What would be an enlightened, true, passionate scientist/engineer be like?

[charlie cho]

Someone who is going into the field. And as Leo was talking about the limits of science. I cannot throw away the idea, however, the value and prosperity science has given us throughout history. As you know, man cannot live by bread alone. But we must consider this point, also, as OSHO once have been quoted saying: "It is true man cannot live by bread alone, but man will not be alive if there is no bread at all." OSHO had been very clear to emphasize how important it is for a person to first be rooted in the Earth and live richly before becoming enlightened. I think Science is that driving force and there is true honor in that. What would a good scientist be like? Show me your opinion. 

[Leo Gura]

A good scientist would deeply understand everything I said and use it to do groundbreaking new science.

My video was not against doing science, it was against doing bad science.

[charlie cho]

@Leo Gura Sorry to be rude, deeply understanding what you said..... it's just that you said so much, for 3 videos it's hard to grasp all of it (I have watched all of it. But it felt like all you did was way more about the fucked up parts of science rather than what the right science is supposed to be) Do you have any concise pointers of what a good scientist might be? 

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, charlie cho said:

Do you have any concise pointers of what a good scientist might be?

That's a deep topic.

If you're serious, you should spend the next 5 years contemplating and studying all the points I made in the videos. This is not something you just follow a list of bullet points on. You must think profoundly about these epistemic issues as you go about learning and doing science.

No one is gonna hold your hand towards groundbreaking, genius-level science. That's your job to figure out and then convince the world of your discoveries. People will not like your discoveries.

[JosephKnecht]

5 hours ago, charlie cho said:

@Leo Gura Sorry to be rude, deeply understanding what you said..... it's just that you said so much, for 3 videos it's hard to grasp all of it (I have watched all of it. But it felt like all you did was way more about the fucked up parts of science rather than what the right science is supposed to be) Do you have any concise pointers of what a good scientist might be? 

A good scientist is the one who investigates his own nature before investigating nature. A good scientist first studies himself before studying nature for the scientist too is also part of nature.

A good scientist questions everything, including his own questions, axioms, and assumptions.

A good scientist is driven by a deep curiosity to know, to solve problems, to understand.

A good scientist is not motivated by awards, prestige, and social acceptance.

A good scientist attempts to share his discoveries with other scientists even at the cost of his own life. 

[Victor van Rijn]

Bentinho has some nice ideas about a true and spiritual scientific approach in this recent podcast:

 

[Lyubov]

the people over at MAPS who do research on using psychedelics for mental health are a good example. they build on everything and utilize science for their studies as well as personal growth and spirituality. 

[electroBeam]

Leibniz, Nassim Haramein, rupert sheldrake, ken wilber. 

The problem with being a real scientist, is you wont be able to do your research and work within a conventional institution like a university. You'd have to build your own system. So to truly be a passionate, enlightened scientist, you'd need to develop the skills to architect an university like system, but for your research. You'd need to build the research equipment, journal system, community of enlightened scientists to follow you, etc to pull it off. This is a skill which not many think of when they think about being an enlightened scientist, but its probably a skill as critical as the ability to do enlightened science itself. 

[DianaFr]

One of the main problems with being a good scientist is the fact that you need a serious infrastructure to do science in the first place. You don’t just decide to be a good scientist and start doing science at home from your laptop. You need to enter an educational system and earn at least a master’s degree in your chosen field. Then you can start to look for PhD opportunities and do a more serious hands-on research. You need to secure funding for your PhD and your research at a certain institution. You need to make sure you publish at respectable enough journals to earn your PhD degree. Then you can apply for a funding as a post doc. After that, if you’re lucky enough to secure a permanent position at a university, your ability to do research will depend on your ability to attract money for your research which will depend on your ability to publish at high impact journals. And by the way, if you started right after highschool and had no significant delays, you are already in your late thirties when you have finally finished your educational journey and become a full-fledged scientist. At least, that’s how an average scientific career looks in my field. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete my PhD thesis because of lack of funding. My field (molecular biology, genetic engineering, cell biology and biotechnology) is insanely expensive and you need to have fancy equipment and expensive reagents to conduct your lab experiments. The science funding in my country is close to non-existent, and on top of that my professor retired, our research group were split apart and I eventually left six years after I started my PhD. I was already 30 at the time and too tired to start it all over somewhere else.

What I want to say with my story is that sometimes your ideals and good intentions to become a good scientist are crashed against a system which doesn’t necessarily hold any value for you or your ideals. It’s super hard to speak about enlightment when yet another one of your research proposals has been turned down for funding, your supervisor doesn’t give a sh*t about you, you cannot get your results published because you can’t buy reagents to do the additional tests required by the journal, and you have just received a notice for salary suspension since there is no more money in your group’s salary fund. Yes, I’m complaining here, but in moments like these your high-consciousness world-changing intentions go out the window and you start asking yourself why the heck am I doing all this.

Maybe I was extremely unlucky and never meant to become a scientist, but becoming a scientist can be H-A-R-D. The practical aspects of it are sometimes totally incompatible with high-consciousness work.

