Progress

[dr_mabeuse]

I’m wondering whether we still believe in the idea of progress, that things are generally getting better, and that the future will be better than the present.

I’m wondering about this because of jfinn’s horror story about the phone company, about my own questions about being anonymously dunned by phone, and because I saw amicus’ mention in his evolution thread about humans colonizing otherplanets. At one time the colonization of space was a centerpiece of the culture of progress, right up there with atomic powered personal helicopters, energy too cheap to meter, and the leisure explosion that computers were going to bring us. I was surprised to see that anyone believes that space colonization is still on the agenda. To me it seems like a quaint retro-ism, like 50’s bachelor-pad music.

The idea of progress as philosophy of life has been with us probably since the enlightnement, and really took hold in the US probably around the turn of the last century, with the explosion of invention and technology. The World Wars pretty much killed the idea of social or moral progress, at leat among intellectuals, but for most of us, we just took it for granted that things would get better and better as science and technology marched on. It was an idea that kept us going when things seemed darkest: we just asumed that things would be better for our children than they are for us.

Now it seems to me that there’s very good evidence that things are generally getting worse, and I cite things like phone trees, pollution, the failure of medicine to eradicate disease, the amount of work we have to do to maintain our standard of living, etc. etc. as evidence.

So do you still believe in progress? That things will be better for your kids than they are now? Or are we really going to hell in a handbasket?

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Progress is in the eye of the beholder doc and has been for a very long time. Every step of the way some people have fought progress, feeling it wasn't making things better but worse. Industrialization is one corner stone of progress, but millionss fought against it and the social turmoil it created. enviormentalists scream foul all the time and all to often they are accused of trying to halt progress.

Will things be better for my kids? Moot point for me since I am unlikely to get married and if I did even more unlikely to have a child. I do have nephews and nieces however and I think the world will be a better place for them. Medicine hasn't cured all disease, but I can say pretty confidently they won't be crippled by polio, die in infancy from small pox, typoid or plague. They won't have rickets and are unlikely to have their bodies destroyed by viral menengitis.

My nieces will be able to decide when and if they want to have children, they will be able to secure good jobs at decent pay, being educated to them dosen't neccissarily mean finishing school and the old MRS. degree. If they do have children it's unlikely they will die in child birth.

My nephews will probably get college educations, they will have a fair shot at improving themselves and if we are all lucky will elevate themselves above both their parents and grand parents in their relative status and comfort level.

Progress is still marching on, but I agree with your concern that it may not be making the world a better place any longer, if that was ever it's primary function. Colonizing other planets seems a bit far fetched, but in our hunger for raw materials and our wanton burning of those here on earth to feed our collective greed I don't see it as improbable that we will eventually begin mining the mineral wealth of other planets. Progress will gladly help us develop the means to do so, feeeding it's own march in the process.

-Colly

 

[MaxSebastian]

I think certain things will get better, like certain technologies and perhaps medical breakthroughs. But these small forms of progress will be mere diversions from the general degeneration of the rest of society.

I think the worst thing that's happened in the last century is the almost complete destruction of humanity's sense of community. This is the explanation for the rise of celebrity - celebrities form a fake community for those without. And it's not going to get better any time soon.

The rich are only going to get richer, the poor are only going to get poorer. Those in the middle will become rich or poor - mostly poor - as society become more polarised and the fortunate few shaft everyone else.

I think Phillip K Dick, the writer behind Bladerunner, had it right.


- But here's an idea: rich people, celebrities, if you pay us writers more, we'll be much nicer when it comes to what you're doing. It's only natural. We'll be less pissed off. Then you won't need to complain about the media the whole time in that boring way you do. Invasion of privacy my ass. You're rich. Deal with it.

Am part of the corruption of modern society? No, I don't have any money, I can't be corrupt.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think Phillip K Dick, the writer behind Bladerunner, had it right.

