Back in 2015 Scott Adams' blog was interesting in terms of understanding why Trump was such a great persuader. Then Adams seem to go complete wingnut and I stopped reading him.
Until recently, when I watched his complete "apology" video. I found it largely incomprehensible except for him blaming it on his penis. I almost never use the word "disgusting" but I would definitely apply it to that performance, but not because of the penis. Slandering Isaac Newton was just the icing on the cake.
I mostly just found it exemplary for its naivety. But now he's taken another "interesting" turn into poking the race bear... we'll see where that goes, if anywhere
I haven't been very interested in following that, but I did look at a video of his original comments, and I could see the point he was trying to make. He's really inarticulate and inflammatory. Intentional or not? Who knows.
"It should not have been hard to form a movement based around a simple, robust argument against..."
That is where you are wrong. All the Westerners live with several background-running mind control programs in their thinking all the time.
The purpose of which is to prevent the formation of functional movements.
For example, a lot of people believe (mind control program) that the workers used to be at the mercy of the owners of the industry and they, the workers, enacted political changes that made the State pass legislation that reined in the abuses of the capitalists pigs. The truth is different. Workers were used as part of a narrative to cartelize industry and destroy the rapidly moving free market dynamics that tend to reduce all prices and ruin the capitalists. The capitalists hate free enterprise more than anyone else. There is no security in free enterprise. But they couldn't pass laws that says: hereby all free market dynamics are to be destroyed to protect the new rich industrialist class at the expense of the working class. They needed to run a huge theater play called "the commies are coming!" so that the masses would accept getting economically slaughtered by decree.
Many people have explained that better than me, and the victims of lefty mind control still don't understand it.
This is just one example of many about why (purposely) disorganized groups have great difficulties in forming an effective movement, even in such an obvious case as the farce of covid.
Obviously, I lean to the anarcho-libertarian side of almost every issue, and I have problems seeing the "mind control" checks that probably exist in my intellectual spehere. I have detected one so far, thanks to the covid fraud: even the most motivated thinkers can fail to overcome the normalcy bias, by which I mean the need to not be a complete social pariah by diverging too much from the mandated general opinion.
Another detection: libertarians in general do not question their own bias to believe the USG plans to kill people, and therefore they swallow hook, line and sinker the GOF false narrative, and will never question it. They won't see that it is a distraction designed for them. There was never a covid or its agent pseudovirus and they cannot get over that.
And that leads me my last tangent: what moves me away from anarcho-libertarianism is the complete lack of curiosity (healthy curiosity) from other specimens of my persuasion to verify by themselves the claims of biology.
The Heresiarch Tom Cowan is far from being an anarcho-libertarian, yet he seems far more interested in preserving the life of individuals, their health, their property, their natural rights than any anarcho-libertarian who ever existed, ***precisely because*** he revises thoroughly all the "truths" of biology, including virology, immunology, cellular ultrastructure, genetics, and the fundamentalist claim of materialism in science as it is commonly understood. At least, that is my impression these days.
I think this lack of curiosity in my tribe is the tell of a mind control program. I want to overcome it. Why would anyone who aspires to live in liberty not question the scientific foundations of the Therapeutic State?
In sum, I'm aware of the difficulties in normies to organize themselves exist also, and more intensely, in intellectually driven individuals.
My basic thoughts on science, as a practicing engineer and a minister of the Gospel, are this:
The Scientific Method has one great power, the power to falsify a hypothesis. We can, for physical and chemical and mathematical, propositions confirm them false if we can find the right experiment and perform it to a sufficient level of accuracy and precision(replicability).
The Scientific Method cannot determine anything to be true, or likely, or valid. It can determine things to be false. Thus, 'Science'-knowing-is at direct odds with the Scientific Method, unless you mean knowing that something has been experimentally demonstrated to be false which no one means that when they say knowing something scientifically.
Anything that is 'known scientifically' has either been directly observed, statistically derived, or made up. 'Directly observed' is actually a pretty small group of phenomena and generally derided by the Faucis of the world as 'anecdotal'. 'Statistically derived' is mostly bullshit. Statistics that are not bullshit should be regarded with enormous scepticism. Good data is not easy to collect. My lab experience tells me that most results have more to do with experimental error than with any great truth. Good data is not cheap to collect, in time or money. No one wants to waste time or money. Once the data is collected finding someone like Brian, in the near to hand example of Immunology, who understands what it means and can report it honestly and clearly, can't be guaranteed even with time and money. The 'Right Guy for the job' is really a very elusive thing. Finding the 'Right Statistics Guy' like Igor is about as rare. Look at all the bad statistics on Alt-Covid Substack and remember that Pro-Narrative world has less talented, less thoughtful people and know that very little truth comes out of statistics. I was hella good at math in my younger days and I frequently find statistics deceptive. It's very easy to get messed up and very hard to get it right. It's easy to kick the cat but actually doing it better is not so easy.
So mostly, we believe the Science that matches our beliefs. Like all marketplaces the 'Marketplace of Ideas' has a natural tendency to monopoly. Markets love monopolies because monopolies are more efficient, less risky. They are a guaranteed ROI, and our society is terrified of risk. Science, as a guide to truth, really is just 'In Fauci we trust'. It is better if you can swap it out to, 'In Maxwell we trust', or Gauss or Dalton, but(removes engineer hat puts on preacher hat) systems and laws always fail as guides because systems and laws are smaller than and inferior to people. The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath. Adam was given dominion over creation not creation over Adam. And when you reverse it, when you make Law or Science or any system bigger and higher and better than people, made in the Divine Image, you booger it up. What is needed is some people who will stop hiding behind the Science and, shepherd the Science to the right answer. Life will always come down to a single, or at best a few, people with integrity and talent and every attempt to automate or systematize or evade that is at best a slow motion failure.
