I’ll say the real geeks are those have better things to do than to speculate on what future generations think of them. The term for your particular description is, as always, “crank”.

Once more: submit spoof essays to the AEI!

I said I was done and I am, but I just thought that one up and I thought I should post it somewhere.

(Question: From India’s viewpoint, is Ayurveda considered to be Leftist, Rightist, both, or neither? Well, I don’t know.)

maybe after several false alarms, he really is done.

Discounting formalism and adversarialism in favour of reason is dangerous indeed: look at the advantages of simple adversarialism we see playing out on this very comments thread!

Oh, and you’re right. I don’t no how to read. Good job I only have to rite.

Of course, whereas the relativist left never exercised any real power outside a few university departments, the rightwing enemies of science control the Bush Administration and are well represented in the commentariat, here as well as in the US.
In regards to your comment on the ‘relativist left’, I am interested in knowing how you view the emergence of entities with decidedly unscientific agendas that ally themselves on the multiculturalist side of the political spectrum, which invariably is the political left.

Consider, for instance, the Art of Living Foundation. Here is an extract from their own website (click on Ayurveda -> An Overview).

Life has Four Characteristics. It exists, evolves, expresses and extinguishes. And for it to exist, evolve, express and extinguish it depends on the five elements : the earth, water, air, ether and fire. To make it easier to understand you can say the five senses and its objects. Sight, smell, taste, sound and touch.

That was the Art of Living worldview of chemistry, one which has, no doubt, been given a great deal of thought! On to their worldview of biology :

Even this five elements of which the whole universe is made up of is not tight compartments of defined objects. They flow into one another. Each one of the elements contain the remaining four. So the approach of Ayurveda towards life is holistic – the sum total. The subtlest element is space of which the mind is made up of and the gross is the earth element of which our bones , marrow, skin and structure is made up of. It is further divided into 3 doshas – Vata, Pittta and kapha – the way to understand the physiology, its characteristics and its reflection on the mind.

The downstream effect of such beliefs is that the wrong sort of medical approaches are promoted and funded. Ayurvedic medicine have generally not found much acceptance in clinical trials, and it is clear that there is a social cost to the advertising, marketing and use of these “medicines” in parts of the world which don’t have access to doctors and reliable medical information.

This sort of scientific nonsense is a massive problem when you are talking about a 1.5 billion dollar foundation with branches all over the world. The Foundation site says that ‘in rural areas, health and well being need to be developed and promoted through ayurveda. It seems to me that some of the supporters of “alternate views of the world” are politically, if not ideologically, affiliated with the very same cultural studies mavens. The founder has been nominated for nothing less than the Nobel Prize for Peace for 2006, by no less than a United States Congressman. In this case, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D – NY). I would be interested in learning your opinion on this very interesting parallel phenomenon.

You accuse people of having an “inability to distinguish between what people say and what you think they must be saying”, and then when I point out that what they’re actually saying is what I’ve been saying, you still insist you’re right.

Ergo, I hereby officially declare you as stupid.

Yes, I know about science and facts. But I also know about rhetoric, and I know that rhetoric’s what lawyers and politicians deal in. And I don’t need some wiseass artist to remind me of that, thank you very much.

“At the same time, journalists and citizens must renounce a lazy ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ approach and start analyzing critically the quality of the evidence.”

No. Journalists in this country should stop taking themselves seriously, stop pretending to be intellectual, and admit that their job is no more or less than to be adversarial. I don’t want newsmen trusting politicians any more than want defense lawyers palling around with prosecutors. Sokal and his ilk pretend that things would be better if people would just grow up. But people will never grow up. Look at you and richard, neither of whom no how to read. Speaking of which you should read the book above. It’s fun trash but the title points to its importance. Ot maybe go pick up a DVD of “The Front Page.”

I’m not opposed to science, but as I’ve been pointing out for 4 years on this site, academics discount the importance of tradecraft in human interaction. Lawyers, journalists and politicians are craftsmen. The new model of academic life as technocratic geek school discounts social and cultural sophistication. It discounts formalism and adversarialism in favor of reason and collaboration, and that sets a dangerous precedent.

It says something about the limits of human intelligence that in 4 years I haven’t made a dent in the culture of this blog. The American web has an overrepresentation of economists, political ‘scientists’ and others who interests overlap with technofantasy. Self-knowledge or self-doubt [or even an interest in either] are hard to come by. I have a portfolio to manage, a business to run, a moribund art career and an equally moribund social and sexual life to resuscitate. I have no more time for any of this.
I did my best. I wiped my blog and I’m done here.

Still, I’m glad Sokal and Mooney know where the real danger lies. A few professors flapping their gums hardly make an impact outside of academia. Global catastrophe, on the other hand, impacts each and every one of us. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (har har) to see which is the urgent issue.