**Pets are wrong.**
I don't mean that pets hold wrong #opinions, of course: I mean that the idea of keeping small animals around for fun is a mistake.
Let me refine that: keeping #pets _in urban environments_ is _almost always_ wrong.
* It's a misallocation of resources (invest that same money and attention on a fellow human being; or improving the welfare of farmed animals, which have it much, much worse than your chihuahua).
* Many pets are probably miserable (caged rodents, reptilians and birds; cats and dogs living in apartments; any animal lacking space, exercise, challenges, prey, mates, etc).
* For cities, some pets may be healthy (eg, cats killing mice), but many others facilitate disease, stain the streets with their droppings, are dangerous to people, or are noisy.
* Pets waste much-needed empathy and send the wrong signal: there are so many pressing issues, and so many millions of people (and billions of farmed animals) in need of help, and so many causes lacking funds and visibility, that choosing to buy a pet and spend money on it seems a weird whim.
Exceptions I understand: guide dogs and the like; pets for lonely people who really can't find friends or caregivers; purely rural environments.
@tripu
Is this you saying it?
@tripu So I have to put the human factor here (what the values mean to you or I as main part of my answer and only partial agreement with what you wrote (does very well it it's own field but horrible in the human realms / different language).
How much all those things you wrote don't touch on these human things is also telling about the 'teaching' and development of it, including what information is taught and not taught... (often no consent or uniqueness or sovereign ways added / considered psychologically to a person), It's all but omitted (compared to what's out there in STEM etc) and probably I think it matters to me and others those things outside the box (but not governments/empires who develop some things 100% not other things, deliberately not being responsible fir those things).
So I have touched on and circling this recently I think and well before so I'm getting nearer but that first line with do for now and I will later list what will be more helpful.
Oh yeah I remember a good conversation.... (or you be a judge and listen)
And also a 'shed load' of points I made about specifically numbers which by nature and classification discriminate humans (only try to measure some things and not others bother from those human using some methods, and by the methods also not being enough to measure everything about unique and changing human beings, moods, happiness, job, needs, expressions, feeling etc)
@tripu
Go tell this to anti realists.
Surely measuring things often improves information and knowledge, but that doesn't mean everything is quantifiable.
@rastinza What isn't?
@tripu
Whose life is better, what is the meaning of life, position and momentum of an electron
Science can study some things, to some others it can offer no response; for example it cannot answer the question "is science a good way to explain the world?"
> Whose life is better
There are entire fields of research devoted to improving (and so, necessarily, also _measuring_) quality of life, aka well-being: within medicine, psychiatry, sociology, philosophy.
There are metrics (longevity, physical health, mental health, suffering, pain, stress, purchase power, crime rate, democratic quality, self-reported happiness), units to measure it all (years, QALYs, BMI, USD, % of disability), and ways to combine it all into a single measure.
I'm not saying there is one single perfect metric or that we have found the ultimate way to measure well-being. But it's definitely measurable, and we're getting better at it.
Whoever measures higher has “a better life”.
@tripu
No, it depends on several assumptions that you make before making those measurements.
You can measure some values, but these measurements in no way can tell you who has a better life.
Let's take a simple example: measure the amount of friends one has to determine if he has a better life than someone else.
For someone who likes meeting people and staying with them, a higher number will indicate a better life; while for someone with a more ascetic view of life a lower number will indicate a better life.
The results of your evaluation will change according to the assumptions you make, in one case you'll consider one persons life better and in the other the opposite.
Science cannot provide any way to determine these things.
I think you only need a few axioms, eg “suffering is bad”. There doesn't need be a big apparatus of ideology.
Your example is simple: losing friends is trivially easy; making and maintaining friendship is costly and for some people may be difficult. Your hermit who has “too many friends” can “solve” the situation in a day or two, alienating or ignoring people as needed. The opposite is not true.
Also: necessarily, when we approximate the ingredients of well-being, there'll be outliers and exceptions. That's to be expected, and doesn't mean numbers don't work.
You can always refine the model, and measure instead no. of friends _in relation to desired no. of friends_: 1 means perfect; anything above or below is worse.
Ultimately, everything is quantifiable.
