I remember having read a science fiction novel, several years ago, that told of the encounter between an alien spaceship and a human one, somewhere in deep space. In the story, humans and aliens breathe different atmospheres and can only make contact through a glass barrier. But, slowly, they begin to understand each other. At one point, one of the Earth astronauts deepens his relationship with an alien female so much that the captain has to rebuke him, saying, "Be careful! You don't want to fall in love with a green alien who breathes chlorine and drinks hydrochloric acid." (The novel was by Soviet writer Ivan Yefremov, if I remember correctly).
We don't often fall in love with Teflon-skinned aliens, however, it happens sometimes to be fascinated by diversity, by discovering completely unexpected worlds. Sometimes, even shocking worlds that you wouldn't want to exist. But diversity always enriches you. If something exists -- and perhaps somewhere there really are chlorine-breathing aliens -- there must be some reason why it exists.
I had such an experience while reading a post published on the blog of a friend of mine, A text I can only describe as alien. Not that it is not understandable: it is written in a Terrestrial language that I can, more or less, decipher. But I cannot find a single sentence in it that is consistent with my view of the universe. Nothing that matches the data I have, or with which I might even vaguely agree. For all I can tell, it could be from another galaxy. Try reading it yourself. If you have any technical-scientific education at all, you will get the same impression. And note that it is not the only one of its kind, it is part of an onrushing wave that's washing humankind's memesphere.
Warning. I am not publishing this text to expose it to the ridicule of anyone, or even to criticize it. On the contrary, I am admired by the frankness of the author. I don't know her personally, but I am overwhelmingly convinced that she is an excellent person. If I present this text to you, it is a bit like presenting a funeral ode. This text is not a poem, but, in a way, it has poetic value. It is an ode to the death of science.
Science, yes, the science that had started with the Renaissance astronomers who meticulously, painstakingly, night after night, collected data on the motion of the planets and stars. Perhaps they really thought there were angels pushing, but that did not make their work any less meticulous. Galileo's science, the one that says that "wisdom is the child of experience." Science, the one made of "1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," the science for which nothing that is not rigorously proven is true, and where everything is quantified, everything is measured, everything is evaluated. That science we were taught when we were freshmen in college. Maybe it never really existed, but we believed in it. And if we believed in it, it existed, in a sense.
And it's all gone. I don't know what effect it has on you to see the face of one of the many TV virologists who have been raging for the last two and a half years. To me, it feels like what I would expect if I were to kiss an alien who just drank a hydrochloric acid cocktail. And I'm not the only one who has that feeling. I know many people who feel heavily cheated by the way they have been treated during the past two and a half years, always under the guise of "science." These people have lost all faith in science, at least in "official" science. It's not that they've all become Flat Earthers, but now they notice the many hoaxes they are foisting on us in the name of science. And I'm guessing that these people are not those on the dumb side of the Gaussian curve.
Unfortunately, you can also go too far with this attitude. There has also emerged a group of people who reject science outright and remake their own view of the universe on the basis of completely different assumptions. As does, among many others, the author of the text, below. And there is no way to find an agreement with them. Science (that thing we used to call "science") starts from certain assumptions, postulates if you like. You can't really prove them: you can only accept or reject them. There is no rigorously rational way to convince someone who believes that science is a hoax that it is not. It is the scientists' fault that in the eyes of so many people science has become a hodgepodge of corrupt hucksters paid by the powers that be.
It may be that, like so many other things, like Communism or the cult of Jupiter, science too has come to an end. Perhaps it had to for some reason -- perhaps someone in high places wanted to destroy it because it was annoying with its insistence on certain things, like the need to do something about climate change. Either way, that's the way it was.
So what? Well, we'll just march into the future in the dark, blindfolded, and with our optic nerves severed. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Note added after publication: I received several comments on the text below. Some said that it was a bunch of idiocies and criticized me for having reprinted it. Others said that they saw nothing wrong with it, on the contrary, they agreed with most of its statements. I am impressed (and also scared) by the depth of the chasm that separates the two positions. Will we ever be able to mend this knowledge fracture? Probably not: it looks more like a sort of epistemological version of California's St. Andreas fault. It is causing epistemological earthquakes and, eventually, one of the two sides will disappear underwater.
