The cult of “science” has got to be smashed
Should we trust people who claim to be speaking in the name of science?
Someone on Twitter just posted this, thinking himself profound: “If you think you don’t trust scientists, you’re mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your tap or open a can of beans. The fact that you’re unaware of this doesn’t mean it’s not so.”
Saifedean Ammous, a great friend of the Tom Woods Show, wasn’t about to let this stand.
Before going any further, let me add this: after the past 18 months, I think the dangers and absurdities of scientism have become clear enough.
“Science” does not and is not intended to have the answers to all questions. It does not and cannot tell us what we should value, what our priorities should be, whether certain behaviors are morally acceptable or indeed required, etc.
Staring longingly at men in white coats, seeking the meaning of life, is superstition of the worst kind.
Not to mention: the standard story of how science progresses is completely wrong. We do not move forward because government-subsidized men in lab coats play around in laboratories doing “basic science” untainted by mundane concerns.
It is generally men of action who actually do the work.
Now for Saifedean:
The Wright brothers and a century of airplane builders were engineers. Scientists first dismissed flight as impossible even after it happened, then made up a bunch of irrelevant equations to pretend to explain how it happened.
Everything that matters to our modern life was built by engineers and workers who got their hands dirty. Scientists sat in cushy universities writing textbooks after the fact indoctrinating generations to think it was their post-hoc explanations that built things.
Lord Kelvin was one of the world’s most important scientists when airplanes were invented. This is what he thought:
“I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of.”
Astronomer and polymath Simon Newcomb in 1903:
“Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.”
This was the same year in which the Wright Brothers, two bicycle shop owner high school dropouts, built the first working airplane.
Three years after the Wright Brothers flew, The London Times dismissed their claims of flight as fake, and was instead writing:
“All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.”
The first commercial steam engine was invented by Simon Newcomen, a barely literate ironmonger who had never come in contact with a scientist. James Watt was a technician, not a scientist, and explicitly denied that any scientific theories influenced his invention.
The scientific method is practiced by engineers building things, experimenting to see what works. Professional science consists mostly of nerds quibbling over each other’s irrelevant papers and agreeing they all need more funding.
Nothing in science needs trust. I don’t trust anyone to get in an airplane. I look at the track record of airplanes and decide the risks are acceptable given the benefits. “Trust science” is how you end up with billions of lives destroyed over virus hysteria.
I love Saifedean.
The real story of science, again, is something like the opposite of what we’ve been told. Not to mention: countries that heavily subsidized science in the nineteenth century lagged behind the UK, which spent no government money.
I tell the story in my 2011 book Rollback, but the classic treatment is Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research.
At Liberty Classroom, my dashboard university, we don’t go in for cutesy myths about how the world works. We tell the un-p.c. truth, every time.
For my birthday the Master (lifetime) membership is 50% off.
Here’s what they kept from you: http://www.LibertyClassroom.com
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Alan
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There are effectively two branches of science. The branch that uses science to make things work and where the theory can be tested. Then we have the modern branch of science that is involved with predictions that cannot be verified, climate science being the best example. Then we have drugs which we also cannot verify are are working. We have to rely on trials to give us statistics on the benefits and risks and since we are not machines we don’t all respond in the same way. This science results in fear being used to make us take drugs that might not benefit us but the benefit the manufacturers.
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Andy
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Well said Alan.
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Artelia
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Science can be fallacious, based on deception or truth based. The Master deceiver has turned science into an evil religion. It is amazing how much blind faith the lost sheep have.
Just because something CAN be done, it does not mean that it should be done. Science should serve the human person, the family and be a blessing for us. The sins of excessive greed and excessive lust for power have increased the errors of science. Science should work WITH the human person, with who we are, with the grand design instead of changing it. Eating foods in season is better than wanting to harvest and eat them outside of their season. Extending the season and making it arrive earlier are not the same as growing strawberries to eat in December and January, in the Northern hemisphere. Our work needs to stop being at cross purposed with the grand Architect’s work and needs to learn how to work WITHIN boundaries.
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sir_isO
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“Just because something CAN be done, it does not mean that it should be done.”
That’s the essence of it, if you’re actually good at the “science”, you would be cautious UNLESS you are motivated to say, do something malicious, as some clearly are.
Personally, I stick with the idea that science is best when it’s purely mental, otherwise I might have to build this gamma bomb in my head.
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VICB3
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It’s not the science that’s the problem. It’s the politicized and agenda driven science that’s the problem. Add vanity, insecurity, cowardice and greed to the mix, leavened with profit and power seeking above all else, and you get the current Covid hysteria.
