The Death of Science

There's a new book out titled "The Death of Science" by a very broadly published physician, oncologist, pathologist, medical researcher and author, Professor Angus Dalgleish. 

There were actually thousands of distinguished clinicians and researchers taking issue with the official pandemic narrative, but the censorship of these scientists was so effective the public has been kept almost completely in the dark about their concerns.

As you'll see if you watch the interview, there have been many more unintended consequences, and in more people, than we've been led to believe.

Early studies enumerating these studies were censored, but for whatever reason current studies looking at severe side effects are no longer being censored by the major medical journals. But these many critical studies have not reached the evening news yet, and one has to wonder if they ever will due to mass media's complicity in the censorship.

Do have a listen to Dr Dalgleish in the interview below and form your own opinion.

https://youtu.be/us4N4KL7VkI?si=ABo6hZD8z0FoDaxR

Oxygen - Separating the Science from the Fiction

Our current modern day mythology is that science and technology can do anything. And mythology is always about imbuing us Humans with super powers that put us above nature. And to some extent we are above nature due to our brain size and capacity for tool making. 

How is it we are the only primate without a coat of fur? As primate brain size evolved in our one species, tool making allowed that species, us, to survive harsher climates. 

It must have been a very slow process! Instinct drove the evolving human to expand its territories, and several things evolved simultaneously: the tool making capacity to begin making clothing, the capacity to withstand harsher climates, and the gradual loss of fur no longer needed for survival. Weapons gave us dominance over smaller brain species, and we gradually lost need of fangs and claws, the "biological weapons".

The odds against becoming a "one off" species with the capacity to dominate the ecological planet must be very small indeed. It is odd also that our super-capable species still "needs" mythology, ie, imaginary limitless capacity.

Of course there are still limits to our capacity, which are most succinctly defined in a single word: mortality. And from that comes the "need" for mythology. 

And modern mythology is found mostly in the form of science fiction.

"Action movies" are popular, and full of science fictions: guns that never run out of bullets, and heroes that recover from every imaginable injury by the very next day.

These super hero mythologies are easy to spot...what about those that aren't? And is their relative invisibility to us a positive or a negative? Harmless, or species damaging? Are these mythologies what allows us to unconsciously damage the earth's ecology? And what's the problem if we do? After we trash the earth we can just escape into space, right? Mars or bust?

Our most vital nourishment, the one that is invisible, oxygen, is to the best of our knowledge only found in sufficient quantity to create the "garden planet" that created us through biological processes that are so complex we do not understand them.

Or perhaps the earth was "seeded" by aliens with humans as an experiment, and they are above somewhere, watching to see what happens. Now that's a nice mythology!

Meanwhile, if "miracles" are true, the biology of Earth itself is primo miraculous. Or is primo miraculous the vast "deadness" of everywhere else?

Limitless oxygen in space is like guns that never run out of bullets.

Peter Attia's Longevity Book Outlive: The BEST or WORST longevity book?

I said in a previous post about Peter Attia's longevity book: "If he has one flaw it's that he does not see empiricism as a type of knowledge". 

In other words he only trusts scientific trials designed to test a certain hypothesis.

I also said: "I could unpack that, but I will be succinct and skip it this time". Well, a excellent review of Attia's book has arrived that is in itself an excellent "unpacking".

So first, before the review, a few words on the general problem of these two types of knowledge formation, and the strong biases that can and do form with each.

Empiricism is essentially what we learn from personal and collective experience. For example, if we ate a berry we had not seen before and it made us sick, we would be wary of eating it again. Then if many other people had the same experience, and we learned of their experiences, we would now benefit from individual and collective empirical experiences combined, and knowledge is strengthened.

It would not be an exaggeration to say the survival of any bio-species depends on direct experiences and the resulting empirical know ledger. 

So, yep, it's a pretty big deal.

Neither process for collecting knowledge is perfect. Mythology can and does "infect" empiricism, and scientific bias (itself a type of mythology) can and does "infect" science, and these "infections" of process are common. Mythological "biases" in any process are, by definition, mostly unconscious, and for that reason stubborn.

Both processes combined can strengthen overall levels of knowledge. However there are also biases in each camp against the other, which is why early stage knowledge formation can be and frequently is a "long argued" complex process, taking decades for so-called "landed knowledge" to arrive.

Both types of knowledge formation can also be socially problematic when strong biases in either are legislated into law, and contrary opinion is punished. There are many examples of this sort of tyranny through history, and it continues to this day.

And now, a most excellent review of Peter Attia's longevity book, by a scientist with a firm grasp on the benefits coming from applied empiricism. Enjoy --

https://youtu.be/VWeg3l3RBIM?si=bHrVo0yqFzQ5NYo9

Is there difference between muscle size and muscle strength?

I've posted a few blogs recently featuring the work of Dr Peter Attia, who currently has a best selling book on longevity. I would say his primary contribution to the the ongoing health conversation is the major increases in health, disease resistance and reversal, and longevity, that come with increased strength.

And absolutely commonly misunderstood is the functional difference between muscle size and strength. Here's a brief discussion on that topic between four experienced vegans who train for strength.

You may find this interesting!

https://youtu.be/CiQA2jWX5AU?si=mFAgaTNBHMRTSoXo

Where do you get your protein on a plant based diet?

Um...from the proteins in the plants you consume?

Yep, it's a myth that plants do not have protein. The myth is reinforced in various ways, but lets look (for example) at competitive professional body builders with extreme levels of musculature, who consume mostly animal protein foods. Yes, one advantage of animal based proteins is they are effective at building muscle size.

So what are the disadvantages? Many pro body builders die in their 30's 40's and 50's of heart diseases. Some of that is certainly anabolic steroid use, but all of these premature deaths also had the condition of atherosclerosis, which is the build up of fats and cholesterol on the artery walls. As we all know, this is also the plaque that narrows arteries reducing blood flow. And plaques can also burst, causing blood clots. 

