within the illustrious circle of the cognoscenti elite of which you consider yourself a member
No point in casting pearls before the swine, eh?
LBird
Marx never, as far as I am aware, suggested that something like a scientific theory – or “maths”- should be subject to a democratic vote by the global population in a socialist society. This is pure invention on your part, the product of an over fertile imagination
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe somewhere Marx said or hinted at something along these lines in which case perhaps you could provide a quote to show this. In any event if he did say or hint at something like this then I would not hesitate to say that on that occasion he had clearly lost his marbles. Unlike you I am not a Marx fetishist, I don’t hero worship the man. He wrote a lot of good stuff but he also wrote some crap too
I suspect what you mean is that Marx would have thought a scientific theory is a social product in the sense that it is the intellectual outcome of a collaborative effort of many individuals. This is quite true but I remind you once again that just because something is a social product does NOT make it a candidate for democratic decision making
I have given you the example of my laptop. This is a social product in the sense that the labour inputs that went into making involve countless numbers of workers distributed right across the globe who assembled the components, produced the components or produced the raw materials required to produce the components etc etc. All in all we are talking about millions upon millions of workers worldwide.
Do you consider that all these millions of workers should democratically determine every step in the production chain from start to finish. If so how exactly do you propose to do that? That’s not a serious proposition is it?
Same with scientific theories. How exactly do you propose these – theories – tens of thousands of them – be democratically voted upon by 8 billion and what purpose would this serve? You never answer these practical questions, LBird. Why is that?
You are the one insisting that global population MUST democratically vote on these theories without consulting anyone as to whether they might even consider it worth the effort. What if no one considers it worth the effort – which is more than likely (to say the least) – would you still insist that such a vote be held. How would square this with your championing of “democracy”?
Entertain us with another round of ducking and diving and doing anything it takes to avoid answering any serious practical question
But it’s true, alan, even you agree – the official stance of the SPGB is to oppose democracy in: nature, reality, truth, physics, matter, maths, logic, necessity… I’m sure there are others that have been mentioned, and I have forgotten.
You are digging yourself ever deeper into a hole of your own making, LBird. For your own sake stop and think a little before committing yourself to print. You are just making yourself look really foolish
Having declared that it seems to be “the official stance of the SPGB” that it is “opposed to democracy” – an outrageous slander by any standard – you are now hastily backtracking in a desperate attempt to save face by qualifying your comment. Its not democracy as such that SPGB is seemingly opposed to, according to you now in your latest spin on the subject, but democracy in “nature, reality, truth, physics, matter, maths, logic, necessity…”
WTF is all that even supposed to mean, LBird? Are you now suggesting that we have global vote on whether 2 plus 2 is 4???? It was bad enough you trying to suggest the global population should vote on tens of thousands of scientific theories when you have never once explained what is the purpose of such a vote or how you propose to organise the mind boggling logistics of all this voting.
It is not just the SPGB that would reject such a silly idea but, I am completely confident, virtually the entirety of humanity. Yet here you are pontificating in the name of “democracy” about a massively pointless and completely impractical idea that the entire world population must follow through on – simply because, in your opinion, it is essential for democracy that they do so. In other words, it is supposedly essential for democracy because you as a single lone individual, apparently without any support from anyone else, says it is!!
Oh the irony! If people in a future socialist society want to vote on whether 2 plus 2 is 4 let them decide on whether such a vote is necessary. Don’t undemocratically impose this requirement on them. Personally I don’t see the slightest chance of this crackpot idea being taken up but then that’s just me I guess…
I can’t retract the truth, robbo.
In return, I wouldn’t call you ‘dishonest’, just apparently incapable of reading what you yourself write. You have a ‘belief’ that ‘democratic decision making’ shouldn’t ‘be extended’ to a list of powerful things that you have chosen.Perhaps it is you, LBird, who is apparently incapable of reading what you yourself write
You earlier wrote “If everyone is so opposed to democracy, and this seems to be the official stance of the SPGB, why not just say so?” Yet here you have just said that I and others in the SPGB have a belief that ‘democratic decision making’ shouldn’t ‘be extended’ to such things as voting on scientific theories since this is pointless and impractical exercise
But for democracy to be considered not “extendible” to such things very clearly implies that one sees democracy as being applicable to certain other things. Yet you are here making this disgracefully dishonest claim that we reject democracy altogether when all we are saying is that its application would of necessity be limited to certain kinds of decisions and not others
Talk about being confused!
You’re going to have to explain yourselves eventually, or the party will collapse. Why is the SPGB opposed to democracy?
Don’t talk such utter rubbish, LBird.
It has been explained to you COUNTLESS TIMES, that the SPGB fully endorses the idea of democratic control and common ownership of the means of wealth production. We just don’t believe that the principle of democratic decision making should be extended to such things as validating scientific theories by mean of a vote by the global population – a ridiculously impractical and pointless idea which you seem to hold.
