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Tag: science

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    chain of equivalences

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    1–2 minutes

    A chain of equivalences occurs when a common opposition links together different groups (or demands). This primarily happens in response to a larger, more hegemonic power. By creating temporary chains of mutual interest, disparate groups can form a broad coalition of significant power despite differences that would usually drive them apart.

    Example: In a protest movement, environmental activists, labor unions, and racial justice groups might unite under the shared opposition to corporate exploitation, even though their specific goals differ.

    Example 2: A group of parents, teachers, and politicians call for textbook change, such as "the math wars" or critical race theory, in which several smaller groups with separate interests form a unity of purpose that dissolves once the goal is achieved.

    Example 3: In Marxism, the notion of abolishing class (the particular) demands the emancipation of the entire society (the universal). In such cases, ethnic or religious differences are suppressed (temporarily) for the commonality of purpose.

    This term originates from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mauffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategies (1985).
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    merit + lottery

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    1–2 minutes

    If we believe in the meritocracy, it is odd we also believe in the lottery.
    We believe in hope and redemption, despite circumstance or sin, retaining space for a lottery that rewards idiocy and illogic, despite simultaneously virtuizing (preaching) hard work.

    We systemically maintain and fund luck structures: the logic is to enhance illogical outlets as a balance for excessive efficiency and reason.

    Paradoxically, we also embrace the ideology of scientific progress while upholding the right to make irrational (stupid) choices, and even exploit that as giddy freedom that science and technology should support.

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    ad-hoc causation

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    What we assume to be causal (a need to see things as linear relations) sets up an outcome, which is never the case.

    Considering "cause and effect," we string together attributions that establish a causal chain, then read it backward to point out what went wrong. We are not truly tracking the variables, simply doing some ad-hoc addition and subtraction from convenient choices.

    Unfortunately, we never have all the facts, so we overdetermine our role in the outcome, often egotistically or narcissistically, but just as often in science without full comprehension, thus deforming our determinations.

    in part from David Hume
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    sceince as authority, not truth

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    Today, we can see science sociologically: rather than its function of falsification to increase comprehension and extend knowledge, its "casue and effect" mode of inquiry has been reversed upon it.

    The left insists you must "believe in science" with religious fervor lest you blaspheme, while the populist right over-indexes its fallibility in the face of corrupt practices and incentives. The most ironic for both sides is decrying science’s groupthink tendency.

    Today, science is politically used as "authority," not a process. Much as having a prophet as a mouthpiece, science is used to legitimize transfer away from the democratic into the technocratic: that is, sovereignty is moved away from individual debate into managerial expertise and handling. To invoke almighty science is to proclaim "truth" but from an inaccessible language backed by powerful corporate and academic institutions. Increasingly, this authority extends into everyday life, the better to manage us: Believe or be purged. Submit or be declared an "anti-science" idiot.

    idea from Matthew B. Crawford

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    Intellectual Integrity: The outcome is predictable

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    Being educated can lead to illogic because wanting something—such as to be virtuous, moral, and right—allows your education to become a rationalizing faculty. Ideally, academics or scholars would draw from a breadth of resources, allowing knowledge to shape their worldview. As an authority, they would be capable of framing or debating multiple arguments from multiple positions. (authority instead of zealotry)

    However, the counterintuitive dynamic persists where, for the sake of inclusive status, research and authority often mold information to fit personal ideologies. The outcome is predictable before the research begins, resulting in increasingly abstruse and moralistic arguments that fail to create the necessary paradigm shifts.

    In this case, academics are not science, though they wish to hold the authority science once held. Even facts are politically reinterpreted, which begs the question of the possibility of apolitical human discovery as an anomaly, if not an impossibility.

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    Noble, Romantic Irrationality

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    Our cherished ideals—peace, love, nobility, altruism—are inherently romantic yet historically fraught with failure.

    Embracing these causes, despite their impracticality, has a romantic allure; we often find ourselves championing the losing side. This tendency towards romantic idealism is as irrational as it is compelling.

    Ironically, we place our hope in science as the savior from our own idealistic excesses, believing it will rectify the very failures bred by our romantic inclinations.

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    We sell ourselves on emotions

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    1–2 minutes

    Macroeconomics is unfalsifiable. As a pseudo-science, it has much in common with astrology or prophecy: it is a politicized sales pitch. Once we have a theory, we strengthen it with belief, restricting our view to one story.
    Microeconomics, on the other hand, can be falsified and show where processes provide deviation.

    However, humans’ micro-moments are heuristics or feelings that fluctuate daily. To convert them into micro-behavioral economics, we must balance against reality by consistent reflection.
    Rather than retrofitting observations to align with ideology (working backward from predefined values), work forward from minute details, building your potential so you can effect change, not letting change affect you.

    Continue to dream or be outraged, but don’t sell yourself on it; don’t con yourself with theory or belief.

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    slippery slope of trust

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    1–2 minutes

    As a society, we handed over more and more authority to science because its agenda was approaching truth in an investigative manner by acknowledging failures and correcting them.
    Over time we placed trust in scientists and doctors, not the discipline, and increasingly handed authority to technocratic expertise: specific knowledge in hard disciplines was earned trust.
    Accordingly, politicians and the state, who seek trust and social persuasion, co-opt technocratic puppets. They utilize credentials to push agendas proven to be blindly harmful.
    The suborning of science’s trust creates a didactic return to the felt experience, the perceptive phenomenal embodied subjective, as more trustworthy, though that too has been proven unreliable.
    Consequently, our state of confusion is valid: we can not trust science, leaders, or ourselves.
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    Mystical reversal: empirical empowerment

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    1–2 minutes

    A supernatural realm persists, enacting odd changes while remaining veiled from comprehension. This mysterious realm seems to serve as the underlying foundation of the palpable, natural world we inhabit. With careful attunement and rituals, we can align with the mystery, predicting and anticipating its caprice.

    While embracing empiricism or materialism might seem to disregard this mystical dimension it is not at odds with it, rather it reverses our relationship: by empowering the physical we induce change on our terms for tangible profit or benefit attempting to reduce dependence on "magical" influence.

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    Prior Understanding

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    Before we understood the science of harmonics, we instinctively knew about octaves. For example, the note of A was recognized with two common octaves before we named it. Using science, we confirmed our perception: we discovered the halving of octave frequencies (880 Hz to 440 Hz).

    This embodied knowledge -our body as a tuning fork- can pick up on realities beyond our mental cognition, yet it does not make these realities mystical. What does seem magical, indeed mysterious, is the ability of notes in sequence to create an altered state in humans.