Besides totally exceeding my post in quality, this echoes my thinking, as I expressed much more crudely in a response to a comment in my Catch Up Effect post in which I defended "study cynicism":
"Humans basically form groups and share perspective and come up with a "bid" on what strategies and policies should be tried. Good, great. I think "a new study says X!" is basically a mind-virus that breaks this process down. So I think spreading cynicism about "a new study says" is an end in itself. "
So few people realize that the experimental method is for falsifying hypotheses. It's too limited and we are too ambitious to stick with it. So, we take shortcuts.
Glad you liked what I said. I really appreciate the work that you do Brian, even if it passes a lot of people off, some of us think that it is very worthwhile.
Very well rambled. I would only add that “Science” was well suited for this sort of branding because of the association with the scientific method, an empirical method for proving cause and effect relationships. The other side of that coin is the Latin root, which essentially translates to “knowledge”, and between the both, it’s fertile ground for obfuscation. The word itself is practically doublespeak, when you apply the scientific method to natural phenomenon and conduct systematic experimentation, you can conclusively prove things. However, it’s application is extremely limited. So we end up in a world where to the layperson, a chemist and a psychologist are both “scientists” but the reliability of their conclusions can drastically differ. Discerning folks can suss out that difference, but I would argue that the term still wields a powerful subconscious connotation, which has been weaponized. Replace the word “science” with “God” and I think you can see the impact, and how there’s really little historical difference in the way power uses language to control (without speaking to the specific veracity of any particular “science” or “God”).
Climate change.. Started as "Global Cooling+the next Ice Age", then Science™️ discovered it was really "Global Warming+polar bears afloat"and now Science™️ knows it's "Climate Change+crabby inconvenienced humans everywhere". Each face of Global Doom birthed in order to open funding faucets.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 30, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Excellent!
The instinctive cry of both the gut-instinctivists and the more logically-inclined has always been "The Covid vaccines are experimental gene therapy with unknowable long-term effects."
You have correctly identified that this natural response was with the wave of a wand and at a state propagandistic level deemed simply inacceptable - a forbidden argument. They furthermore accused any who would make such an argument of that which they themselves are guilty of: being "anti-science". So yes, this has sent so many of us scurrying for scraps of "more scientific/statistical" proof to bolster our entirely legitimate opening argument which was thrown out of court right at the beginning as illegitimate.
=Aside= I literally posed these points to the doctor before I received my first (and last) Covid gene therapy product. He did not even try to deny the point I was making, it was simply deemed mute, superfluous. I kid you not, I felt in that moment in a kind of trance, powerless in the face of an almost magical thinking that had swept across the land. It all seemed somehow inevitable and to my eternal shame I shrugged my shoulders and relented.
After I left the medical surgery it was like a cloud suddenly lifted and I came to my senses. To my horror I realised that what had happened had not been my conscious will but an acquiescence. As soon as I got home I redoubled "do your own research" and never went back.
I sometimes joke I now belong to the select group of long-term single dosers who chose apostasy early on and remain in a vaxxed, anti-vaxxer limbo, treated with suspicion by all sides :)
That would be me, too, a member of "the select group of long-term single dosers who chose apostasy early on and remain in a vaxxed, anti-vaxxer limbo, treated with suspicion by all sides".
I can't help thinking your doctor was probably thinking "Another wingnut, let's get this over with so I can move onto the next." I get the same reaction every time I talk to my oncologist about supportive dietary regimens.
That is extremely well put; it could even be worded as a rebuttal to my whole part ii argument. If the first principles arguments were declared "not admissible" from the start, then naturally the only recourse was to make a case on grounds of statistics etc. But obviously there's no actual rules in this court, it's just consensus. So if enough people insisted the first principles are the issue, it would have been the issue.
The exception of course is that society is all siloed, and no one knows what reality is, so media gets to declare what everyone thinks. But I think you can't do anything about that but place a bid on real reality and consensus still existing and mattering.
"Limbo," ha. If it's any consolation, I've long said that the best number of doses after 0 is 1. Probably still get 100% of the benefits (severe efficacy), and lowest amount of costs, especially as regards tolerance. So at this point I'm still happy to be on Team 0, but if I were on Team 1 I wouldn't be too worried overall. Maybe Team 1 is still a bad spot, but life is not a guarantee to begin with, so what difference does it really make.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 30, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Great article! I think that in government, public health, media and many social media personalities, even some medically trained ones, there's been an abject failure to reason objectively, most notably on the issue of vaccine safety and effectiveness.
In pretty much every case they have failed to make a proper individualised risk benefit decision even for themselves, yet they feel intellectual and moral superiority to pass judgement, or even coerce people accordingly.
It should be patently obvious there's been no proper open debate on vaccine safety, the required level of safety should have been set in stone while the vaxx was being developed, then all should have been given clear, relevant, timely and unbiased information and allowed to make a decision for themselves. To quote the Japan Ministry of Health on their own website:
'Vaccines will never be administered without the recipient’s consent. We urge the public never to coerce vaccinations at the workplace or upon others around them, and never to treat those who have not received the vaccine in a discriminatory manner.'