Translated from Italian. The author's name and Web address are withheld.
<..> It should be kept in mind that the same centers of power (military first and foremost) that ride the anthropogenic climate catastrophism and provide their solutions are the same ones that constructed the climate change "narrative," aware of the role and power that such a narrative could entail in the future.
That climate change depends on the earth's history and its natural cycles of cooling and warming is a sensible assumption since the earth is not a machine; it is a living organism that evolves, influences other organisms, and is affected by them. Then there is the responsibility of that part of mankind that has damaged and still damages the ozone layer by exploding nuclear bombs and launching rockets and satellites, that uses electromagnetic technologies capable of modifying the ionosphere, that sprays the skies with substances that shield sunlight bringing about a change in climatic conditions, as well as being harmful to all living things.
Perhaps the deception of co2 as the worst of all possible evils is revealed when we realize that it is not a pollutant, it is the main component of living things, and without it plants will not survive..... and neither will human beings, at least as long as they remain as such
One might think that it has been released in excess, but then why does earth's history show that periods with higher CO2 concentration (higher than the present one) corresponded to a maximum explosion of plant life? and then why are the "climate change deniers" who see the decarbonization program as an environmental catastrophe being obscured without allowing them a confrontation?
Once upon a time, deniers were rightly accused of being paid by oil companies to deny climate warming (later changed to change).
With the same eagerness we should have asked who the promoters of climate catastrophism were funded by (Al Gore, Club of Rome, UN, WHO IPCC, NATO WWF........ behind them we would have found Rockefeller, Soros, the British monarchy......)
I don't know what impact CO2 has on climate change, but more importantly, I don't know if the climate is changing and what the causes are, for sure the overlords of evil will never declare war on the war machine and its emissions of chlorides heavy metals radiation and co2, just as they will never pick on the rockets that take Musk's and Bezos' satellites into the sky.
They just happen to be picking on the least harmful molecule among many...... who knows, maybe someday in addition to accusing us of being too many, they will ask us to reduce the exhalation of carbon dioxide...... just as some "environmentalists" are blaming tree corpses for emitting co2 during decomposition.
Meanwhile, under the guise of energy emergency, in some parts of Europe (Romania) "protected" forests are being allowed to be cut down, the use of shale gas is being implemented, the use of coal is increasing, nuclear power plants are being reactivated, dangerous high-pollution regasifiers are being imposed, oil extraction is increasing, monstrous wind turbines and photovoltaics will be installed everywhere..... in short, we are witnessing an acceleration of the destruction of the earth and "the inevitable" increase of co2 in the atmosphere.
Well wrote a friend of mine about the ridiculous clock that marks the time until the catastrophe..... because it is also in the grotesque details that we see the deception. In this regard, it is useful to recall some famous apocalyptic statements from "authoritative" voices: UN 1989: if global warming is not reversed by 2000, rising seas will cause disasters,
Al Gore 2008: the entire Arctic ice cap will disappear within 5 years (2013).
Of these statements with "randomly" shot dates there have been countless, and all of them have been meant to instill fear, to make people familiar with a future danger and the need for someone to manage it.
This morning the sky was blue, clear, then the usual planes began to spray forming a thin veil. It is a case of saying that they make it right over our eyes! So many people have no memory of the beautiful blue skies of the past. It's as if the sky is an entity that doesn't "belong" to them, it's none of their business...... and to me this mentality looks more much more worrisome than CO2.
The reality is that they are deceiving us by pointing out one problem to hide other and far more serious ones. By turning co2 from a life-sustaining molecule into yet another invisible enemy to be fought, the evil overlords have embarked on the final confrontation against nature, which is called the ecological/digital transition. The plan to control and manipulate life, including climate, is being carried out, so we can identify climate change theory as the tool to bring it to fruition, and with the blessing of the green mass, who have become useful idiots of the 'Transcodigital Agenda'.
