Philosopher Matthew B. Crawford: Science has become corrupted

This is an excellent exposition on how science has been corrupted. This isn't new, we've first heard "god is dead, science is the new religion" for at least two decades, taking science from a questioning and discovery mode open to public debate, to a mode of moral authority that cannot be publicly questioned.

Previously it has been corrupted in the developed west mostly to produce outsized revenues, but has more recently taken another turn into a darker woods of social control.

https://youtu.be/2oro0ttU2_A

Conveniently, a perfect illustration of how science is distorted in such a way to produce fear showed up recently in the presentation of the second pandemic wave in India we've seen in the news. The case and mortality rate are reported in absolute numbers as opposed to "per million people", which of course is the relevant statistic. So how does the second wave look on a percent of population basis?

https://youtu.be/vg4aUqjH4N4

The Brilliance of Dr Zack Bush

Presented in an illustrated format that makes his message all the more clear.

Enjoy

https://youtu.be/hkNhFY-s4GM

Traveling to Mars Will Wreak Havoc on Our Bodies – Can We Prevent It?

 I'm bemused by the notion the only hope for the survival of our species is "escape" to Mars...bemused because it's an absurdly delusional fantasy. But a fantasy apparently compelling enough to many that I feel motivated to try and pop it with a pen.

My perspective on delusion in us humans was the topic of my last blog if you care to see it.

https://davewavehealthway.blogspot.com/2021/04/deconstruction-of-hubris.html

NASA has compiled a lot of data about human health in the context of prolonged weightlessness, or to put it more simply, in the absence of being on and with our "mother" Earth. All data points in one direction, rapid erosion of health in every parameter, which would eventually result in premature death. Well we already have quite a bit of that here on earth (also the result of delusional thinking), but I suppose "in for a penny, in for a pound" as the saying goes.

NASA does not promote this data for understandable reasons. First, it's an impediment to the realization of a popular science fiction fantasy that was in some (large) part the motive force behind NASA to begin with.

How big an impediment? Really big. It points to myriad other factors beyond weightlessness that are equally impedimentary. It also points to the very likely possibility of factors as yet unidentified. All factors taken together essentially point to one thing - life beyond the biosphere of Earth is so improbable as to be essentially impossible.

One does not have to look very far to begin to see allusions to this data. For example, one article (I borrowed the title for this blog from) at this link:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/07/407806/traveling-mars-will-wreak-havoc-our-bodies

And a few lines from the article I felt the need to correct:)

“People think of technology as the limiting factor in space flight, but it’s not,” said Thomas Lang, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UC San Francisco. “Human physiology is the limiting factor.”

Would more accurately read: "Biology itself is the limiting factor".

Nutritional biochemist T. Colin Campbell frequently makes the point biology is so complex we will likely never completely understand it. But he also makes the point we don't have to completely understand it to observe what works and what doesn't work. And let's just do that (for crying out loud). Colin Campbell also deserves the Nobel Prize in Medicine, but you may have noticed Nobel Prizes are never awarded to any idea that would have negative impact on economies in the near term.

Anyway...

OK, here's one more, then enough of this nonsense:

“We’re attuned to living in gravity,” Lang said.

Would more accurately read: "We're literally the biological/physiological/anatomical product of countless interactive phenomena that exist on Earth, including gravity".

And living anywhere else is a complete delusion. So, while the contemporary T. Barnum Bailey (never give a sucker an even break) Mister Musk has sufficient financial reason for promoting this delusory popular fantasy, it ain't gonna happen. We need to figure out how to live here if our species is going to continue to flourish on a going forward basis.

Radical deindustrialization anyone?

Deconstruction of Hubris

A friend responded "better tell Bill Gates!" to my previous post "If you haven't heard of Ivermectin yet...it's time".

To which I responded "Gates has became an astute investor, he's probably heavy in BigP, and BigP is the reason no one has heard of Ivermectin. The existence of a cheap, safe, highly effective treatment for Covid pretty much destroys billions in profits and the constructed narrative in one fell swoop.

To which he responded "is Bill Gates a bad man?"

And then I responded in the context of things I've been thinking about in general, and that is the primary reason for this blog post:

-----------------------------------------

No of course not, he's a good man with the best intentions trying very hard to do good in the world. It is not a simple black and white question tho. Humans, even the best and brightest of us, have biases that create blind spots that result in unintended consequences. Every action has the potential for unintended consequences, and it's probably true that potential is usually fulfilled in some way.