@rastinza @tripu simply measuring the amount of friends would not tell you who has a better life, as you say, because each person prefers different amounts of friends. What we can measure is the effect of each amount of friends in the brains of those people, and that might tells us who feels more content with the number of friends they have. That is measurable.
@ImperfectIdea
Sure, but you're still just measuring the effects in the brain of a person.
You still have no way to determine which person has a better life, you did not measure that.
You could say that you assume that one response in the brain is associated to a better life *in your opinion* and thus measure that.
But that is still your opinion.
Because first of all you have to decide what it means to have a better life, and that is not something that you can design experiments or falsify.
If someone tells you he has a better life than billionaires because he has fun throwing rocks at trees, you cannot say that's not true. A billionaire might disagree and prefer its own life. Now, deciding who has a better life is possible: you can have an opinion about it. But that is not scientific and that is not something that can be measured.
@tripu
@rastinza, let me try to reset the conversation, with a couple hypothetical scenarios:
👉 We are discussing some wealth transfer program or social intervention. I present you with a number of specific individuals, in order to decide who should pay, or start paying more, or be asked to help the community somehow — and who should benefit from subsidies, grants or other kind of social assistance. How do you proceed?
👉 You're pondering whether to have kids at all, or have another kid, or have kids now or ten years from now. Your friends advise you in one direction, your religion tends to recommend something else (but your own pastor seems to disagree), your parents have their own piece of advice, social norms push you in one direction, and your gut seems to disagree with them all. How do you make up your mind?
👉 You could invest what little spare time you have in studying a new degree, working extra time at a side gig, tackling the pile of books you've been meaning to read for years, or starting to work out. What tools do you use to move forward?
/cc @ImperfectIdea
I already agreed with you that science is an useful tool, I don't see why you want to discuss that further.
I never said the opposite.
1. Science is surely a useful tool that can aid you in taking this decision.
You cannot however use science alone to take it: you must first of all decide whether wealth transfer or social intervention are things that should be done, that is, if you think it is a moral and acceptable thing.
2. You will decide to do what you'll decide to do, you will ponder all things that come at you. Certainly you will consider whether it's a good economical decision, but that won't be the decisive thing.
All in all, it won't be the scientific method telling you "you should have a child"
3. Science will not motivate you in doing things, that is something you must do yourself.
All in all, this discussion is getting quite useless. I feel I am learning nothing and you're not willing to consider the fact that antimaterialistic philosophies do exist and you cannot prove them wrong, thus you should consider their existence even if you disagree.
If the world is not completely material, you cannot measure immaterial things using material ones, thus science will fail in explaining everything that is not material.
Even if you're a materialist, science cannot provide clear answers to certain questions, such as "should I have a child?"
I propose we finish this discussion, unless you have something different to say than "science is useful".
@ImperfectIdea
@rastinza what I'm trying to say is that any feelings that we might associate with "a good life" are ultimately brain states - which are measurable, at least, in principle. If you say that the definition of "a good life" changes with time, culture and each person, that's true, but the brain states that give all those different definitions are also measurable. Define "good life" well enough and you'll end up with atoms and electric charges.
@tripu
@rastinza @tripu And I'm not saying we can determine which is "better" - there might be brain states that can't be felt by everyone, so they're not comparable; there might be many different ways to get to the same brain states. Context is needed. But for each life there's definitely better and wrong choices, depending on the brain states they produce. Religion simply tries to answer questions that we haven't been able to define well enough mathematically yet.
@ImperfectIdea
> But for each life there's definitely better and wrong choices
That is opinable. Are you able to tell a person whether he should suicide or not? Is it an objective analysis that can be done simply through science? If that's possible, then one day we will have a computer telling people the exact day in which they should suicide.
If you can say that living is a better choice than dieing for that person then he should not suicide, if you can tell the opposite then he should.
> Religion simply tries to answer questions that we haven't been able to define well enough mathematically yet
You are assuming that it is possible to do so.
I believe it is not possible.
> Define "good life" well enough
This is what I think is impossible to do in a scientific way.
It's possible to define good life, but not through science.
You can do a lot of calculations and stuff, but none of those will result in "this is good life, while that is not"
You must first define what is good life and then you can use science to identify which people have a good life and which ones do not.