That's a good point. I'm old enough to remember when science fiction was almost always upbeat. Sure there were invasions of earth and things like that, but the basic tone in SF was that the World of Tomorrow is going to be a great place. Books like 1984 were notable for their deviation from this notion of progress.

Things changed sometime around the '60's. Now the view of a dystopian future seems more the norm, and one of the common themes of Sci-Fi is the individual vs. the state or the dystopian corporation. What does that say about us and what we think of the future?

And Colly, I would absolutely agree with you that there was a time when progress was definitely being made, and I'm certainly not suggesting that things are worse now than they were, say, 100 years ago. But as to 10, 20 years ago... That's what I wonder about. And if we had peaked and were on a downsilde, would we even notice? Are we changing because things are improving, or are we changing just for the sake of change?

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Being a fairly conservative person I am not really pleased with change, especially change for change's sake.

Are we better off now than we were twenty years ago? I suspect the answer depends a lot on where you see us as having been twenty years in the past. Certainly the end of the Cold war is progress that makes us all safer. If you are a neo-con then we are far better off as we are begining to fulfill our manifest destiny and rule the world. If your hopes are less grandiose then it's hard to say. I suppose there is a dichotomy here as progress applies to each of us. We are healthier on average, live longer, have more lesiure time and more money to do things in that lesiure time. Yet we are more stressed, more over weight, less phyiscally fit and seem to enjoy our free time less than ur forefathers.

Our basic civil liberties are under asault from our own government and our very lives are under threat of terrorist attack. It is far more difficult for me to imagine a utopian future than it is to imagine a dystopian one. So in that sense we are prehaps moving backwards. If history is any guide then this society like all before it will have a golden age, followed by a decline. Unless we think technology can over rule history I would say things will probably get worse overall as time goes by.

-Colly

 

[raphy]

The rich are only going to get richer, the poor are only going to get poorer. Those in the middle will become rich or poor - mostly poor - as society become more polarised and the fortunate few shaft everyone else.

I think Phillip K Dick, the writer behind Bladerunner, had it right.

Ah, the pessimism of cyberpunk. There's a reason the sci-fi world welcomed Gibson's pre-apocalyptic depressing vision of tomorrow with open arms in the late 80s. It almost seems irony of the highest order to say it came as a breath of fresh air, refreshing and vitalizing, but it did, injecting depth and realism into a genre that had, so far, not lived up to its promises.

From The Gernsback Continuum:

The Thirties dreamed white marble and slip-stream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the covers of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car—no wings for it—and the promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and the fumes ate the marble and pitted the miracle crystal.

And that's the future that never happened.

Progress? Won't stop it, can't stop it. Whether or not it will be called progress, of course, will depend on exactly how you define progress....

I know progress has no patience, but something's got to give
-- Rush, Second Nature

 

[Pure]

I think Orwell, and more recently Atwood, got it right. Despite techological advances like laser surgery, the advances in IT have great potential for use to enhance 'national security.' Further, as Atwood recognized, the Religious Right is gaining strength in many countries, from US to Algeria and Pakistan.

Tolerant secular 'humanism' that seemed so 'rational' and saleable a while back, seems like a white elephant-- or a dead duck.

 

[Mhari]

I guess I am an eternal optimist. Even with the bad, I hope that something good will come of it. Certainly, scientific developments have caused unfortunate effects at times, but on the whole, I think we're better off with them.

Keep in mind that *every* age has dealt with this issue. Just about every single generation has worried that the future will be worse because of those horrible new-fangled things scientists, industrialists, and others come up with. It just seems worse these days because of the plethora of information available to the general public. And with the random nature of material available on the internet, it's much harder for people to separate the wheat from the chaff. (Once, to my horror, I had a student write an entire "research" paper based on internet sites. Ones that claimed hundreds of people died as an immediate result of the Three Mile Island accident. OMFG.)

