Leonid Positselski
- Do you believe in science?
- The short answer is "no".
- What is the long answer?
- The longer answer is that I do not believe in what you mean by science.
- How do you know what I mean by science?
- I make my guess from the fact that you are asking me the question. I think that the people asking others whether they believe in science generally have a certain concept of what they mean by "science". From my perspective, what these people call "science" is not trustworthy.
- What is this concept that you think they have?
- I think that they mean by science something like "the officially expressed opinions of the professors of the world's leading universities". Or "whatever is written in the research monographs and articles published by the world's most reputable scientific journals and book series".
- And, to you, the world's leading and most reputable science is not trustworthy?
- Absolutely. Not trustworthy.
- What is your version of science that you believe in, then? If it exists at all...
- Yes, it exists. I believe in science as an ideal you can strive to live if you so choose. Everyone can. If you really want to know the truth, understand your subject etc., then you can pursue this ideal and it gives you a fair chance of arriving to a better understanding of things than the one you started from. Spend years learning the basics, spend decades doing the research, chances are that by the end of your life you will have understood something. If that is indeed your highest goal, I mean.
- Isn't it what the professors of the world's leading universities have done or are supposed to be doing?
- That depends on who does the supposing. I, for one, suppose that professors of the world's leading universities are people like everybody else. If they are a baker, they want to make money selling bread. If they are a lawyer, they want to make money representing their clients. If they are a professor, they want to make money by teaching and doing research. No one can expect knowing the truth to be their highest goal, not any more than baking perfect bread can be expected to be the baker's highest goal.
- So it is all about money?
- The answer to this question you know yourself. Everybody knows that. It is all as usual. People want money, fame and glory, social status and power, sex, families, children and whatnot. That's the kind of things that generally motivate people. Searching for scientific truth for its own sake is not.
- Of course, everybody knows that. People are selfish. That is the problem.
- I did not say that.
- Have I misunderstood you? OK, what did you say?
- I did not say that people being selfish is the problem. I said that the concept of science I believe in, as opposed to the one I do not believe in, presumes no responsibility for people's actual motivations. If you want to know the truth, the methods of scientific inquiry will probably lead you somewhere. If you want something else, that is up to you. That's all.
- But I think that what I said was correct, and your words confirm that. People's selfishness is the root of all problems.
- I disagree. People's selfishness is a given. The root of all too many problems is unrealistic expectations. They lead you to advocate social policies that do not work. This applies to everything nowadays, science including. The general description of today's social policy that does not work is to subsidize irresponsibility and then expect people to behave responsibly. You throw government's money at problems and then complain that people are selfish. Certainly receiving government's money does not make people any less selfish than they otherwise are. This applies to professors of the world's leading universities as much as to everybody else.
- Let us return to the original question. What is this concept of science that you say you believe in, as opposed to the one you don't believe in? Is it anything but some idealistic vision that does not correspond to anything in social reality?
- You cannot trust anything that exists in social reality. Social realities are inherently not trustworthy. Only idealistic visions can be trusted, if anything at all. Everybody understands that, actually. The key difference is between the correct idealistic visions and the wrong ones. For example, your favorite vision of a society of unselfish people is wrong. Your even more favorite vision of a society ruled by unselfish people is even more wrong.
- What it the correct idealistic vision?
- People should realize that a way of social organization transforming selfish motivations into socially beneficial activities does exist. It is called the capitalism, or the free market if you wish. It is an everyday miracle that works, to the extent that the social policies allow it to work. Nothing else works, actually. If you study how and why it works and how it doesn't, you may eventually arrive to some ideas as to possible ways of social organization of scientific research that would do a better job of transforming everybody's necessarily mostly selfish motivations into a social practice of science in which the truth is being discovered rather than lost.
- So, you do not believe that the social practice of science as it currently exists tends to discover the truth more often than lose it?
- Exactly. I do not believe in the social practice of science as it currently exists. In my view, it is not trustworthy at all. Its general tendency is not to approach the truth, but to go astray.
- But you are a part of that practice, as a mathematician?
- As a mathematician, I strive to live the ideal of having the understanding and advancement of mathematics as my highest goal.
- So, everybody is corrupt, but you are not?
- I cannot help you if you fail to see the corruption around. And if you raise this issue and believe that I am as corrupt as everybody else, then you should not be having this conversation with me, and I should not be having this conversation with you. Go find a more worthy interlocutor.