According to Nigel Calder's testimony, in the late 1980s Margaret Thatcher went to the Royal Society and said to the IPCC engineers, "here's the money to prove the thesis of anthropogenic global warming!" They came up with the first major report that predicted climate disasters as a result of global warming. When Calder went to the scientific press conference, he was impressed by two things: First, the simplicity and striking power of the message. Second, the total indifference about all climate science at that time and especially the role of the sun, which had instead been the topic of a major meeting at the Royal Society only a few months earlier.
Good morning Ugo! The last two years have opened my eyes to the willful manipulation of the masses by political scientists masquerading as the general purpose scientist - often a nameless expert. I am no sociologist, just a humble engineer. But when I see the attacks on ideas - no matter how outlandish, that intolerance to alternate points of view has created an era of what I call Orwellian Enlightenment. Let me share an observation... What we took for granted as vetted, debated, replicated and tested results are now suspect although we always knew many test results were never absolute anyway. The entire system requires intellectual honesty if it is to be trusted. If that honesty isn't there then there is no science, just entertainment. I recall a friend of mine in grad school who left the University because he was asked to falsify his test results. A shocking breach of ethics, but I learned something back then. Grant money and those who are dependent on it can fail us all miserably. It was the 1980's and I knew early in my career that this could happen. Spin the hands of time to today and I see it has become, sadly, pervasive. Money can and does drive the scientific method into some murky places by some unethical practitioners. Opinions now replace rigor on a regular basis maybe they always did but now I see it more and more. It is a sad state of affairs, but this has happened in the past. Galileo had that run-in with the Pope... 359 years later "Oops, we're sorry" Mary Anning and the experts in the UK who said that silly girl found a crocodile only later and after much debate - yup a dinosaur... Wegener, Al-Razi, Bruno the list is long. What scares me the most these days is not the hyperbole, or the debate among the researchers but the active censorship of our governments to ideas that don't fit the discourse. I suppose this is nothing new.
ReplyDeleteOutrageous and nonsensical claims about owning science - LOL, how does one own a method? I suppose you can sort of control a narrative, maybe that is what they mean. Science will endure, the truth simply "is". With or without validation, but censoring the debate just drives good work underground. Newton didn't publish a lot of his work because he hated the debating and arguing. It's a strange time to be alive.
I stopped arguing, debating, trying to convince or any other term you want to use with respect to climate change a looooong time ago. I'm a retired engineer and I couldn't believe all the climate deniers even among the engineering profession.
ReplyDeletePerhaps people are focusing too much on regional weather than actually paying attention to global climate. Many people still don't seem to distinguish between climate and weather. Then there is also the problem of change on a global scale that doesn't seem perceptible to the everyday person. The problem is that when it does become evident to those in doubt it will be close to over as far as any civilized future. I'll add the disclaimer - in my opinion.
I'm not a climate scientist but when I look at all the data it even looks troubling to me. Like I said, I don't argue with friends any more over climate change - I just keep repeating - climate change is not a political issue, it is a scientific issue clouded by politics and propaganda. If you aren't convinced the climate is changing and will change dramatically then time will tell if you are still alive. Meaning people above 60 may not see catastrophic collapse but many younger people will. It's possible we could see dramatic changes in the next 5 years but I'm not one of the "human extinction by 2026" people. It may be bad by 2026 but it will get much worse if we keep pumping CO2 and other emission into the atmosphere unabated.
Forty five years ago as a student I first hear climatologists discussing the "greenhouse" effect. Twenty years later with the ability to computer model we began to hear alarmist ideas that transformed into "conventional wisdom".
ReplyDeleteConcurrent as a student I learned of resource depletion models, of Hubbert and peak oil. I have observed the veracity of that theory, it "works".
Over the last two decades the debate on both has morphed into "settled science" and become highly politicised. No alternate explanation was accepted or allowed to be debated. Worse even new discoveries that didn't fit neatly into the politicised wisdom aren't allowed, even as refinements or modifications. This has spread to health science where no debate was allowed on the safety of experimental vaccines, nor the data derived post event. Our NZ Prime Minister told us that they, the official people were the only source of the "truth". Science died at their feet.
I understand what this girl writes, your eyes don't lie. White is not black, up is not down. Science begins with observation. We must learn to see what is, not what we are told.