I've spent some time looking at this; the PMC and elites greatly defer to bureaucracies like WHO, Sage, CDC which from which they can inherit authority yet pass back responsibilty. Furthermore the bureaucracies themselves are extremely deferent to certain other ones, eg Sage to WHO and Imperial College in the case of the UK. So groupthink rules.
Further still, certain personalities and their interests can hold great sway over their output by influencing people behind the scenes, yet to the outsider it's impossible to percieve this, it just looks like a series of committee votes.
Anyway, you can guess I'm no fan of them. I feel that the advice of the UK's Sage vs Swedens Anders Tegnell is a great example of narrow expertise coming a distant second to general wisdom.
On and individual level Jons 'filtering problem' sounds like Bruce Charlton's 'Head Girl Syndrome' from another perpsective:
Not actually that rambling; good, in fact, very good. To paraphrase: do not counter propagandists on their own terms. Call out their BS from first principles (e.g. irrelevant whether draconian NPIs will cause this much or that much harm - they are wrong, full stop).
PS. Not sure Lysenkoism's greatest crime was to have a Lamarckian outlook? I think the far greater failing was being ideologically wedded to courses of action that - however well meant - failed spectacularly and created hitherto unthinkable collateral damage!
That sums up my attitude on masks. I don't care about working, not working - they are denigrating and depressing. Imagine if the debate on slavery were "it doesn't work! yes it does! no it doesn't, oh wait, I saw a chart that changed my mind ok let's keep doing slavery!"
But I actually think many of the substackers would agree with you that all vaccines should be called into question. I think they are stuck in the efficacy argument because they are trying to prove the first and easiest piece of evidence they can get their hands on. It’s a flawed approach and I agree with you because it still wont change minds and it fails to point out the bigger argument. I think they were trying to stop the mandates with anything they could get a hold of.
As for the first box option- I also think it is part of science- it isn’t unusual to think a researcher would even use their own biases to further test some evidence they found and then in the process uncover something new. Box 2 with the government/pharma/media is part of current science but should be jettisoned. Your example of Fauci is a great example of that taint. Wow, he really is a cockroach.
On a side note, I have to admit I felt completely deflated when I read that Dr. Kahneman supported mandating the covid jabs.
Also on a side note, I think Scott Adams appears depressed. He is using humor but his affect and demeanor are jarring. I hope he is ok.
Generally, you can tell position on overall vaccination by whether a stack emphasizes "leaky vaccines." This reflects unawareness of virtually all previous vaccines being leaky, except maybe Measles, which doesn't grant permanent immunity so it is also leaky (hence the need to double-mandate it to make it "work;" however, it's probably not-leaky in the short term because the virus has to get through the blood to achieve transmission). So those writers found this idea that "oh, there's some magic reason that the Covid vaccines aren't as good as trusted vaccines" appealing, and then ran with that, and are still running with that after a year and a half, reflects that they hadn't stopped to question "trusted" vaccines.
Hahaha- yeah that’s a good new title for him to use.
Igor did a great job introducing this line of thinking with the problems with the new version of the pertussis vaccine (especially as we have had wide spread whooping cough outbreaks and now they want the grandparents to get jabbed too - eyeroll). Maybe you should do a series on these leaky vaccines? I think it was Gato Malo who started the “leaky” vaccine thing, but I could be wrong.
I didn't get into this game until the Bret Weinstein GvB interview, so I am not sure who the first person to find Leaky Vaccine Atlantis was. At all events it was clearly a lot of "oh I see that person got a lot of likes with a Leaky Vaccine post," imitation, reinforcement, as new writers set up shop. Which is such a powerful force in this space that if one wanted, you could make anything become consensus. So definitely *no* reason to worry about whether the deep state is manipulating which posts get likes via bots...
Jan 29, 2023·edited Jan 29, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
There is plenty of "sciences" where, despite occasional reversals of scientific thought, there is an undeniable progress of finding true, verifiable scientific findings. Physics, chemistry, mathematics (which is a whole separate thing not exactly the same as other "natural" sciences) are full of useful findings that are confirmed daily and used for centuries.
The closer "science" gets to human beings, their needs, or preferences, the less reliability, fidelity, honesty, verifiability etc.
I am not a science hater or denier, I love science, and that's why I am upset at what is happening in the covid vaccine world.
I think of 'The Science' as being the 'approved science' of the Covid Regime... not real science of course, which progresses with good faith debate and disagreement.
Right, and "science" can describe those things if it is understood as primarily "humans trying to figure stuff out as best they can," without worshiping a particular method which at best was pretty good for chemistry.
Once you get beyond chemistry in the natural sciences, the scientific method breaks down (because you can't isolate most things from nature without changing their properties) and you're back to regular old humans trying to figure stuff out as best they can. The better description for this was always natural philosophy.
I should have read this comment before posting mine. Though I guess I came at it from a slightly different angle, this is essentially what I was getting at and I totally agree.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 30, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
More like it wouldn’t have existed at all, we’d still be discussing the halting problem and it’s implications and theorizing the perfect implementation.
Jan 29, 2023·edited Jan 29, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Phlogiston anyone? But, err, if you were summarising your main point in a sentence, what would it be?
Is it that the absolute pursuit of truth within the realm of “operational” science has been essentially hijacked (and largely negated) by politically correct, philosophically driven “scientism”, aka The Science TM?
Which main point? The points about "Science" and oppositional science can't be combined, two different subjects. For the latter, the point is that the arguments against vaccination are not hard and that playing a constant game of narrative-reinforcing statistics-doing is a distraction that doesn't actually offer opposition to the cult of vaccines. (But I don't claim to know whether this describes the general antivaccine movement, it is just what I observe with skeptic substack.)
