To get a little meta, there's even somewhat of an open source race to communicate this exact message. I first saw it on eugyppius' substack, I tried my hand at it, I see you talk Gel-Mann amnesia which Mathew Crawford seems especially fond of including in any of his analysis of this issue, and now you deliver this gem.
I agree wholeheartedly that many captured institutions can be circumvented. I'm hoping to convince you that the American government needs to be recaptured as opposed to circumvented. I'm agnostic about this for other countries, but in America, I think we have a solid majority of the populace that subscribe to American values not shared by the managerial class controlling the government both in terms of elected officials and throughout the bureaucracy. I think if we can put our heads together there is potential for a populist political strategy to leverage this edge in popular support to achieve a similar end state for U.S.G. institutions as is already being achieved via circumvention with respect to institutions that don't have a monopoly on force. If successful, this effort also has the potential to shield these nascent attempts to circumvent sclerotic institutions against their inevitable attempts to defend themselves against this threat by leveraging state power (such as promoting another disinformation governance board).
I recall that corollary to Murphy’s Law, Silverman’s First Law of Journalism: “The closer you are to the facts of a situation, the less accurate the media coverage will be.”
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by John Carter
Great article, and full of hope in regards to open network. Thank you.
Your point about research built upon flawed (yet accepted as true) prior research/ideas is very important - creating a 'drift' in a field that may not be immediately obvious. I've seen this - key references to flawed papers that were also constructed by flawed papers/ideas (and/or highly subjective conclusions) - and so the ideas drift in a particular direction.
I guess I'm talking more about theoretical research that builds on former theoretical research. I don't know about hard science doing actual lab experiments - my guess is that's less prone to such drift - unless you are a Big Pharma funded lab ;-)
It's fashionable lately to criticize institutional policing because a few cops misbehaved, or all guns because a nut used one for murder. Most cops are competent and professional, and most guns are used legally. And most scientists try to do their science right. Most of the improper actions in any endeavor are more likely due to failures of leadership. If rank and file scientists perform badly, their leaders either committed the fraud or forced others to, or tolerated those who did.
But a lot of failures of science are because they can. Corruption proliferates where it's permitted. The ultimate guardians of integrity are the public, who should protest the fraud. Much of the public has been trained to accept, even applaud, fraud that supports their politics. And the failed education system assures that fewer people are even capable of recognizing bad science or good.
Betrayers of Truth was a good discussion of this several decades ago. Probably deserves an update.
May 27, 2022·edited May 28, 2022Liked by John Carter
The real science was banned. So were drugs that treat & cure. Rush & science don’t belong in the same sentence. Incompetence, corruption, censorship. Change the definition of vaccine instesc of experimental gene “therapy.” Vaccinating into a pandemic violated Rule 1. No doubts at all the fake pcr, the highly incentivized & orchestrated propaganda were segues to planned implementation of a social credit system.
'' It's also why 'impostor syndrome' has gone epidemic in the professoriate: people promoted beyond their ability feel like they're impostors because, well, they're impostors''...Once I thought otherwise but after seeing the c19 circus I agree too. I think that all the hoops and the bureaucracy of the academy arises in part as a way to reassure itself of its capabilities.
But the main issue remains in those arrogants at the top running the show.
Russia has just announced that it is planning on pulling out of the Bologna Process (the mechanism to synchronise educational standards and credentials across national jurisdictions). The Kremlin wants to aim higher and enhance academic rigour. It is a vote of no confidence in the metrics by which the Atlanticist meritocracy defines itself. In effect, Russia is making the development of human capital a national priority.
This is truly a 'Sputnik' moment, albeit one that will probably go unnoticed in much of the West. It will be interesting to see what eventually happens: will the US ditch affirmative action to meet the challenge or will it double down and seek 'excellence' via Woke?
It helps when quantitative researchers make their base level data available. Duplicability is a key measure for quality assurance. Ditto for honesty. You can't fake analysis when the data sets are there for your critics/rivals to take you down.
John, your suggestions on prose style are spot on. During the scientific revolution in the 17th c. there was a very strong emphasis on clarity and directness, especially amongst the crowd involved in the Royal Society. Clarity was identified with honesty and reliability. This was contrasted with the old style of the Scholastics, who preferred gaseous and flowery language. Thomas Hobbes (England's premier physicist before Newton came along) was particularly strong on this point.
Your comment about humour hit the mark. Francis Bacon keenly appreciated the value of humour in rigorous philosophy. The Enlightenment's premier encyclopediast Pierre Bayle (according to Voltaire he was the first man to write a book that could teach anyone to think for themselves) recommended that scholars "sport with the Muses" (lighten up and adopt a playful attitude while they pursue knowledge). From the little that I know about neuroscience, this makes perfect sense
May 28, 2022·edited May 28, 2022Liked by John Carter
The Temple/Network proposition does remind me of Eric Raymond''s similar (though not identical) theory about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar." I think the connective tissue has to do with the appeal to authority when it comes to matters of fact. Authority among humans is more often born of storytelling and traditional hierarchy than of raw fact-finding (unless those facts are highly relevant to instruments of war). The temple/cathedral/god-king/unerring authority is the psychological totem for all of us, whenever reasoned investigation seems too inconvenient or difficult. Which is often.
