Three Questions about the Assault on Science to Ponder, and the Outline of an Answer

[arendt]

Question 1. How does one remain sane in the face of a delusional society?

By sticking to testable facts and by telling the truth about those facts, and asking others to do the same, and accepting this will make some people quite upset at you.

Here are some of the more obvious, testable facts that the American elites want ignored:

--- There are more humans than the planetary ecosphere has capacity to carry. This population overshoot is destroying the environment, which (in a vicious circle) lowers the carrying capacity of the planet. Every day we collectively deny we are beyond carrying capacity, we sentence ten thousand people to death by starvation. (3 million starved last year.)

--- We are at peak oil. All major fields are pumping at capacity, but production is flat globally and falling in many important locales (e.g., Mexico, North Sea).

--- And even if we weren't at peak, we would have to curtail fossil fuel use for climate reasons.

Despite these actual crises, the elites clearly want people to forget about science - to vote their faith or their gut, instead. The elites are pushing this ignorance notwithstanding the fact that, without science and advanced technology, 90% of the people on the planet would be dead in a decade, even without organized warfare. They would simply starve to death or die from treatable medical conditions. The elites expect to hide out with food and fuel supplies and armed guards until the proletariat has died back to the level where they can be kept as house niggers.

Based on what I've seen lately, the elites are going to get their way. People, unfortunately, are not rational. Tversky, and other psychologists and behavioral economists, have been demonstrating this in behavioral experiments for the last thirty years. Their scientific evidence for lack of rationality in human decision making is now a toolkit that sophisticated propagandists for the elites use to undermine the societal consensus for the scientific method.

Question 2. Who is really "pro-life"?

Scientists are pro-life, all life! Armageddon fetishists may want to commit collective, species suicide or ecocide; but I don't.

Why is it necessary to defend the four hundred year old body of scientific knowledge acquired by the whole of Western civilization against a bunch of self-proclaimed ignoramuses?

If your mind hasn't been ruined by the school system that the elites have been wrecking for the last forty years, science is so much more interesting than the repetitive dreck they try to pass off as entertainment - TV celebrities, sports heroes, pop musicians, and their unending baby bumps. Same old same old.

Of course, the main competition is not celebrity media; its fundamentalist religion. Their attitude is also "same old same old". In fact, its so old that its a joke:

IN GOD WE TRUST

It was flooding in California. As the flood waters were rising, a man was on the stoop of his house and another man in a row boat came by. The man in the row boat told the man on the stoop to get in and he'd save him. The man on the stoop said, no, he had faith in God and would wait for God to save him.

The flood waters kept rising and the man had to go to the second floor of his house. A man in a motor boat came by and told the man in the house to get in because he had come to rescue him. The man in the house said no thank you. He had perfect faith in God and would wait for God to save him.

The flood waters kept rising. Pretty soon they were up to the man's roof and he got out on the roof. A helicopter then came by, lowered a rope and the pilot shouted down in the man in the house to climb up the rope because the helicopeter had come to rescue him. The man in the house wouldn't get in. He told the pilot that he had faith in God and would wait for God to rescue him.

The flood waters kept rising and the man in the house drowned. When he got to heaven, he asked God where he went wrong. He told God that he had perfect faith in God, but God had let him drown.

"What more do you want from me?" asked God. "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

What more do you lunatics want from science? We sent you birth control, peak oil warnings, climate monitoring satellites, pollution control equipment, and alternative energy technologies.

If you are the kind of person who makes plans for the future, there are a few basic expectations that guide your plans. Most people assume that, since the sun has been going around the earth since before there were humans, that it will continue to do so for the rest of our lives and the lives of our progeny. Some people, though, believe that the world is coming to an end, real soon. These are drastically different expectations; and, unsurprisingly, they result in drastically different plans.

Unfortunately, science is not in control in America anymore. Our leaders believe in magical thinking. That means denying science, ignoring facts, putting church dogma before democratically-enacted laws, and attacking the "usual suspects" of authoritarian rulers: powerful women, intellectuals, people of color, and gays.

Question 3. How does one make a rational criticism of delusional/magical thinking?

