On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Jason Holt wrote: > But I can also offer something better than the scientific method for living. > The scientific method doesn't work well because we're not smart enough to > figure out life in one lifetime. We'd spend our whole lives trying to set up > unbiased experiments and isolate all the variables, which are constantly > moving around. > > Instead, we have to do life engineering - find something that works kinda okay > and then bang on it until it works a little better. You may never get all the > variables isolated, never fully nail down exactly who this being is that's > nudging you from time to time, but you /can/ find ever more powerful methods > of maximizing the variables important to you: happiness, life, connection with > others.
I totally agree with your post, Jason, but with one small quibble: to me, your "life engineering" is _exactly_ what "the scientific method" is--find something that works kinda okay and then bang on it until it works a little better. We found Newton's laws and they worked kinda okay, and we banged on'em until we found something a wee bit better. Did we spend centuries trying to set up unbiased experiments and isolate all the variables to get something a wee bit better? No, not really. We used what worked, and then when we ran into something where it looked funny, we banged on it a bit until we got something better. Same with life--we can't inequivocably _know_ that the path we're taking is the "mathematically best course of action"--but we use scientific principles to take the course that seems best, and revising our path as new information comes along. It's the only way _to_ live, IM[NS]HO. > Put another way, I used to look for the Grand Unified Theory of life from > which I could always mathematically derive the best course of action. But I'm > just not smart enough for that. Instead, I focus on what actually makes life > worthwhile - my relationships with other people. And in making that > transition, I find that there's Somebody who isn't interested in being a > subject of my laboratory experiments, but who is very interested in having a > relationship with me. I've realized, from long years of experience ;-) , that the relationships we have with other people are the single most important things in our lives. [Unixy tangent:] If I had come around about five years earlier, I probably wouldn't have got very interested in computers at all. I was programming at a wee young age, but my interested started to wane after a few years. I would have been gone to some other hobby if I hadn't discovered the world of BBSes, first of all, and then subsequently the glorious Internet. Why? Because through networks I could talk to _real people_ and, without that connection, those human relationships, I really didn't, and don't find computers that attractive at all. ~ ross -- This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
