"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
Crichton's "State of Fear" is an eloquent, heavily researched and foot-noted semi-fiction book that was years ahead of what we're dealing with currently. Though it's centered around eco-terrorism, it's also an interesting commentary about pseudo "experts" in scientific fields. He left us too soon.
"Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world"
Dark matter/energy? [lol]
No one has ever seen nor measured either of these items but their existence is considered science simply because IF THEY EXISTED, they would nicely fill the holes in the current equations.
There are numerous other examples.
The point being that "science" isn't absolute nor infallible. Yet "The Science" was one of the justifications used during the Covid scamdemic to divide people into believers and non-believers.
But it kind of IS just another opinion. Science has always been opinions about data. There are many famous examples of different scientists arguing about the nature of phenomena over the same measurable data. I highly suggest Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" or Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method".
Science is not just another opinion. It is knowledge based on tested evidence. If new evidence contradicts old science, new science deals with the new evidence. Better evidence yields better science. Ignoring evidence is the opposite of science and many opinionated voices ignored the best evidence available as COVID overtook the world. That cost lives unnecessarily.
Again, there are multiple cases in the history of science where the >same data< and the >same evidence< could be and were used to support different theories. I can give quite a few examples: Newton and Young on the nature of light, Proust and Berthollet on the nature of chemical reactions. James Clerk Maxwell's theories took half a century to be accepted, Darwin knew that his theory would take decades to be accepted. Ptolemy's geocentrism was perfectly fine and practical (to this day some when Galileo came up and for no reason went against it, not even being able to explain certain physical phenomena.
He explicitly says it: "The [fringe science] authors have not been able to get their work published in the scientific journals that would have been chosen by professionals. Such journals are peer reviewed, and no reviewer would have approved the work. This is because professional reviewers have no difficulty spotting fatal shortcomings"
These people would disregard Galileo and Darwin and they're not even hiding it.
Also this is kind of irrelevant to my point. My point is that the scientific establishment often is wrong and only admits it decades later. You can't just blindly accept whatever scientists (which, by the way, is different from science itself) say, especially in social issues.
Galileo thought his strongest argument for the earth’s rotation was his interpretation of the tides, which turned out to be wrong. New knowledge proved him wrong about the tides, but other evidence showed him to be correct about the earth’s rotation. We are all fallible humans. The best among us learn from mistakes by examining them carefully.
... how? I am being very clear in my position. The mainstream science establishment is very biased and very often gets things wrong. It's always been that way, but at least in the past scientism wasn't a thing.
Thank you Eduardo Ramos, W.R. Dunn and others for this eloquent debate on scientific consensus. Very helpful for laypeople (me) as we wrestle with the issues. The best of what a comments section can be - a public square for informed discussion. And thanks of course to Ted Gioia.
Science cannot claim proof. Proof is for courts and mathematics. Science is an ongoing process of Conjecture and Refutation (Popper). It is trustable in all its manifestations as a near as can be got at the time to whatever is the focus of its enquiry. I guess it’s trustable precisely because it does not claim absolute answers but intelligent, questioned and interrogated notions. The credibility of scientific method lies, it seems to me, precisely in its ‘best guess we have’ but.... This contrasts with the ‘science proves that ....’ so often used in advertising etc. which turns science into a ‘cult’. But this is a blunt misunderstanding of science....and Feral Finster above, nothing is ever settled. I think that it can be phrased in Quine’s symbolic logic as: the negation of If p>q Where q is a theory and p is an ‘item’ of evidence.... q does not follow from p (n) but one not p means not q. Scientific method precludes certainty but it is claimed by power to lead to certainty. This does mean that truth is relative either.
I think that science is just one area in which pernicious consensus (claimed) is damaging societies.
Although I am not a fan of Popperian philosophy of science (Kuhn and Feyerabend are much better aware of the history of science and draw better, less self-conflicting conclusions in my opinion), I agree with what you said. Much of Kuhn's appendix to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is defending himself from the idea of absolute relativity: truth indeed isn't relative. Feyerabend defended what he called epistemological anarchism partly because that way it couldn't be used as a tool for evil, which implies that he means that truth isn't relative either.
I am more afraid of "scientific consensus" than I am of fringe science. Eugenics was a "scientific consensus" not 100 years ago (take a look at Rexford Tugwell and FDR), for example. Fringe science says what, the Earth is the center of the universe? I'm actually okay with that, it's not even that important, what does it matter to my life? They're skeptical about vaccines? Let them be, who cares? The scientific establishment is the problem.
I used Popper because I think he defined the logic of scientific enquiry with some precision. I didn’t go into Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos not least because I didn’t want to write an essay. 😄 But, absolutely with you.
Science is less about “data” and “evidence” than it is about experiment. If the results of an experiment can be interpreted in several ways, then more experiments are needed to settle the issue. In science, experiment is the arbiter of truth. Of course, we have allowed the soft “sciences” pretend for too long that they are something like the hard sciences. They are not yet science in the same way that a hard science is a science. They might be sciences one day, but if they are, each is a science in its infancy.
Part of the reason people were/are so skeptical of COVID science is because some of the institutions publishing COVID info are guilty of multiple points on this list. Trust has already been eroded, so it is hard for the average person to judge the authenticity of anyone, including respected scientists.
You c an trust the process of science all you want but at least in the case of Covid, science in flux should not have been used as rustication to make/enforce societal and economic decisions.
Valid point. I would assume that a big portion of science-skeptics are not actually reviewing the data themselves, they are trusting others to do it for them. Which goes back to Ted's point of the preponderance of untrustworthy sources. Including sources that were trustworthy at some point in the past...
I place the responsibility of falling into untrustworthy sources 100% on the reader. If you're not willing to actually read and study whatever the hell you're trying to debate, you are completely in the wrong. And you kinda suck too haha.
I don't believe for a second that Ted's points to protect verified scientific institutions would work, either. The history of science is gory, and scientists are just as prone to protect their own class as any other people. The scientific establishment is pretty bad, most scientists don't really know how data really works, and the incentives are all there for them to have the political position that gives them the most power.
You may think it is reasonable for scientists to have such importance, but when you realize that in the 19th century they were measuring skull sizes to promote eugenics, and even in the 1930s many eugenics were inside the American government making actual policies you start to understand that maybe scientists should pipe down a little bit. There's a tendency for scientists to get conceited as hell, their egos need to be checked at all times, because when they get power, their decisions affect millions, and COVID is a great example.
I really try to avoid politics when commenting on Ted's articles, but your comment needs clarification as to who are the "science skeptics?" Let's hope my question leads to reasoned debate...
I was referring specifically to COVID, since that point was brought up first but I was referring to literally any layperson who rejects a scientific argument. I stand by my assumption that most of those people are not actually reviewing data, and are trusting others to do that for them. No part of my comments are political
"but I was referring to literally any layperson who rejects a scientific argument"
----
This implies that a "layman" is unqualified to question anything that an official "expert" has pronounced.
This argument was used ad infinitum during Covid to shut down any questioning of social or economic decisions (e.g. closing some businesses while leaving others open) because these decisions were based on "THE SCIENCE" as pronounced by the the FDA, NIH, CDC, etc.
You may recall the advice and constant drumbeat on MSM during Covid to rely on your "trusted source", who was supposed to be any MD that agreed with the establishment position on Covid.
I can't tell you the number of times I (and many others) were challenged in respected forums like the NYT when I questioned various Covid recommendations/protocols with the retort "but are you an epidemiologist?" as if I were incapable of understanding high falutin science. [lol]
The issue wasn't/isn't the employment of the scientific method and the findings evidenced. The issue was/is those who take those findings and construct a narrative(s) that, even when shown to be in error refuse to admit error and take a different course. The creators and disseminators of the narrative(s), on the whole, are not the actual scientists involved. Science, sui ipse, is not the issue. It cannot be by definition. Science is a methodology; it is a methodology that can have epistemic implications (deep ones); but it is a methodology, nonetheless. We often conflate methodology for truth. This is a category mistake.