Law of unintended consequences

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/unintconseq.html

I'm reading an interesting book at the moment, "Why Buddhism is True"

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenment/dp/1439195455

I'm not far into it yet, but it seems to be making the case that the natural state of humans is delusion, and one might say then that the primary thrust of Buddhism is to come out of that normal state of delusion. There are corollaries all over the place, for example contemporary brain science is looking at the forces that drive us, let's call them biological forces or instincts, that are invisible to us even though they dominate our actions.

https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=emotional+intelligence&qid=1619180649&s=books&sr=1-4

We make our way out of delusion, to the extent possible, by first realizing it's pervasiveness. That does not mean we can begin to see delusion clearly, but it at least puts us on guard for it, so that we may recognize it more quickly. Meditation practice is a potential second step, as is psychotherapy.

Alan Watts, the british philosopher and promoter of Buddhism, was asked "what is the closest thing in the west to Buddhism?" His answer was psychoanalysis.

Would Hitler have been evil if he was in the practice of looking for his delusions? (Hitler the Buddhist:) Probably not, but was it even in the realm of possibility for him to have become capable of knowing and practicing this? Some humans are seemingly damaged beyond repair. Trump, for example, was a front row seat on pathological narcissism, seeing it that clearly is unusual. Once you see something you can't unsee it, and I was surprised how few saw his narcissism since it is his dominant trait. But the other odd twist is pathological narcissists are frequently charismatic and attractive.

Is Gates a pathological narcissist? Sure doesn't look like one to me. The primary trait of narcissism is lack of empathy. Using that as a filter we can begin to see degrees of narcissism in ourselves and others, and to complicate things further there are also healthy levels of narcissism. Seems to me Gates is motivated by concern, which is empathy.

It is also true that there is no such thing (in a biological sense) as omniscience. But there is some kind of state of omniscience genius attains, and it doesn't seem to be well understood yet...scientists and poets can both be struck by it.

We humans seem to be loath to admit we are at bottom biological creatures. We would have to literally be omniscient to see unintended consequences clearly, from the beginning, before they occur. But drive forces have us focus almost exclusively on potential.

In terms of species, intelligence is limited by brain size. In that sense humans are no different than any other species, and we are on the track of consuming extant resources to the point of species collapse, the same as "less intelligent" species. Collectively we seem to be incapable of halting this behavior, which is the biological imperative for growth.

In a very important sense then we humans are no more intelligent than any other species of life on earth. In that sense, it is delusional to think otherwise.

I wonder what the unintended consequences of "the singularity" will be. Particularly if the primary unintended consequence of industrialism happens to be the 6th mass extinction.

If you haven't heard of Ivermectin yet...it's time

Ivermectin is a well known drug that's been around for decades that's inexpensive and very safe, and is very effective in treating Covid 19.

But doctors are being told not to use it. Some are anyway, here are some of their comments.

https://youtu.be/QciiFYJJiJk

And here's one of thousands of anecdotal responses.

https://youtu.be/hFd9EcUCZXY

Inflated COVID Cases and Fatalities

Here's a pretty scary video put out by Dr Mercola purporting to show the narrative around this pandemic was constructed. What I'm wondering if all these "sleight-of-hands" spoken of in the interview reveal an extreme and widespread case of unconscious bias in a world where vaccines have been given credit for "saving humanity" multiple times from diseases that, according to the narrative, would have wiped out half the global population.

But now we are in the 6th mass extinction, caused by the industrial activity of humans, which has already caused the demise of many species, and will eventually (connect the dots) cause significant collapse in global human population.

And what if the agency of that collapse was simply the collective effects of metabolic syndrome? To halt the 6th mass extinction in its tracks would require we collectively implement radical global deindustrialization, and go back to the land. Of course the likelihood of that is nil. Industrialization is a freight train going too fast already, and still gaining speed.

We'd rather believe the modern allopathic fiction we can eat whatever toxic brew we want and "here's a pill to fix it", breathe toxic air and here's a pill for that too, spray deadly toxins on the crops and yep, yet another pill. While we're at it let's remember the massive collective revenues being generated start to end in this process.

For whatever reason I stopped watching "TV" while still in high school, and when I happen to see conventional broadcast media now I am shocked how many of the ads are for those "magic" pills. I glance around the room and notice these ads, like most ads, have become "invisible" to the other viewers in the room. Meanwhile we are being penetrated.

Do you prefer the red pill or the blue pill?

The writer Upton Sinclair's famous quote "It difficult to get a man to see a truth when his salary depends on his not seeing it" underlines the tremendous capacity for delusion and denial in our species. My fear is there's no stopping a coming collapse, and initially the narrative will be "rolling pandemics", which ultimately are simply the result of widespread metabolic syndrome. If you need convincing on that point watch the video posted in my previous post "Top 3 Causes of Death in 2020: Where's the outrage over this?"

And here is the Mercola interview titled "Inflated COVID Cases and Fatalities":

https://youtu.be/WyoXR53ECFU

Top 3 Causes of Death in 2020: Where's the outrage over this?

