Thread by @SteB777

Let me briefly explain the fallacious thinking and misinterpretation of what I said. I have never said we shouldn't have or use ideas. Only that seeing ideas as the ultimate reference is wrong.

https://twitter.com/RMBlaber56/status/1453325195607953412

What the map-territory relationship teaches us, is that even the very best ideas are partly mistaken and never the same as reality. So like maps, ideas are at best a guide to the world, we should always take with a pinch of salt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80…

As any walker or hiker knows, maps are absolutely valuable for navigation. However, any experienced walker also knows you must never totally rely on the map. A map cannot tell you where there is a waterlogged piece of boggy ground where you will sink up to your waist.

Of course maps can be completely mistaken, and direct people along routes where they would walk of the edge of a cliff. Google is not the first map to do this.
futurism.com/the-byte/googl…

It goes much deeper than this. The fundamental property of maps is entirely different to the territory they actually map. Actual territory has characteristics no map could contain.

This is why it is absolutely essential that we don't mistake ideas for absolute reality, and that we must constantly re-examine our knowledge of reality, our ideas, to re-assess our ideas about it.

I totally repudiate the idea that any philosopher's ideas about the world we live in, whether they be Kant, Marx or whoever, are at all a useful guide to navigating our way out of the climate and ecological crisis. This is the whole problem with using ideology as a guide.

None of these philosophers of the past or those who formulated the ideology on which the modern world operates, knew anything at all about what modern climate science, ecological science etc, have discovered. Their ideas were based on outdated views of the world we live in.

I am not saying these philosophers had nothing useful to say. Only that when it came to pontificating about the world we live in, they had false and misguided ideas about the world we live in, which modern science has updated.

As a science undergraduate, it was constantly drummed into me that you mustn't mistake the model for reality, the map for the territory, and actual reality was quite different to our current ideas about.

Specifically, many of these points were about cell micro-structure. We we told we must never think actual cell micro-structure was the same as the illustrations in text books, even if they were based on electron micrographs.

The thing about our scientific knowledge of the world is that it is being constantly updated, old ideas over-turned. New paradigms emerging as Thomas S Kuhn described in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Struc…

The reason we are in a crisis now and facing the future collapse of our civilization is the structure of our modern world and economies is based on ideas and ideology from over 200 years ago, when our scientific knowledge of the world was not so good.

The primary driver of our economies and the ideology of all our governments, is constantly striving for economic growth, which is obtained by over-exploiting the Earth's natural systems, our life support systems.

This economic model was based on ideas by those who did not understand the consequences of what they started, and specifically they mistakenly thought the natural world was simply a bottomless pit of commodities to exploit.

Very specifically, the designers of our current economic model failed to understand that natural systems are systems, where everything is connected to everything else. They had no concept of ecology.

This is the danger of using ideas as your ultimate referent, because eventually, all these ideas are found to be flawed and not a good guide to how things actually are. Yet if you base something like our world economic/political systems on these ideas, it is disastrous.

Therefore we must always see ideas as contingent, as inherently containing flaws and mistaken, in constant need of review and updating. This is the serious problem with being guided by ideology, as one fatal flaw in it, can render the whole ideology as dangerous.

It doesn't mean we should stop using ideas. Rather that we must just use ideas as a temporary guide. That we must instead refer to what the latest science is telling us about the things these ideas refer to, and be prepared to update of discard mistaken ideas.

This is the huge problem with organizing and running our societies on ideological principles, which is what has got us into this mess. The ideologies our economic models and political ideologies are based on are mistaken and dangerously wrong.

It becomes impossible either for individuals, or especially political parties or politicians, to admit that the ideological principles they hold dear and on which their power is based, are just plain mistaken and wrong. Because it undermines their right to rule over us.

If you are in a position of power, and you have to admit all your ideas are wrong and mistaken, you lose the right to be in that position. This is why modern politicians are in denial. In reality they need to move aside for someone who isn't in denial of the situation.

Richard tells me my ideas are ridiculous. I'd like him to explain what ideas I've expressed are ridiculous. I never said we shouldn't use ideas. I said we shouldn't use ideas as our primary referent as to how the world actually is.

https://twitter.com/RMBlaber56/status/1453325579240054785

I do not blame Richard or others for clinging to ideas or ideologies they hold dear. It must be disconcerting to acknowledge the ideas and ideologies you are invested in, are out of date and of not much use in the modern world, where the climate and ecological emergency is real.