I will argue that the real anti-science position is that of the climate alarmists.
ReplyDeleteScience is based on observing data from nature and using reason to infer physical laws from that data. The point is that all relevant data must be taken into account in order to draw relevant conclusions. Selecting an extremely small subset of data and pretending to draw relevant conclusions from that is not doing real science. Which is precisely the case with climate alarmists as they restrict their analysis to temperatures, CO2 levels, etc. during the last 2,000 years, which makes their conclusions, while factually correct regarding the future evolution of temperature, wholly inadequate for practical purposes.
Because for practical purposes humanity has to choose between realistically possible future paths, and if you look at the temperature record for AT LEAST the last 420,000 years [1] you immediately see that a long-term stable state at the levels of the last 2,000 years is NOT a realistically possible future path. Rather, EITHER we break from the quaternary glaciation cycle UP by burning all fossil fuels that we have available, OR we are doomed to fall DOWN into a future glacial period.
Therefore, a really scientific approach to climate change would not consider only the consequences of future warming but also the consequences of falling into a future glacial period, and choose the least bad path. Looking at the information at the Wikipedia article on the Last Glacial Maximum [2], all of it science-backed, it is clear that the prospect of a future glacial period is MUCH worse than the realistical prospect of warming, where by realistical I mean it takes into account the finite amounts of coal, oil and natural gas that remain to be extracted and burned. Let me quote a paragraph of [2]:
"During the Last Glacial Maximum, much of the world was cold, dry, and inhospitable, with frequent storms and a dust-laden atmosphere. The dustiness of the atmosphere is a prominent feature in ice cores; dust levels were as much as 20 to 25 times greater than now.[11] This was probably due to a number of factors: reduced vegetation, stronger global winds, and less precipitation to clear dust from the atmosphere.[11] The massive sheets of ice locked away water, lowering the sea level, exposing continental shelves, joining land masses together, and creating extensive coastal plains.[12] During the last glacial maximum, 21,000 years ago, the sea level was about 125 meters (about 410 feet) lower than it is today.[13]"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum
I forgot to quote a study [3] which backs what I said in my previous comment:
ReplyDelete“Even without man-made climate change we would expect the beginning of a new ice age no earlier than in 50.000 years from now – which makes the Holocene as the present geological epoch an unusually long period in between ice ages,” explains lead author Andrey Ganopolski. “However, our study also shows that relatively moderate additional anthropogenic CO2-emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are already sufficient to postpone the next ice age for another 50.000 years. The bottom line is that we are basically skipping a whole glacial cycle, which is unprecedented.”
So, unless you bet on the world ending within the next 50,000 years as a result of divine intervention, you should be glad that, by burning fossil fuels, mankind has been able to postpone the onset of the next glacial period for at least a further 50,000 years. "Skipping a whole glacial cycle" may be unprecedented (*) but good, very good.
(*) Not really, because there was no glaciation since 289 Mya until 34 Mya, and life, particularly mammal life, did very well during that interval. [4]
[3] https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/human-made-clima
te-change-suppresses-the-next-ice-age
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
I still believe that the main problem when talking about climate change is that it has been used politically to prepare peak oil. This created a situation where people were lost because complex policies were made to reduce the energy consumption of houses and promote renewables, but nothing was done regarding cars and airplanes, which would have been the hanging fruits when aiming to reduce CO2 emissions.
ReplyDeleteThe further problem of these complex policies is that they were only available for people with some fortune, you had to own your home or your company to be able to enjoy it. I just ordered the cheapest EV car on the market, and even with the subsidies, it is way too expensive for somebody with a low income, and has a real autonomy around 150 km which is not enough to go back home during the holidays. The new regulations on the cars in the EU increased the size of the cars because efficiency is calculated per kg of car.
So, since people are not completely stupid, they realize that there is a problem with the science served by the government and reject the whole package because they probably can't tell between the good, the bad and the ugly which one is better.
Etienne
Ugo,
ReplyDeleteI don't find anything to disagree with in your friend's blog post. But I also don't see anything there which amounts to a dismissal of science. On the contrary, it's a call to recognise the obvious corruption that has taken hold of science. On by acknowledging that corruption can we think about fixing it.