Delusional systems are self-sealing, and will simply label the critic an enemy. Al Gore tried to talk about the environmental problems, and got vilified.

Fundamentalist Christians have been recruiting cadre for decades and turning them loose to enforce religious correctness. One of the first differentiations fundamentalists make is that scientists "deny god". Scientists are demonized for thinking, because "thinking is the snare of the devil".

There is a new kind of "utopia" afoot in America, warming up for its brief turn on the blood-spattered stage of history. There are no mass murders in America, yet. (We have inflicted mass slaughter on an innocent country, Iraq.) But the climate for mass murder has been created. History shows us that the larger atrocities committed by fanatics rarely occur at the beginning of their regimes. The progression is always: differentiate, demonize, and destroy. We are at the doorstep of the destroy stage. The Tennessee UU shooting is a spark that may fizzle out or may catch. The McCain campaign to demonize Obama is pouring fuel on those sparks.

Insanity is not rational; but, when backed up with guns and soldiers, it is lethal.

As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot set about transforming the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were evacuated, factories and schools were closed, and currency and private property was abolished. Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed. Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology.

http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge /

I have no intention of being killed for my eyeglasses, my hard-won education, or my refusal to kowtow to power-hungry theocrats. I am no B'hai, believing that non-violence will save me from people with murder in their eye.

Nevertheless, fighting violence with violence is the last resort. We need to fight violence with common sense. More importantly, we can't just be anti-; we need to fight for a purpose. What has set this country adrift is its loss of purpose. It has been said that the New Deal put itself out of business. It created a prosperous America, which then turned around and voted for Reagan. But, now Reaganism has run its course; and America is again devoid of any purpose except cheerleading our military adventurism.

Therefore, I offer the following outline of new purpose as an answer to the questions I have posed.

Article 1:
A Scientific Purpose: A sustainable planet

....if its not sustainable, then humanity has just been 4000 years of looting nature, with a very bad ending.
....6.5B people alive today; 3M starve every year.
............How can you be pro-life and not care about all this death?

Article 2:
A call to action (be good stewards of this planet - for our own continuation)

....Speaking truth to ignorance
............not sin & redemption; but ignorance & enlightenment
....I am dumbstruck at the self-destructive denial of reality, the willful ignorance.
............Fundamentalism is an affront to common sense.
....We must get people to think rationally again
............We must reduce emotionalism, which media pour on everything, like sugar.
....When people think, they will see the planet is in danger
............We need to move to alternate energy
............We need to use biotech
............We need to limit the population

Article 3:
The scientific worldview IS legitimate. It is not anti-human or un-spiritual

....Its purposes and goals have created the means for billions to live.
....Its rise has limited, somewhat, the destructive irrationality of humanity

....We have enough knowledge to fix things; but not enough will
............Overpopulation is at root of all problems.

....The planet is finite; rationality is limited.
............Fundies must be stopped or life is over in our lifetime
....................They are wrong. Billions alive today, and more in future will pay for that.

....The world is unknowable but manipulable
............Fundies: it is neither. Scientists: it is both.

....There is emergence and "life" at every scale
............All life is connected
....................Horizontal gene transfer
....................Epigenetics
....................The origins of multi-celled life in endosymbiosis

Article 4:
We now read the book of life - why isn't everyone fascinated?

There is a whole new world right here, but it is "invisible/microscopic". Like a god, it is everywhere, but mute. What does it mean when so many people do not accept its existence, much less try to comprehend it.

Just as it took knowledge to appreciate that Copernicus was right and the Catholic Church was wrong about heliocentricity, it takes knowledge to understand that evolution is proven beyond a doubt by massive genetic data banks that demonstrate the relationships of species, by detailed examination of the mutation rates of various genetic copying systems (polymerases).

To the creationists, the world is one big black propaganda operation, and god is the intelligence agency running the game.

--------

arendt

[kimmerspixelated]

1. Major basic stupidity will remain in place

because there's too much money to be made in doing the opposite of what you outline as the best thing to do. Every stupid thing humans have done can be traced to the chance for making moolah. Facts, who needs them. They just want to pad their bank accounts! It is a sad state of affairs!