@tripu
@rastinza that's exactly what I said. If we define "good life" in any way, it will be, in principle, measurable. Good life = happiness? Define happiness. Happiness = serotonin (simplifying a lot for the sake of argument)? That's measurable. Add any amount of feelings and definitions, but it will be measurable. I'm not saying we *can* define it, because linguistical concepts are fuzzy, but in the end it's all atoms (or whatever the universe is made of).
@tripu
@ImperfectIdea
There is no proof of what you're saying, thus that is just your opinion.
Science demonstrated that atoms exist, not that the universe is only made up of atoms or that immaterial things do not exist.
> Anything else is so improbable it can be disregarded until new evidence
The fact that you disregard it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You may be right or you may be wrong, but saying that those things don't exist is an opinion.
Also, you cannot talk about probability... If those things exist then they exist, if they don't they don't; there's no existence probability.
@tripu
@rastinza I haven't said they don't exist, have I? I said I'm happy to update my worldview.
"...that immaterial things do not exist"
But I don't even know what you're talking about. And you don't either. If you define "immaterial" then we can try and test that. Otherwise we're not saying anything.
@ImperfectIdea
Things which are not material and are not observable in the material world.
Let's take that everything in the material world is made up of atoms, something immaterial is something that is not made up of atoms and cannot be observed.
@tripu
@ImperfectIdea
You don't
That's why the scientific method fails
@tripu
> What is the meaning of life
It's debatable that this question is even sensical. “Life” could very well have no “meaning”. This question could be as absurd as “what do screwdrivers desire?”
If we accepted the question is valid: my claim is not that we can answer any question with a single figure. Rather that numbers can and should be used to describe everything and inform all our decisions.
About the big questions or life: whatever (concrete) doubts we have, numerical data comes to our rescue: should I have kids? Should I work harder? Should I vote yes on this referendum? Should I meditate? There are studies or surveys or cost-benefit analyses or diminishing returns or cutoffs or optimums for all that.
@tripu
The question is sensed and the answer might be that life has no meaning, however science cannot provide this answer. You can use all the measurements you like, but you won't get a scientific answer.
Surely numbers can help you, but there's no way that science is giving you an answer.
The 'correctness' of a choice cannot be measured.
You'll be the one deciding what you want to do.
Even if there was a model measuring the goodness of a choice, that would still be arbitrary since it would depend on a number of assumptions made while making it.
> _“You can use all the measurements you like, but you won't get a scientific answer.”_
I think science is the best tool we have to get closer to know whether the question is valid in the first place, and if so to learn the answer. There have been astonishing discoveries and progress, and it's continuing.
How are evolution by natural selection, the Big Bang, multiverses, computation, quantum physics, black holes, chemistry, mathematics, space probes, genetic engineering, etc _not_ getting us closer to the mystery? Project that trend one millennium (or a billion years) into the future, and tell me that math in particular, and science in general, are not helping us, by far more than anything else we have, in answering that question (and _any_ question).
@tripu
No, science will never provide that answer.
@ImperfectIdea
There is no way to demonstrate that, is there?
Does it really matter anyways?
I'm just stating that science provides no answer to this question, while other disciplines do.
@tripu
@ImperfectIdea
I don't feel like discussing this just to talk about an unrelated topic.
@tripu
@rastinza you used the question "what's the meaning of life" as an example of something that can't be measured. I said it is an invalid logical question, therefore an invalid argument, unless you define your terms. I wasn't trying to move to the topic of the meaning of life (since I don't agree it's a valid logical question).
@tripu
> Position and momentum of an electron
Yes, I think you hit on a valid edge case: singularities (in the physics sense). At quantum level and black hole level my claim might well fail 😅
> [Science] cannot answer the question "is science a good way to explain the world?"
Yes, it can. Put science to compete against alternatives (intuition, religion, tradition, randomness, etc) to make predictions about a specific phenomenon. See which does better. Rinse and repeat. Science comes ahead in the aggregate.
@tripu
One edge case is enough to falsify a whole theory.
Making predictions does not equate to explaining something: neural networks for example make very good predictions about stuff, however provide no explanation.
Moreover, you cannot consider religion and tradition as alternatives to science since these do not work in the same field.
How can you evaluate which works better if they provide answers to different questions?
The scientific method is based on several axioms, thus one might simply disregard it completely if he disagrees with one of those.