What you are describing is a lack of trust. The point of the article is about all the factors that contribute to a lack of trust. There are very legitimate reasons to not trust establishment institutions despite them being shielded from critique because "Science!"
“The gold standard is trust, not information” nicely sums it up. Human intelligence is so much more than algorithmic processing of big data (aka “AI”). But the general level of education has waned to such a low ebb that few folks think carefully enough to recognize this big fact. Thanks for committing to honesty. It is what any robust culture most needs and what this culture starves to meet. Every contribution helps - one hopes.
Ohtani hit 14 HRs so far this month. Pitched pretty well too.
Not sure how many Ted has hit, but it's a lot.
Part of the problem is that many people have never really wanted information.
Very smart people like Asimov (your ignorance is as good as my knowledge) and Mencken (never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people) wrote about this many decades ago long before the internet or many other factors Ted mentioned.
2 things- did Madonna really get sick and end up in an ICU? One of the biggest celebrities of the last fifty years. Judging by the lack of coverage of many media outlets, one has to wonder if it really happened.
Putin, Prizzy, and that whole coup thing. Suddenly every Opinion writer has to share theirs with you, because you know they're experts on all things Russian. A country that was, in Churchill's words, mostly an impenetrable mystery wrapped in this and that. We're drowning in content. It's all about the clickbait. NYT has so many Opinion writers now you can't even keep track of them all. Of course the new ones are mostly DEI hires. Ayn Rand, that bitch, got it exactly right with the Fountainhead. She predicted all of this.
We're in a serious quandary. The elites are self-interested. Always have been. They may or not be incompetent, that's largely irrelevant. They'll look after their own interests. But most people are rather stupid. George Carlin riffed on this decades ago, the average American's IQ and remember now half of them are stupider than that. It only seems like it's perhaps getting worse.
That college part? Most people never needed any such thing. The real education should start well before that. But they told millions that a college degree made you X number of dollars more than someone without one. So people listened and started going more than ever. Can't tell you how many people I've met who learned almost nothing in college. They knew nothing when they started. Those stats on $$$ never specified what colleges, what majors, what GPAs. Now we've got baristas and whatnot with college degrees. Never heard anyone in that situation with a REAL degree from a real school. Since I mentioned that word twice, real estate agents with degrees. So they can show you how well-rounded they are showing you closets and bathrooms. Ever chat philosophy or physics when you're looking for a place to live, whether renting or buying? Me neither.
Nice references to Isaac, H.L., and Ayn, all apropos. Regarding "real degrees" and "real schools": I spent six years in college to get a degree in architecture so I could become a licensed architect. But the vast majority of what I've used in forty-five years of being paid for my work came from what I learned in the first three before I was finished with public education. The rest came from OJT, aka experience. Also, I'll point out that a certain vocal Marxist member of The House of Representatives received a degree from a supposedly real school and obtained her experience by tending bar. Mike Rowe has some excellent insight as to how valuable those "real" things work.
Great points. There's an old joke- what do you call someone who graduated at the bottom of their med school in the Caribbean?
. . . Doctor.
I've seen slackers from Columbia and other elite schools. But I've seen far more mediocrity from places with much lower entry requirements. It's never black and white. Some are late bloomers, nothing to make one get their act together like working a dead end job after finishing high school and wondering is this the rest of my life?
But it's the same in all arenas. You can make it to the NFL playing football at Alabama State, but your odds are much better if you were good enough to get a scholarship to play for the Crimson Tide.
One of my fave quotes ever sums up our dilemma. "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." Not enough people have said curiosity. I fear it's largely something one is born with, although undoubtedly there's some aspect of nurture? My sister and I could not be less alike. Her kids- only the youngest seems to possess it.
Sometimes I think it might be the most useful way of classifying people. Is one interested in learning more, about anything, all the time? Or would they rather watch stupid videos on their dumbphones? Extends beyond nationality sex religion. Are you curious? (Aside I enjoyed just rereading Alice in Wonderland, she was a curious sort of little girl . . . )
I'm the photo by the definition of anti-establishment. I despise the fact that I had to go through years of education to get a license to do work that I'd been doing since my mid-teens. That requirement is simply a nod to the collegiate money scam and grift (my auto spell check seems to think the word grift is misspelled, go figure) system. It hearkens back to the guild system that supposedly disappeared in the nineteenth century, and it's just as corrupt.
If I accept that a license is required (I'll address that later) I posit that the ARE (Architect's Requisite Exam) should be allowed to be taken by anyone, regardless of their education or experience. I took it nine years after I graduated with no preparation. I figured that I'd do well to pass two or three of the nine part, four day exam. I managed to pass eight, leaving only the contracts portion for me to pass. I sort of wear that as a badge of honor because my brain doesn't comprehend legalese in any way, shape, or form. I passed it the next year (the exam was only offered once a year back in the day) and was deemed minimally qualified to be an architect. What it boils down to is that I'm very good at taking multiple guess exams, and the graphic sections (three parts over twelve allotted hours) are in my wheel house; the reason I became an architect instead of an artist.
In reference to license requirements: My opinion is that they're useless. I've dealt with licensed architects who are no more than bubble diagram experts who have zero idea of how a building is put together in any aspect including structurally, mechanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP), practicality, aesthetics, or budgetary. They apparently were also good at taking tests. That proves to me that the licensing, which is significantly easier today than it was decades ago, is bogus. The fact that structures like the Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome are still standing attests to that. And in some cases people are simply geniuses. In this case I'm a free market guy: Let anyone call themself an architect; if he or she sucks the word will get out, it's self-correcting.
Now, curiosity... I'm too curious and spend too much time running down rabbit holes. As my Dad described himself and me: fonts of useless trivia.
I hear you. I'm a medical doctor graduated top of my class and left really early. So much bullshit in the system and I've been anti-establishment since my earliest memories. I got sent to the principal's office at a Jewish private day school so often 1st through 9th grade they should have just had a fucking chair with my name on it. But mostly because I was bored out of my mind. Licensing is complex though when lives are at stake. Forget about the doctors who passed the exams and are simply terrible (I couldn't deal with the incompetence and indifference that's part of the establishment), you don't want to contemplate the folks who couldn't pass the exams and still want to practice medicine. Aside, I maybe anti-E, but don't get me started on anti-vaxxers. We learned about a ton of diseases that nobody I know has ever claimed to have seen.
Problem with my anti-E thing is I always loved music and went to NYC for college because of that, but back then I was stuck between two worlds. Classical piano that I was quite good at but thought practicing five hours a day was ludicrous. That was what the best teacher in town said was required during my audition as an absolute condition for studying with him. Fourteen years old and supposedly headed for Carnegie (one of my cousins is arguably the best living violinist on the planet, his sister is "merely" a Steinway pianist). But into jazz and rock and far too stiff to know how to really improvise and just jam, something shared by most classical folks. I started really putting it together first on guitar then on piano, and am thinking about making my "debut" at the age of 55.
Fuck the establishment, mostly. But we don't want buildings falling down either. Those guilds preserved and passed down a ton of information. To some extent all hell breaks loose when you let everyone join the club. Organic chemistry is the weeder class, I'd venture that less than one percent of doctors ever think about the subject and those are only the ones doing certain research in biochemistry. I'd also say that the ones that struggled to pass the class are the ones mystified by a lot of the math and physics necessary to understand intensive care.