If the SPGB is opposed to democracy, as you claim, you would not have been afforded the privilege of debating your ideas on this forum when you have been booted out of many other forums as I understand it
Stop being so downright dishonest, LBird. That is an appalling comment you made. You should it retract it immediately
BD, I know that you’re trying to give me genuine advice, but you’re still not arguing with what I’m saying, but with the straw man built by ALB, robbo, twc, etc. For example, to equate Marx’s ‘democracy’ with ‘plebiscites’ is a straw man that no-one (certainly not me) is arguing in favour of.
So are you now saying scientific theories will NOT be subject to a democratic vote by the population in socialist society???
Please clarify
The idea, put forward by some here, that ‘democracy’ has ‘limits’, when discussing social production, is clearly mistaken, because only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits’. Once again, those proposing ‘limits’ outside of democratic creation of limits (a manifestation of the bourgeois ruling class idea of ‘fear of the mob’) are really talking about themselves as individuals, rather than their future society’s social production.
LOL LBird you are tying yourself up in knots even more and making yourself look silly in the process.
How is the idea that democracy has limits is “clearly mistaken” because “only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits'”??? In order to test this proposition you have to assume that 8 billion people are capable of organising tens of thousands – nay, millions – of global plebiscites every year on all sorts of things (from the validity of some scientific theory to what is they consider to be a socially acceptable as a form of musical expression), but choose instead to whittle down democratic decision-making to but a few aspects of life.
That assumption is clearly ridiculous. It is clearly OBJECTIVELY IMPOSSIBLE on logistical grounds alone for such a scenario as the above ever to happen. Organising multiple referenda on such a scale would absorb all of the available resources and human labour available to a socialist society, several times over. We would all die of hunger before we ever got round to deciding how we are going to “democratically” organise agriculture
If people chose to democratically limit the scope of democratic decision-making it is because they are sensible enough to see that it makes no sense at all trying, for example, to hold a democratic global vote on whether some obscure scientific is valid or not. It is not worth the effort in terms of the utilisation of human resources, quite apart from being totally pointless.
Using up all, or a even great deal, of your human resources to organise multiple global plebiscites clearly constitutes an objective limit to such an activity which human beings would recognise and to which they would sensibly respond by limiting the extent of such activity.
Denying this is akin to saying we can democratically decide to defy the law of gravity but prefer to submit to the gravitational pull of the earth as a matter of democratic choice! That’s why we fall down when we trip over stone. Cos society has deemed this should be the way of things
I don’t suppose that you’ll tell what these limits are, and who determines these limits, and how they do so.
These have been mentioned often enough on this thread, LBird. You should really be more attentive
There are logistical limits to democracy for example. Recall the UK referendum on staying or leaving the UK. About 35 million voted if I am not mistaken It was massive undertaking in itself. Yet you are proposing that not just one referendum should be held but tens of thousands of referenda every year right across the world involving a global population of nearly 8 billion. If you can’t see the absurdity of that then there is little hope for you LBird
Another limitation is knowledge. You have agreed that there will be specialists in a socialist society. Well, specialists by definition have specialist knowledge in the particular field in which they specialise which lay people lack. Yet you expect lay people – which includes those specialists in other scientific disciplines – to vote on some obscure scientific theory about which they may very have little or no understanding or interest. Again, completely absurd.
Unlike a local community voting to determine where it wants to build a new hospital , there is no point whatsoever in voting for some scientific theory. What purpose does it serve? To date you have never explained. And if you have never explained what happens if hypothetically a global referendum on, say, whether anti matter exists was held and only 0.000057% of the global population bothered to vote. Would the outcome of the referendum be a democratic expression of the “will of the people” to which we must now all conform? Why?
I don’t believe it is up to anyone to determine where the “limits to democracy” lie. These limits will emerge organically. If some people feel something is a worth holding a vote on then let them make a case for this through the various local , regional and global decision-making bodies that will operate in a socialist society
Christ, robbo, I’ve answered this time and time again – change the record, mate
Can you cite the particular post(s) where you claim to have answered the question of whether or not Marx was an individualist for saying “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”?”. I don’t recall you ever addressing this question
Right, robbo! Who determines ‘free’ and how do they determine ‘free’?
What constitutes freedom is a social product but, once again, something that is a social product does not have to automatically be determined or defined by a democratic vote or plebiscite of the global population, does it? It can emerge organically out of the interactions of multiple players and this is true of most “social products”
I am waiting expectantly for the day when you finally concede democracy has its limits and cannot possibly be extended to every decision human beings make without – paradoxically enough – undermining the very democratic aspect of communism itself and transforming it into a form of insidious totalitarianism
I think that it’s very interesting how this thread has developed, since BD’s humorous crack about the Beatles (and as it happens, his list of favourite artists reads exactly like one of mine!).
Yes, and just because music is a social product does not automatically mean it has to be subjected to a democratic vote. Democracy is only (rightly) applicable to certain kinds of decisions and not others. Or do you think musicians should not be allowed to play music other than that officially approved by the global population in a mega plebiscite?
I am still waiting to here your view on Marx, LBird. Do you think he was a bourgeois individualist for saying “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”?
