> Engineers and physicians will generally employ whatever tool works best as well.
That’s a common myth amongst people who fetishize “science”. Boltzmann committed suicide over the pushback on how outlandish his theory of the atom was. Ignaz Semmelweis was ignored and ridiculed when he pushed for surgeons to wash their hands before operations and finished his life in an asylum.
Engineers and physicians will only employ whatever tool works best as long as it fits their conception of the world and what is socially acceptable at the time.
As far as claiming that democracy is by nature pragmatic, that’s a statement that’s going to need a lot of arguments to support it, in a time where many support eg China’s communist party as an example of “pragmatic” government.
It's refreshing to hear this point of view with some notable cases to back it up.
I'm tired of hearing people saying how efficient the markets are and how great the system is at rewarding talent and hard work and all that "you make your own luck" bullshit. History books are littered with examples of mathematicians, scientists and engineers who were being ignored or ridiculed for purely social reasons.
In fact, it almost seems to be the norm. It shows just how stupid we all are and that we all ought to eat humble pie.
When we come up with new laws and regulations, we should always factor in our collective stupidity.
I don't think we can say that markets are objectively efficient when a bunch of monkeys operating under shared social delusions get to set the price of all things based on those delusions.
That’s a common myth amongst people who fetishize “science”. Boltzmann committed suicide over the pushback on how outlandish his theory of the atom was. Ignaz Semmelweis was ignored and ridiculed when he pushed for surgeons to wash their hands before operations and finished his life in an asylum.
Engineers and physicians will only employ whatever tool works best as long as it fits their conception of the world and what is socially acceptable at the time.
As far as claiming that democracy is by nature pragmatic, that’s a statement that’s going to need a lot of arguments to support it, in a time where many support eg China’s communist party as an example of “pragmatic” government.