> _“One edge case is enough to falsify a whole theory.”_
I'm happy for my claim that “math is everywhere and numbers are useful to us humans in all domains of life” to be limited by the Uncertainty Principle. There's still an awful lot of useful applications outside of that. After all, when was the last time you felt the UP was constraining your options in life?
> _“Making predictions does not equate to explaining something: neural networks for example make very good predictions about stuff, however provide no explanation.”_
Agreed. Still, science and math do tend to make predictions _and_ explain far more than anything else we know. Even when science or engineering can't “explain” but just “predict accurately”, they're terribly useful, and better than anything else. Don't you agree?
> _“You cannot consider religion and tradition as alternatives to science since these do not work in the same field.
How can you evaluate which works better if they provide answers to different questions?”_
What questions do religion or tradition answer better than science?
> _“The scientific method is based on several axioms, thus one might simply disregard it completely if he disagrees with one of those.”_
Agreed. But that's true of _any_ epistemic system. That's not a weakness of science. (And I would claim that science needs fewer and simpler axioms than, say, Christianity.)
@tripu
I do agree with you in almost everything, but even though you believe that everything is quantifiable, you have no way to prove it is, while I did provide valid examples of things which are not quantifiable.
Thus, according to the scientific method, not everything is quantifiable.
Religion provides clear answers to the questions "why are we here" "what is the purpose of life" and so on
Tradition provides guidance on how to behave in certain situations, something that science cannot do: science can help you understand the outcomes of certain actions but it doesn't tell you which one to perform, while instead tradition does guide you in your decision making.
Science and technology are useful, I never said otherwise.
The fact that religion is also based on axioms doesn't change anything. One could consider the axioms on which religion is based as correct and the ones on which science is based as incorrect and still use science because it works.
Just like when you use classical mechanics, you know that the theory is wrong but it does work well enough to do what you need to do.
Keep in mind, I'm not religious at all.
If you believe that science provides real knowledge, that is fine; but it's just your belief and you have no way to prove it to be true.
> _“Religion provides clear answers to the questions ‘why are we here’, ‘what is the purpose of life’ and so on”_
Sure. But it's not about providing answers; it's about providing _good_ answers. My 2-year-old can provide a clear answer to the thorniest of questions, too.
I sense you're stuck in binary thinking: either a theory is absolutely comprehensive, or it fails; either an epistemic system can answer any conceivable question, or it doesn't work as stated. I'm more interested in what works best.
Yes, you can reject any axiom, define “works best” to mean anything, and even deny that there could be a way to know what “works best”. But then you're trapped in an epistemic void of nihilism.
Almost everything we use for decision-making would fail at the quantum level, near a black hole, or when the Big Crunch is nigh. Again, I'm happy to rephrase my claim to restrict it to a human-scale scope. As I said, that's still an awful lot of areas that are commonly assigned to the realm of intuition, opinion, the ineffable, or the subjective — and I maintain they're not.
@tripu
Science provides a comprehensive explanation of the world only as long as you have a materialistic view of the world.
Religion provides answers if you don't believe in materialism.
Now, wether those answers are correct or not it doesn't really matter; science does not provide those answers at all if you are not a materialist.
A Christian will tell you that while science is really useful, it doesn't allow you to discover God, which is in their view the real objective of life; thus while science is useful in conducting life on earth it's not useful to conducting a proper life.
@rastinza @tripu yes, some people can believe extremely improbable things and still lead a happy life. There isn't a single answer for the best way to live. I don't think science will ever say "no one should believe in God to be happy", since that's clearly (and measurably) not true. There's no contradiction here.
@rastinza @tripu but everything *is* quantifiable in principle, even if we *can't* quantify it, which is a different thing. An electron has a position and a momentum, even if we can't predict both. A black hole has properties, even if we can't understand them from our dimension. There's a number of atoms of hydrogen in all of the golf balls in the world even if we wouldn't be able to count them. It's all measurable, in principle. Science provides the single best approximation.
@ImperfectIdea
> Meaning has no quantity
> It's like asking the size of blue
> Everything is quantifiable
Decide yourself, either everything is quantifiable or not.
If everything is quantifiable, then concepts should be quantifiable as well.
If concepts are not quantifiable, then the statement that everything is quantifiable is false, which is what I'm saying since the beginning.