I wonder if Ted has thoughts about the musical "guild." And if shamans lost their roles if for whatever reason they just didn't have the requisite musical skills and gifts. That indigenous thing about how everyone can dance and sing isn't exactly true.
Wow, that's a lot to digest. I'll address the falling down buildings first. I had the displeasure of working with a bona fide (there goes the spell check again, which thinks I'm misspelling words) licensed AIA toting architect who presented a plan and elevations for a building that had had an elevated tower element for which she neglected to provide support at one corner or the tower because it "was in the way..." The same person was doing a tenant finish-out for the same client and, instead of dealing with the existing structural grid, decided a column had to be removed. She apparently believed in the mythical sky-hook that provides support in these cases. As the saying goes: you can't make this shit up. Concerning the AIA, I've been licensed for nearly thirty years and have only been a member for two of those years because my employer paid for my membership, and also made sure continuing education was provided at no cost, which is important because the AIA requires six or more hours than what is required by (in my case, Texas) states' licensing rules. Minor rabbit hole here: Continuing education is a joke, every day of work is continuing education because there's always something you have to research in order to complete the design and construction of a project. Back to the AIA, it's only a social networking apparatus, and I have zero interest in that. And finally: Architects should never responsible for a building falling down, that's why any structure to which the public has access will also have its structure designed by a licensed structural P.E. And a post script on the subject. I know that FLW didn't graduate with an architectural degree from college, and didn't even bother to graduate from high school. I never took the ARE, but designed the Johnson Wax Headquarters with its "lily pad" columns, which, in required testing, supported five times the building inspectors' required twelve tons. There are photos of FLW kicking out the shoring members while standing under the loaded column. Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, which is (or was, I'm not sure) the second-most recognized building in the world after the Taj Mahal. Not too bad for an "uneducated" architect.
Next up: music. I absolutely love music from a truly eclectic perspective. I'll listen and enjoy any type, with the following exceptions: rap/hip hop, opera (which my Mom loved), and twangy country. And I envy those who can produce it by instruments, voice, and writing. I have zero capability with any of those things. Maybe I could write a lyric, but that's about it. So, in short, I envy you whether or not you've made a career of it.
And last on the list is "anti=vaxxers." That's a pretty broad term. I received small pox and MMR vaccines after I was born, but have become skeptical of the myriad vaccines that are pushed by our government apparatus and their cronies in Big Pharma. Requiring children to receive a huge number of different vaccines that have been found to cause problems. I'm old enough, and you're probably old enough to have been able to be spared having been required to receive those. And, wonder of wonders we're still here without, at least for me, having been afflicted with any of the spectrum of diseases that the vaccines supposedly would have prevented. Interestingly, my pharmacist suggested I should get a shingles vaccine, even though I've never had chicken pox, and I can't have that vaccine because it's created with a live virus which I'm unable to have, being a double transplant recipient, and therefor immunosuppressed. Finally, with this topic it's impossible to not speak of the mRNA vaccines that were mandated by our betters to save us all, only to have been found to be especially dangerous to young men, and well as the reproductive capabilities of young women. There was, and continues to be, too great a financial incentive for the manufacturers and those supported by them for anyone to not at least question whether the vaccine should be administered without having been tested in long-term, peer reviewed, double blind studies.
In salutation I will say that math, and particularly physics should be considered everyone's best friends, closely followed by nature and the arts.
P.S. I wish you a wonderful day celebrating the one hundred forty-seventh birthday of the greatest country ever created.
Know I'm commenting weeks late but loved your comment, esp. anout the woman who was willing to make structurally bad decisions. Because of regs and good training, stuff in the US seldom has a fail, which could lead to overconfidence.
I’m less concerned about those who learned nothing at “college” (I’m not American, so this term is unnatural for me) than those who evidently have stopped learning, regardless of when that death of their minds took place.
Elites are unavoidable (that's also something Rand got right), all we can hope for and demand is that they're healthy. The scientific establishment is a horror show, anyone who's worked with science knows how unrealistic the sense of self importance these people have is. And they're dangerous: not too long ago, in the late 19th and early 20th century, scientific eugenics was a thing. Would erasing entire races be justified because of science?
It's also worth remembering that quality information has always cost money. A working man who bought a cheap newspaper every day was still shelling out a significant slice of disposable income over the course of a week.
The disaster happened in the late 90s when news outlets began offering website content on a free-but-advertising model. The public has been trained in subsequent decades to think news content should be free -- and you get what you pay for.
Not to mention navigating the maze of pop-up ads, newsletter offers, subscription requests, passwords, logins, cookie preferences, and other garbage is seriously screwing up my attention span for what little actual content is left. Yeah I'm ready for newspapers and magazines again. I miss the living room drowning in the Sunday paper, strewn about with cats and dogs enmeshed.
Newspapers always depended on advertising. They wanted to keep their advertisers happy, but it didn’t influence coverage much. Depending instead on subscription revenue or click-bait headlines also leads to bias because the editorial focus leans to focusing on what the subscribers want, so NY Times and WaPo readers get liberal bias (where even earthquakes are linked to the ‘climate emergency’ and every problem is related to race), and WSJ is biased to its conservative subscriber base. There isn’t much neutral news now, so for balance either read all of them or none.
James Caan attributed his success to his father’s advice: “Look at what the crowd does - and do the opposite.” Here it’s more than just the crowd, it’s every system and incentive. And Ted delivers the heat again 🔥
Spot on, and grim. As a professor, I face that awful number 20 a lot, and it affects the faculty (such as we are) as much as the students. I feel that I can just, sort of, feel out our digital library systems to do my work with instincts honed in paper libraries, and even that is difficult. My students who have never know anything different, are trying to learn without the shaping tutelage of those wonderful structures of shelves and stacks, and (for all the benefits of digital access) there is a real intellectual cost, a contextlessness.
I've been an academic librarian for 40 years. I struggle against administrators who believe that free iPads and digital subscriptions are not only a more affordable substitute for our historic, carefully curated stacks, but an improvement on them. Have they never sat on the floor of a library, surrounded by piles of books, completely subsumed in the richness and variety of knowledge?
In journalism, outsource the editing and subedit functions, preferably off-shore, so that journalists and editors no longer know each other. Some Australian newspapers did this about a decade ago.
Perhaps another one to add to your list (No. 31): Censor and suppress any information that is contrary to the “elite agenda,” even if it is demonstrably true, and publicly shame and shout down the truth-teller to scare others from trying to expose the truth.
And willingly elect the most corrupt and senile president in US History- Joe Biden- who is bent on destroying America with millions of third world drug dealers and refugees from corrupt countries so they can do the same for America.
Seeing the two replies following your comment sums up nicely what Ted is talking about. Simon Zabell and Warren Wind (by the way Warren.....were your parents that stupid, that they thought with a surname of 'Wind', 'Warren would be a good choice for a first name? Let's hope you never had a speech impediment and difficulty pronouncing 'r's). Wind and Zabell both think the 'news' and 'facts' they have consumed are the 'truth'. There is a reason why in almost all 'democratic' countries there is a 'left' and a 'right'. If you control both, then you can keep the idiots at loggerheads with each other so you can wield power.
Yes, so thankful that this is a safe haven where freedom of speech is valued and not censored like so many small minded people would want. Hey Simon, how much do you want to bet that if my comment was one you agreed with- you would be fine with it, right? When did having an opinion about something make it "unsafe"? Exactly.
Good point, We can't have people expressing their opinion with free speech. But I do agree with you. Corporate corrupt politicians that protect multi-national corporations of their fraud like RIGHT WING corporate pawn Biden should go away. I only wish. BTW, I FINANCIALLY support the honest broker because he is an artist who understands the importance of artistic and personal expression. I appreciate being able to express myself without being cancelled as you would prefer.
