To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to neatly align with the Party Line.
This should be taken as a warning sign by all intellectuals and everyone with a love of knowledge. When the political animal becomes so arrogant, they're deluded into thinking they can dictate reality, instead of being subject to it, society has wandered into a very dangerous kind of epistemic breakdown.
Look for this in particular, when politics has become "single party" and there is absolutely no room for dissent. Look out for mechanisms and practices of suppressing and intimidating dissent which do not have due process, or which are corruptions of due process mechanisms.
Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
>Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
Holding one's tongue is a social tool that makes meaningful collaboration between dissimilar parties possible. Having the space to speak freely is undeniably a liberty worth defending. But it's important to remain conscious of the difference between being silenced by force and being gracious by custom.
It can be difficult to distinguish between the two when the stakes are high or tempers run hot, but that's when it matters most. The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
Holding one's tongue is a social tool that makes meaningful collaboration between dissimilar parties possible. Having the space to speak freely is undeniably a liberty worth defending. But it's important to remain conscious of the difference between being silenced by force and being gracious by custom.
This is a good point. What I meant by Must hold your tongue is that all of "the space to speak freely" is being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people. (In particular, if one's response to speech being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people, is to turn around and systematically deny speech to wholesale groups of people, one is part of the problem.)
The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
True. As in many things, there is balance. A problem with accumulating too much power, is that it enables one to create such imbalances, while insulating one from the information the imbalance is happening.
This should be taken as a warning sign by all intellectuals and everyone with a love of knowledge. When the political animal becomes so arrogant, they're deluded into thinking they can dictate reality, instead of being subject to it, society has wandered into a very dangerous kind of epistemic breakdown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Look for this in particular, when politics has become "single party" and there is absolutely no room for dissent. Look out for mechanisms and practices of suppressing and intimidating dissent which do not have due process, or which are corruptions of due process mechanisms.
Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html