@tripu
@rastinza @tripu this is not the gotcha you think it is 😆 It doesn't mean that any sentence you can construct in a language will have a measurable answer.
"What's the weight of January?" is invalid.
"What's the average height of elfs?" is invalid.
"What's the meaning of life?" could very well be invalid.
The above is just the kind of example I was looking for!.. More below - not a rant, just trying to work it out... so thank you for all comments before....
@ImperfectIdea @rastinza @tripu
The above is just the kind of example I was looking for!
More below - not a rant, just trying to work it out... so thank you for all comments before and I reserve right to change / correct it with your assistance / improve all this...
just speed read this...
and if you prefer audio then this might help for better consumption for these points...
http://freeschool.0id.org/numbers-discriminate/
MAIN WRITING / WORK IN PROGRESS
So I'm trying to get to some of these points because of how it seems some people can't do it any of the other way of thinking (so not you guys necessarily but almost everyone lol).
I think we just came from this primitive-counting 'everyone can count no probs' perspective and mixed complete things... which would ALL be ok... if it wasn't for humanity in the middle of it all!
Why to care about all other things is another way of looking at instead of specific metrics.
Why look at all life when you have such measured ways on a ruler?
Without hating anyone for there trade or practise in STEM - I'm realising (apart from trouble in life using STEM as a tool) that itself was born by incrementing Governments mostly and more recently we are realising or re-realising (as every civilisation perhaps does) especially when abusing it even more... computer says no / doesn't understand us... and that is deliberate distancing from humans (I don't have to deal with them, they just follow this tool / machine).
It's for me a kind of obvious filter since the other parts of life are lacking (people stuff mainly and largely undeveloped) so IF mostly one expects not being able to relax away from the number (and what first post mentions) for our own human interpretation then I feel we're already losing / lost.
Being valid or not basically in the end. Lol...
People are also improvable but in their own way so this way almost robs of that though we might say 'it's just a tool' but if developed by people and hammers and guns everywhere then it does make it more obvious (I consider computerisation and algorithms weaponising supermarket so go figure that one!)
I've had sincere conversations where there are small agreements about what humans need etc that include getting away from numbers or this mentality while it being tempting to count (maybe the most basics I can agree with but speculating too much is erroneous).
Overall achievable virtues are there by people but from lack of way or 'answer' or 'solution' the needle somehow jumps back into that numerical / solution-first thinking... and sometimes nothing without expecting a chain much like a miracle!
"Surely you don't mean stop the machine and look at ourselves a bit more?"
It's almost a perfectionism perhaps or too much of expectation / dependency on something else... even laziness
Again if it was kind of everything as Tech and dependency / basing off what we know is killing faster, then hey it wouldn't be so bad!
Using another tool more than self and whatever you can do I guess is the humble ecological way with little factory type expansion and more agreements with people first AND THEN all the rest maybe incremented / reducible (if it's not possible to not have then that's bad / usually not natural or planet based).
So rather than binary, a gradient or dialling down some of the damage from tech use (not saying 0 just not steroid pumped from USA) - this is one of the common examples where people immediately jump into thinking I men 0 but maybe 2000-2010 era!
MISSING MENTALITY
It's as if there is a logic board is missing (like a missing sound card or 2nd graphics or humanity card missing)
Happens in everyone in different topics but I think but this type of conversation sees chinks in armour from pure-numbers or tech-defaults as our main staple... (who cares who made it, it's iterations and damage elsewhere)
Unless you spend most of your life working snapping out of it and that beautiful honed gun of perfection then probably you are not looking toward humans and more machines (which anyway is made by humans and politics so this is why I think there is short-circuit in my brain and cognitive dissonance / disconnect from others... because it's one and the same thing(s) by people and old mentalities!) so then admitting some of these things seems key.... not separate from bastards who made it before (or just unknowingly people doing for the Empire) and it's very clever like saying money is just paper and machines are just metal.
"It's just how you spend it" lol
I almost hope I'm wrong and not pushing too hard either... at the same time I feel like a pioneer of thought probably re-doing what has been said but snuffed from lack of use and support by system and people in such an environment.
