MICHAEL GIACCHINO

I didn't mean to imply anything against the Wachowskis or Giacchino for accepting the project. If there was ire in my words it is directed at Warner for continuously putting out cynical, negative crap that appeals first and foremost to the darker and baser parts of human nature. I don't have any affection for studio executives who could choose to support projects that inspire kids to dream towards and build for a better, more beautiful, and more compassionate future and instead choose to make dark, drab, depressing dystopias like the later Harry Potters (in which Warner had more control over the written story than most people are aware), Man of Steel, or Jupiter Ascending; not that those are the only examples at all. Warner is hardly unique for this in Hollywood but they are rather better at it than most other big studios. So it was unsurprising but offensive to me that a new big-budget sci-fi franchise comes along, a rare thing these days, and all we get is creepy reptilian aliens farming humans for their blood and a pair of extremely monotone actors role-playing utterly unconvincing "good guys" who are selected for their genetics rather than the quality of their spirits (yes, oversimplification). Where is the wonder and the beauty and the science-can-lead-to-a-Star-Trek-utopia? Okay, I'll shut up now before I sound completely insane...oh wait...

Very true Ralph, VERY true!

Yes, it's called science.

Science helps us to inform ethics and morality, so I would say it most certainly does.



Bollocks.



Science needs good communicators, like Sagan, and sometimes that can come in the form of fiction. But science is innately human from the start, it's there because we as humans want -and need- to learn more about nature. Your implication that "science" is anything less than this reveals a rather pessimistic view of it.

This! (What Ralph said.)

Ethis is not grounded in the natural order of things. Ethics are grounded in culture, not nature. The very idea of evolutionary ethics is a naturalistic fallacy.

Certainly wasn't meant as a snap.



If your experience of science is largely through fiction, then there's little wonder you're disappointed.



If your point is that people can be assholes, I certainly agree.



Depends on the problem. Though for many of them, it most certainly is.



Indeed.



So I can't use science against people who use science for bad? Hmm. I suppose I better stop referring people to the evidence when an anti-vax nut job starts spouting rubbish.

This sounds precariously close to relativism, which is nonsense.

'Science' is a very broad word, so when we refer to a 'science of morality', this doesn't mean wearing a white lab coat while using a Bunsen burner to see what answer it gives us. It simply means applying the scientific method to a particularly complex and seemingly subjective field. Morality at its most basic is about the well being of conscious creatures, about avoiding the worst possible pain and achieving 'the good life'. Science, that is the scientific method, can help us achieve this. (Do I think we'll ever have a single, all-encompassing theory on morality? I doubt it. But that's not to say there aren't facts to discover about human and animal well being.)

Steven, first of all, anti-vax nut jobs don't care about evidence, as anti-science movements do in general. That's part of the problem. Science has been abused so much that people don't trust in it anymore.

Second, I have a science-based education and worked as a biological/medical technical assistant in a prenatal diagnostics laboratory, analysing unborns' DNA for defects and testing embryos for spina bifida and similar things. As such, I experienced the many advantages of science, right alongside the abuse. If the result you give parents leads into a forced abortion, not because something was wrong with the DNA, but because the result showed they were getting a little girl instead of a boy, you start wondering what you are doing there.

I specifically wrote earlier that I also dug into the real scientific aspects of space exploration, but I believe we started our discussion because you want more promising futures shown in movies, and that will always hardly have anything to do with real science, but with what we hope science will be able to achieve someday.

Do you consider philosophy a science? And do you consider the fact that defining a proper scientific method for ethics would be very difficult, if not nigh impossible?

And is science meant to be "uplifting stuff" or to describe the way the world works "as is" and how that can be used by humanity? I don't think Volker deals with relativism here. I think that the fallacy is that we are giving science roles that it's not meant to play. Considering philosophy, ever since, I think, Nietzsche philosophy made a turn from the normative (to your question about single, all-encompassing theory of morality... there were a crapload of these, from the Ancient Greeks up to early 19th century) to descriptive, which of course brings it closer to the scientific method (especially in the Anglo-Saxon field).

I meant our personal discussion that started with your statement about prefering promising futures in movies.

That other thing, just to clarify, yeah, of course you can use science against people who abuse it. I just meant that it's no help where it's not accepted by the "enemy" as an argument to change things, as in the very example you cited (global warming being another example), or in every religion-based discussion.

I honestly don't remember making this statement.

I think you're confusing me with Scribe.

That quite was attributed to so many people, I'm glad you possibly pointed out the right one (I think even to Bill Nye!)

I nowhere disagree with science as it is. But this is where exactly I draw the line, that science is "uplifting stuff". It's as Novella said a "systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results". In other words, scientific discovery (especially scientific papers, considering the language!) is not meant to be uplifting or to bring anyone down. It's about observing, evaluating and describing natural phenomena.

And that would be a truly egregious error.

Ha! If that really is true, then they're more deluded than I thought.



It's an absurd oversimplification to conflate reasonable criticism of a nonsensical movement like anti-vaxxers with prejudice for "not accepting the mainstream".

*vaccine deniers