They’re not bold faced lies because it’s really the best we have about consistently explaining reality but I think we should let kids understand that even the latest and greatest reduction theories of reality won’t unlock truth everywhere, just allows you to peek in at some places and perform some degree of interpretation and prediction. It’s still quite valuable but we need to stop telling everyone we have the answers because we don’t. We almost masquerade around like a religion to some degree and people use that in the same way, “well science says” or “according to this data and paper” —- well yea, maybe, but also probably not.
How did we go from:
Our simplified model Ignored friction.
to
We have no idea what is real, throw away all technology and lets live in the trees.
Just search 'anti-science' in the US.
There are literally hundreds of articles, and studies slicing the data by any metric you desire.
How can you have missed the US turning against science. It pre-dates Covid by a few years, and Covid just ramped it up. We are having measles outbreaks. Polio is coming back. The US is turning more towards a religious Fundamentalism, and science just doesn't fit their world view.
(of course, i'm assuming you were making a comment about my internal model being that the US is turning anti-science, and based on models being imperfect, maybe i'm over-stating it.)
And marvel at the pseudoscientific claims, that purely coincidentally get a free pass from science.
Don't forget though: the claim is "We have no idea what is real, throw away all technology and lets live in the trees". I am anti-science, but I am not the strawman described above - I wonder how many others are like me, and I also wonder how many in the pro-science camp actually care about such details, despite how important interpersonal relations are when it comes to people's beliefs (something fairly well studied by science, ironically).
> It pre-dates Covid by a few years, and Covid just ramped it up.
Was it the virus itself, or might it have been the mass psychological phenomenon surrounding covid that got people all worked up?
> We are having measles outbreaks. Polio is coming back. The US is turning more towards a religious Fundamentalism, and science just doesn't fit their world view.
That's right! I recommend scientists take off their fundamentalist hats and put their science hats back on, lest even more misfortune befall them, and us.
> (of course, i'm assuming you were making a comment about my internal model being that the US is turning anti-science, and based on models being imperfect, maybe i'm over-stating it.)
"I have a bee in my bonnet" is probably a decent description of my ire lol. Joking aside though: I am literally serious about what I say, and I propose it is very far from guaranteed that I do not have a valid and causally important point.
They developed a measles vaccine. Measles was almost eradicated. Deaths gone.
Anti-Science proponents stopped taking the vaccine.
Those people started getting sick with Measles again. And dying.
That seems pretty clear. A->B.
You don't have to invoke any mystical aspect of a belief in science that is causing misfortune.
Same with Covid. Red states/counties that are more anti-science, did not take as much Covid vaccine. Their per-capital adoption was lower, and they had more sickness and death per-capita.
You can graph it and look with your own eyes. No mystical beliefs happening.
Not in that text, but you cleverly avoided addressing my actual complaint, which I indicated by quoting the specific text of yours I was agreeing with before posting my disagreement.
There is a mystical belief here though:
>> What is up with people throwing out science these days?
>> How did we go from:
>> Our simplified model Ignored friction.
>> to
>> We have no idea what is real, throw away all technology and lets live in the trees.
I asked in response:
> How many people actually do this though, as opposed to how many people's models contain other people doing this?
Your reply:
>> Was going to add some citations, but really there are too many.
>> Just search 'anti-science' in the US.
>> There are literally hundreds of articles, and studies slicing the data by any metric you desire.
Here you are speaking as if ALL returned hits (ALL instances of anti-science) match your prior framing: "We have no idea what is real, throw away all technology and lets live in the trees."
So, you dodged my criticism, while representing that science, and pro-science thinkers, are better at thinking...while demonstrating otherwise.
That most any pro-science person I engage with tends to follow this methodology is a part of the reason for my anti-science stance: the combination of deceit/disingenuousness combined with implied superiority (times the percentage frequency of this behavior in my experience) bothers me.
Because scientist test their theories.
If the test fails, then that become part of the known false things.
If the test passes, then they become known true.
There are no ''things that are believed true because of science as some pseudo religious belief'', they must all be proved true.
So to be anti-science, you are automatically saying that you would ignore true results. That truth does not matter. Or be willing to believe false things.
This happened a lot during Covid. 'Scientist' would offer very narrow results on exactly what was tested and known. And people really didn't like that, and either wanted to read too much into the results, or mad the results conflicted with their belief.
And not sure how to? Where to start?
Sure, scientific research has its issues.
Models aren't always as exact as 'reality'.
Testing methodologies could be flawed.
Various assumptions could be incorrect. And even proved wrong in future testing.
The point is, it is a process, and all results can be re-evaluated, re-tested.
But nobody is believing something that was proved false. Something was proved false, but "I'm going to ignore the science and just believe what I want". Which is what a lot of Covid and Climate conspiracy theorist do.
Yes, which is consistent with the scientific method, by definition at least.
> And not sure how to? Where to start?
I have a very long list of ideas, the vast majority of which I've borrowed from various domains, science being one of them (the very idea of the scientific method, abstractly, is very powerful, and can be applied in a variety of ways over and above what science currently does).
> Sure, scientific research has its issues.
> Models aren't always as exact as 'reality'.
Agree, but there is a true/false binary representation, and then there is the degree to which these things are true, and more! This tends to not be of interest though.
> But nobody is believing something that was proved false.
I am opposed to practicing logic using technically misinformative figures of speech like this.
> Something was proved false, but "I'm going to ignore the science and just believe what I want". Which is what a lot of Covid and Climate conspiracy theorist do.
Agreed[1], but here is something everyone does: believes that what seems true, is true. Our culture teaches us to think in binary, which is a dangerous form of logic when applied to non-binary domains, like reality.
[1] Though, how much worse are they, in fact, compared to those who suffer from normative cognition? And perhaps even more important: how many individuals are in each set? Which set causes more harm? Where should our critical attention be?
I agree, not everything is always binary True/False, and culture can influence these. But in todays world, it is hard to discuss something with a lot of gray area.
Also. Seems like you might be playing at language games some. Really, if we pick everything apart enough, nothing means anything.
See the distinction between murder and manslaughter (is it me who is playing language games?).
> Really, if we pick everything apart enough, nothing means anything.
Which seems counterintuitive to me, since science's ability and willingness to dig ever deeper (even years after any success has been achieved) is what sets it apart from most other disciplines. What's funny is that the very same methodology applied to the metaphysical realm can cause opinions on whether that is a good idea to flip, as is happening here and is getting me into trouble.
Catholicism even celebrates various “mysteries,” which are things like the trinity which they do not think can be understood fully by mortals.
this vagueness is a feature of surviving religions the more details you add the more your predictions become falsifiable. this leave room to theologians to speculate and when they are wrong it's not the religions that false it's the person who made that specific inference and when it's right, well it was already written.
this is not an /r/atheism checkmate post just pointing out the evolutionary dynamics, since even if there was a religion that described things in great details and all of it were true the people at its inception would just violently reject it without expanding efforts to verify the claims, since they don't have the means.
for example image you go thousand(s) years in the past and preach the standard model (lets ignore all the pesky details about how you'll probably die or become a slave regardless of ethnicity since you have no social backing in the era).
Gates, perfection, eternal peace and happiness, etc. but the catch-all for modeling reality or beyond reality in most religions tends to be that the supreme deity fixes or resolves any inconsistency or unknown. So, the afterlife is whatever your supreme deity decides and makes it, you just don’t know about it. It’s modeled (which is partly why it’s so successful) it’s just that you may not know the details explicitly, a sort of black box model you don’t get to peek inside of.