As for Philip K. Dick and the cyberpunk authors...I just don't like that stuff. To dark and depressing, and I just can't make myself believe in a future *that* bleak. Though in Dick's defense, the novel (originally titled Do Androids Dream of Electirc Sheep?) isn't quite as grim as the part of it they used for Blade Runner.

I for one will continue to hope for good stuff in our futures.

 

[SummerMorning]

Progress and scientific positivism - they died with the world wars, with the genocide, with nuclear weapons.

The 19th century was the golden age of progress, when everyone believed that science would solve all ills.

Today some sciences have become more self-critical and self-reflexive, which is a good thing. It is the uncritical use of a far-off utopia that brought us fascism and communist totalitarianism. We dreamed of a future where everyone would be equal, and in order to gain that we killed.

Some things will get better, some things will certainly get worse. Most people will continue to believe things are getting worse... life will go on.

BTW - I cannot stand those prissy neoliberal economists who say that the free market solves all and that we're almost in the free market capitalist utopia. That's BS.

What's the problem with markets? If you go to a vegetable market, the prices do not fluctuate - the sellers agree on them beforehand and shaft you - the buyer. So much for the free f*ing market.

Ah, but it is a wonderful world we live in - no disease, teeth in your thirties, only 0.4% infant mortality - life is great. So don't anybody whine that things were better. They weren't.

 

[Mhari]

Progress and scientific positivism - they died with the world wars, with the genocide, with nuclear weapons.

“It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.” --J. Robert Oppenheimer

Discuss.

Yes, the development of nuclear weapons brought us terror and horror and death and massive destruction, but it also brought us nuclear energy. And as unspeakably horrible as the Genocide was, scientists *did* make discoveries based on their experiments during same. Before the lynch mob comes after me: Please note that I am NOT saying that the Genocide was a good thing. I am merely making a statement of fact. A fact surrounded by horror that we still can't cope with, but still.

Today some sciences have become more self-critical and self-reflexive, which is a good thing. It is the uncritical use of a far-off utopia that brought us fascism and communist totalitarianism. We dreamed of a future where everyone would be equal, and in order to gain that we killed.

Hmm. I agree with your first point, certainly. As for the second...I would posit that it was Stalin's utilitarian usage of Marx and Lenin (who may have also been making utilitarian usage of Marx) that created "communist" totalitarianism. Stalinism bore very little resemblance to Marxism. Don't give the true utopianists a bad name by including him (or Lenin) with them. Hitler and Mussolini I know rather less about, so I won't venture any theories about them.

I maintain that not all progress is bad. Maybe I just have my rose-colored shades superglued to my head, but I just can't go with that.

 

[Guest]

Mab., this is an inspiring post, thanks. I understand what you and everyone has said (nearly, haha). I think I'm more akin to Mhari here. Working at a university and being surrounded by young, intelligent, creataive and innocently idealistic students gives me hope. They help me better see the forest for the trees. My own sons, and my 12 year old niece, give me hope for their futures. They will all have to deal with the crappiness of "progress" but I have faith in them.

Perdita

p.s. space colonization as "50’s bachelor-pad music" was a brilliant item, point, whatever

 

[A7inchPhildo]

Progress is in the eye of the beholder...

Progress is within each of us. If you believe progress is no longer being made in a satisfactory way. Then you should take a good look at your own life and ask why.
It is not up to the masses of other people to ensure progress is being completed as you would see it. You must be the one to take charge and change/ mold it into a better plan for the future generations. No one else can be held liable except our selves. We all have potential, but do we use it for bettering?

 

[shereads]

Shereads' Theory: Progress is when mankind improves one thing and accidentally screws up two other things.

Example 1: Suffering from something hideously painful but probably not fatal, like a bladder infection, it's easy to appreciate progress. Progress is the invention of antibiotics.

Then you hear from a friend who's been hospitalized for two months with a mysteriously reoccuring bacterial infection that is doing to his lower leg what gangrene does, and which his mystified doctors theorize is the result of a usually harmless organism reacting to his use of antibiotics to treat earlier illnesses. In an attempt to save the leg, they perform surgery to drain fluid from it twice a week.