On the specific question of climate change, I disagree with you that "science says we need to do something about climate change." Firstly, science does not set goals. Secondly, climate science relies on irreducibly complex models which means there is always a level of uncertainty about the accuracy of the model. That's true of the model itself i.e. what will happen with the climate and even more so of the models of second order effects i.e. what will happen to society when the climate changes.
When you have inherent uncertainty, you should diversify your exposure. In that sense, we should "do something about climate change" but in my opinion that's not a question of science but of wisdom.
Agreed, Simon. I don't see anything unscientific (or anti-scientific) in the quoted post, though the post does mention some things that I know nothing at all about. But certainly, nothing that sounds stark raving mad. If Ugo wanted to convince us it was unscientific/anti-scientific, he really should have dissected the post and told us exactly how and where it was so. As is - nope, I see nothing.
DeleteThanks, Irena. Thanks Simon. You (and others) inspired me to add a note to the post.
DeleteUgo, just when I couldn't find anything to agree with in your friend's blog post I came across
Delete"I don't know what impact CO2 has on climate change, but more importantly, I don't know if the climate is changing and what the causes are"
Sorry Ugo, you should probably delete that last comment of mine...I don't mean to incite
DeleteI see nothing wrong with your comment. The sentence written by the lady can be read as an honest statement of ignorance. But, if it is an honest statement, she should also be willing to learn. Which I think I am justified to doubt on the basis of the rest of the post!
DeleteAs a comment to Simon and Irena, the problem with the text I reproduced is not with the validity of single statements. It is an epistemological problem and, as such, the text cannot be discussed or criticized in terms of being true or false. Truth, as we all know, depends on the initial assumptions. Let me make an example. About CO2 a scientist would say
Delete"We observed a correlation between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and temperature during the past two hundred years or so. This observation agrees with what we know of the properties of the CO2 molecule and therefore we think it is highly probable that the observed global warming is the result of the increasing CO2 concentration. For this reason, we recommend to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted in the atmosphere.
Now, let's see what the lady says on this point:
"I don't know what impact CO2 has on climate change, but more importantly, I don't know if the climate is changing and what the causes are, for sure the overlords of evil will never declare war on the war machine and its emissions of chlorides heavy metals radiation and co2, just as they will never pick on the rockets that take Musk's and Bezos' satellites into the sky. They just happen to be picking on the least harmful molecule among many...... who knows, maybe someday in addition to accusing us of being too many, they will ask us to reduce the exhalation of carbon dioxide...... just as some "environmentalists" are blaming tree corpses for emitting co2 during decomposition."
You see? There is no epistemological contact of these two statements. It is impossible to criticize one of the two on the basis of the other. Two different planets: little green men vs. big pink women. Can't find a common language.
Ugo,
DeleteI agree. Your friend's text is written in a stream of consciousness style and not as an ordered argument. You might say it has nothing to do with science. If that's true, I still don't see how it is a negation of science. After all, it's just one piece of writing. Maybe your friend was feeling creative that day and spends the rest of her time doing hardcore science research. Scientists are perfectly capable of ranting incoherently on the internet. I've seen it before :)
Nevertheless, I think we can clearly interpret her main points in the passage you quoted:
1) There is uncertainty about the climate science and there is a non zero chance that the models are entirely wrong [I agree with this. Climate models are irreducibly complex. Any outcome between ice age and full melt of the ice caps is possible and in my opinion we should consider all outcomes even if most models predict some outcomes as more probable than others].
2) There is a fixation on carbon emissions that aligns with political interests while other problems of potentially equal or greater magnitude receive no attention [I think this is uncontroversial].
3) There is mass hypocrisy around who has to pay the costs for carbon reduction [I think this is uncontroversial].
So, again, I don't see how any of this is mutually exclusive as you seem to think.