Good post!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. "We must reduce emotionalism, which media pour on everything, like sugar."

hoping to induce a toxic coma from unnecessary elevated stresses...

Another excellent OP from you. Recommended.

[alarimer]

3. Great post.

I get so fed up with the state of science education in this country. I blame the right-wing for a lot of it, of course, but scientists could do a better job of communicating with the public as well.

I think every science teacher (in high school and below) needs to have an actual science degree, a BS or preferably an MS. Not some bullshit "science education" major. Of course I am not really aware of the qualifications these days but a lot of my science teachers were coaches. Not exactly rocket scientists.

[HereSince1628]

4. I dunno if rationalism and reliance on consensus understanding of the empirical world

is capable of revealing "THE" truth that you mentioned a number of times. I'm pretty sure it isn't doesn't strictly conform to the ideology of a scientific world view. That view includes treating knowledge as tentative and capable of improvement, which is to say not truly "TRUE."

I do fully appreciate your frustration with irrational thinking supplemented by appeals to religious authority. I can see the potential utility of having talking point memos, or even a talking point manifestos useful in providing rhetorical ammunition to those who want to engage in argumentation with irrational viewpoints. Its a laudable tradition and a handful of scientifically trained persons exist as celebrities in this arena by publishing and promoting defenses of scientific notions such as biotic evolution.

However, talking points are not free of risks for scientists. And that isn't because once in print they become rooted in time and thus fall behind the advancing corrections to tentative knowledge.

The thing is, talking points promote cue-based thinking. Cue-based thinking is characterized by surveillance for and response to cues. In other words it tends to find, note, and act on those things for which it is looking. In science cue-based thinking is pretty common and it's built on prevailing contemporary understanding (its often stated as hypotheses based on implications of what we think we know). It is responsible for the "routine" scientific activity that Kuhn noted was how most scientists spend their time (remember that Kuhn was trying to explain scientific revolutions).

The risk that cue-based thinking generates boring science isn't its greatest threat to scientific thinking. The danger in cue-based thinking is that it can become so focused that ONLY those things expected are the things that become noticed. On occasion unexpected things really do happen in the presence of observing individuals or in records produced by surveillance instruments. If a scientist has cue-generated tunnel vision the unexpected thing goes unnoticed and overlooked. Unexpected things often are interesting; sometimes they are extraordinarily interesting. Openness to experience is needed to achieve an ideal scientific world view. In as much as talking points are created to be used in response to rhetorical cues, they tend to focus attention on detecting cues, rather than openness to ideas. That can actually result in scientists adopting thinking that is quite conservative and its own sort of fundamentalism.

I am certain that you are not in anyway promoting closed-mindedness, but rather the defense of society from fundamentalism.

I only share this "intellectualization" on one aspect of your post as a consequence of having spent a large part of my life in "ivory towers." High in those dungeons I have had the opportunity to spend many an impractical and unproductive hour considering how to endow undergraduates' lives with some appreciation of thinking like a scientist. So with an inability to sound other than hypocritical, I admit that your post provided a cue about cue-based thinking to which my memory reacted...

[arendt]

6. I am sorry that all you got were "cues". I did not intend my outline as talking points, rather...

it was just ideas I didn't have time to flesh out. I hate talking points. To say that being rational and seeing what is in front of your face are "talking points" is part of the war on rationality. How has being logical become reduced to posting "talking points"?

I understand that you meant well; but to hear this from someone who I believe to be in my camp is most discouraging.

I used the word 'truth' exactly twice. The word "facts" would have done just as well. In fact, it would have done better, because it doesn't carry the baggage that "truth" carries. I'm going to guess that you have been pilloried in the "the good" vs "the true" wars in academia.

The problem in the media, and on DU, is that no one sticks around for a lengthy discussion. Its just a few soundbites, and goodbye. Maybe you could comment on my outline as a worldview. My worldview is that molecular biology is just as immanent as any "god". It is everywhere, it is mysterious, it is life itself. As Tom Knight of MIT said, "Biology is nanotechnology that works." It is awesome stuff that I am willing to fight for. Technology has gotten us to the point where we can ask questions about what is life and get answers that aren't metaphysical gibberish. That scares the crap out of the willfully ignorant. As many have remarked, the key aspect of being a conservative is being afraid.