Example 2: Progess during the 1930's in South Florida was the digging of canals to drain portions of the Everglades, creating flood-proof land for farming and residential development.

Decades later, it becomes evident that altering waterflow in the Everglades is rapidly destorying the shallow-water "nursery" where most of our seafood takes shelter in its infancy; innumerable species are dependent in their juvenile phases, on the seasonal mingling of freshwater and saltwater that the Everglades once produced like clockwork, and now only intermittently; fertilizer runoff from farms, and sewage entering the water even in filtered form, cause algae blooms that have reduced water clarity on the reef south of the Keys from a typical 150-foot range twenty years ago to 30-40 feet, resulting in smothered coral, disappearing fish and shellfish species, well-publicized beach closures when "fecal material counts" surpass levels considered tolerable; the tourism, scuba diving and sport fishing industries that provided income to support all that development are experiencing a downward spiral as word gets out that one now has to go to the Bahamas or farther to find what was common in the waters off of Miami and the Keys as recently as a decade ago.

Billions are spent in an attempt to put things back the way they were, and it becomes increasingly evident that money and science and even political cooperation can't begin to recreate the natural systems that were so little understood when we "improved" them. Proponents of Everglades restoration win an agreement with the sugar industry to allow re-flooding of an old lakebed that had been farmed for decades; it would become a "filtering" mechanism to prevent chemical runoff from reaching the remaining Everglades and contaminating the acquifer, Florida Bay and the coral reef and incidentally the drinking water that makes it possible for people, including sugar farmers, to live here. A side benefit of the reflooding would be the recreation of critical nesting habitat for migatory birds. Within a year or two, it begins to happen: the white pelican and a number of threatened and endangered species flock to the area as predicted, build nests, begin laying and hatching their young - and die by the thousands, their bodies littering the shallows. Autopsies on the dead birds show toxic levels of farm and industrial chemicals leeching up from the lakebed and poisoning the frogs and small fish that the birds feed on.

Next?

 

[Guest]

After Theory is the Marxist Terry Eagleton's just published book. He's a hero of mine, gives the best intro to lit. theory available. A fave Slovenian philosopher wrote this blurb:

"Eagleton argues that the golden age of cultural theory has ended and he traces its rise and fall from structuralism to post-colonial studies and beyond. In a new era of globalization and terrorism, Eagleton warns, the bundle of ideas known as post-modernism is essentially toothless. Furthermore, Eagleton challenges contemporary intellectuals to engage with a range of vital topics--love, evil, death, morality, religion, and revolution--that they've ignored over the past thirty years. This latest offering from Eagleton's will engage readers inside and outside the academy who are eager for a more holistic and humane way of "reading" the world. "A rare opportunity to enjoy the art of cultural and social diagnosis at its purest! Eagleton offers a unique combination of theoretical stringency and acerbic common-sense witticism, of critical historical reflection and the ability to ask the 'big' metaphysical questions." -- Slavoj Zizek

My point: academia thought such progress was made by post-modernists that many took it up like a religion (I daresay never before had such metaphorical blood been shed in the halls of academe). I'm with Eagleton in that it's gone nowhere fast, though it did create much good thinking and ideas. And I don't know that it harmed anyone subtantively except for lost tenure tracks.

Perdita

 

[Quasimodem]

I am ambivalent.

Everything of a technological or scientific nature is progressing to bring us bigger, smaller, faster, longer lasting, more powerful, less clumsy, more manipulable, processes, tools, products, or sciences.

Everything of a humanitarian, or societal nature, pendulates between two extremes of human overreaction, gaining little or no forward momentum.

Until man can learn to process himself toward progress, all of our bright ideas will falter into weaponry, various methods of enslaving one another, or of earning money (power) through the merchandising of bright shiny toys.

Science Fiction did not suddenly discover dystopia in the mid-twentieth century. It was there since the beginning.

