Social Science. Feynman. Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. David Graeber [from The Baffler No. 19, 2012] A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like.
I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like.
And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.
Space. Evolution. 4395741_700b_v1. Health. Biotech. Brain. Why do we believe in electrons, but not in fairies? By Benjamin Kuipers No one has directly observed either electrons or fairies.
Both of them are theoretical constructs, useful to explain observations that might be difficult to explain otherwise. The "theory of fairies" can actually explain more things than the "theory of electrons". So why do we believe in electrons, but not in fairies? Is the issue a political one, where the "electron" fans got the upper hand in the nineteenth century, so by the twentieth century the "fairy" fans were a scorned and persecuted minority?
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