Is the cause of premature death in body builders mostly anabolic steroid use? Probably not, considering the primary cause of premature death in the general population is also due to sclerotic plaques in the arteries.

Another thing that is not generally mentioned in discussions of heart disease is that plaque build up is not limited to the arteries, it also occurs simultaneously throughout the vascular system (veins, capillaries, etc), and there are various dysfunctions in health that additionally occur as a result.

Basically we do not want plaques anywhere in our cardiovascular system, and if we can reverse that condition we should. And we can reverse it...in fact, logistically, it is not all that difficult.

How common is this condition? In the developed west extremely common, it is found in the autopsies of teenagers who died accidentally. 

It is caused primarily by the western diet, which is increasingly clear, on an ongoing basis.

But it is difficult to change the diet we grew up with, we unconsciously associate the early diet with survival, even, ironically, if it is killing us. Smoking is the same, we unconsciously associate it with the early feeding mechanism of sucking in mothers milk needed for survival. Out of all the addictions, oral addictions are probably the most common.

And BTW, health producing behaviors are not addictions. Addictions, by definition, destroy health. Some will say "I'm addicted to exercise", but that is actually a misnomer, because exercise is health producing.

I'm addicted to breathing? No, that is just silly.

Speaking of exercise, just what can plant proteins produce in terms of muscle size and quality? Have a look at what these two gents have gained in terms of size and function, and more importantly, what has been gained in overall health.

https://youtu.be/UnlMcFXf_w8?si=HK_CTbrtB-pk4EU_

This gentleman knows which way is up

Please enjoy this video, and take it to heart, your body will thank you.

https://youtu.be/kfZcPsIzpEM?si=qlqwpTu4QRtaXbIl

Man still cannot fly...biologically

What if we genetically modified a human with eagle genes? Easy to do, just splice them in. But would it result in a human with wings of their own, and that could fly? Theoretically possible? But where is the evidence that genetic modifications of anything has produced "better"?

OK, but what about the combination of biology and technology? What if we inserted technology genes into a human? Wait, technology does not have genres.  Or human genes into technology? Where would we put them.

So what if we wired a circuit board into a spinal cord? The Terminator!

But the singularity does not require biology

To this point all growth has been biological. To ascribe motive to technology requires it to be at least partially biological:

Biology continues to be greatly underappreciated. But why should we appreciate it? It's all over the place, everywhere we look. As common as grass.

But we didn't invent biology, we invented technology. And so the "invented here" bias controls the narrative.

Humans have been mythologizing in various ways since writing. This is simply another one of those. Mythology would not capture the imagination if it were not myth.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

If everything is a miracle, why do we even need myth?

Good question.

The malevolence of AI? Really?

AI is an interesting technology, and like all technologies will be a double edged sword with unintended consequences difficult to predict. 

But I'm having difficulty imagining how a non biological structure can be malevolent. Perhaps the word is being misused? 

Malevolence belongs to biology, and mostly to human biology. We don't think of natural disasters as malevolence. We don't think of a cheetah killing and eating a gazelle as malevolent. Malevolence is a deliberate evil rising from a lust for power or hatred. It has an emotional origin. 

An AI could be programmed to be destructive, but the malevolence would come from the programmer, not the software. It could happen accidently as an unintended consequence where the human creators had no malevolence. But just as hurricanes are not malevolent because hurricanes do not have feelings, an AI could be programmed to be destructive, deliberately or accidentally, but it would not be malevolent because AI cannot have feelings, it/they are not biological.

Malevolence is very simply an expression of the human capacity for evil. Deliberately teaching an AI to be destructive is malevolent, but the machine itself (with no feelings and no hatred) is not malevolent, the human is.

We won't be able to teach an AI to love either. We will be able to teach it to look and sound like love, but real emotion will not be there.

Think for a moment of some of the emotions an AI cannot possess: Regret, anguish, grief, anger, joy love benevolence.

In fact malevolence and benevolence are opposite emotions, but a computer cannot experience either of them, because machines do not have emotions.

An AI enabled human can have emotions because the human continues to be biological.

Certain science fictions can become reality, but others cannot, and we can have difficulty discerning which is which because of the human tendency toward hubris. Hubris, like its opposite, modesty, arise from the capacity for emotion. Pride is an emotion.

Emotions are the most complex aspect of being human, and for that reason we can both value them and despise them. When we despise them we may try to push them into our unconscious to the extent possible in order to function. Hubris exists mostly on the unconscious level, and it is moderated only by becoming conscious of it.

Think of a current figure on the world stage whose name begins with a T and who appears to have little to no capacity for the moderation of his own hubris. Where there is little capacity for the moderation of hubris there is pathological narcissism, a potentially dangerous psychological disorder.

If we humans ultimately become the authors of our own species destruction, that malevolence resides within us. Nukes and computer technology are not malevolent, using them to kill humans is.

Why do we persist in attributing malevolence to software/hardware? The answer is found in psychology, it's the denial mechanism, a way of not facing and taking responsibility for our own destructivity.

The history of all technological progress may be leading to our own species self destruction, it does sometimes appear to be the case. If so we cannot attribute the fault to technology, which has no conscience, no emotion, no blood, no veins. We would only accurately attribute the self destruction of our own species to our own inability to recognize the hubris in our belief we are the masters of the laws of nature and biology.

British Medical Journal - Is the US’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System broken?

Well based on what I've read or seen reported by some of the most respected epidemiologists in the world, the VARES system is well and truly broken.

Dr John Campbell reports on the BMJ article:

https://youtu.be/B0ghZSaUHEA?si=j8GDKJc5MC1NslyK