As to Science and the Scientific Method being the bad guy, one need only look to Germany in the 19th century to see that merit based and class-blind scientific research resulted in too-numerous-to-name scientific advances. Likewise, the class blinded British scientific establishment gave us such frauds as the Piltdown Man. This highlights again that it ain’t the science, it’s the people and culture behind the science that matters.
(As for engineers always getting it right, one need only look to the POS F-35 to see what politicized engineering gets you.)
Finally, as to the Wright Brothers et al in ~1900, it’s interesting to note that the whole era resulted in a sea change of technologies due to the efforts of what were essentially the equivalent of a bunch of outsiders and amateurs working in their parent’s garages. 80 year’s on, we saw the same thing with computers and electronics in general as dropouts and outsiders who didn’t know any better (and with a willingness to make lots of mistakes) ushered in our modern technological era. (And like the current crop of tech oligarchs, they morphed into a bunch of world-improving control freaks, but that’s another story.)
1820 gave us the beginning of the steam era. ~80 years on gave us the electrical and internal combustion era. ~80 years on after that – 1980 – gave us the electronic and computer era.
1980 + 80 years = AD 2060. It will be interesting to see what that era ushers in.
Keep taking those vitamines and going to the gym, and you just may be around to see it all happen.
Just a thought.
VicB3
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sir_isO
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“Keep taking those vitamines and going to the gym, and you just may be around to see it all happen.”
As opposed to actually living and eating good food.
Like if I personally shift a few hundred tons of soil, having been toxified by pesticides and shit, resulting in asthma, heart, gut, brain problems at 2-3 years old, and now I smoke cigarettes and marijuana (especially when I drink) too…to grow actual plants that I know something about, considering they’re about 90% of the importance of my environment…wtf would I go to a gym if I can use Qat and say fuckoff more often?
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sir_isO
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I don’t believe in gymming, coz it’s superficial “narcissist” garbage. For someone too stupid to figure out something useful to do. That’s why I reckon gyms should harvest that kinetic energy. But you don’t tell them about it.
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sir_isO
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The reason I say that is because I asked some people “So, let’s say you gym and that generates electricity which is not for you”…they actually complained, can you believe that?
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Artelia
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Paracetamol tylennol acetaminophen prevent healthy immune response.
Aspirin is better as it is an anti -inflammatory. Take with food and the dissolving kind is best BUT first of all generate a temperature and deep sweat, THEN take it.
Aslo anti-biotics prevent the health immune response of the good bacteria. Then with the medication of steroids, again the immune response is bashded.
The only steroid should be budesonide powder for 5 mins in a nebulizer and only to be taken if a cytokine storm is in the lungs.
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Roslyn Ross
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Anyone with half a brain can work out the science which creates manmade mechanical machines is going to be more reliable than science which works with the natural world. Pure and simple logic.
The ‘science’ which helps make a plane is very different to the science which makes a vaccine or medical treatment. The most successful areas of modern allopathic medicine are where things can be reduced to the mechanical, i.e. surgery and diagnostics but, even there, things often go terribly wrong because natural processes are involved and sometimes ignored.
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cnash
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Last week was the second week in a row more Americans died from the Covid vaccine than from Covid itself. That’s astonishing. And the death count is accelerating rapidly.
This “vaccine” is a disaster. As a matter of fact, it’s not a vaccine. It’s an untested, rushed-to-production, “experimental” shot approved “for emergency use only.” This is far different than polio, smallpox, or any other life-saving vaccines in our history.
The truth is this vaccine must be immediately suspended, before it kills, injures and maims more Americans (ie human guinea pigs).
Don’t let the liberal fake news media confuse you, or shame you. This experimental Covid shot has as much in common with a life-saving polio vaccine, as a dog has in common with an alligator.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed just this week claiming the CDC is hiding this gigantic death count. Two CDC whistleblowers confirmed that the CDC is outright lying.
Even more remarkable is the complete fabrication told by the CDC over the past few days. They claim everyone getting Covid is unvaccinated. It’s such an absurd lie, Pinocchio would blush. The overwhelming majority of newly infected people are vaccinated .
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Genghis Cohen
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Scientists still don’t fully understand or agree on how flight is possible.
https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-one-way-to-explain-how-flying-works/
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Howdy
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Just scientific types making a problem as complicated as possible. The lift methods we already know and understand are both valid.
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Genghis Cohen
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lol, thanks for that pronouncement…
http://milesmathis.com/lift.pdf
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