Allow me to disagree, Simon. It is not a question of style. Let me repeat that it is a question of epistemology. Once someone decides you can state such a thing as "They just happen to be picking on the least harmful molecule among many" then no reality-based discussion is possible. It is over. Two epistemological approaches that are completely incompatible with each other. One person is speaking koala and the other person is speaking kangaroo (no offense to kangaroos or koalas intended). But so is the human mind. Strange entity, enclosed in a thick bone box. It is so desperately self-referential! It loses contact with reality so easily -- easily duped by the images that arrive to it through a thin nerve channel, in turn connected to sensors, connected to a network of transmitters beaming to it all sort of fake reality signals. It has little chances to perceive the real world. And usually it doesn't. Probably, we have to consider it a failed experiment by Gaia. She will probably stick with regular holobionts for processing signals after we are gone, and she would be right. After all, she IS a holobiont.
DeleteBTW, just for the chronicle, I never met this lady. I know of her only this piece that was published on the blog of a friend of mine. People who know her tell me she is a wonderful person, and I fully believe that. Both kangaroos and koala are wonderful creatures. They are just very different from each other.
A VW regional executive where I live - in effect: "The moment we stop high spending on marketing it, the VW Up! sales go immediately back to Zero - therefore, we decided to pull it"
ReplyDeleteClimate Change movement never called for stopping hysteria-ridden weapons manufacturing worldwide - no matter how it is fossil fuels-extensive [imagine the energy required to build a single tank that weighs tens of tonnes]...
It never called for stopping wars, too
The great and infamous Al Bartlet has touched on the subject and has highlighted an anomaly: "War is good" [see it on the internet]...
That has been said decades ago - before the statement in thermodynamics, published last decade, proposed that - "In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most"...
That means - if you choreograph a war, the energy burned in the process is much more than the energy saved later by killing all those dead people - victims of the war.
War always requiring energy greater than if nobody has been killed in that war - even if they last for few several decades longer - alive.
There are reports on the internet claim the US has burned 1/3 of all its oil reserves animating the choreography of what's called the WW II.
Today, ITER think they are building a smaller Nuclear Fusion sun on earth.
Instead, they are busy building bridges - no different from bridges the Romans and Abbasids have built centuries ago - and we still can see some of them standing ...
Climate Change movement think they are working on the reduction of burning fossil fuels - where in fact they are turning blind eyes on burning more fossil fuels - manufacturing weapons, waging synthetic wars and building more bridges.
Climate Change movement should call for stopping manufacturing weapons, stopping wars and stopping building more bridges....
When no more fossil fuels to burn owing to depletion - you'll see our Western Civilisation and its Climate Change movement - pulled out, like VW Up! - by physics.
Wailing.
That's a disgusting misreading of Bartlett's comment on war and you know it.
DeleteCorrect. Bartlett never said that!
DeleteBTW, wailing commenter, wait for next post discussing nuclear fusion for a new generation of weapons!
DeleteYou guys, Chemists, Ugo, proved much more dangerous than Physicists. Chemists, actually, who are spending months prior to refuelling a nuclear power plant - calculating and churning numbers, not Physicists.
DeleteN. power plants wouldn't have been possible to work at all without one of the most old professions on earth - a Chemist.
This can be what's really behind the failure of N. Fusion - No Chemistry involved to trick humans with Chemists' smoke and mirrors - ha ha ha...
Chemists are so dangerous - they can trick humans to think Nuclear is Physics - when it is actually - Chemistry? Come on, Ugo, confess....
DeleteWhen there are no more fossil fuels to burn and depletion happens believing in science, or not, won't matter.
But as I roast small birds over a wood fire along the freeways of our vanished civilization. I hope brother wanderers of the wastelands know what science is when I share my interstate ortolan.
If you think about it, it's logical, our real rulers in society manipulate us to retain their absolute power over us, so keeping us fooled is their easiest tool and how better to scam people by gaining their trust. They therefore hide behind the experts people respect, by corrupting them and suppressing alternative views, so in profession after profession, we see them discredited until they even become a symbol of dishonesty.
ReplyDeleteThink of how (differing according to country) the police, judiciary, military, scientists medical establishment and yes, even bankers at one time used to be respected and trusted before being used as a tool for crime.
