Reply #57: not really

[DonCoquixote]

You said:
"In fact, what you describe is perfectly within the realm of scientific truth. We can observe it, we understand the phenomena at work, we can even predict it."

Not really. Ask any of your friend that try to work within the realm of social science, especially psychology. We do not understand everything that goes into making someone "buy" one item and not another. Madison Avenue is littered with the graves of ideas and campaigns that made perfect sense, yet failed miserably. From the Edsel to "McPizza" to "New Coke" to Robert Plant's solo career, there were ideas that were researched throughly, where statistic after statistic, poll after poll, test after test was done, and lo and behold, the ideas that seemed to be "sure things" that had a ton of data backing them, FLOPPED. The same could be said of much more serious matters (like why was Stalin able to defeat your namesake, when many people would have picked Trotsky to win) but I use Madison Avenue because it is a clear example where good, solid logic and statistics get smashed to dust every day.

We are talking about concepts that were based upon phenomena that were observed and proven every single day (i.e. In Coke's case, Pepsi was outselling it, something which boiled down to hard numbers. Coke spent money for surveys, and the customer feedback was that "we buy Pepsi because it tastes sweeter than Coke." Logic then dictated "Let's make the product taste sweeter so that the public will buy more of our product, add more sugar!" Perfectly sound logic, based on some of the best statistics social science could compile. And it still flopped. The only way Coke recovered was, oddly enough, to return to the old formula which the numbers proved was getting beaten by Pepsi. As of right now, Coke Outsells Pepsi, though that may change.


The point was not to make a Coke commercial, but to show that while Logic can explain a lot of phenomena, it cannot explain everything about us. We as human beings do not add up neatly to "2 + 2 =4." Granted, the social sciences are indeed making progress, finding out which areas of the brain light up when someone sees a favorite color, and linking it to phenomena. Indeed, that is being used by both governments and Madison Avenue. However, as of this point, you cannot make a math equation that says "This formula of soft drink will outsell Coke" and say it with the certainty you can say "2+2 =4." Yes, we can as you say Observe the phenomena, have SOME understanding of the phenomena at work (about as much as Coke execs understand the soft drink business, which is not perfect, though pretty good) and to some extent, predict it (again, about as well as Coca Cola execs do). Fortunately for us, Coca Cola does not have the formula down to where they can control us as reliably as 2 + 2=4, or else they would be able to blast every other drink out of existence, to say nothing of Snapple or Pepsi.

I will not deny that as your "few millenia" occur, many things that were once thought of spiritual do get explained, however, for every question we answer, a new one gets asked. MY complaint is not with people who seek after truth, but with people who think they have found it, and then make the conclusion that what other people have to say is useless. We will see a lot of areas becoming smaller and bigger as years go on; the key is to be flexible enough to hang on since we know the waves are going to get choppy.