If Jules Verne envisioned a “nuclear” sub, he also envisioned the destruction one could reap were it to fall into the hands of a madman. From his position, viewing a poisonous social structure, H. G. Wells could posit that the separation of working class from leisure class would eventually breed two distinctly separate versions of man, each incomplete, and devouring the other.

Carl Kapek on stage, in “R. U. R” ( Rossum s Universal Robots ), Fritz Lang on the silent screen, in “Metropolis,” and Aldous Huxley in print, in “Brave New World,” warned of the dangers of man scientifically controlling man. As (in a way) did B. F. Skinner’s two novels about “Walden” and all of George Orwell’s writing.

If in the late fifties and sixties, the dystopian sci-fi novel tended to concentrate upon apocalyptic and/or post apocalyptic imagery, it is only because that end was already vividly clear to the least imaginative person, without the aid of visionaries.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

And as unspeakably horrible as the Genocide was, scientists *did* make discoveries based on their experiments during same. Before the lynch mob comes after me: Please note that I am NOT saying that the Genocide was a good thing. I am merely making a statement of fact. A fact surrounded by horror that we still can't cope with, but still.

No. Depite your protests, the lynch mob is here. That is an unbelievably callous statement.

Just what discoveries did "scientists" make during the various genocides that have been conducted around the world? I'd like to see these.

---dr.M.

 

[Weird Harold]

That's a good point. I'm old enough to remember when science fiction was almost always upbeat. Sure there were invasions of earth and things like that, but the basic tone in SF was that the World of Tomorrow is going to be a great place. Books like 1984 were notable for their deviation from this notion of progress.

I disagree. Science Fiction has always had a pessimistic sub-genre to it. I think you're probably remembering the up-beat parts of the science fiction you enjoyed and forgetting (or just didn't read) the darker visions.

The perceived increase in darker visions in the sixties is more an increase in the darker visions' representation on the best-seller lists rather than a change in the SF genre overall.

1984 was only the best-selling of the crossover best-sellers, but books like Watership Down, Lord of The Flies, and Animal Farm were other dark visions that paved the way for best-selling dystopian visions.

Things changed sometime around the '60's. Now the view of a dystopian future seems more the norm, and one of the common themes of Sci-Fi is the individual vs. the state or the dystopian corporation. What does that say about us and what we think of the future?

One of the most popular SF novels of the 1960's was R.A.H's Stranger in a Strange Land. That is NOT a dystopian vision, although it does have a somewhat pessimistic conclusion.

Perhaps it's just my taste in Science Fiction, but I've not noticed an increase in the pessimism of SF. In Fact, with the decline of Post Apocalyptic stories, there is always the underlying assumption that the human race and civilization WILL survive -- with or without a "diaspora" that spreads humanity through space -- and that is NOT something that was true in the fifties and sixties SF.

But as to 10, 20 years ago... That's what I wonder about. And if we had peaked and were on a downslide, would we even notice? Are we changing because things are improving, or are we changing just for the sake of change?

I have observed the changes of the last half century first hand, and can't decide whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Progress.

I can point to things that I think are changed for the better -- communications, environmental concern, safety concerns (most notable in automobile safety features,) medical procedures and diagnostic technology, etc.

I can also point to things that have changed for the worse -- declines in education, literacy, personal integrity, etc.

Right now, I'm in an optimistic mood and think that everything is going to be just fine in the long term future although there are some hard times ahead, too. The world is a better place now than when I was born and the hard times will only make the world even better for having lived through them.


Humanity and Civilization will survive and technology will continue to "progress" until the "diaspora" SF has been promising for decades will eventually happen.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I disagree. Science Fiction has always had a pessimistic sub-genre to it. I think you're probably remembering the up-beat parts of the science fiction you enjoyed and forgetting (or just didn't read) the darker visions.

The perceived increase in darker visions in the sixties is more an increase in the darker visions' representation on the best-seller lists rather than a change in the SF genre overall.