Fundamentalism is a mental disease; and the easiest way to prove it is to put scientific facts in front of those fruitcakes and watch them deny reality.

Imagine setting up some scientific "evangelism". They have these things called "science cafes" where they get big name scientists to give lectures at venues in big cities where anyone can attend. These are sellout events. We need more of them. We need to demonstrate there is a huge constituency for science. We need to make politicians want to show up at these events, like they show up today for whacko fundie tent revivals.

I don't need Richard Dawkins prating on about atheism. I just need to show people the consistency, the elegance, the open-endedness of science. It is mesmerizing - much more than the hypnotic pablum of fear and submission that the fundies preach.

It is sad that, after three centuries, we have to fight for science as hard as they had to during the Religious Wars.

arendt

arendt

[HereSince1628]

13. I framed a rather long response to your OP including comments on the outline

earlier this morning but lost it when the SO came in to look at her email and closed the window I was in...

I'll PM to you after I reconstruct it.

[arendt]

16. Been there. DU post windows vaporize if you hit the wrong button. That's why I compose long...

responses in a text editor and copy them into the post page.

Looking forward to your response.

arendt

[HereSince1628]

21. Here, edited a bit particularly to avoid emotional responses to the 800 lb knot

My understanding of what you want to do is to create a framework of understanding that can be used to counter/annhililate the influence of religious fundamentalist thinking in societal decision making and to replace it with rationalism and something you call a scientific worldview. I know what rationalism is and I know what science is. I have the feeling that what you call scientific world view includes ethical and other prescriptive considerations that are not really part of science. Because I think there is likely a conceptual difference on the use of "scientific" I expect that on a regular basis this response is going to travel down a track you didn't intend. I apologize in advance for the places my interpretation displaces your intent.

You seem to want society to run on a system of rational thinking supported by science. Rationalism and empiricism are not always the best of friends. Rationalism has to do with finding answers by thinking about them. Yet, science is empirical and finds answers in observable phenomen in nature. Scientists certainly do think about things. In physics so called “mind experiments” are really nothing more than thinking. But there is a lot of room for conflict. Thought doesn’t always end up squaring with empirical observation. I would advise you that Intelligent Design is indeed a rational argument. It is one I don’t accept myself, but it is nothing if it is not a conclusion based on thinking. Most everyone wants to create a system of argumentation that biases the admission of some things as fact and evidence and denies unfavorable lines of questioning (points of view).

Your dream society seems like that of Roddenberry’s planet Vulcan. Roddenberry was a committed atheist and academic consideration of his Star Trek scripts have shown that he frequently included storylines wherein science and logic triumph over religion and emotion. Whether or not such a society would be good, let alone better than ours, is far outside the realm of science. Roddenberry created the mixed species Spock with an internal conflict between “human nature” and Vulcan logic in order to play with that notion. Dr. McCoy was frequently the voice challenging the lack of humanity in Spock. Interestingly, Roddenberry used theater rather than science to deal with issues of ethics and human nature--theater (a product of Humanities), ethics and human nature (products of philosophy a domain within Humanities). I am not sure that any scientist I know would want to live within Vulcan society, not matter how cool they might think travelling to Vulcan would be. Your assumption that such a society would be better than our current one is one that really needs more than assertions to support it.
I really doubt your 3 important questions would be within the field of view of most scientists’ doing their scientific activity. So I’m not certain it would be with a scientific world view. Like the exploration of the conflict of human nature and technology explored by Roddenberry, these questions are topics for different domains of intellectual pursuit.

