Thread: Hard SF
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Old 9th January 2007, 08:22 PM   #53 (permalink)
Specfiction
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: California
Posts: 87
Re: Hard SF

Quote:
We all know that science does not provide all of the answers that people need, nor is all what passed for science in the past and probably some things that pass for science in our day as well will prove to be false.
I don't want to beat this thing to death, but I couldn't help responding. First, the short answer to all of this is: "sometimes I don't know" is the best answer to a deep, complicated question. Second, there are some things men and women will probably never know--get used to it. It's a big, complicated universe and we are small, not very bright creatures living on a little speck of it--that okay, it's a beautiful speck to us and we can find subjective fulfillment. Making stuff up is always problematic. Think about needing medical assistance, or having to make political decisions on the basis of make-believe answers to important questions. Many of us in the US have lived through that nightmare these past few years.

Finally, about science. We used to have a tee shirt at LBL--it read, in Latin: "We give you the truth to two standard deviations."

They once asked Richard Feynman, a certified genius, "do you believe in God?" He answered, "not in the God of any organized religion." They asked why. Feynman answered: "Everyone calls me a genius. I've won the Noble Prize. All my life I've tried to answer at most two simple questions--and in that I've failed. Then, some religious guy comes into the room and says--I know everything--the answers not to simple questions, but to the most difficult. I don't believe him. I think the problem with a guy like that is that he doesn't understand what it means to understand something."---QED
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