This trend has been going from the moment big companies learned how to use the internet. Every information of value has started to cost a lot of money. And this tendency was started by Elsevier who hijacked scientific publications. Retreating governments who apparently cannot understand the value of an educated populations have done nothing - for decades- to enable people to educate and emancipate themselves.
We’ve been heading for a new Medieval period for a while and it’s not going to stop. The key is that there is no authority on knowledge. Us educated people may laugh about a dumb journalist for a large British newspaper who - last year - spoke their surprise about the award going to an unknown blues artist - that was Bonnie Raid!! - but that person has the job and power of knowledge comes with it although they have no real knowledge.
Another interesting observation is that while China is going more 1984 with AI on every camera on every street corner, the West is going Brave New World where people are drowned in the river of crapology you described so well.
I am still naive enough to get disappointed by the stupidity of society and about things not working, breaking etc. Our Windows and Apple PC’s are less reliable than when XP was around!
And let’s not forget the unseen influencers that have ensured the world does nothing to stop climate change, a truth resulting from 150 years of quality scientific work. The real influencers are lobbyists and business associations and they do a million times more damage than that girl with the blown up lips and the pink tights. I guess you know about the big sugar misinformation scheme?
This is gonna be a tangent off a minor point you briefly make and kinda breeze by, so take that for what it's worth.
"The world" can do nothing to "stop" climate change, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to make money or gain power or both.
The only thing an individual can do is position himself to benefit from the inevitable consequences. The cake is already in the oven. Your job is to make sure your family gets a slice when it comes out. Screaming that the oven is too hot, or that the cake is too sweet, is completely pointless. Fiat accompli, my man. As an Ohioan and a landowner in this state, I stand to benefit greatly from the inevitable drying of the American southwest. Think like me, you will be happier. We are installing cisterns and planting figs, peaches, experimenting with bananas, planting native shrubs and bushes that have undiscovered culinary potential, buying cheap cast off land that no one sees value in.
Related to this point, I encourage you to read read Wendell Berry's Think Small. Stop asking "the world" to do any work for you. Stop placing your hope for the future in collective action, it's not gonna happen. If you see a problem and think "other people / the government / international organizations should do something about this", you aren't gonna make it in the new climate paradigm.
Go do what you can do for your family. Change your own lifestyle to position yourself appropriately. Buy real estate in Alaska and Greenland. Be more selfish, your grandkids will thank you.
I think you mean “self-reliant.” I don’t think “be more selfish” is a notion Wendell Berry would endorse. More to your point, though, he would absolutely encourage you -- not to find your tribe (an inherently ephemeral relationship that doesn’t exist IRL) -- but to find your community and embed yourself there. Raise a family. Make friends. Be neighborly.
And resist the mining companies (actual and virtual) that would strip the living soil from your land and your soul.
Thanks guys. You’re right about positioning. But indeed climate change is only a part of the onset of new medieval times. And when you’re in it you don’t worry, you act.
Yes, you are right, that is crude verbiage. The sentiment I am trying to convey is to put your family and your community first. I can't stop global warming, but I can experiment with crops that becomes commercially viable in a warmer climate. I can buy land around the great lakes. I can protect my family.
Mining is a vitally important industry that makes modern life possible. You cannot simultaneously oppose mining while enjoying the trappings of modern life. The eco folks drive me crazy in this regard. They want electrification, but oppose lithium extraction and natgas pipelines. Utterly nonsensical.
There’s mining and there’s mining. I was alluding to Berry’s deep and abiding opposition to the coal miners who (as he tells it) stripped the hills of Kentucky, poisoning the water and destroying the topsoil, either actively or through neglectful remediation practices. Poor agricultural practices also contributed to the erosion of the land.
I suspect he would also question the supposition that the preservation of modern life at any cost is desirable, but it’s safe to assume very few people want to go back to a materials economy based on stone, wood and metal from the occasional meteorite. Granted, then, that mining is vitally important. But, like any industry that has “externalities”, it does need to be regulated so as not to harm the community.
Of course, regulation means community action so I guess, in the end, we can’t get away from thinking about politics and the proper role of government.
The cake is in the oven, but if you think you’re going to be growing bananas in Ohio by 2100 you are dreaming. Bananas cannot survive freezing and the average lowest temperature in Ohio is now -6 °C, the worst case warming is predicted to be 5 °C by 2100 and current track is half of that so your grandchildren will still be freezing there in the winter.
Take heart brotha. The critique is sharp and I’m feeling you on every point. But you of all people know that the latent human potential for truth and beauty will always present formidable opposition to the stifling forces afoot in culture, society and the economy. You know that because of jazz. Let the bastards try to baffle us with BS. Some people know better.
As a jazz musician, I agree with you. But when I look around at the majority of my colleagues I see a lot of conformity and toeing of the authoritarian line. Jazz musicians back in the day were individuals, and they were setting trends, not copying them. But at least we've got the back catalogue.
Treat the medical community like cigarettes. Start with no medical advertising. Zero , and that is a good first step to getting off cigarettes and the media merry go round
This article is very on-point and resonates with my experience. It reminds me of David Foster Wallace's work, which posits that in the (then) future (our present, clearly) information will become so voluminous and of questionable veracity that people will essentially have do meta fact checking by essentially relying on a handful of trusted sources to curate what they see to prevent drowning in nonsense. Neal Stephenson's novel Fall has a similar concept but more literal: the web of the 2040s and on becomes so polluted wealthy people *literally* pay low wage assistants to manually scrub their personal version of the internet they interact with, while everyone less fortunate just has their brains melted by a torrent of AI-generated spam, porn, propaganda and worse
The best antidote, I think, to “drowning in nonsense” is to cultivate independent judgment by wide reading and careful thinking. Nonsense then becomes not so hard to detect. We should be less indulgent of adults wallowing in lazy nonsense. Once upon a time the inexperienced sought guidance from sources of earned trust.
Ted, while you do not explicitly say this, the list at least implies that all these phenomena are imposed top-down with malicious intent. Some, to me, appear emergent bottom-up, such as our consumption of short form content, or the rise of the influencer-class. Just humanity being human?
Fantastic list, and so much that I agree 💯 with. Thank you!
#31. When govt intel agencies secretly payoff hundreds of mainstream media editors, journalists and anchors to spread their propaganda in support of forever wars, intervention in foreign affairs and elections, and protect the interests of big oil and pharma, and at the same time discredit and minimize any dissenting opinions.
And treat scientific data as being just another opinion, or dismissing it, when it comes to treating infections like COVID.
"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
Michael Crichton
Crichton's "State of Fear" is an eloquent, heavily researched and foot-noted semi-fiction book that was years ahead of what we're dealing with currently. Though it's centered around eco-terrorism, it's also an interesting commentary about pseudo "experts" in scientific fields. He left us too soon.
"Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world"
Dark matter/energy? [lol]
No one has ever seen nor measured either of these items but their existence is considered science simply because IF THEY EXISTED, they would nicely fill the holes in the current equations.
There are numerous other examples.
The point being that "science" isn't absolute nor infallible. Yet "The Science" was one of the justifications used during the Covid scamdemic to divide people into believers and non-believers.
Science isn't intended to be absolute or infallible.
"Because Science(tm)" is presently used as an argument from authority, the PMC version of "The Bible States".
But it kind of IS just another opinion. Science has always been opinions about data. There are many famous examples of different scientists arguing about the nature of phenomena over the same measurable data. I highly suggest Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" or Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method".
Do not turn science into a cult.
Science is not just another opinion. It is knowledge based on tested evidence. If new evidence contradicts old science, new science deals with the new evidence. Better evidence yields better science. Ignoring evidence is the opposite of science and many opinionated voices ignored the best evidence available as COVID overtook the world. That cost lives unnecessarily.