The hue of your post is largely painted in the colors of utilitarianism. You point out problems and suggest that science creates understanding and that technology based on said understanding can solve problems, maybe even our big problems. The conflict of “pure” science vs. practical science is really long standing and a few minutes on Google will probably provide you with a long reading list and save me a lot of time pointing out that your pragmatic viewpoint, as much as it reflects the drive of American society, isn’t really so universal among scientists. Many would see your Article I as an anathema, a societal imposition greatly restricting their intellectual freedom. In a world in which science is pursued by the un-rich it is an old debate.
The belief that technology can solve all problems is widespread and many critics of our civilization see it as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. People believe in technology because it has indeed solved many problems. However, it has also led us into our current state of troubled affairs. Can we trust that a techno-fix will always emerge; can we trust that the techno fix will not be worse than the problem? I don’t think that is a safe assumption. It wasn’t timely for the pre-Columbian mesoAmericans, and technology never came in time for the civilization that built the statues on Easter Island.

There is no real reason to believe that in a world free of religious fundamentalists technological solutions will be derived in any more timely a manner. Moreover, workable solutions to problems may not require new technology, or indeed anything we could call technology. Solutions to sustainability are also about political resolve. A planet with fewer people who require fewer energy and material subsidies would be an obvious part of a solution to sustainability. But that solution, if it ever occurs, will result from mandated laws (for the ethical issues this could cause think about how technology contributed to the horrors of India’s early population control programs), or will be based on personal reproductive considerations far apart from science or technology.

Your article 2 is proscriptive about relationships of human activity to the world. Science isn’t proscriptive about society. It doesn’t generate a moral code for society. I think the nature of the difference between science and societal solutions can be illuminated a bit by considering the distinction between ecology (a field of natural science), environmentalism (a type of political advocacy movement), and environmental science ( a multi-disciplinary approach to human caused problems). Ecology is the study of interactions between organism(s) and components (both living and non-living) of their environment. It creates theoretical frameworks of understanding of these relationships and tests them. In general, ecology doesn’t make value judgments about the nature of these relationships…predators and pathogens are neither good nor bad, late sere of succession are not better or worse than earlier stages, etc.). Environmentalism is a sub-category of political movements. Its purpose is to change attitudes and ultimately government policy. Its methods include things which are decidedly outside the domain of science thinking. Environmental Science (ES) is a name that sounds like the sort of “Science” you’d like. However, ES is a multi-disciplinary approach to the identification, analysis, and management (including legal frameworks needed for management) of environmental risks (environmental risks are limited to loss of values caused by humans’ interactions with the natural world). ES certainly uses understanding and technology derived by science, but the management of risks involves stakeholders with a wide range of values at risk that aren’t properly scientific issues--the aesthetic appeal of a landscape, the spiritual value of a wilderness, etc. Natural science simply doesn’t have the answers to resolving conflicts in values that underlie most environmental issues. Not surprisingly these end up resolved not thru science but thru changes of societal attitude (which could be religious/moral) or legal/regulatory action of government.

I think it is interesting that you want to eliminate emotionalism and the use of fear in society. Nevertheless, in Article 3 you used fear of the outcomes of Fundamentalism as part of your argument for their annihilation. Seems a bit ironic and begging for a better justification for why your fear is legitimate and theirs is not. How do you eliminate emotionalism without eliminating emotion? We are harkened back to the model of Mr. Spock and the world of Vulcan. How do we deal with the spiritual aspect you claim scientific thinking doesn’t undermine or the reverence you hold for scientific discovery if we are not allowed to experience the emotion of awe? I don’t see how it is possible to have something that is “fascinating” if we are devoid of the tug of emotion.

Your Article 3 is a collage of ideas and it is consequently somewhat difficult to address in one general statement. I certainly agree that the empirical view used by scientists is legitimate. Certainly, the planet has finite boundaries. The elemental and energy inputs from outer space limit the availability of stuff and the energy needed to work with it.

I disagree with the starkness in which you state that the world is unknowable. Science uses empirical methods BECAUSE empirical things are observable, and hence in some sense knowable. True our knowledge is incomplete, imperfect and likely to remain so. Akin to Xeno’s paradox, our forward progress in science as wonderful as it is never seems to get us to the end of the knowledge race.

I don’t really know what you mean by emergence. If you mean that at different levels of resolution (scale) properties emerge that are not available to study at other levels, I agree. Because of this sort of emergence Biology, in particular among sciences, is very hierarchical in its consideration of biotic phenomena...


