While you say that science creates reality, I say it reflects reality. Ironically, you are constructing your own reality based on the stories you're telling yourself - the things you say below are vague, unsupported, and generally orthogonal to the points that you seem to be most interested in. Science cannot solve the problems that ethics focuses on.
> the scientufic world view is pretty clear on the abortion issue, yet whole voting blocks reject right to choose
What is the scientific consensus about abortion? Do you mean the question of consciousness? That's an important component, but it's not an answer to a challenging ethics question. 55-60% of voters are pro-choice in the US[0], btw.
I don't think voters vote based on the science. This is unfortunate in areas like climate change, but not all that relevant in morality-driven context, like for abortion.
> But we also have atom bombs and given extinction event and multiple potential ways to wipe ourselves out. We are also more ideologically divided than in any period in history.
Is your point here that we have applied science to develop things that are used for good as well as bad? That's uncontroversial, but I'm not sure how that supports your point that modern science tells people what they want to hear to maintain authoritative reality (what the heck is authoritative reality, anyhow?)
> We are also more ideologically divided than in any period in history, I'd argue, and precisely when it is most necessary that we be informed and unified
It might feel this way - it does to me! - but, frankly, I don't think you can accurately measure modern, much less historical, things like "dividedness" or "[it is now] most necessary to be informed and unified".
I'm not going to argue that there aren't big, important, hard problems to solve. But I also think this type of handwringing tone is unsupported by objective evidence.
> So science is a more powerful paradigm for building certain technocultural realities at the expense of others.
Do you mean expense of other realities, like religion? That makes sense -- when one paradigm proves superior to another in describing reality, it is natural that it will replace the less-useful model.
What we currently are focused on is a very small slice of reality. I don't see much reason to think these are new problems, or that they're unique.
> I would say it fails in ways that the older science of cultural uniformity and authority succeeded.
We do know what a lot of the costs for uniformity and authority are. Especially when carried out by imperfect humans - that's what leads to the Inquisition, or racism, or any of the other base instincts we seek to reduce.
> the scientufic world view is pretty clear on the abortion issue, yet whole voting blocks reject right to choose
What is the scientific consensus about abortion? Do you mean the question of consciousness? That's an important component, but it's not an answer to a challenging ethics question. 55-60% of voters are pro-choice in the US[0], btw.
I don't think voters vote based on the science. This is unfortunate in areas like climate change, but not all that relevant in morality-driven context, like for abortion.
> But we also have atom bombs and given extinction event and multiple potential ways to wipe ourselves out. We are also more ideologically divided than in any period in history.
Is your point here that we have applied science to develop things that are used for good as well as bad? That's uncontroversial, but I'm not sure how that supports your point that modern science tells people what they want to hear to maintain authoritative reality (what the heck is authoritative reality, anyhow?)
> We are also more ideologically divided than in any period in history, I'd argue, and precisely when it is most necessary that we be informed and unified
It might feel this way - it does to me! - but, frankly, I don't think you can accurately measure modern, much less historical, things like "dividedness" or "[it is now] most necessary to be informed and unified".
I'm not going to argue that there aren't big, important, hard problems to solve. But I also think this type of handwringing tone is unsupported by objective evidence.
> So science is a more powerful paradigm for building certain technocultural realities at the expense of others.
Do you mean expense of other realities, like religion? That makes sense -- when one paradigm proves superior to another in describing reality, it is natural that it will replace the less-useful model.
What we currently are focused on is a very small slice of reality. I don't see much reason to think these are new problems, or that they're unique.
> I would say it fails in ways that the older science of cultural uniformity and authority succeeded.
We do know what a lot of the costs for uniformity and authority are. Especially when carried out by imperfect humans - that's what leads to the Inquisition, or racism, or any of the other base instincts we seek to reduce.
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-abortion-debate-isn...