There's definitely a big forest-versus-trees effect.
Faith in vaccines is emotional, not based on fact, for the most part. Skeptics need to figure out how to address that aspect. Banging on about statistics is essentially only preaching to the choir, pretty much what you said in the main article.
Ah, got you. I do agree that the introduction of a new genetic therapeutic with no long term safety data was the best argument for 1. Not rushing into a mass rollout and 2. Not imposing mandates. This was my main objection to friends early on in the saga. But as soon as they started the rollout I knew it was no longer about the science and that ideology was in play. Plus in NZ we had the advantage of 6 months to observe data from the rest of the world and yet they pressed ahead. Simply evil.
"Most science is reductionist, and the world simply does not work that way."
There is no alternative to "reductionism", unless you can show me your "reality-as-is-perceptor organ".
"Reduction" really is dealing with things at a certain level of abstraction, trying to generate a model that fits well the observations. And you deal with complexity by having several models, at different levels of abstraction, interconnect.
The problem as it seems to me be is that some/many scientists forget, or never understood this in the first place, and even less the pop science outlets, as an interface to regular folks.
So people, including a good chunk of scientists, take things too much at face value.
"The whole is greater than the sum of the microbiological parts"
... which is covered by interations between parts of the overall model and submodels.
Well. Or could be. One actually does need to do that. Same as with former paragraph.
And when observations are made that expose the gaps somewhere in your network of models on different layers, or show how some of the layering may be wrong - then, I guess, there will be a lot of resistance against getting back to the drawing board big time, because it's getting really difficult to take a complicated mess and make a good fit of it, around the so far observed, as well as the new stuff that disturbs the neat old construction that would also require people to change some of the ways they think about things, that they got used to.
And this doesn't even include yet conflicting motives and corruption, offering further resistance to such a correction process.
But long story short - there is no easy way to understand complicated things, it's not like those naughty reductionists just needed to stop being so reductionist and then wisdom would radiate out of a bright opening in the heavens, accompanied by an angelic choir.
Reductionism has its place in trying to understand complex systems. Where we go wrong is ignoring the existence of the complexity and using our reductive understanding as a model of the real thing. Hubris.
"Engineering", which one might call "solving problems with tools and technology", existed long before *formal* scientific endeavor. Scientific endeavor simply gave engineers far more, and more useful, tools, with greater predictability.
I don't understand what you mean by your quote. Science is a messy operation, so is engineering. You seem to need to create a dichotomy here between two disciplines that are so connected we have "applied science". There's no conflict, really, except when someone wants to start a dogfight.
None of that would have held together without some kind of preliminary abstraction: geometry, mathematics and basic physics etc. In other words "science". The history of technology is full of examples of this, along with the feedback between the disciplines. But I think it's a pointless debate.
That depends on what you call science. I guess you mean there was no science until we had universities, chalk, and blackboards. The truth is that science in some form had to precede the "bridges, roads, pyramids and aqueducts". Or there would have been a whole lot of rubble all over the landscape. But hey, let's squabble over nothing.
You're confusing science with Science™. Actual science isn't reductionist, it lays no claim. It's a method for seeking truth, and nothing more. Everything else is dogma, wishful thinking, magic, etc.
Science doesn't create a reductive view, it can only reveal it. As for what happened in the mid-20th Century that changed science, it was the Manhattan Project, which proved to Big Government that Science™ meant Power and Money. So suddenly there was Big Government Money available for those folks willing to Do Science™. And in that moment, the scientists who did all the observing and deducing (and inducing, etc.) and making experiments and coming to conclusions, all for the sake of truth, all were pushed aside by a big wave of Scientists™ who all showed up to Do Science™ for *money*. Money became the object of Science™, rather than truth, which was the object of science.
Now it's just publish publish publish, for grants and grants and grants. Never mind what's in any of the papers. It's not like anyone's paying attention to the actual content.
In pursuing truth, one can certainly end up at the bottom of a deep rabbit hole with a pile of truths that aren't really helpful - in your example, one might end up "discovering" that oxygen really likes to combine with hydrogen. True, but how does that help me cure cancer?
But this fact isn't a ding on the methods used to get to the truth. Just like, if one were to use a large enough wrench on a bolt and twist hard enough, one could break the bolt or the stud - but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the wrench. There are tools, and then there are applications. Science, as a discipline, is a tool.
Also see https://www.eugyppius.com/p/more-on-what-is-wrong-with-the-science. This Unglossed post is an excellent complement.
It is paywalled, though.
Back in 2015 Scott Adams' blog was interesting in terms of understanding why Trump was such a great persuader. Then Adams seem to go complete wingnut and I stopped reading him.
Until recently, when I watched his complete "apology" video. I found it largely incomprehensible except for him blaming it on his penis. I almost never use the word "disgusting" but I would definitely apply it to that performance, but not because of the penis. Slandering Isaac Newton was just the icing on the cake.
I mostly just found it exemplary for its naivety. But now he's taken another "interesting" turn into poking the race bear... we'll see where that goes, if anywhere
I haven't been very interested in following that, but I did look at a video of his original comments, and I could see the point he was trying to make. He's really inarticulate and inflammatory. Intentional or not? Who knows.
"It should not have been hard to form a movement based around a simple, robust argument against..."
That is where you are wrong. All the Westerners live with several background-running mind control programs in their thinking all the time.