Unfortunately, it is the condition of human society, that power attracts the worst and corrupts even the best, while absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Yes, Hugo, I have no clue what she is talking about. But you can get the same word salad by listening to Janet Yellen, Christine Lagarde, or Jerome Powell. Economics is not exactly a science, yet they rule the world. They might as well come out in public wearing wizard hats, carrying staffs and wands.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when we put up two solar panels and stop using fossil fuels, are you still living La Bella Vita, collecting a pension, and eating Bistecca alla Fiorentina with your Americano tourist friends? If yes, then sign me up.
You are welcome to visit me in Italy anytime! If we have steak, you can have steak with us. If we'll be forced to limit ourselves to salad, we can partake that and thank our luck to have that at least.
DeleteWell firstly the text seems riddled with the usual conspira-loon nonsence where everything bad is blamed on the new world order/elders of zion. Count me in the people who do not regard it highly. Yes it will appeal greatly to the anti-fact subculture but when people at large hear this sort of stuff they disregard it entirely and arguably righly so. Crazy conspiricy theories about UFOs, world government, the British Royal family being lizards have been going around for decades and are nothing new. I think the real reason these people refuse to accept the reality of climate change is it would contradict their exisiting worldview. Surely the proper response to the decline of science is to demand proper impartial scientific rigour rather than inventing paranoid delusions about the world.
ReplyDeletePardon my asking, but what was difference between Covid and Climate change as they're presented by the media?
DeleteHello Ugo
ReplyDeleteWe were never going to do anything about global warming/climate change. Too much went to food production and the military. The leftover went largely to middle & upper classes. Even today when we hear of carbon taxes, private jets will be exempt. Instead we'll reduce nitrogen fertilizer & cattle. Its likely to trigger famines. Population reduction works, right? What was that you were addressing in earlier posts about governments deliberately killing people? The problem was real, the proposed solutions, fake.
And science in the industrial countries has indeed committed suicide. It's death throes started years ago. Hundreds if not thousands of computer simulations, ideologically driven, absent real world validation have infested even the best journals. We never took the lesson of Lysenko seriously.
For two years we have be subjected to "scientific" rule...where the science is nothing more than the orthodoxy established by the clerisy back by computer simulations. And most of it lies. Sadly, researchers too often backed the clerisy without even bothering to ask the most basic question "how do they know that?" or investigating to see if the evidence existed (where it counted, it didn't).
Science as a tool is too powerful. Others will carry on the scientific endeavour elsewhere. You are alive at a time when some of the most wondrous of discoveries took place. Take heart.
There is some provocation in your post, or maybe you are sincerely naive? If so you should read this text about trust an betrayal: https://mellob33.substack.com/p/trust-and-betrayal-how-to-destroy
ReplyDeleteI like the end of it "Mad scientists and dangerous lunatics are in charge almost everywhere, spreading fear, division, and confusion. The inmates are running the asylum. And this is putting it mildly. But don’t be fooled, there are also men behind the curtain with conscious intentions and own agenda. They know perfectly well what they are aiming for."
So why should we trust science or anybody in charge anymore? Actually, we should not and this is what some of us, perhaps many of us, have decided to do: we need to leave the boat, get out of the asylum. We will not watch tv, read neewspaper or vote anymore. We do not care what Al Gore and other minions can tell. Science is just a tool in the hands of dangerous psychopaths. Science is dead, so it is and this is probably fair enough. We do not recognize any authority anymore, weither it is science, religion, economics, politics and so on. What we suspected before 2020 has become an absolute certainty. We did not imagine that such a worldwide coordination was possible, that all the leaders would align so perfectly with the same agenda, from Putin to Trump or Biden, Xi Jinping, Macron, Trudeau, Johnson, Draghi. Not only them but also all the media and institutions in the world. Now we do know that such a thing is not only possible but really happened, what do you expect from us? Do you really think we will engage in a struggle against climate change? Are you really joking?
I read the paper by Mello. Overlong, but it says what there is to be said. Of course, we all know that "they" are serial liars, in addition of being criminals. The problems that Mello's paper doesn't cover is how is it that people are so easily swayed by evident lies. But there is an even more worrisome problem that I tried to outline with my post. Granted that we decide that what they say, let's call it "A" is false, then what is true? B? or C? or D? Or maybe 真? Or perhaps 𒍣? The lady who wrote the paper I reproduced is convinced that A is false, just like you and me. But she went off the rail with choosing what she believes as true. And I go as far as to say that her choices have been influenced by the PTBs -- they are evil enough to be able to do that.
