Re: do we need a master game manager?

["Marasigan . Vicente" <vic@pusit.admu.edu.ph>]

On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, Jay Hanson wrote:
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> And yes, you should feel "terrorized"
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We share our terrors.  Perhaps we can also share hopes?  Are there
grounds for hoping that our youth, having learned from mistakes of our
20th century system, will construct a better system for the 21st
century? Concretely, will they elect "scientists instead of merchants"
to positions of leadership?  Let us hope that they will.

But they will have to know more science, both its strong points and
its limitations - to know whom to elect among the scientists.  For
scientists are also political subjects and partisanship is involved in
their consensus-forming processes.  Let me quote from "Lifetide: The
Biology of the Unconscious" by Dr. Lyall Watson:

"And why do I choose to believe the one rather than the other?  Simply
because the Oxford opinion is one verified by an elaborate system of
rival researchers who duplicate, largely with the hope of
discrediting, each other's work.  A system of commenting and
criticizing, weighing, assessing, and refereeing in which experts sit
in judgment of the facts, ultimately reaching a consensus, selecting
what is true and rejecting the remainder as false.  But, in the final
analysis, this is a political process, not a scientific one."

I am heartened by Paul Swann's y2k-182 description of their group
dialogue about Y2. It turned out to be a "spontaneous, dynamic,
heart-warming and fun event."  It was an extraordinary experience of
living in the "wisdom of insecurity."

But if this wisdom gives no grounds for hope, we are back to
Dostoevsky's inquisitor. Or to the master game manager.

Amazing how all these contrasting mindsets are being exposed by a Y2K
bug that is much smaller than an ant!

Vicente