The purpose of which is to prevent the formation of functional movements.
For example, a lot of people believe (mind control program) that the workers used to be at the mercy of the owners of the industry and they, the workers, enacted political changes that made the State pass legislation that reined in the abuses of the capitalists pigs. The truth is different. Workers were used as part of a narrative to cartelize industry and destroy the rapidly moving free market dynamics that tend to reduce all prices and ruin the capitalists. The capitalists hate free enterprise more than anyone else. There is no security in free enterprise. But they couldn't pass laws that says: hereby all free market dynamics are to be destroyed to protect the new rich industrialist class at the expense of the working class. They needed to run a huge theater play called "the commies are coming!" so that the masses would accept getting economically slaughtered by decree.
Many people have explained that better than me, and the victims of lefty mind control still don't understand it.
This is just one example of many about why (purposely) disorganized groups have great difficulties in forming an effective movement, even in such an obvious case as the farce of covid.
Obviously, I lean to the anarcho-libertarian side of almost every issue, and I have problems seeing the "mind control" checks that probably exist in my intellectual spehere. I have detected one so far, thanks to the covid fraud: even the most motivated thinkers can fail to overcome the normalcy bias, by which I mean the need to not be a complete social pariah by diverging too much from the mandated general opinion.
Another detection: libertarians in general do not question their own bias to believe the USG plans to kill people, and therefore they swallow hook, line and sinker the GOF false narrative, and will never question it. They won't see that it is a distraction designed for them. There was never a covid or its agent pseudovirus and they cannot get over that.
And that leads me my last tangent: what moves me away from anarcho-libertarianism is the complete lack of curiosity (healthy curiosity) from other specimens of my persuasion to verify by themselves the claims of biology.
The Heresiarch Tom Cowan is far from being an anarcho-libertarian, yet he seems far more interested in preserving the life of individuals, their health, their property, their natural rights than any anarcho-libertarian who ever existed, ***precisely because*** he revises thoroughly all the "truths" of biology, including virology, immunology, cellular ultrastructure, genetics, and the fundamentalist claim of materialism in science as it is commonly understood. At least, that is my impression these days.
I think this lack of curiosity in my tribe is the tell of a mind control program. I want to overcome it. Why would anyone who aspires to live in liberty not question the scientific foundations of the Therapeutic State?
In sum, I'm aware of the difficulties in normies to organize themselves exist also, and more intensely, in intellectually driven individuals.
Good 3 arguments
My basic thoughts on science, as a practicing engineer and a minister of the Gospel, are this:
The Scientific Method has one great power, the power to falsify a hypothesis. We can, for physical and chemical and mathematical, propositions confirm them false if we can find the right experiment and perform it to a sufficient level of accuracy and precision(replicability).
The Scientific Method cannot determine anything to be true, or likely, or valid. It can determine things to be false. Thus, 'Science'-knowing-is at direct odds with the Scientific Method, unless you mean knowing that something has been experimentally demonstrated to be false which no one means that when they say knowing something scientifically.
Anything that is 'known scientifically' has either been directly observed, statistically derived, or made up. 'Directly observed' is actually a pretty small group of phenomena and generally derided by the Faucis of the world as 'anecdotal'. 'Statistically derived' is mostly bullshit. Statistics that are not bullshit should be regarded with enormous scepticism. Good data is not easy to collect. My lab experience tells me that most results have more to do with experimental error than with any great truth. Good data is not cheap to collect, in time or money. No one wants to waste time or money. Once the data is collected finding someone like Brian, in the near to hand example of Immunology, who understands what it means and can report it honestly and clearly, can't be guaranteed even with time and money. The 'Right Guy for the job' is really a very elusive thing. Finding the 'Right Statistics Guy' like Igor is about as rare. Look at all the bad statistics on Alt-Covid Substack and remember that Pro-Narrative world has less talented, less thoughtful people and know that very little truth comes out of statistics. I was hella good at math in my younger days and I frequently find statistics deceptive. It's very easy to get messed up and very hard to get it right. It's easy to kick the cat but actually doing it better is not so easy.
So mostly, we believe the Science that matches our beliefs. Like all marketplaces the 'Marketplace of Ideas' has a natural tendency to monopoly. Markets love monopolies because monopolies are more efficient, less risky. They are a guaranteed ROI, and our society is terrified of risk. Science, as a guide to truth, really is just 'In Fauci we trust'. It is better if you can swap it out to, 'In Maxwell we trust', or Gauss or Dalton, but(removes engineer hat puts on preacher hat) systems and laws always fail as guides because systems and laws are smaller than and inferior to people. The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath. Adam was given dominion over creation not creation over Adam. And when you reverse it, when you make Law or Science or any system bigger and higher and better than people, made in the Divine Image, you booger it up. What is needed is some people who will stop hiding behind the Science and, shepherd the Science to the right answer. Life will always come down to a single, or at best a few, people with integrity and talent and every attempt to automate or systematize or evade that is at best a slow motion failure.
Besides totally exceeding my post in quality, this echoes my thinking, as I expressed much more crudely in a response to a comment in my Catch Up Effect post in which I defended "study cynicism":
"Humans basically form groups and share perspective and come up with a "bid" on what strategies and policies should be tried. Good, great. I think "a new study says X!" is basically a mind-virus that breaks this process down. So I think spreading cynicism about "a new study says" is an end in itself. "
So few people realize that the experimental method is for falsifying hypotheses. It's too limited and we are too ambitious to stick with it. So, we take shortcuts.