Just seems really obvious and I've lost enough chess games to admit defeat if I'm wrong so please let me know also without hating - I basically think humanity GREW UP on this and well DADs all around didn't always know better in these other fields and actually knew exactly what and how they were doing things against nations, from chemistry, biology, geography. etc all toward domination...
Anyway....
As said in first post - it's a good point- evn sound right... I think is really difficult - like telling people you're just a number but at the same time caring for them (?).
Measuring and being sensitive... hmmm (the emotional plane is not always there or subjective... or just needs for the human to be themselves)
Numbers do discriminate unique life elements, people and life in general if they try too hard without measuring *everything* AND also asking someone's own preferences and their own measuring system
Again some audio if wanted:
http://freeschool.0id.org/numbers-discriminate/
In the ecology of life just as different animals can fit in / 'work' together I think that's people (like animals tht just need to get along).. so I'm not excluding numbers and people here... but really it's hard not to go too far in it's binary usage and how bad measuring can get or people can lose count....
Summary: the middle is unclear/sometimes non existent and actually counting in the moment every time is just better for less abuse / forgetting / the human effect / whose doing the books/accounting.
I appreciate when many technologists simply can't see the point of doing anything until there is a solution...
and don't realise "not doing" IS the solution sometimes... it's like not an option for them.
To stop is not possible sometimes.
To look at one's self (in the analysis) and with others (it seems so separate / distant with tech) then understanding what boxes they are in / perpetuating and what they want more of. (possibly more control of tech itself by letting it go!)
Again people / regulators behind it all know about this and keep us hooked... it's often assumed that it's innocent-tech or non-manipulation or even unplanned stuff. I think measurably the opposite and very clever restriction WHILE giving (in one door, closing behind and giving 'new' / bad options continually / as stepping process).
Self-control perhaps is hardest in the analogue way. The shit people DON'T want to do :)
'Always better with tech' rather than eco-shitty chatting to each other stuff :)
It is possible to have TOO MANY SOLUTIONS also!
So it's not like waiting another YouTube comes along to fill your endless tech satisfaction. It is about stopping to use it until something comes a long (or better you help find others to make it)...
So habitual or business things with Google and all that... come into it but the Google could be just the externalisation and dependency etc for Gov that we allow by thinking it's not political
... the tech candy / unmeasurable damage from extraction / factories / transportation / geo-political (mixed countries) with mixed parts of it to make it and get it all to us.
This practical 'doing' is messing stuff up too and I kind of get it but there is a case for:
" it's gone too far people "...
"hang on this is too fast for us to understand"
"the tech tree branch is too heavy for life "
" We can't even calculate the real cost in money of this tech or cost to cultures for their metals we are buying through God-know what ways ".
Apologise for this but a certain blindness seems to come with this area.
It's FULL of politics and built from those politically controlling over the years.
I'll rewrite this if necessary (do help if you wish or make it on your own website to revise)
So I do love the invalid questions or realms it cannot bridge in quantifying, but also just lessening soem parts and letting other thigns growing (imagine something overgrown and not letting sunlight to other parts of garden).
And much like a different language or measuring system many things can't do right type of measurements like the value of garden itself.
Perhaps the shortest way is saying the meaning is very much lost DURING measuring.
Looking at a few attributes from 100's we/people want or gradients of different values... not exactly what the tech was developed for... and it's actively not measuring other attributes because that would take too much time (lol).
Some attributes are looked and some not hence creating a silent discrimination or mess of the uncalculated all which inescapable and mounts up as inter-operated things with others tart to lose [relativity / meaning / glue / more words?] and like a axis looses stability since all is at a changing state and different value to different elements over any given period of time!
INVISIBLE CALCULATIONS: What you don't see is how measurements are not being used not just the measurement of numbers which also can be questionably used... (the method is critical more than masurements itself) and then the interpretation over and over loses it's focus and meaning over time...
@undefined @ImperfectIdea @rastinza @tripu
This kind of initial statement vs. the above line *seems* quite clear and clean... MY FORMULA TO DEMONSTRATE THAT:
- You/People are measuring some things and not others
- You/People are using some method which also includes / excludes things (there is not 1 method or 100 methods to cover everything reasonably without over-doing it.
So perhaps just training humans to balance this all rather accepting some actually don't mind 'losing in the balances' (it doesn't have to be pure numbers but by how comfortable these human animals are in living and balancing that instead.