[Leo Gura]

@DianaFr Of course it's H-A-R-D. If it wasn't, it would have already been done, and there would be no value in doing it.

Improving society is always H-A-R-D for this reason. This is why society evolves inch by inch, tooth by tooth, claw by claw.

It takes a hero to push new ideas through to mass acceptance.

[charlie cho]

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Edited November 18, 2020 by charlie cho

[DianaFr]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@DianaFr Of course it's H-A-R-D. If it wasn't, it would have already been done, and there would be no value in doing it.

Improving society is always H-A-R-D for this reason. This is why society evolves inch by inch, tooth by tooth, claw by claw.

It takes a hero to push new ideas through to mass acceptance.

@Leo Gura This is where I totally agree with you. There is just this one thing that bugs me. On one hand there is improvement of society, the bigger meaning behind one’s work. But on the other hand, there is the personal journey and all the limitations that must be dealt with on a personal level. And there must be a healthy balance, since you need to be somewhat well on a personal level in order to endure hardships of changing society. I remember reading somewhere (I believe it was one of physics professors who said that) that if you have pushed the wall the whole day but the wall hasn’t moved an inch, you have not done any work. This really struck me. And I have ever since pondered what the right balance between ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ should be. When ‘hard’ means ‘just keep pushing and you will eventually get there’ and when it means ‘better stop, you not gonna achieve anything’. How do you know the difference.

[DianaFr]

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

I can feel you are deeply sorrowful for how the community treated your scientific career

@charlie cho Haha, this is so obvious, isn't it? Yes, this wound is still pretty raw.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

I'm interpreting that you are saying that those "high consciousness" values won't be of any help in being a "good scientist".

I didn’t intend to come across as pessimistic as that. What I wanted to say is that before you can apply your high consciousness values in your work as a scientist and really make a difference, you could be asked to deal with a whole range of practical issues which may turn out to be bigger than you. 

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

Really reading your post, makes me feel like the whole structure will try to destroy me from doing good science.

Please, don’t be disheartened by my inability to make it. There are many others who succeed and thrive as scientists. If you are fired up and have a vision for this thing, I would do nothing but encourage you to go for it all in. Maybe don’t expect your career to be in a certain way, because you never know how things my turn out. Other than that you will still gain a lot, if only you will be willing to invest yourself.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

Because going into that job first and foremost requires much integrity, leadership, and mostly intuition rather than scientific thinking.

Definitely! If you do it seriously, you will have a great opportunity to develop a whole range of personal qualities way beyond your actual subject.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

why not study the whole of science in a more balanced way than studying one specific field?

This can be a bit tricky. Of course, you need good and broad background knowledge in order to see your work in a bigger perspective. But if you want to really contribute, you have a better chance to do that in a specific niche you’re an expert of. But it takes time and a lot of learning from many disciplines to become a good expert in one.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

1. How about studying a little bit of epistemology? I read that Einstein thought what differentiated his good students and his bad ones, are ones who take steadfast position in taking an interest in epistemology. I think that study is for really highly conscious scientists.

Certainly. Anything that can help you become better and embody your ideals.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

2. Rote learning. I feel like rote learning is the enemy of mathematics... I'm good with math, but with science..... not really. High school chemistry really made me feel hatred for it, because it felt more like memory rather than understanding. And I never had any interest at the time, so i didn't take the time to understand chemistry or memorize it. How does college teach chemistry? Is chemistry like that in college? Forget about college, is rote learning necessary to be good in the field?

Not necessarily. Being good at memorizing things is of course very helpful, especially when it comes to things like chemistry or human anatomy, for example. But is that a deal breaker if you’re not? No. It all comes down to knowing your strengths and the way you learn best and then utilizing those strengths as much as possible. But most likely some level of rote learning will be necessary.

1 hour ago, charlie cho said:

3. What is the difference between studying theory through experiment or through books? Is there a big difference? If so, then should I stop reading books and try to buy those expensive equipment to learn? 

There’s a huge difference, in my opinion. Studying theory from books is like reading about how to have fun or how chocolate tastes. Doing experiments is like having a bite of that chocolate and having that fun yourself. Through engagement, you can see how things actually work yourself and you can start to interact with them in your own way. But I may be very biased on this. I hated reading theory, it made me sleepy and tired. But I loved working in lab and spent there as much time as I could. I assume there are people who prefer other way around. You should not invest in buying your own equipment. It needs to be properly calibrated and maintained in order to give reliable results. You should enrol in college and get access to their facilities. Before you can do that, keep studying books.

[Leo Gura]

@DianaFr Of course you can't just keep pushing like a dumb mule. You gotta be very clever and intelligent about it. You gotta be like a fox.

Notice that all of reality runs on cleverness. Brute force approaches are not smart enough to solve the deep problems.

The problem you're facing is a lack of requisite variety (a cybernetics term). See my blog post video on Requisite Variety. It will explain everything.

[Chrisd]

On 17-11-2020 at 3:37 PM, charlie cho said:

 

A good scientist questions his/her own assumptions.