Glad you liked what I said. I really appreciate the work that you do Brian, even if it passes a lot of people off, some of us think that it is very worthwhile.
Thanks!
Mr. Cutchins, I really like this comment so much that I'm copying it to save for myself. 🙂🙏
Very well rambled. I would only add that “Science” was well suited for this sort of branding because of the association with the scientific method, an empirical method for proving cause and effect relationships. The other side of that coin is the Latin root, which essentially translates to “knowledge”, and between the both, it’s fertile ground for obfuscation. The word itself is practically doublespeak, when you apply the scientific method to natural phenomenon and conduct systematic experimentation, you can conclusively prove things. However, it’s application is extremely limited. So we end up in a world where to the layperson, a chemist and a psychologist are both “scientists” but the reliability of their conclusions can drastically differ. Discerning folks can suss out that difference, but I would argue that the term still wields a powerful subconscious connotation, which has been weaponized. Replace the word “science” with “God” and I think you can see the impact, and how there’s really little historical difference in the way power uses language to control (without speaking to the specific veracity of any particular “science” or “God”).
Science is being used as a slogan, not a word describing a discipline. This is science. Everything else is sloganeering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
Climate change.. Started as "Global Cooling+the next Ice Age", then Science™️ discovered it was really "Global Warming+polar bears afloat"and now Science™️ knows it's "Climate Change+crabby inconvenienced humans everywhere". Each face of Global Doom birthed in order to open funding faucets.
Excellent!
The instinctive cry of both the gut-instinctivists and the more logically-inclined has always been "The Covid vaccines are experimental gene therapy with unknowable long-term effects."
You have correctly identified that this natural response was with the wave of a wand and at a state propagandistic level deemed simply inacceptable - a forbidden argument. They furthermore accused any who would make such an argument of that which they themselves are guilty of: being "anti-science". So yes, this has sent so many of us scurrying for scraps of "more scientific/statistical" proof to bolster our entirely legitimate opening argument which was thrown out of court right at the beginning as illegitimate.
=Aside= I literally posed these points to the doctor before I received my first (and last) Covid gene therapy product. He did not even try to deny the point I was making, it was simply deemed mute, superfluous. I kid you not, I felt in that moment in a kind of trance, powerless in the face of an almost magical thinking that had swept across the land. It all seemed somehow inevitable and to my eternal shame I shrugged my shoulders and relented.
After I left the medical surgery it was like a cloud suddenly lifted and I came to my senses. To my horror I realised that what had happened had not been my conscious will but an acquiescence. As soon as I got home I redoubled "do your own research" and never went back.
I sometimes joke I now belong to the select group of long-term single dosers who chose apostasy early on and remain in a vaxxed, anti-vaxxer limbo, treated with suspicion by all sides :)
That would be me, too, a member of "the select group of long-term single dosers who chose apostasy early on and remain in a vaxxed, anti-vaxxer limbo, treated with suspicion by all sides".
I can't help thinking your doctor was probably thinking "Another wingnut, let's get this over with so I can move onto the next." I get the same reaction every time I talk to my oncologist about supportive dietary regimens.
That is extremely well put; it could even be worded as a rebuttal to my whole part ii argument. If the first principles arguments were declared "not admissible" from the start, then naturally the only recourse was to make a case on grounds of statistics etc. But obviously there's no actual rules in this court, it's just consensus. So if enough people insisted the first principles are the issue, it would have been the issue.
The exception of course is that society is all siloed, and no one knows what reality is, so media gets to declare what everyone thinks. But I think you can't do anything about that but place a bid on real reality and consensus still existing and mattering.
"Limbo," ha. If it's any consolation, I've long said that the best number of doses after 0 is 1. Probably still get 100% of the benefits (severe efficacy), and lowest amount of costs, especially as regards tolerance. So at this point I'm still happy to be on Team 0, but if I were on Team 1 I wouldn't be too worried overall. Maybe Team 1 is still a bad spot, but life is not a guarantee to begin with, so what difference does it really make.
Great article! I think that in government, public health, media and many social media personalities, even some medically trained ones, there's been an abject failure to reason objectively, most notably on the issue of vaccine safety and effectiveness.
In pretty much every case they have failed to make a proper individualised risk benefit decision even for themselves, yet they feel intellectual and moral superiority to pass judgement, or even coerce people accordingly.
It should be patently obvious there's been no proper open debate on vaccine safety, the required level of safety should have been set in stone while the vaxx was being developed, then all should have been given clear, relevant, timely and unbiased information and allowed to make a decision for themselves. To quote the Japan Ministry of Health on their own website:
'Vaccines will never be administered without the recipient’s consent. We urge the public never to coerce vaccinations at the workplace or upon others around them, and never to treat those who have not received the vaccine in a discriminatory manner.'
https://japan.kantei.go.jp/ongoingtopics/vaccine.html
Now THAT is an example of how it should be done. 👍👍👍
'there's been no proper open debate on vaccine safety, the required level of safety should have been set in stone while the vaxx was being developed'
Unfortunately for years that's been the SOP for vaccine approval.
Thanks!
That brings up an aspect that my post only grazes, which is why the groupthink was so pervasive in the PMC, elites, all over. But Jon has also done good work on this question https://inflamedcynic.substack.com/p/the-filtering-problem-in-leadership
I've spent some time looking at this; the PMC and elites greatly defer to bureaucracies like WHO, Sage, CDC which from which they can inherit authority yet pass back responsibilty. Furthermore the bureaucracies themselves are extremely deferent to certain other ones, eg Sage to WHO and Imperial College in the case of the UK. So groupthink rules.