Again, there are multiple cases in the history of science where the >same data< and the >same evidence< could be and were used to support different theories. I can give quite a few examples: Newton and Young on the nature of light, Proust and Berthollet on the nature of chemical reactions. James Clerk Maxwell's theories took half a century to be accepted, Darwin knew that his theory would take decades to be accepted. Ptolemy's geocentrism was perfectly fine and practical (to this day some when Galileo came up and for no reason went against it, not even being able to explain certain physical phenomena.
Science as we know it today is basically a trust of academics, and it isn't really even something they're not aware of. Take a look at 't Hooft's take on "fringe science": https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/fringe-oct-2017.pdf
He explicitly says it: "The [fringe science] authors have not been able to get their work published in the scientific journals that would have been chosen by professionals. Such journals are peer reviewed, and no reviewer would have approved the work. This is because professional reviewers have no difficulty spotting fatal shortcomings"
These people would disregard Galileo and Darwin and they're not even hiding it.
Sure. But what decides the controversies? New evidence.
Also this is kind of irrelevant to my point. My point is that the scientific establishment often is wrong and only admits it decades later. You can't just blindly accept whatever scientists (which, by the way, is different from science itself) say, especially in social issues.
Sure, it is always rational to evaluate sources without bias or preconception.
Not really. I mentioned Galileo precisely because of that.
Galileo thought his strongest argument for the earth’s rotation was his interpretation of the tides, which turned out to be wrong. New knowledge proved him wrong about the tides, but other evidence showed him to be correct about the earth’s rotation. We are all fallible humans. The best among us learn from mistakes by examining them carefully.
That’s the ultimate motte and Bailey.
... how? I am being very clear in my position. The mainstream science establishment is very biased and very often gets things wrong. It's always been that way, but at least in the past scientism wasn't a thing.
You’ve proved no bias at all. Difference of opinions based on incomplete data are not biases. All of your examples are flawed
Thank you Eduardo Ramos, W.R. Dunn and others for this eloquent debate on scientific consensus. Very helpful for laypeople (me) as we wrestle with the issues. The best of what a comments section can be - a public square for informed discussion. And thanks of course to Ted Gioia.
Science cannot claim proof. Proof is for courts and mathematics. Science is an ongoing process of Conjecture and Refutation (Popper). It is trustable in all its manifestations as a near as can be got at the time to whatever is the focus of its enquiry. I guess it’s trustable precisely because it does not claim absolute answers but intelligent, questioned and interrogated notions. The credibility of scientific method lies, it seems to me, precisely in its ‘best guess we have’ but.... This contrasts with the ‘science proves that ....’ so often used in advertising etc. which turns science into a ‘cult’. But this is a blunt misunderstanding of science....and Feral Finster above, nothing is ever settled. I think that it can be phrased in Quine’s symbolic logic as: the negation of If p>q Where q is a theory and p is an ‘item’ of evidence.... q does not follow from p (n) but one not p means not q. Scientific method precludes certainty but it is claimed by power to lead to certainty. This does mean that truth is relative either.
I think that science is just one area in which pernicious consensus (claimed) is damaging societies.
Thank you for this article Ted Gioia.
Although I am not a fan of Popperian philosophy of science (Kuhn and Feyerabend are much better aware of the history of science and draw better, less self-conflicting conclusions in my opinion), I agree with what you said. Much of Kuhn's appendix to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is defending himself from the idea of absolute relativity: truth indeed isn't relative. Feyerabend defended what he called epistemological anarchism partly because that way it couldn't be used as a tool for evil, which implies that he means that truth isn't relative either.
I am more afraid of "scientific consensus" than I am of fringe science. Eugenics was a "scientific consensus" not 100 years ago (take a look at Rexford Tugwell and FDR), for example. Fringe science says what, the Earth is the center of the universe? I'm actually okay with that, it's not even that important, what does it matter to my life? They're skeptical about vaccines? Let them be, who cares? The scientific establishment is the problem.
I used Popper because I think he defined the logic of scientific enquiry with some precision. I didn’t go into Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos not least because I didn’t want to write an essay. 😄 But, absolutely with you.
Science is less about “data” and “evidence” than it is about experiment. If the results of an experiment can be interpreted in several ways, then more experiments are needed to settle the issue. In science, experiment is the arbiter of truth. Of course, we have allowed the soft “sciences” pretend for too long that they are something like the hard sciences. They are not yet science in the same way that a hard science is a science. They might be sciences one day, but if they are, each is a science in its infancy.
Part of the reason people were/are so skeptical of COVID science is because some of the institutions publishing COVID info are guilty of multiple points on this list. Trust has already been eroded, so it is hard for the average person to judge the authenticity of anyone, including respected scientists.
But we saw science developing in real time, which was imperfect and constantly in flux. Watching it made me trust science more, not less.
You c an trust the process of science all you want but at least in the case of Covid, science in flux should not have been used as rustication to make/enforce societal and economic decisions.
Valid point. I would assume that a big portion of science-skeptics are not actually reviewing the data themselves, they are trusting others to do it for them. Which goes back to Ted's point of the preponderance of untrustworthy sources. Including sources that were trustworthy at some point in the past...
I place the responsibility of falling into untrustworthy sources 100% on the reader. If you're not willing to actually read and study whatever the hell you're trying to debate, you are completely in the wrong. And you kinda suck too haha.
I don't believe for a second that Ted's points to protect verified scientific institutions would work, either. The history of science is gory, and scientists are just as prone to protect their own class as any other people. The scientific establishment is pretty bad, most scientists don't really know how data really works, and the incentives are all there for them to have the political position that gives them the most power.
You may think it is reasonable for scientists to have such importance, but when you realize that in the 19th century they were measuring skull sizes to promote eugenics, and even in the 1930s many eugenics were inside the American government making actual policies you start to understand that maybe scientists should pipe down a little bit. There's a tendency for scientists to get conceited as hell, their egos need to be checked at all times, because when they get power, their decisions affect millions, and COVID is a great example.
All fair criticisms that ought to be levelled with extreme prejudice against economists.
Mainstream economics is pure cancer. Blame Keynes for that.
I really try to avoid politics when commenting on Ted's articles, but your comment needs clarification as to who are the "science skeptics?" Let's hope my question leads to reasoned debate...
I was referring specifically to COVID, since that point was brought up first but I was referring to literally any layperson who rejects a scientific argument. I stand by my assumption that most of those people are not actually reviewing data, and are trusting others to do that for them. No part of my comments are political
Thanks for the clarification, and I appreciate your approach.
"but I was referring to literally any layperson who rejects a scientific argument"
----
This implies that a "layman" is unqualified to question anything that an official "expert" has pronounced.
This argument was used ad infinitum during Covid to shut down any questioning of social or economic decisions (e.g. closing some businesses while leaving others open) because these decisions were based on "THE SCIENCE" as pronounced by the the FDA, NIH, CDC, etc.
You may recall the advice and constant drumbeat on MSM during Covid to rely on your "trusted source", who was supposed to be any MD that agreed with the establishment position on Covid.
I can't tell you the number of times I (and many others) were challenged in respected forums like the NYT when I questioned various Covid recommendations/protocols with the retort "but are you an epidemiologist?" as if I were incapable of understanding high falutin science. [lol]
The most damaging one of all. The destruction of science.
Don't turn science into a weapon. Don't create falsehoods from science (your "opinions") to control the populous or line your pockets.
Yes, the scientific data that has not been in any way affected by items 1 through 30 on the list. Very important.