That we are NOW reading the book of life stated in the heading of your Article 4, implies that until recently we have not been reading the book of life. As someone whose active scientific career spanned the molecular revolution, I find that insensitive and frankly dangerously wrong thinking with respect to understanding phenomena contributing to global problems such as global warming and bio-simplification resulting from the on-going massive global extinction event.

To assume that sequencing genomes and finding within them information content about gene products is the “only way to read the book of life” is characteristic of the hubris so prevalent in the popular promotion of the molecular biology hegemony. No doubt, molecular biology and biotechnology have opened to research and industry an aspect of biotic phenomena that has not previously been available. Its practical and economic value is already enormous. But, dammit, people have been interpreting and sharing stories from life for a long time. Moreover, molecular biology, per se, does not and cannot provide answers to all biological questions.

A paragraph or two ago I agreed with your point of emergent properties and alluded to the hierarchical nature of biology which is generally presented as a scalae naturae something like this…atoms, molecules, membranes, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, and biospheres (life containing planets of which we have one known, though many are assumed to exist). The categories of fine organization are nested in their existence inside larger levels of organization in this system. Consequently, all organisms are composed of cells and all cells depend upon biochemical (including DNA activity) activity for life. Even at the highest levels in the hierarchy, the presence of biochemical processes is implicit, and these biochemical processes may have significant importance at these high levels of the heirarchy (as in nitrification and denitrification in nutrient cycling or as in the liberation of oxygen and the transformation of the Earth’s early reducing atmosphere). Processes we think of as central to molecular biology, those involving cellular information storage and its expression, have implications that are transcendent from bottom to top of the hierarchy. Not surprisingly we can relate their presence and activity to many phenomena across all heirarchical levels.

However, moving up the hierarchy, properties emerge that can’t be studied at a lower level. DNA cannot hear. Neither can any other of the bio-molecules be they proteins, lipids, or carbohydrates. Admittedly, within the information content of DNA there are genes that influence the formation of a vertebrate’s ear components (i.e. the necessary physiological platform for hearing). Beyond its inability to hear DNA also can’t vocalize, nor can it interpret the meaning of a heard vocalization, but seagulls (organismal organization level) commonly do this as evidenced by their behaviors surrounding the species' “long call.”

In 1953, Niko Tinbergen published his book on the seagull’s world. An entire book based on his reading of one of the narratives constantly being told by living things to those erudite enough to understand. Obviously, the work discussed in that book was conducted much earlier. I choose this example because 1953 was about the time that the structure of DNA was finally published and it’s mechanism for replication was proposed. It should be clear that Tinbergen was interpreting the narrative being told by sea gulls decades before this. Indeed Tinbergen’s readings from life were undertaken before DNA was actually shown to be the stuff of inheritance.

If you are proposing a truly science based scientific world-view it ought to value more than only the reductionist’s approach that always seeks finer resolution of more and more minute mechanisms and processes. It ought not to privilege the role of DNA in the resolution of all biological problems. If you really think in terms of the value of applying scientific thinking to understanding global problems then you ought also to be promoting integrationism. The opposite of reductionism, integrationism is a perspective used by scientists who are asking questions about the role of mechanisms in larger and larger contexts.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. An excellent post....

How does one convince the willful ignorant that there is an actual truth out there that is better able to provide them with survival than the lies to which they adhere? They are ignorant, and proud of it.
They behave as if their survival depends on maintaining their ignorance, and anyone trying to enlighten them is actually trying to destroy them..

[NoFederales]

7. Lake Wohbegone, where everyone is above average, is as much an

illusion as Camelot, or fill-in "utopia". Giftedness, creative and innovatively skilled people will never be the "norm" in a population. Without crutches such as religion, or endless warring, or whatever, the masses cannot be focused in so-called higher order mental processing because they cannot operate there. Base appeals probably have to be made along the simplest modes of experience. Academically gifted individuals are not the norm and may be why "ordinary" people mistrust the "intelligent".

So, how big can a progressive group be? Big enough to influence a population as in the USA? I don't know, but I think that we need intelligent leaders. Clearly, the Reagans, Bushs, and McCains (and a host of politicians) have shown that appealing to the lowest common denominators is only successful for those who cultivate base desires to manipulate and achieve greediness and power, and those masters are rapers of populations, not benevolant administrators.