Further still, certain personalities and their interests can hold great sway over their output by influencing people behind the scenes, yet to the outsider it's impossible to percieve this, it just looks like a series of committee votes.
Anyway, you can guess I'm no fan of them. I feel that the advice of the UK's Sage vs Swedens Anders Tegnell is a great example of narrow expertise coming a distant second to general wisdom.
On and individual level Jons 'filtering problem' sounds like Bruce Charlton's 'Head Girl Syndrome' from another perpsective:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-head-girl-syndrome-opposite-of.html
Not actually that rambling; good, in fact, very good. To paraphrase: do not counter propagandists on their own terms. Call out their BS from first principles (e.g. irrelevant whether draconian NPIs will cause this much or that much harm - they are wrong, full stop).
PS. Not sure Lysenkoism's greatest crime was to have a Lamarckian outlook? I think the far greater failing was being ideologically wedded to courses of action that - however well meant - failed spectacularly and created hitherto unthinkable collateral damage!
And thanks for the kind remarks on my rambling-not-rambling post.
That sums up my attitude on masks. I don't care about working, not working - they are denigrating and depressing. Imagine if the debate on slavery were "it doesn't work! yes it does! no it doesn't, oh wait, I saw a chart that changed my mind ok let's keep doing slavery!"
But I actually think many of the substackers would agree with you that all vaccines should be called into question. I think they are stuck in the efficacy argument because they are trying to prove the first and easiest piece of evidence they can get their hands on. It’s a flawed approach and I agree with you because it still wont change minds and it fails to point out the bigger argument. I think they were trying to stop the mandates with anything they could get a hold of.
As for the first box option- I also think it is part of science- it isn’t unusual to think a researcher would even use their own biases to further test some evidence they found and then in the process uncover something new. Box 2 with the government/pharma/media is part of current science but should be jettisoned. Your example of Fauci is a great example of that taint. Wow, he really is a cockroach.
On a side note, I have to admit I felt completely deflated when I read that Dr. Kahneman supported mandating the covid jabs.
Also on a side note, I think Scott Adams appears depressed. He is using humor but his affect and demeanor are jarring. I hope he is ok.
I really loved "Mandating, Fast and Slow."
Generally, you can tell position on overall vaccination by whether a stack emphasizes "leaky vaccines." This reflects unawareness of virtually all previous vaccines being leaky, except maybe Measles, which doesn't grant permanent immunity so it is also leaky (hence the need to double-mandate it to make it "work;" however, it's probably not-leaky in the short term because the virus has to get through the blood to achieve transmission). So those writers found this idea that "oh, there's some magic reason that the Covid vaccines aren't as good as trusted vaccines" appealing, and then ran with that, and are still running with that after a year and a half, reflects that they hadn't stopped to question "trusted" vaccines.
Hahaha- yeah that’s a good new title for him to use.
Igor did a great job introducing this line of thinking with the problems with the new version of the pertussis vaccine (especially as we have had wide spread whooping cough outbreaks and now they want the grandparents to get jabbed too - eyeroll). Maybe you should do a series on these leaky vaccines? I think it was Gato Malo who started the “leaky” vaccine thing, but I could be wrong.
I didn't get into this game until the Bret Weinstein GvB interview, so I am not sure who the first person to find Leaky Vaccine Atlantis was. At all events it was clearly a lot of "oh I see that person got a lot of likes with a Leaky Vaccine post," imitation, reinforcement, as new writers set up shop. Which is such a powerful force in this space that if one wanted, you could make anything become consensus. So definitely *no* reason to worry about whether the deep state is manipulating which posts get likes via bots...
I liked this comment. Disclaimer: I am not a bot.
There is plenty of "sciences" where, despite occasional reversals of scientific thought, there is an undeniable progress of finding true, verifiable scientific findings. Physics, chemistry, mathematics (which is a whole separate thing not exactly the same as other "natural" sciences) are full of useful findings that are confirmed daily and used for centuries.
The closer "science" gets to human beings, their needs, or preferences, the less reliability, fidelity, honesty, verifiability etc.
I am not a science hater or denier, I love science, and that's why I am upset at what is happening in the covid vaccine world.
I don't disagree with you. Biology is complex and messy and that makes it easier prey for manipulation.
However, corruption happens in the hard sciences too, like physics.
I think of 'The Science' as being the 'approved science' of the Covid Regime... not real science of course, which progresses with good faith debate and disagreement.
Science™ is a slogan used for propaganda. Classical science is a method.
More succinctly, noun vs verb.
Right, and "science" can describe those things if it is understood as primarily "humans trying to figure stuff out as best they can," without worshiping a particular method which at best was pretty good for chemistry.
Once you get beyond chemistry in the natural sciences, the scientific method breaks down (because you can't isolate most things from nature without changing their properties) and you're back to regular old humans trying to figure stuff out as best they can. The better description for this was always natural philosophy.
100% ditto and thank you for your clear thinking and understanding of boundary conditions.
I should have read this comment before posting mine. Though I guess I came at it from a slightly different angle, this is essentially what I was getting at and I totally agree.
Karl Denninger is banging on that engineering is the correct approach to apply instead of the scientific method lol.
Right, and most of technology is just engineering, not science. If it were any otherwise then the very first computer would have been a MacBook Air.
More like it wouldn’t have existed at all, we’d still be discussing the halting problem and it’s implications and theorizing the perfect implementation.