The issue wasn't/isn't the employment of the scientific method and the findings evidenced. The issue was/is those who take those findings and construct a narrative(s) that, even when shown to be in error refuse to admit error and take a different course. The creators and disseminators of the narrative(s), on the whole, are not the actual scientists involved. Science, sui ipse, is not the issue. It cannot be by definition. Science is a methodology; it is a methodology that can have epistemic implications (deep ones); but it is a methodology, nonetheless. We often conflate methodology for truth. This is a category mistake.
What you are describing is a lack of trust. The point of the article is about all the factors that contribute to a lack of trust. There are very legitimate reasons to not trust establishment institutions despite them being shielded from critique because "Science!"
“The gold standard is trust, not information” nicely sums it up. Human intelligence is so much more than algorithmic processing of big data (aka “AI”). But the general level of education has waned to such a low ebb that few folks think carefully enough to recognize this big fact. Thanks for committing to honesty. It is what any robust culture most needs and what this culture starves to meet. Every contribution helps - one hopes.
Ohtani hit 14 HRs so far this month. Pitched pretty well too.
Not sure how many Ted has hit, but it's a lot.
Part of the problem is that many people have never really wanted information.
Very smart people like Asimov (your ignorance is as good as my knowledge) and Mencken (never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people) wrote about this many decades ago long before the internet or many other factors Ted mentioned.
2 things- did Madonna really get sick and end up in an ICU? One of the biggest celebrities of the last fifty years. Judging by the lack of coverage of many media outlets, one has to wonder if it really happened.
Putin, Prizzy, and that whole coup thing. Suddenly every Opinion writer has to share theirs with you, because you know they're experts on all things Russian. A country that was, in Churchill's words, mostly an impenetrable mystery wrapped in this and that. We're drowning in content. It's all about the clickbait. NYT has so many Opinion writers now you can't even keep track of them all. Of course the new ones are mostly DEI hires. Ayn Rand, that bitch, got it exactly right with the Fountainhead. She predicted all of this.
We're in a serious quandary. The elites are self-interested. Always have been. They may or not be incompetent, that's largely irrelevant. They'll look after their own interests. But most people are rather stupid. George Carlin riffed on this decades ago, the average American's IQ and remember now half of them are stupider than that. It only seems like it's perhaps getting worse.
That college part? Most people never needed any such thing. The real education should start well before that. But they told millions that a college degree made you X number of dollars more than someone without one. So people listened and started going more than ever. Can't tell you how many people I've met who learned almost nothing in college. They knew nothing when they started. Those stats on $$$ never specified what colleges, what majors, what GPAs. Now we've got baristas and whatnot with college degrees. Never heard anyone in that situation with a REAL degree from a real school. Since I mentioned that word twice, real estate agents with degrees. So they can show you how well-rounded they are showing you closets and bathrooms. Ever chat philosophy or physics when you're looking for a place to live, whether renting or buying? Me neither.
Nice references to Isaac, H.L., and Ayn, all apropos. Regarding "real degrees" and "real schools": I spent six years in college to get a degree in architecture so I could become a licensed architect. But the vast majority of what I've used in forty-five years of being paid for my work came from what I learned in the first three before I was finished with public education. The rest came from OJT, aka experience. Also, I'll point out that a certain vocal Marxist member of The House of Representatives received a degree from a supposedly real school and obtained her experience by tending bar. Mike Rowe has some excellent insight as to how valuable those "real" things work.
Great points. There's an old joke- what do you call someone who graduated at the bottom of their med school in the Caribbean?
. . . Doctor.
I've seen slackers from Columbia and other elite schools. But I've seen far more mediocrity from places with much lower entry requirements. It's never black and white. Some are late bloomers, nothing to make one get their act together like working a dead end job after finishing high school and wondering is this the rest of my life?
But it's the same in all arenas. You can make it to the NFL playing football at Alabama State, but your odds are much better if you were good enough to get a scholarship to play for the Crimson Tide.
One of my fave quotes ever sums up our dilemma. "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." Not enough people have said curiosity. I fear it's largely something one is born with, although undoubtedly there's some aspect of nurture? My sister and I could not be less alike. Her kids- only the youngest seems to possess it.
Sometimes I think it might be the most useful way of classifying people. Is one interested in learning more, about anything, all the time? Or would they rather watch stupid videos on their dumbphones? Extends beyond nationality sex religion. Are you curious? (Aside I enjoyed just rereading Alice in Wonderland, she was a curious sort of little girl . . . )
> There is no cure for curiosity.
Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object -- Laurence J. Peter
I'm the photo by the definition of anti-establishment. I despise the fact that I had to go through years of education to get a license to do work that I'd been doing since my mid-teens. That requirement is simply a nod to the collegiate money scam and grift (my auto spell check seems to think the word grift is misspelled, go figure) system. It hearkens back to the guild system that supposedly disappeared in the nineteenth century, and it's just as corrupt.
If I accept that a license is required (I'll address that later) I posit that the ARE (Architect's Requisite Exam) should be allowed to be taken by anyone, regardless of their education or experience. I took it nine years after I graduated with no preparation. I figured that I'd do well to pass two or three of the nine part, four day exam. I managed to pass eight, leaving only the contracts portion for me to pass. I sort of wear that as a badge of honor because my brain doesn't comprehend legalese in any way, shape, or form. I passed it the next year (the exam was only offered once a year back in the day) and was deemed minimally qualified to be an architect. What it boils down to is that I'm very good at taking multiple guess exams, and the graphic sections (three parts over twelve allotted hours) are in my wheel house; the reason I became an architect instead of an artist.
In reference to license requirements: My opinion is that they're useless. I've dealt with licensed architects who are no more than bubble diagram experts who have zero idea of how a building is put together in any aspect including structurally, mechanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP), practicality, aesthetics, or budgetary. They apparently were also good at taking tests. That proves to me that the licensing, which is significantly easier today than it was decades ago, is bogus. The fact that structures like the Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome are still standing attests to that. And in some cases people are simply geniuses. In this case I'm a free market guy: Let anyone call themself an architect; if he or she sucks the word will get out, it's self-correcting.
Now, curiosity... I'm too curious and spend too much time running down rabbit holes. As my Dad described himself and me: fonts of useless trivia.
I hear you. I'm a medical doctor graduated top of my class and left really early. So much bullshit in the system and I've been anti-establishment since my earliest memories. I got sent to the principal's office at a Jewish private day school so often 1st through 9th grade they should have just had a fucking chair with my name on it. But mostly because I was bored out of my mind. Licensing is complex though when lives are at stake. Forget about the doctors who passed the exams and are simply terrible (I couldn't deal with the incompetence and indifference that's part of the establishment), you don't want to contemplate the folks who couldn't pass the exams and still want to practice medicine. Aside, I maybe anti-E, but don't get me started on anti-vaxxers. We learned about a ton of diseases that nobody I know has ever claimed to have seen.
Problem with my anti-E thing is I always loved music and went to NYC for college because of that, but back then I was stuck between two worlds. Classical piano that I was quite good at but thought practicing five hours a day was ludicrous. That was what the best teacher in town said was required during my audition as an absolute condition for studying with him. Fourteen years old and supposedly headed for Carnegie (one of my cousins is arguably the best living violinist on the planet, his sister is "merely" a Steinway pianist). But into jazz and rock and far too stiff to know how to really improvise and just jam, something shared by most classical folks. I started really putting it together first on guitar then on piano, and am thinking about making my "debut" at the age of 55.
Fuck the establishment, mostly. But we don't want buildings falling down either. Those guilds preserved and passed down a ton of information. To some extent all hell breaks loose when you let everyone join the club. Organic chemistry is the weeder class, I'd venture that less than one percent of doctors ever think about the subject and those are only the ones doing certain research in biochemistry. I'd also say that the ones that struggled to pass the class are the ones mystified by a lot of the math and physics necessary to understand intensive care.
