projMajr

Lies, Damned Lies, and Scientists

Dark optimism : 21Oct2023 This webPage is altogether too dark and one-sided. It's missing the part that addresses the opposite characteristics of the focus here, and which accounts for essentially all [science, scientist]s : [honest, intelligent, diligent, straight forward, helpful, etc]. I wrote something somewhere on that, but can't find it. My overall view is "Dark Optimism", that both simple parts of the dichotomy apply, but differently, because we are human. Out of that, rather than the seemingly inevitable search for the "evil perpetrators", with endless conspiracy theories, what we see is actually [fantastic, beautiful] in spite of our limitations. It's a bit more like the ancient gods, who were a complex mix of what we now tend to separate into [good, evil], and to classify individuals accordingly.

Something is rotten in the state of science. Or perhaps what is dreadfully wrong, and what scientists illustrate in a spectacular fashion, is that we are not what we claim to be, and that perhaps there are very good reasons for that.

The central themes are built around climate science for a start, but seem to apply to ALL areas of science:

the catastrophic failure of [rational, logical, scientific] thinking by essentially ALL scientists, with the exception of a currently fuzzy concept of LOCAL reasoning based on the current consensus scientific belief frameworks for that LOCALITY, plus the obvious exception of [simple, dead] systems analysis;
for high-profile, politically-correct scientific issues, what we see is that the thinking of INDIVIDUAL scientists, or small groups of scientists, is generally conformant, and their defenses of their orthodoxy against non-conformant [lunatics, liars, corporate greed, political powermongers] (right OR wrong - it doesn't matter!) are [dysfunctional and/or dishonest and/or delinquent and/or hypocritical], with at least ONE of those traits being present strongly and often extemely. Even in a court of law it is typically impossible to clearly determine which of those dark behaviours apply, but as third parties we cannot know, and in the end we can't care - the end effect is essentially the same in all cases!
It is the rule, rather than the exception that CONSENSUS science is [dysfunctional AND dishonest AND delinquent AND hypocritical AND vindictive], all of these traits being present to extremes with respect to [rational, logical, scientific] thinking. Given scientist's education, training, expertise, and erroneous claims of doing [rational, logical, scientific] thinking, my conclusion is that is that this failure is a UNIVERSAL PROPERTY of homo sapiens.
Almost of the strong thinkers (one in ten thousand or better, where the payoffs seem to start) are NOT scientists, and few scientists (the same one in ten thousand or less) are strong thinkers. That is why, when a science issue start causing a lot of damage and costing a huge amount of resources, scientists get over-ruled. The really smart guys start looking at what the scientists are doing, and put a lid on it. (Note: I don't necessarily believe that such really smart guys, the one in ten thousand, exist, but it comforts me for now, and explains partially why some can see what almost no others can.)
In complete contrast to near-universal thinking, I maintain that it's not the funding, it's not the greed, although those are likely important factors for at least a small portion of scientists. Taking for example, climate science, even though a huge number of scientists get funding according to that theme, most scientists don't get funding for climate, and these scientists with NO climate funding have most often been strong, repressive advocates.
Through evolution, and massive catastrophies repeatedly over history:
...........The reason for your success as an individual, an organisation, a society, or civilisation
...............has everything to do with cheating theory and game theory,
...............and almost nothing to do with [rational, logical, scientific] thinking
...............(the schmucks can do the latter...you're too busy leading)
Other problems solving approaches are better suited GENERALLY for [complex dead systems] than [rational, logical, scientific] thinking, which can be highly misleading for those systems, and is GENERALLY wholly inadeqaute for living and human systems.
Obvious scientific failures include very high profile, long-term scientific mainstays:
- Climate science - the starting point for this theme for me (actually, dioxins, ozone in the past)
- Special and General Relativity - including neutrinos
- Big Bang theory
- The treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky and many other "lunatics"
- Many of the health and environmental issues (I'll finish listings later)
Amateurs, and non-expert scientists addressing other fields of expertise, have long been important to the identification of consensus failures and the generation of the great scientific revolutions. With the advent of the internet and "free and quick access" to scientific publications, more and more they will dominate the conceptual side of science, besting the top scientists and the nobel prize winners in their own fields of expertise. Professional scientists and engineers will still dominate instrument and equipment design & development, and data gathering, as only they can access the funding (for now).
I, Bill Howell, am NOT a strong thinker, easily outdone by most scientists and anybody else. However, I seem to be OK at seeing problems that don't generally seem to register with scientists, even those at the center of the storm. My friends, family, and colleagues will be quick to point out that an entirely easier hypothesis is that I am hugely [dysfunctional AND dishonest AND delinquent AND hypocritical]. Touchee - and if I'm the only one, please forgive me for assuming that everone else shares my flaws!
...many other points to add later...

This is a long overdue, frightfully incomplete, and error-replete draft of a long-overdue work hinted at in several of my postings over the last few years. An initial draft presentation-format dates to 09Apr2007, and several updates were made in 2007 and 2008, with activity dying until starting up again at the end of 2009 (I had moved back to Ottawa, bought a house, then had number laptops and hard drives die). The pdfs of the end-of-2010 Word files were were created and posted to my websie on 06Sep2011. As with most of my work, I'll never finish it anyways, and it's important to track the progression of ideas, to check back and see what I was thinking, to see how far I went, instead of mis-remembering the detals.

Current Chapters

You will note that about half of these chapters are empty! Additionally, my writing starts out as harsh and judgemental, and those parts are the more complete sections. Later writing flips - accepting the failure of logic for good reasons, and accepting the behavioural extremes of scientists and others (as a parallel, from a historical perspective, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were moderates, and of the three, Hitler was the nice guy). But I haven't done much on those chapters, yet. Moreover completion of this work may take forever to develop - I want to work on a pile of other things, and I may leave this "to ripen" for a year or two before getting back to it. My "main interest" is neural networks and neuroscience - not climate science, nor spending all of my time chasing the endess progression of screw-ups by professional scientists. It's more fun chasing the crazy, lunatic science - at least until it becomes accepted, distortionary, and vindictive. The truth can only lie with a lunatic - unfortunately, there are about six billion lunatics on Earth, each with several thousand lunatic ideas. Finding the right lunatic idea of the right lunatic is harder than guessing at the answer yourself.

Figures, pictures and tables are the property of the original publishers (my apologies as perhaps not all sources are cited in this mid-project draft).