May 28, 2022·edited May 28, 2022Liked by John Carter
Bravo!!!
There is a hilarious “TED TALK” By Rupert Sheldrake, (biologist who created the idea of Morphic Resonance) in which he tells about making a hobby out of collecting laboratory reports from different times and places about the speed of light. He says things like “in 1927, in Portugal, the speed of light increased to such and such, and then , 17 years later, at the National Lab in Berlin , it slowed down again to such and such, then, 30 years later, in Buenos Aires, it was seen to have speeded up to such and such.” He questions why the speed of light is considered to be a constant. What is the authority that gets to say, “no , your measurements must be incorrect, the speed of light IS a constant, in all times and places.” He does this with very droll British humor. But guess what? TED BANNED HIS VIDEO!!!!! Too hot to handle! Muh “SCIENCE” is not to be examined too closely!
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by John Carter
The ''publish or perish'' culture brings a few distortions I think. People tend to conduct research that doesn't really answer the question, but bring more papers. We don't ''get to the point''. Paradoxically, also a lot o basic, ''field work'', or cumbersome research is delayed because doesn't fit the scheme o doesn't attract students (because is deemed boring or is harder to published). (In the same vein some research cannot conclude appropriately because it doesn't fit the schedule of a post grade). Another naughty thing is that some people do some research and do not publish it. They prefer instead to keep it behind doors, ''under their sleeve'', to guide other publications. Add also the fact that negative results are barely published, so you always risk to repeat the same mistakes another person committed.
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by John Carter
I think the elephant in the room (as Eisenhower clearly grasped, and as decades of postmodern left wingers misconstrued or blatantly misrepresented) is the military-industrial complex. You touch on it when you mention the shift in priorities and practices post WWII. The goals, the funding mechanisms, the structure of credentials, publishing and debate... everything, essentially, changed beneath the shadow of the Cold War and the arms race.
What we're experiencing now is the hangover from that dizzy hslf-century. We built a hundred towers of Babel on the bedrock of MIC and MAD, only for the animating principles to fizzle in the early 90s, while the illness that infected the "enemy" had infested every scientific institution that was built and fed to defeat it. Less a Pyhrric victory than an ouroboros... which is more or less what Ike and others had predicted.
I am not a scientist. I do read mainstream science publications online and off. The culture changed as Boomers got greedy in both a cash nexus sense and ego sense. This is not limited to science. We live as e.e. cummings said in a culture of much and quick. https://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/
To get a little meta, there's even somewhat of an open source race to communicate this exact message. I first saw it on eugyppius' substack, I tried my hand at it, I see you talk Gel-Mann amnesia which Mathew Crawford seems especially fond of including in any of his analysis of this issue, and now you deliver this gem.
I agree wholeheartedly that many captured institutions can be circumvented. I'm hoping to convince you that the American government needs to be recaptured as opposed to circumvented. I'm agnostic about this for other countries, but in America, I think we have a solid majority of the populace that subscribe to American values not shared by the managerial class controlling the government both in terms of elected officials and throughout the bureaucracy. I think if we can put our heads together there is potential for a populist political strategy to leverage this edge in popular support to achieve a similar end state for U.S.G. institutions as is already being achieved via circumvention with respect to institutions that don't have a monopoly on force. If successful, this effort also has the potential to shield these nascent attempts to circumvent sclerotic institutions against their inevitable attempts to defend themselves against this threat by leveraging state power (such as promoting another disinformation governance board).
I recall that corollary to Murphy’s Law, Silverman’s First Law of Journalism: “The closer you are to the facts of a situation, the less accurate the media coverage will be.”
Great article, and full of hope in regards to open network. Thank you.
Your point about research built upon flawed (yet accepted as true) prior research/ideas is very important - creating a 'drift' in a field that may not be immediately obvious. I've seen this - key references to flawed papers that were also constructed by flawed papers/ideas (and/or highly subjective conclusions) - and so the ideas drift in a particular direction.
I guess I'm talking more about theoretical research that builds on former theoretical research. I don't know about hard science doing actual lab experiments - my guess is that's less prone to such drift - unless you are a Big Pharma funded lab ;-)
It's fashionable lately to criticize institutional policing because a few cops misbehaved, or all guns because a nut used one for murder. Most cops are competent and professional, and most guns are used legally. And most scientists try to do their science right. Most of the improper actions in any endeavor are more likely due to failures of leadership. If rank and file scientists perform badly, their leaders either committed the fraud or forced others to, or tolerated those who did.
But a lot of failures of science are because they can. Corruption proliferates where it's permitted. The ultimate guardians of integrity are the public, who should protest the fraud. Much of the public has been trained to accept, even applaud, fraud that supports their politics. And the failed education system assures that fewer people are even capable of recognizing bad science or good.
Betrayers of Truth was a good discussion of this several decades ago. Probably deserves an update.
The real science was banned. So were drugs that treat & cure. Rush & science don’t belong in the same sentence. Incompetence, corruption, censorship. Change the definition of vaccine instesc of experimental gene “therapy.” Vaccinating into a pandemic violated Rule 1. No doubts at all the fake pcr, the highly incentivized & orchestrated propaganda were segues to planned implementation of a social credit system.