I wonder if Ted has thoughts about the musical "guild." And if shamans lost their roles if for whatever reason they just didn't have the requisite musical skills and gifts. That indigenous thing about how everyone can dance and sing isn't exactly true.
Wow, that's a lot to digest. I'll address the falling down buildings first. I had the displeasure of working with a bona fide (there goes the spell check again, which thinks I'm misspelling words) licensed AIA toting architect who presented a plan and elevations for a building that had had an elevated tower element for which she neglected to provide support at one corner or the tower because it "was in the way..." The same person was doing a tenant finish-out for the same client and, instead of dealing with the existing structural grid, decided a column had to be removed. She apparently believed in the mythical sky-hook that provides support in these cases. As the saying goes: you can't make this shit up. Concerning the AIA, I've been licensed for nearly thirty years and have only been a member for two of those years because my employer paid for my membership, and also made sure continuing education was provided at no cost, which is important because the AIA requires six or more hours than what is required by (in my case, Texas) states' licensing rules. Minor rabbit hole here: Continuing education is a joke, every day of work is continuing education because there's always something you have to research in order to complete the design and construction of a project. Back to the AIA, it's only a social networking apparatus, and I have zero interest in that. And finally: Architects should never responsible for a building falling down, that's why any structure to which the public has access will also have its structure designed by a licensed structural P.E. And a post script on the subject. I know that FLW didn't graduate with an architectural degree from college, and didn't even bother to graduate from high school. I never took the ARE, but designed the Johnson Wax Headquarters with its "lily pad" columns, which, in required testing, supported five times the building inspectors' required twelve tons. There are photos of FLW kicking out the shoring members while standing under the loaded column. Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, which is (or was, I'm not sure) the second-most recognized building in the world after the Taj Mahal. Not too bad for an "uneducated" architect.
Next up: music. I absolutely love music from a truly eclectic perspective. I'll listen and enjoy any type, with the following exceptions: rap/hip hop, opera (which my Mom loved), and twangy country. And I envy those who can produce it by instruments, voice, and writing. I have zero capability with any of those things. Maybe I could write a lyric, but that's about it. So, in short, I envy you whether or not you've made a career of it.
And last on the list is "anti=vaxxers." That's a pretty broad term. I received small pox and MMR vaccines after I was born, but have become skeptical of the myriad vaccines that are pushed by our government apparatus and their cronies in Big Pharma. Requiring children to receive a huge number of different vaccines that have been found to cause problems. I'm old enough, and you're probably old enough to have been able to be spared having been required to receive those. And, wonder of wonders we're still here without, at least for me, having been afflicted with any of the spectrum of diseases that the vaccines supposedly would have prevented. Interestingly, my pharmacist suggested I should get a shingles vaccine, even though I've never had chicken pox, and I can't have that vaccine because it's created with a live virus which I'm unable to have, being a double transplant recipient, and therefor immunosuppressed. Finally, with this topic it's impossible to not speak of the mRNA vaccines that were mandated by our betters to save us all, only to have been found to be especially dangerous to young men, and well as the reproductive capabilities of young women. There was, and continues to be, too great a financial incentive for the manufacturers and those supported by them for anyone to not at least question whether the vaccine should be administered without having been tested in long-term, peer reviewed, double blind studies.
In salutation I will say that math, and particularly physics should be considered everyone's best friends, closely followed by nature and the arts.
P.S. I wish you a wonderful day celebrating the one hundred forty-seventh birthday of the greatest country ever created.
Know I'm commenting weeks late but loved your comment, esp. anout the woman who was willing to make structurally bad decisions. Because of regs and good training, stuff in the US seldom has a fail, which could lead to overconfidence.
Curiosity sufferer here.
Haven't yet been able to make it very financially profitable, but psychologically it's a lovely place to be.
I’m less concerned about those who learned nothing at “college” (I’m not American, so this term is unnatural for me) than those who evidently have stopped learning, regardless of when that death of their minds took place.
Elites are unavoidable (that's also something Rand got right), all we can hope for and demand is that they're healthy. The scientific establishment is a horror show, anyone who's worked with science knows how unrealistic the sense of self importance these people have is. And they're dangerous: not too long ago, in the late 19th and early 20th century, scientific eugenics was a thing. Would erasing entire races be justified because of science?
Great reference to H. L. Mencken.
Where the inevitability of elites are concerned I would encourage you to credit Michels and his “Iron Law of Oligarchy” rather than Rand.
Fair, but I also didn't say she was the first one to think about it haha. Have you read the book The Machiavellians by James Burnham?
It's also worth remembering that quality information has always cost money. A working man who bought a cheap newspaper every day was still shelling out a significant slice of disposable income over the course of a week.
The disaster happened in the late 90s when news outlets began offering website content on a free-but-advertising model. The public has been trained in subsequent decades to think news content should be free -- and you get what you pay for.
Not to mention navigating the maze of pop-up ads, newsletter offers, subscription requests, passwords, logins, cookie preferences, and other garbage is seriously screwing up my attention span for what little actual content is left. Yeah I'm ready for newspapers and magazines again. I miss the living room drowning in the Sunday paper, strewn about with cats and dogs enmeshed.
What is stopping you from simply subscribing to the paper again? Sounds like you have the solution right in front of you already.
Lol, have you seen newspapers lately? They're just leaflets now.
Newspapers always depended on advertising. They wanted to keep their advertisers happy, but it didn’t influence coverage much. Depending instead on subscription revenue or click-bait headlines also leads to bias because the editorial focus leans to focusing on what the subscribers want, so NY Times and WaPo readers get liberal bias (where even earthquakes are linked to the ‘climate emergency’ and every problem is related to race), and WSJ is biased to its conservative subscriber base. There isn’t much neutral news now, so for balance either read all of them or none.
James Caan attributed his success to his father’s advice: “Look at what the crowd does - and do the opposite.” Here it’s more than just the crowd, it’s every system and incentive. And Ted delivers the heat again 🔥
Spot on, and grim. As a professor, I face that awful number 20 a lot, and it affects the faculty (such as we are) as much as the students. I feel that I can just, sort of, feel out our digital library systems to do my work with instincts honed in paper libraries, and even that is difficult. My students who have never know anything different, are trying to learn without the shaping tutelage of those wonderful structures of shelves and stacks, and (for all the benefits of digital access) there is a real intellectual cost, a contextlessness.
I've been an academic librarian for 40 years. I struggle against administrators who believe that free iPads and digital subscriptions are not only a more affordable substitute for our historic, carefully curated stacks, but an improvement on them. Have they never sat on the floor of a library, surrounded by piles of books, completely subsumed in the richness and variety of knowledge?
Keep fighting the good fight for books! Thank you for your service. ❤️
In journalism, outsource the editing and subedit functions, preferably off-shore, so that journalists and editors no longer know each other. Some Australian newspapers did this about a decade ago.
The not-knowing is such a good insight, thank you
Perhaps another one to add to your list (No. 31): Censor and suppress any information that is contrary to the “elite agenda,” even if it is demonstrably true, and publicly shame and shout down the truth-teller to scare others from trying to expose the truth.
And willingly elect the most corrupt and senile president in US History- Joe Biden- who is bent on destroying America with millions of third world drug dealers and refugees from corrupt countries so they can do the same for America.
Seeing the two replies following your comment sums up nicely what Ted is talking about. Simon Zabell and Warren Wind (by the way Warren.....were your parents that stupid, that they thought with a surname of 'Wind', 'Warren would be a good choice for a first name? Let's hope you never had a speech impediment and difficulty pronouncing 'r's). Wind and Zabell both think the 'news' and 'facts' they have consumed are the 'truth'. There is a reason why in almost all 'democratic' countries there is a 'left' and a 'right'. If you control both, then you can keep the idiots at loggerheads with each other so you can wield power.