This is what I've been trying to say from the beginning, but Mike Mutzel is saying it more coherently than I've managed to. Over to you Mike:

https://youtu.be/9Ie-3W7Xc8Q

Sometime in the Summer

Sometime while you're meditating allow yourself to feel the earth.

Focus on one thing...how she's pulling you toward her.

Do you feel how strong she is?

She's not kidding around. She LOVES us.

We are always in her strong embrace.

Our mother.

And yet she allows us to walk and run and play and work.

She wants us to be free, but close to her.

It's comforting to be held this way, in her warm embrace.

Sometime in the summer, outdoors on a hot day, lay with her.

Our father the sun keeps us warm.

Remove your clothing and focus on his heat on your skin.

Do you feel how HOT he is?

And yet he is 93 million miles away.

A pretty big playing field.

This relationship bore us.

The fruit of Mother and Father.

There is an EXACTITUDE in this relationship.

We don't know if it's coincidence or design.

Or both.

The confluence of exactitudes.

In this warm embrace.

What are the odds?

And yet we beat them.

We are here.

Update on the 6th Mass Extinction

 There's a couple of new documentary films on Netflix I'd like to recommend to you if you haven't watched them yet. One is "Seaspiracy", a film about the degradation of the oceans and seas. It reads like Sea Conspiracy, but I think there's a play on words here because it also reads like "Seas Piracy". The other film is David Attenborough's most recent, "A Life on Our Planet".

These two films offer us the opportunity to take a hard look at how far the 6th mass extinction has progressed in the 100 years since it started.

A corollary is a book titled "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari", where he avers we anatomically "modern" humans are the most destructive species in the history of the planet. It's interesting that anatomically modern humans were the most intelligent of the seven human species that roamed the Earth when we Sapiens arrived. What happened to the other six species of humans? "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" is a fascinating read on many levels, I will recommend that also.

And yet we don't think of ourselves as destructive. Perhaps it's time to collectively take a hard look at ourselves by absorbing Freud's message in its most accessible format, his summation work, the book "Civilization and it's Discontents". There's this idea out there that Freud has been discredited. Closer to the truth is that we don't want to see the aggression that is in every human. In every species in fact. There is no capacity for survival otherwise.

The question arises; why can't aggression be modulated from within our human species? Freud's answer is something to the effect the survival instinct springs up (for unknown reasons) from primordial biology. It is literally outside of our purview in spite of the fact it is within us and drives us. We also call it life force energy, and on this planet it's all around us...and it is us also.

The simplest illustration of this I can think of is: "breathing is not a decision". Or, "holding your breath is not a reliable form of suicide".

The life force drive is paramount, it literally overarches everything biological, and we don't control it, it controls us. But there is a point it collapses of it's own accord, Freud called that the death instinct, together forming the complete life cycle. And as Mandelbrot noticed, life cycles occur on shorter and longer time frames, but share the same structural characteristics. And here we are in the 6th mass extinction, this one caused not by a volcano or meteor, but by the activity of a single species, us.

Is there anything we can do to stop the collapse of biological life on Earth? Maybe, but the job is way bigger than it looks because we are driven by the biological imperative to grow. And we humans do not have the same structural checks and balances of egalitarian predatory forces imposed upon other species. Who was it who said "I have met the enemy and it is us"?

From a macro perspective the blame for the 6th mass extinction can be put on overpopulation. And it can also be put on industrialization. And perhaps the root cause is industrialization, it was the force that caused parabolic human population growth with the advent of "free energy" (fossil fuels), when combined with increasing human technological prowess.

Industrialization began about 200 years ago, the 6th mass extinction about 100 years ago. It's very unlikely this is a coincidence.

Conspiracy theory abounds...the industrialists feel the way to survive is to reduce population. Perhaps a better plan for all humans collectively is very significant levels of deindustrialization. Well, the industrialists do not like that idea very much, and they have all the wealth and political power. In addition they are (mostly) in deep denial. So we don't know what is going to happen. Or to be more accurate, what is already happening.

But wait! Lest we forget, Elon Musk has the answer! We'll simply transplant our species to Mars!

Humm. Even Mister Musk is intelligent enough to know that we sprang up from the fertile soil of this one planet, and we have no knowledge of another that is remotely similar. Surely there's a technological solution?

Let's see...we're going to leave a planet with biological sustainability that has been reduced by some significant degree, and go to one that has zero innate capacity to create and sustain biological life. What degradation of biological sustainability has to occur to have us trade it for zero? 25 percent degradation? 50 percent?

Humm. Let's do a rough test of Earth's biological sustainability. Let's plant seeds of local flora all over the planet and then wait breathlessly to see what happens. WOW! Who knew, it still grows.

I'm partial to the idea of radical deindustrialization. Think we can get it through congress?