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NO_FUTURE

                                             February 26, 2007

  We can not know what the future
  will be like, therefore, there
  is no point in thinking about
  what the future might be like.               Since prophecy is impossible,
                                               speculation is prohibited.
  A transparently dubious thesis
  as stated... but I see this
  idea in many different places.



A case in point, Cosma Shalizi
casually mentions that he can't take
Freeman Dyson seriously at all, and                  (Shalizi's tendency
points to a review of "Imagined                      to declare in passing,
Worlds".                                             without any support,
                                                     that someone "can not
Here he condescendingly dismisses the                be taken seriously"
work as "uncle freeman's stories",                   sometimes makes me wonder
and mentions in passing an obscure                   if Shalizi can be
argument of Popper's arguing against                 taken seriously...)
prophecy, essentially because of the
impossibility of perfect knowledge
(or the impossibility of knowledge of                But then, there really
the perfection of our knowledge, or                  are people who shouldn't
something like that).                                be taken seriously...

                                                     TRAITORS_OF_INTELLECT
   Which certainly smells a
   lot like the "no future"                             GARDNER
   line again.

          TIME_MIND






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