1984 was only the best-selling of the crossover best-sellers, but books like Watership Down, Lord of The Flies, and Animal Farm were other dark visions that paved the way for best-selling dystopian visions.





One of the most popular SF novels of the 1960's was R.A.H's Stranger in a Strange Land. That is NOT a dystopian vision, although it does have a somewhat pessimistic conclusion.

Perhaps it's just my taste in Science Fiction, but I've not noticed an increase in the pessimism of SF. In Fact, with the decline of Post Apocalyptic stories, there is always the underlying assumption that the human race and civilization WILL survive -- with or without a "diaspora" that spreads humanity through space -- and that is NOT something that was true in the fifties and sixties SF.



I have observed the changes of the last half century first hand, and can't decide whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Progress.

I can point to things that I think are changed for the better -- communications, environmental concern, safety concerns (most notable in automobile safety features,) medical procedures and diagnostic technology, etc.

I can also point to things that have changed for the worse -- declines in education, literacy, personal integrity, etc.

Right now, I'm in an optimistic mood and think that everything is going to be just fine in the long term future although there are some hard times ahead, too. The world is a better place now than when I was born and the hard times will only make the world even better for having lived through them.


Humanity and Civilization will survive and technology will continue to "progress" until the "diaspora" SF has been promising for decades will eventually happen.

Just Curious Harlod, but Watership Down is my favorite book of all time. I can name all the characters and even quite lines from rote memory. I don't see the book as being dark in any manner, unless you wish to concentrate on the police state that Efrifa represents. May I ask what you see in the tale that is so dark?

-Colly

 

[Mhari]

No. Depite your protests, the lynch mob is here. That is an unbelievably callous statement.

Just what discoveries did "scientists" make during the various genocides that have been conducted around the world? I'd like to see these.

Mmm, I was referring to the one Genocide of SummerMorning's post; ie, the Holocaust. You can call it a callous statement if you choose, but they did perform scientific experiments and did obtain data. One of the questions I put to my freshmen engineering students is, What do you do with the data obtained by such methods? Is it ethical to use it, when such horrible processes went into obtaining it? Or is it unethical *not* to use it, given the human sacrifice that went into obtaining the data? These are not easy questions, and I don't pretend I know the answers.

As for data obtained by those charming Nazi doctors during the Holocaust, I will take a look and see what sources I can find for you. Two books I have on my shelves right now: The War Against the Jews by Lucy S. Dawidowicz and The Racial State by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann. The last focuses more on the Nazi program of Eugenics rather than the Holocaust, which was no less horrifying in its own way, and which also did provide scientific data (in this case, specifically on genetics).

Don't mistake the facts of the situation for the horror surrounding it. Was the Holocaust one of the most terrible events in the history of mankind? Yes. Did it also produce usable scientific information? Again, yes. And then what do you do with said data? Not an easy question to answer by any means.

 

[Guest]

One of the most popular SF novels of the 1960's was R.A.H's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Good gosh, WH. I've lived in SF for decades and that book was so unrealistic.

sorry, Perdita

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Mmm, I was referring to the one Genocide of SummerMorning's post; ie, the Holocaust. You can call it a callous statement if you choose, but they did perform scientific experiments and did obtain data. One of the questions I put to my freshmen engineering students is, What do you do with the data obtained by such methods? Is it ethical to use it, when such horrible processes went into obtaining it? Or is it unethical *not* to use it, given the human sacrifice that went into obtaining the data? These are not easy questions, and I don't pretend I know the answers.

As for data obtained by those charming Nazi doctors during the Holocaust, I will take a look and see what sources I can find for you. Two books I have on my shelves right now: The War Against the Jews by Lucy S. Dawidowicz and The Racial State by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann. The last focuses more on the Nazi program of Eugenics rather than the Holocaust, which was no less horrifying in its own way, and which also did provide scientific data (in this case, specifically on genetics).