Please, this is supposed to be a safe haven.
Yes, so thankful that this is a safe haven where freedom of speech is valued and not censored like so many small minded people would want. Hey Simon, how much do you want to bet that if my comment was one you agreed with- you would be fine with it, right? When did having an opinion about something make it "unsafe"? Exactly.
A safe space from reality?
Go away you right wing idiot!
Good point, We can't have people expressing their opinion with free speech. But I do agree with you. Corporate corrupt politicians that protect multi-national corporations of their fraud like RIGHT WING corporate pawn Biden should go away. I only wish. BTW, I FINANCIALLY support the honest broker because he is an artist who understands the importance of artistic and personal expression. I appreciate being able to express myself without being cancelled as you would prefer.
This trend has been going from the moment big companies learned how to use the internet. Every information of value has started to cost a lot of money. And this tendency was started by Elsevier who hijacked scientific publications. Retreating governments who apparently cannot understand the value of an educated populations have done nothing - for decades- to enable people to educate and emancipate themselves.
We’ve been heading for a new Medieval period for a while and it’s not going to stop. The key is that there is no authority on knowledge. Us educated people may laugh about a dumb journalist for a large British newspaper who - last year - spoke their surprise about the award going to an unknown blues artist - that was Bonnie Raid!! - but that person has the job and power of knowledge comes with it although they have no real knowledge.
Another interesting observation is that while China is going more 1984 with AI on every camera on every street corner, the West is going Brave New World where people are drowned in the river of crapology you described so well.
I am still naive enough to get disappointed by the stupidity of society and about things not working, breaking etc. Our Windows and Apple PC’s are less reliable than when XP was around!
And let’s not forget the unseen influencers that have ensured the world does nothing to stop climate change, a truth resulting from 150 years of quality scientific work. The real influencers are lobbyists and business associations and they do a million times more damage than that girl with the blown up lips and the pink tights. I guess you know about the big sugar misinformation scheme?
This is gonna be a tangent off a minor point you briefly make and kinda breeze by, so take that for what it's worth.
"The world" can do nothing to "stop" climate change, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to make money or gain power or both.
The only thing an individual can do is position himself to benefit from the inevitable consequences. The cake is already in the oven. Your job is to make sure your family gets a slice when it comes out. Screaming that the oven is too hot, or that the cake is too sweet, is completely pointless. Fiat accompli, my man. As an Ohioan and a landowner in this state, I stand to benefit greatly from the inevitable drying of the American southwest. Think like me, you will be happier. We are installing cisterns and planting figs, peaches, experimenting with bananas, planting native shrubs and bushes that have undiscovered culinary potential, buying cheap cast off land that no one sees value in.
Related to this point, I encourage you to read read Wendell Berry's Think Small. Stop asking "the world" to do any work for you. Stop placing your hope for the future in collective action, it's not gonna happen. If you see a problem and think "other people / the government / international organizations should do something about this", you aren't gonna make it in the new climate paradigm.
Go do what you can do for your family. Change your own lifestyle to position yourself appropriately. Buy real estate in Alaska and Greenland. Be more selfish, your grandkids will thank you.
I think you mean “self-reliant.” I don’t think “be more selfish” is a notion Wendell Berry would endorse. More to your point, though, he would absolutely encourage you -- not to find your tribe (an inherently ephemeral relationship that doesn’t exist IRL) -- but to find your community and embed yourself there. Raise a family. Make friends. Be neighborly.
And resist the mining companies (actual and virtual) that would strip the living soil from your land and your soul.
Thanks guys. You’re right about positioning. But indeed climate change is only a part of the onset of new medieval times. And when you’re in it you don’t worry, you act.
Yes, you are right, that is crude verbiage. The sentiment I am trying to convey is to put your family and your community first. I can't stop global warming, but I can experiment with crops that becomes commercially viable in a warmer climate. I can buy land around the great lakes. I can protect my family.
Mining is a vitally important industry that makes modern life possible. You cannot simultaneously oppose mining while enjoying the trappings of modern life. The eco folks drive me crazy in this regard. They want electrification, but oppose lithium extraction and natgas pipelines. Utterly nonsensical.
There’s mining and there’s mining. I was alluding to Berry’s deep and abiding opposition to the coal miners who (as he tells it) stripped the hills of Kentucky, poisoning the water and destroying the topsoil, either actively or through neglectful remediation practices. Poor agricultural practices also contributed to the erosion of the land.
I suspect he would also question the supposition that the preservation of modern life at any cost is desirable, but it’s safe to assume very few people want to go back to a materials economy based on stone, wood and metal from the occasional meteorite. Granted, then, that mining is vitally important. But, like any industry that has “externalities”, it does need to be regulated so as not to harm the community.
Of course, regulation means community action so I guess, in the end, we can’t get away from thinking about politics and the proper role of government.
The cake is in the oven, but if you think you’re going to be growing bananas in Ohio by 2100 you are dreaming. Bananas cannot survive freezing and the average lowest temperature in Ohio is now -6 °C, the worst case warming is predicted to be 5 °C by 2100 and current track is half of that so your grandchildren will still be freezing there in the winter.
Take heart brotha. The critique is sharp and I’m feeling you on every point. But you of all people know that the latent human potential for truth and beauty will always present formidable opposition to the stifling forces afoot in culture, society and the economy. You know that because of jazz. Let the bastards try to baffle us with BS. Some people know better.
Interestingly, everything can be explained through jazz
As a durable and living monument to what is artistically possible in the face of commercial apathy and aesthetic mediocrity it’s pretty hard to beat.
As a jazz musician, I agree with you. But when I look around at the majority of my colleagues I see a lot of conformity and toeing of the authoritarian line. Jazz musicians back in the day were individuals, and they were setting trends, not copying them. But at least we've got the back catalogue.
Treat the medical community like cigarettes. Start with no medical advertising. Zero , and that is a good first step to getting off cigarettes and the media merry go round
This article is very on-point and resonates with my experience. It reminds me of David Foster Wallace's work, which posits that in the (then) future (our present, clearly) information will become so voluminous and of questionable veracity that people will essentially have do meta fact checking by essentially relying on a handful of trusted sources to curate what they see to prevent drowning in nonsense. Neal Stephenson's novel Fall has a similar concept but more literal: the web of the 2040s and on becomes so polluted wealthy people *literally* pay low wage assistants to manually scrub their personal version of the internet they interact with, while everyone less fortunate just has their brains melted by a torrent of AI-generated spam, porn, propaganda and worse
The best antidote, I think, to “drowning in nonsense” is to cultivate independent judgment by wide reading and careful thinking. Nonsense then becomes not so hard to detect. We should be less indulgent of adults wallowing in lazy nonsense. Once upon a time the inexperienced sought guidance from sources of earned trust.
Ted, while you do not explicitly say this, the list at least implies that all these phenomena are imposed top-down with malicious intent. Some, to me, appear emergent bottom-up, such as our consumption of short form content, or the rise of the influencer-class. Just humanity being human?
Fantastic list, and so much that I agree 💯 with. Thank you!
With all due respect – may I add one more…
#31. When govt intel agencies secretly payoff hundreds of mainstream media editors, journalists and anchors to spread their propaganda in support of forever wars, intervention in foreign affairs and elections, and protect the interests of big oil and pharma, and at the same time discredit and minimize any dissenting opinions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Next up: Ted's favorite 'clear streams' in 10 different categories. We're ready!
Yes -- ten times -- Yes.