5 thoughts on “Scientific “Consensus””

  2. science is life (and all its parts) are much more complex than many people are comfortable with.

    But at the same time made from that which is simple. For example, nothing is simpler than machine language which manipulates bits (just two states.) A program however, made up of this simplest of things, can be as complicated as time and space allows.

    This is a red herring…

    Evidence provided by science is often mixed, incomplete, changeable or conditional on context.

    …because it presumes a reality that doesn’t exist. Real things exist in tolerances. Only imagined things are perfect. If chaos theory is believed then conclusions can only be probabilities.

    Even digital algorithms are not immune as quantum tunneling introducing probability.

    However all of this is good because it produces conflict. Otherwise we could reach a point where no change and no learning occurs. A point of delusion.

    What about the comfortable part? Comfortable is the signal that something is wrong. Some would conclude the discomfort is the problem. That’s the sad part.

  3. It was an interesting article. Also interesting was to look at the climate articles on the site, which all conform to a single viewpoint.

  4. But this is only a problem in a culture where people expect prescriptions to be based on unshakeable evidence, and where experts cultivate that impression. On other issues such as climate change, where science is invoked to justify particular interventions to the public, we see the same pattern.

    We have a technocratic elite which want to be a new priesthood and control everyone’s lives. It isn’t surprising considering the rise of communism on the left in the USA. But people who are smart and think everyone else is stupid, should really know better.

    1. I think it is because they have never interacted to a degree that would inspire humility. You have an elite who went to private schools, then elite universities, and have generally kept themselves apart from the hoi polloi all their lives.

      Their heroes and villains are one-dimensional storybook characters read about in second and third hand accounts, with a pronounced selection bias.

      It is an unstable dynamic. The more they remove themselves from the people they scorn, the more they find reasons to scorn them, and the more they retreat into a fantasy land of their own making.

Comments are closed.