Eugyppius has written a couple of recent posts about this. They're behind a paywall but well worth the investment. Most recently https://www.eugyppius.com/p/more-on-what-is-wrong-with-the-science
Phlogiston anyone? But, err, if you were summarising your main point in a sentence, what would it be?
Is it that the absolute pursuit of truth within the realm of “operational” science has been essentially hijacked (and largely negated) by politically correct, philosophically driven “scientism”, aka The Science TM?
As for Fauci starting in 1984... Wow, just wow.
Which main point? The points about "Science" and oppositional science can't be combined, two different subjects. For the latter, the point is that the arguments against vaccination are not hard and that playing a constant game of narrative-reinforcing statistics-doing is a distraction that doesn't actually offer opposition to the cult of vaccines. (But I don't claim to know whether this describes the general antivaccine movement, it is just what I observe with skeptic substack.)
There's definitely a big forest-versus-trees effect.
Faith in vaccines is emotional, not based on fact, for the most part. Skeptics need to figure out how to address that aspect. Banging on about statistics is essentially only preaching to the choir, pretty much what you said in the main article.
Ah, got you. I do agree that the introduction of a new genetic therapeutic with no long term safety data was the best argument for 1. Not rushing into a mass rollout and 2. Not imposing mandates. This was my main objection to friends early on in the saga. But as soon as they started the rollout I knew it was no longer about the science and that ideology was in play. Plus in NZ we had the advantage of 6 months to observe data from the rest of the world and yet they pressed ahead. Simply evil.
"Most science is reductionist, and the world simply does not work that way."
There is no alternative to "reductionism", unless you can show me your "reality-as-is-perceptor organ".
"Reduction" really is dealing with things at a certain level of abstraction, trying to generate a model that fits well the observations. And you deal with complexity by having several models, at different levels of abstraction, interconnect.
The problem as it seems to me be is that some/many scientists forget, or never understood this in the first place, and even less the pop science outlets, as an interface to regular folks.
So people, including a good chunk of scientists, take things too much at face value.
"The whole is greater than the sum of the microbiological parts"
... which is covered by interations between parts of the overall model and submodels.
Well. Or could be. One actually does need to do that. Same as with former paragraph.
And when observations are made that expose the gaps somewhere in your network of models on different layers, or show how some of the layering may be wrong - then, I guess, there will be a lot of resistance against getting back to the drawing board big time, because it's getting really difficult to take a complicated mess and make a good fit of it, around the so far observed, as well as the new stuff that disturbs the neat old construction that would also require people to change some of the ways they think about things, that they got used to.
And this doesn't even include yet conflicting motives and corruption, offering further resistance to such a correction process.
But long story short - there is no easy way to understand complicated things, it's not like those naughty reductionists just needed to stop being so reductionist and then wisdom would radiate out of a bright opening in the heavens, accompanied by an angelic choir.
Reductionism has its place in trying to understand complex systems. Where we go wrong is ignoring the existence of the complexity and using our reductive understanding as a model of the real thing. Hubris.
epicycles upon epicycles. gordian knot.
there is no room left for thought.
Science gave birth to engineering. But both have always been messy.
"Engineering", which one might call "solving problems with tools and technology", existed long before *formal* scientific endeavor. Scientific endeavor simply gave engineers far more, and more useful, tools, with greater predictability.
I don't understand what you mean by your quote. Science is a messy operation, so is engineering. You seem to need to create a dichotomy here between two disciplines that are so connected we have "applied science". There's no conflict, really, except when someone wants to start a dogfight.
None of that would have held together without some kind of preliminary abstraction: geometry, mathematics and basic physics etc. In other words "science". The history of technology is full of examples of this, along with the feedback between the disciplines. But I think it's a pointless debate.
That depends on what you call science. I guess you mean there was no science until we had universities, chalk, and blackboards. The truth is that science in some form had to precede the "bridges, roads, pyramids and aqueducts". Or there would have been a whole lot of rubble all over the landscape. But hey, let's squabble over nothing.
You're confusing science with Science™. Actual science isn't reductionist, it lays no claim. It's a method for seeking truth, and nothing more. Everything else is dogma, wishful thinking, magic, etc.
In a largely atheist society, "Science" is the religion. "Come, follow Me" has been turned into "Follow the Science".
As an atheist, I find myself uncomfortable at that generalization.
Science doesn't create a reductive view, it can only reveal it. As for what happened in the mid-20th Century that changed science, it was the Manhattan Project, which proved to Big Government that Science™ meant Power and Money. So suddenly there was Big Government Money available for those folks willing to Do Science™. And in that moment, the scientists who did all the observing and deducing (and inducing, etc.) and making experiments and coming to conclusions, all for the sake of truth, all were pushed aside by a big wave of Scientists™ who all showed up to Do Science™ for *money*. Money became the object of Science™, rather than truth, which was the object of science.
Now it's just publish publish publish, for grants and grants and grants. Never mind what's in any of the papers. It's not like anyone's paying attention to the actual content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
In pursuing truth, one can certainly end up at the bottom of a deep rabbit hole with a pile of truths that aren't really helpful - in your example, one might end up "discovering" that oxygen really likes to combine with hydrogen. True, but how does that help me cure cancer?
But this fact isn't a ding on the methods used to get to the truth. Just like, if one were to use a large enough wrench on a bolt and twist hard enough, one could break the bolt or the stud - but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the wrench. There are tools, and then there are applications. Science, as a discipline, is a tool.