Don't mistake the facts of the situation for the horror surrounding it. Was the Holocaust one of the most terrible events in the history of mankind? Yes. Did it also produce usable scientific information? Again, yes. And then what do you do with said data? Not an easy question to answer by any means.

I am a bit of a historian and while I have never made an issue of it, I have a lot of specific knowledge of the concentration camps. To my knowledge no information gained held any scientific value. In the first place a good deal of it was based on the false premise of Hitler's racial theory and like most scientists who work on a government grant there was a great deal of pressure to make the research conform to the theory, so much so that even the base emphical data has to be examined with a great deal of sceptisism. Those experiments that were not connected with racial theory were unscientific in the extreme, using faulty control groups and sloppy methods. While there is a great deal of data, it cannot be reproduced in a lab due to ethical considerations and data that you cannot reproduce in the lab is useless to a scientist.

Granted my studies have never focused on the actual results, more the methods, so you may very well be able to find some data that is useful. I would be interested to see it. At this time all I have read has lead me to believe that none of the data was useful in anyway and if that is not the case then I need to re read and see if the authors I have followed had their own agenda in the writing.

-Colly

 

[Weird Harold]

Just Curious Harlod, but Watership Down is my favorite book of all time. I can name all the characters and even quite lines from rote memory. I don't see the book as being dark in any manner, unless you wish to concentrate on the police state that Efrifa represents. May I ask what you see in the tale that is so dark?

Like many other books of that time, it's a story of hope set as a struggle against a dystopian society or police state -- a warning about what life might be like if the "dirty reds" were to win.

Watership Down is far from being a hardcore "dark vision," but it set against that oppressive police state, which other, more optimistic, Science Fiction of that time didn't have.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Like many other books of that time, it's a story of hope set as a struggle against a dystopian society or police state -- a warning about what life might be like if the "dirty reds" were to win.

Watership Down is far from being a hardcore "dark vision," but it set against that oppressive police state, which other, more optimistic, Science Fiction of that time didn't have.

Thanks WH,

I have always loved the story and viewd it as a feel good story of hope and triumph against the odds. Ihave never looked at it in the way you suggest. It's pretty cool

-Colly

 

[Weird Harold]

...Those experiments that were not connected with racial theory were unscientific in the extreme, using faulty control groups and sloppy methods. While there is a great deal of data, it cannot be reproduced in a lab due to ethical considerations and data that you cannot reproduce in the lab is useless to a scientist.

... At this time all I have read has lead me to believe that none of the data was useful in anyway and if that is not the case then I need to re read and see if the authors I have followed had their own agenda in the writing.

I think you'll find that the Nazi studies on hypothermia have been proven to provide a good deal of useable information that has been verified by experience "in the field" and less drastic studies with volunteer subjects.

I've seen people discount the value of those studies, but there are thousands of people who have survived extreme hypothermia because of information from those Nazi studies.

I suspect that there is a large element of bias from authors that completely discount information as being flawed and useless because it can't be duplicated by ethical scientists. Such authors are as guilty of flawed logic and desire oriented results as the studies they denounce.

A lot of the Nazi data IS flawed, but there is also a lot of information that can be gained from the data by understanding why and how it's flawed.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I think you'll find that the Nazi studies on hypothermia have been proven to provide a good deal of useable information that has been verified by experience "in the field" and less drastic studies with volunteer subjects.

I've seen people discount the value of those studies, but there are thousands of people who have survived extreme hypothermia because of information from those Nazi studies.

I suspect that there is a large element of bias from authors that completely discount information as being flawed and useless because it can't be duplicated by ethical scientists. Such authors are as guilty of flawed logic and desire oriented results as the studies they denounce.

A lot of the Nazi data IS flawed, but there is also a lot of information that can be gained from the data by understanding why and how it's flawed.

thanks again WH. I was under the impression that the information gleaned from the hypothermia experiments was flawed because the test subjects were jews selected from the camps and were already suffering from malnutrition.

-Colly