- Numbers try to standardise what shouldn't be (humans, organic life matter, stuff that wasn't numerical to start with exactly or not as head classification - it's organic and analogue <-- something like that)
The number - "I know best and I can measure it" perspective is dangerous as I see it and like calling something like life and humans by another name... Even only loosely using this (plus other methods) is borderline fascistic with making drama here about that word! Nobody wants to be a number in your counting.
So inside a questionable method I feel like this is actually a dangerous perspective as I can't see how it can't go right! Usually it's ok with 50/50 stuff but this is like only good for measuring wood and cutting it immediately lol even storing wood means it deform or dehydrates if you measure years later!!)... things perish... plastics fade and crack... people lose faith... lots of obscure examples
I think numbers-attitude (loosely calling it that) is rife in engineers or engineer-mentality - just dogged or dog-focussed about it and then trying to force it on almost everything forgetting unique unidentifiable humans... or changing organic life... not digits
Added point:
Digits can be static and even if there not they need 'viewing' or another human to interpret... so you have this constant human factor (more than once) in how stats or numbers are used and like many accountants they are all using the numbers differently
(even the same numbers)...
**** that is what you don't see (how it's being used not just the measurement) ****
@tripu Another way of saying it (especially about STEM) is that measuring something is one thing but having any sort of meaning to others is another thing.
So measuring is almost a kind of language of calling something x, or a number, to which any measurement I grant has *almost* universal standard or looks like it with patterns etc... but the meaning to anyone else is actually of high priority, so what they think other than the measurer and values you attribute... (there is a lot of interpretation there or error / transfer of numbers from tools)
Putting a strict value on things is generally asking for trouble... yes it seems to 'get things moving along' but it's exactly those inaccuracies people stop working for....
Generally everything is priceless or immeasurably in valuable (just opinion of needed or as part for life more than number format) so if you ask us (the humans species) vs. 1 persons opinion + the mechanical measuring device they are using (also man-made) mostly for physical units of interpretations, then you might say there is a mismatch there.
That's why to put a number on it is too accurate and used a million times a second for big calculation does everybody an injustice (accumulated inaccuracy)... and therefore looking at a vegetable I can't say this is worth a number or currency other than being forced too. I would choose 'feeding all' or 'relieving suffering' as the default not the man-made profit or die default. A 'dollar' is actually quite a terrible shorthand for an living object.
I often ask parents who are looking for examples "How much is are you kids worth?" or daughter / son / etc... That is measurable but it isn't the aim of life **which I admit in the first line of your post it seems to assume "...and should be quantified".
No actually don't measure me but number or the cat or future...
I know it was dying I'd still pay 100 for a cabbage but 1 or 100 is not really matching a cabbage it;s own wonder.
I guess that's another thing, everything is in it's own category / realm / eco-system although *we* inidividuals can standardise it, actually in this 1 moment in time everything is unique or full of wonder how it got there... and mistake for us not to treat it as unique
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^-- ok that was a good point also
I know it's locked down now with numbers as the way but 'relieve human suffering" and "share" or "work on those things as we progress of inaccurate numbers, mechanical thinking" has infinitely more value for me (value to me as pposed to numbers in a standard metric)
And of course people cheating using numbers / false accounting etc is something else.
But yes mostly people need the will to accept the wonder in being and that we could develop things given the same time as other stuff but current controllers currently block it. Arguably with currency which is even worse than number based counting as 1 dollar is actually different every day and equations out of wack too...
Ok that's enough for now, ok 1 more point.
Each person has their own measurement.
And given the chance they would use their own way of representing things.
( I might shorten this later. )
@tripu Could it be that humans are wrong?
@gojonnes Very likely :)
**_Everything_ is quantifiable, and should be quantified.**
Everything is a #measure or can be measured.
#Science can study anything, and #mathematics is the language of science.
The fact that some aspects of life seem hard to estimate doesn't mean we are better off not even trying and coming up with our best approximation.
More #information rarely hurts, and even rough approximations (accompanied by their respective confidence intervals) are useful information.
One can measure, weigh and analyse… and still be sensitive, funny, romantic, impressionable, intuitive, creative — if one so chooses after all the (numeric) information is available.