DeleteThank you, this is a very useful addition to your article. In fact, I think exactly the same thing.
DeleteAbout Mello, I consider that he or she describes well how "people are so easily swayed by evident lies".
For example:
"If you trust someone, your guard automatically goes down, and you make yourself vulnerable for a possible breach of that trust in the future"
"When an uncertain situation, a crisis, or challenging times come, you may decide to put your life in the hands of people whom you deeply trust and rely on, thinking that they will help you survive or overcome the incoming danger. What we tend to do in these situations is we put blind trust in the ones who are above us in a social hierarchy"
"It can also be observed that the majority of the population do not think that they are responsible for themselves in everything they do, this is why they don’t bother researching things by themselves as it takes time and effort. They think that everyone has a role to play in society, and we should just, almost blindly, follow another’s lead, based on social status and the idea of credentialism. At least, this is the general and acceptable view of how society should function.
Usually, there is nothing wrong with that, and any risks associated with this approach are small, so we simply go along with the way we have set up our societies. Ask yourself this, how often do you question the mechanic who is responsible for fixing your car? Or a doctor? A lawyer ? Very few people do."
"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. ... This is due, in part, to the fact that repetition causes familiarity and familiarity distorts our thinking"
"But what needs to be pointed out is the fact that people become even more gullible and trusting when things get global, meaning that the same message is being reported by almost every major station in the world. If all main news channels speak the same voice in a coordinated fashion, then what you receive must be true, right? Of course, they would never mislead or lie to you. Why would they ?!
This is how the average consumer of mainstream media thinks. It never occurred to them that, someday, for some reason, things may suddenly change. Additionally, they never step out of their comfort zone, and this, in return, negatively affects their critical thinking and pattern recognition skills"
and there is much more in the article.
Now let's go back to your point. If "A" is wrong that does not necessarliy means that "B" or anything else is true, I agree. Or we could believe in aliens, or in dragons, or whatever.
However, when you convince someone that his beliefs are false he will lose the meaning he used to give to things and events. But what makes a human being is the capacity to create meaning. So anyone who has lost such a battle will have to find a new meaning, a new explanation for his environment . The first thing that will look convincing enough, even if it is weak, will have a great chance to be accepted. That's why TPTB are very efficient to "pick up" people whose cause has failed. They already have ready-made solutions in their drawers. They even spread the Internet with them.
The other problem is that TPTB are very good at creating false dichotomies so that no one is interested in the real issues.
In a war it is common for the arms dealer to profit from selling to both antagonists. Whether these weapons are physical or just ideas, the principle is the same. When the combatants are out of strength it becomes easy to take advantage of them.
Life in overshoot. A scientific view or the popular wishful thinking fads. Green team, black team, a matter of degrees between the extremes. One dimension. Few wear the color of a mathematical view along a new orthogonal axis.
ReplyDeleteWhere does science come from. If physics is king of science, who is queen of the purple team?
I wish the math behind human extinction was as hard to understand as the Riemann Hypothesis. But it is not.
K-Dog
Only horses get to deny math.
Hello Ugo. I have just read a book that might help explain the reasons people say and do what appears illogical. Ernest Becker's "Escape from Evil".
ReplyDeleteA bad synopsis is:
People fear the immensity of life and the totality of death, and push these fears onto hero figures and scapegoats to help them remain sane.
Heroes can be anything that promises power and immortality (like kings, scientists, wall street). Scapegoats we can all imagine (Klaus Schwab, Just Stop Oil protesters, jews, etc).
Then there is conflation between a method and the interpretation. Science is a way to arrive at the most appropriate explanation for percieved phenomena. Anyone who says otherwise has slipped into dogma. Science is never settled: things change, underlying assumptions change, and new explanations are needed. What to do with the knowledge is wisdom, not science, and this is a little thin on the ground these days...