NoFederales

[arendt]

9. I'm not asking for utopia; just for enough common sense to avoid committing suicide...

Let people make a religion out of biology - if it stops us from killing the planet. Anything that works.

But, no more brain-dead Reagans, McCains, and Bushes. It will be the deaths of us all. Literally.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

22. Common sense?

[bonito]

8. I wish

I could get my hands on a lbm, never had one but I think I'm long over due.
Seriously, anybody?

[arendt]

10. morning kick n/t

[tom_paine]

11. Isn't it ironic that science is the strength behind the Bushies' hold over the National Mind

and National Dialogue.

It comes back to something you said in your OP.

People, unfortunately, are not rational. Tversky, and other psychologists and behavioral economists, have been demonstrating this in behavioral experiments for the last thirty years. Their scientific evidence for lack of rationality in human decision making is now a toolkit that sophisticated propagandists for the elites use to undermine the societal consensus for the scientific method.

It is exactly this 20th & 21st Century quantum leap of many magnitudes in the science of propaganda and it's underpinning sciences that has made the change complete, along with a level of media-saturation that is the perfect delivery system for such. Media saturation delivered unto us by...science.

This is the 20th and 21st Century elite/dictator/oligarch response to the now-ended Age of Enlightenment, and it has been terrifyingly effective, now that it has kicked into overdrive these last eight years.

And now, as we sit at what for the moment is the pinnacle of progress for the science of propaganda looking back, we can see just how untrue, from a biological perspective anyway, the precepts of the Enlightenment were. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions for the human species, as advancing to the next stage of evolution very likely would have involved a path to some sort of rationality and cooperation, a putting aside of our evolutionary imperatives that served us so well but now are killing our species even as it swells us to unheard of numbers.

Enlightenment over Evolutionary Imperative...that was the way forward.

But no, it was not to be. Instead, those evolutionary imperatives, in the form of the Bushian Elites, shall we say, harnessed all the power of scienece that thier wealth could buy, to buy them a way out of the Enlightenment and back to the Dark Ages, a time of paradise for Bushian Lords and their Evangelical Priests in terms of their absolute political power over the rest of us.

Unfortunately, such is hell for the Earth and for 90% of us, we now see, and for the long-term future of our own species.

But I digress. The main point here is that it is the media-saturation combined with this hyper-advanced gestalt-based propaganda (not to mention the Democratic Leadership STILL being largely clueless and/or hapless in it's face so many years later) that have made the age-old dreams of dictators and oligarchic wealthy flunkies rekindle to life in another guise.

It is the science, ironically, that is the iron, the power behind the Bushie Propaganda Machine. Not that the Bushies themselves, science haters, would ever admit it. They would like to think they "made it up" and they did to some extent. But they never EVER could have done what they did so very well in terms of literally nullifying the idea of truth and lies in the public sphere, without the years and decades of pyschological research, advertising research, marketing research, millions of focus groups and double-blind experiments, etc. etc.

The classic case of the old Alexander Pope saying (I think it was Pope), A dwarf standing on giant's shoulders sees the farthest of the two.

Science in general is like guns and any other inanimate tool, IMHO able to be used for great good or great ill. It is not the tool but the hands that wield it. You may disagree, but that is my position and I am sticking to it.

[arendt]

12. That should be an OP. Very well said. However sad it is; it is also true.

However, at this moment (and for not much longer), there is still a fight for control of the corporate gangster world empire. I can't really say who is fighting whom (Peter Dale Scott and the more recent John LeCarre novels are reports from the front in this secret war). Until they shut it down or turn it into a panopticon, the internet is a place where all these psych-war techniques can be exposed - even if it is to a miniscule audience.

When I was reading The DaVinci Code, I couldn't credit the idea that Da Vinci and others could hide Gnostic references in plain sight, that the Church was so ignorant that it was being mocked. Now, I have two alternatives to consider. First, the Church could have been that stupid. I mean, look at the WH inviting Stephen Colbert to that dinner; they thought he was a conservative. Second, the PTB could be content to let the few still awake talk in code - the PTB know that it goes right over the heads of the brainwashed masses. I tend to favor option two. They will let us sit here and talk to each other, impotently.