'' It's also why 'impostor syndrome' has gone epidemic in the professoriate: people promoted beyond their ability feel like they're impostors because, well, they're impostors''...Once I thought otherwise but after seeing the c19 circus I agree too. I think that all the hoops and the bureaucracy of the academy arises in part as a way to reassure itself of its capabilities.
But the main issue remains in those arrogants at the top running the show.
Russia has just announced that it is planning on pulling out of the Bologna Process (the mechanism to synchronise educational standards and credentials across national jurisdictions). The Kremlin wants to aim higher and enhance academic rigour. It is a vote of no confidence in the metrics by which the Atlanticist meritocracy defines itself. In effect, Russia is making the development of human capital a national priority.
This is truly a 'Sputnik' moment, albeit one that will probably go unnoticed in much of the West. It will be interesting to see what eventually happens: will the US ditch affirmative action to meet the challenge or will it double down and seek 'excellence' via Woke?
Outstanding article and practical.
It helps when quantitative researchers make their base level data available. Duplicability is a key measure for quality assurance. Ditto for honesty. You can't fake analysis when the data sets are there for your critics/rivals to take you down.
John, your suggestions on prose style are spot on. During the scientific revolution in the 17th c. there was a very strong emphasis on clarity and directness, especially amongst the crowd involved in the Royal Society. Clarity was identified with honesty and reliability. This was contrasted with the old style of the Scholastics, who preferred gaseous and flowery language. Thomas Hobbes (England's premier physicist before Newton came along) was particularly strong on this point.
Your comment about humour hit the mark. Francis Bacon keenly appreciated the value of humour in rigorous philosophy. The Enlightenment's premier encyclopediast Pierre Bayle (according to Voltaire he was the first man to write a book that could teach anyone to think for themselves) recommended that scholars "sport with the Muses" (lighten up and adopt a playful attitude while they pursue knowledge). From the little that I know about neuroscience, this makes perfect sense
The Temple/Network proposition does remind me of Eric Raymond''s similar (though not identical) theory about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar." I think the connective tissue has to do with the appeal to authority when it comes to matters of fact. Authority among humans is more often born of storytelling and traditional hierarchy than of raw fact-finding (unless those facts are highly relevant to instruments of war). The temple/cathedral/god-king/unerring authority is the psychological totem for all of us, whenever reasoned investigation seems too inconvenient or difficult. Which is often.
“have to (be) addressed” this was so good I started reading it out loud to a friend and noticed you dropped a word in the first paragraph.
Bravo!!!
There is a hilarious “TED TALK” By Rupert Sheldrake, (biologist who created the idea of Morphic Resonance) in which he tells about making a hobby out of collecting laboratory reports from different times and places about the speed of light. He says things like “in 1927, in Portugal, the speed of light increased to such and such, and then , 17 years later, at the National Lab in Berlin , it slowed down again to such and such, then, 30 years later, in Buenos Aires, it was seen to have speeded up to such and such.” He questions why the speed of light is considered to be a constant. What is the authority that gets to say, “no , your measurements must be incorrect, the speed of light IS a constant, in all times and places.” He does this with very droll British humor. But guess what? TED BANNED HIS VIDEO!!!!! Too hot to handle! Muh “SCIENCE” is not to be examined too closely!
The concept of replacing the system instead of trying to change it is the best idea of all.
The ''publish or perish'' culture brings a few distortions I think. People tend to conduct research that doesn't really answer the question, but bring more papers. We don't ''get to the point''. Paradoxically, also a lot o basic, ''field work'', or cumbersome research is delayed because doesn't fit the scheme o doesn't attract students (because is deemed boring or is harder to published). (In the same vein some research cannot conclude appropriately because it doesn't fit the schedule of a post grade). Another naughty thing is that some people do some research and do not publish it. They prefer instead to keep it behind doors, ''under their sleeve'', to guide other publications. Add also the fact that negative results are barely published, so you always risk to repeat the same mistakes another person committed.
I think the elephant in the room (as Eisenhower clearly grasped, and as decades of postmodern left wingers misconstrued or blatantly misrepresented) is the military-industrial complex. You touch on it when you mention the shift in priorities and practices post WWII. The goals, the funding mechanisms, the structure of credentials, publishing and debate... everything, essentially, changed beneath the shadow of the Cold War and the arms race.
What we're experiencing now is the hangover from that dizzy hslf-century. We built a hundred towers of Babel on the bedrock of MIC and MAD, only for the animating principles to fizzle in the early 90s, while the illness that infected the "enemy" had infested every scientific institution that was built and fed to defeat it. Less a Pyhrric victory than an ouroboros... which is more or less what Ike and others had predicted.
I am not a scientist. I do read mainstream science publications online and off. The culture changed as Boomers got greedy in both a cash nexus sense and ego sense. This is not limited to science. We live as e.e. cummings said in a culture of much and quick. https://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/
I also have to wonder if we are learning the circumstances of the overthrow of the paleoancient matriarchy