How does reality show us what is ethical persuasion, or that ethical persuasion is objectively the correct approach? You need to convince me this chain of questioning won't lead to either:
-Pointing to a historical line of moral tradition and figures that hold a feeling of authoritativeness to us
-"Reality is reality" and an implicit appeal to yourself and your aura of "rationalistic candor" as the authority
Either way, I predict you'll ad-hom me for daring to ask the question...
Because the most thoughtful option would be conceding that there's basically not a substantive enough basis for the virtue of ethical persuasion that makes it inherently part of science. And then, science isn't especially distinct in this way from any moral tradition that values ethical persuasion, and then your tribe loses some of its unique sense of popular appeal, and then society won't be as easily coerced into the shape you want it to be. And you understandably wouldn't want that.
You said in a cousin comment:
"It [science] is no more (or less) a religion than what we have now."
And I think this applies here also and flattens out the appeal to ethical persuasion into less of a rigid, dogmatic declaration of "reality". It's rather that you want to be ethically persuasive in your reporting and discourse of what we try to agree upon as scientific evidence, which I think is good of you as a matter of faith and instinct, but I do not accept as self-evidently inherent to the epistemological basis of science itself nor necessarily to reality if we try to approach this rationalistically and divorce ourselves from appeals to authority.
The only other direction I can see for you is to try to bum-rush past the Peripatetic Axiom, and say that something about "reality" is somehow bypassing the fallibility of our sense-data and instinctual human appeals to authority - and therefore absolutely rock-solid, utterly unmistakable to anyone sincere... And that would be like what we call "Divine Revelation" in the metaphysics business. Anything like it is a strictly religious dogma - anyone who questions that epistemology as some branches of philosophy do, becomes a heretic, someone who needs to just embrace the model and "get with the program" already.
So if you take the p2p model seriously (for example) then you have no way to force a peer to accept an update, there is no coercion when it comes to beliefs.
All I can do is be patient and wait for others to reach the same conclusions I have. Also if people are interested (like you are) I can attempt to communicate my beliefs but I have no right. The communication may backfire into me accepting different beliefs.
What I am saying with my original comment is just that I don't believe in coercion as a way to coordinate society. I believe people would rather be persuaded (i.e. presented with information in as coherent a way as we know how to and then given free choice w.r.t. their behaviour) than coerced (threatened with censorship), I do acknowledge that there is a fine line between the two and I am not always sure how to draw it.
I think this makes a ton of sense and reflects a lot of how I try to live.
I think many people will never accept science as the guiding light by which they live their lives. Indeed, I don't - I think of it as a vey useful methodology for figuring out ways to reliably predict certain classes of behavior (a.k.a. "developing a consensus reality").
But, as JetAlone suggested, I see no way to scientifically conclude almost anything about correct personal values.
I may personally value truth, beauty, justice, empathy, and love, but it's clear to me that's not because they're scientifically validated as Good Things, nor because they've been scientifically shown to be pragmatically-optimal things to value.
If there's not an ironclad, undeniable path between the scientific method and optimal human values, then the only way to arrive at a culture where science is the shared value and ideology is coercion.
> If there's not an ironclad, undeniable path between the scientific method and optimal human values, then the only way to arrive at a culture where science is the shared value and ideology is coercion.
Let's leave the scientific method aside for now and focus on persuasive arguments as the way to change behavior (scientific method is persuasive but is not necessarily the only method to persuade someone ethically).
> I see no way to scientifically conclude almost anything about correct personal values.
Well the way I would attempt to persuade someone is by teaching them about the tragedy of the commons, i.e. when the security of the many is threatened by the incentives afforded to the individual, usually we call this pollution or corruption but I'll call it the tragedy of the commons.
Now, the persuasive argument would be that you would rather be persuaded than coerced (or that is my assumption here) but if you were to undermine the security of the whole to enrich yourself then it follows that if the whole is properly coordinated then they would balance out your gains by refusing to work with you, thereby eliminating the advantage you achieved with your actions and if you are made aware of this preemptively then your calculations change and you realize that the only way for you to gain an advantage is to contribute to the commons.
There are some assumptions in there and the argument is not completely persuasive as I delivered it here but I am trying to make a scientific experiment of sorts by building a system on these principles and seeing if the resulting economics can become more legitimate than the current system without being founded on coercion (i.e. whether people will willingly move to this new economic system because they perceive their interests better aligned with this method of assessment) ... you can check out datalisp.is, I was recently on the street and I am still flat broke (because I refuse to go against my morals - all part of the experiment ;) so this project has been crawling along, now my situation is on an upswing so I am hoping to make a lot of progress in the coming months.