That said, it is a very dark time. The AG refuses to prosecute crimes. The Congress refuses to impeach despite mountains of evidence. The Federal Reserve hands our last real money to the Wall St. crooks who wrecked the economy. The FBI harrasses innocent people to death and then lies about it. The media run a one-sided version of events in Georgia, leaving out WHO STARTED THE FIGHTING, and neglecting to mention shitskashvili's stay in Giuliani and Mukasey's law firm.

This is a police state, not a democracy. Its just a new, highly propagandized police state. They have figured out that brainwashed idiots don't need to be locked up. Its much cheaper that way. Instead, we lock up the idiots only when they spiral into suicide-by-drugs. The prison industry completes the vertical integration of the drug conglomerate - from importing and selling the drugs to locking up the drug users and endless supply of minor dealers.

Life sucks lately.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

14. How does one remain sane in the face of a delusional society?

I don't think that it is possible to remain entirely sane when faced with a society as delusional as ours.

Erasmus said that in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Erasmus was dead wrong, in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is thought delusional.

[arendt]

15. Truly. The sane are defined as "deviant". If unlucky, they are forcibly medicated...

can you say ritalin?

When the American Psychological Association can't muster the votes to denounce psychologists participating in torture, how is the society that depends on these experts going to do any better.

The society that I was born and raised in has been burned to the ground. This hideous open-air concentration camp has replaced it. I remain sane partly by telling the truth about what I am seeing to anyone who will listen.

arendt

[Fumesucker]

18. You find people who will listen?

I doubt you live in the Bible belt.

I know exactly one person IRL who I can talk to about what I see and fear, my brother who already thinks pretty much as I do. And we find it so depressing to discuss the disaster around us that we mostly stick with other subjects.

Good point about the APA, when even the official keepers of "sanity" devolve to insanity, is there any hope left?

We are living in the world of Kornbluth's Marching Morons, but we have no Barlow to come along and save us.

[arendt]

19. I live in Massachusetts and work near MIT...

everyone hear hates the GOP; but they are doing OK personally, so they just blow it off as the usual corrupt politics. (Remember, this is the state with the "Big Dig".)

People listen to me. They agree about the facts. They agree what assholes are running the country. And then they just say "not my problem". They think I'm "gloomy".

But at least they listen. One guy in the office has it in for Scientology. Hey, at least he's shooting at a good target.

It truly has become "idiocracy" around here. The corporate media have dissolved the nation's brains in a soup of sex and violence.


arendt

[Fumesucker]

20. "Gloomy"

Cassandra didn't get treated all that well.

-Another nattering nabob of negativism.

[ensho]

17. if you don't think science is all that important, think on the many dead scientists

that the neo cons caused to die - it is a long list. and then look at the list of what the scientists were working on.

science is so important the neo cons murdered the scientist truth tellers.

[tannybogus]

23. I taught physics and earth science for 20 years.

If I hear "idiot design" one more time, I think my head will explode. Unfortunately, you
can't reason with people. They have their beliefs, and they will not change them. If they decide
they don't believe in gravity, it will be "the magic hand of God" or some hooey that keeps us
on Earth.
I have never had a problem with religion and science. I personally believe if there is a God, she is
a mathematician. My Mama seized up over that. I think it is just as remarkable that a God could
create such an intricate world of atoms and such.
The scariest thing in my mind is home schooling. There are people who are smart enough and well
versed enough to do it. There are a lot of people, however, who can't teach the ABC's.And yes, I do
know what shape public schools are in. I'm amazed that a new teacher doesn't run screaming from his/her
classroom after the first week.
Your post was well thought out and well reasoned. It is hard to get anything across in a classroom that
requires such reasoning. I had some classes where my major objective was to get the idea across that they
had to stay in their bloody seats. It will be even harder to teach anything because of the "No Child
Left Untested" act.
All I can add, is if Columbine had happened where I taught, there would have been return fire from
some student.


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