In the past, I’ve expressed concerns about Scientism. It’s something I began to worry about a long time ago when the YouTube skeptics were bouncing about, making fun of Christians. I’ll also make it clear right now that I am not Christian despite preserving quite a few Christian values or maybe I preserve values that are shared by Christians.
Scientism, for those that don’t know, is this idea that we let “science” guide every aspect of our lives. In my eyes, it falls quickly to appeal to authority where “if this is published, it’s true” and in the past I’ve maintained that not only is this a REALLY bad idea, but that it’s not even science to begin with. I remember mentioning this with my criticism of Climate Change policy. Might’ve been one of my posts from 2015 or 2016 when I was somewhat supporting Senator Sanders’ bid for the presidency. However, the one issue I took with this sort of idea was that because climate scientists say X, we MUST do Y. There is no option. Thinking about today’s topic, I’m actually reminded of that line of thinking when it comes to the WuFlu outbreak. Where medical professionals say that wearing a mask reduces transmission, therefore mask mandates, close the stores, and in the words of the great Presidents from Madagascar and Greenland: SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. I disagree with this type of policy because I find it to be very short-sighted.
In recent news, Elliot Page came out as transgender. OK. Honestly, don’t care too much. Actors can be whatever, in fact their entire job is pretending to be something they aren’t. But then I was reminded (by all of the social media crowd) that we MUST use the correct pronouns to refer to Elliot. That not doing so is rude and/or harmful. Then we have to look at these cases where people allegedly committed suicide because they felt the social pressure. Now, putting aside the fact that in a worst case scenario: If you claim that social ostracization causes suicide, but then say you’ll socially ostracize people who don’t conform to your standards because your standards prevent suicide which effectively results in you perpetuating the problem you’re claiming to solve… this got me thinking. Hold on, there are social terrorists with degrees. These subversive elements have positions that dictate policy in universities and some science publications. These people… control the scientific literature. Or at least have some not insignificant impact.
Now we tie everything back to Scientism. Scientism is spreading throughout the United States, possibly the western world. Idk what the Eurochumps are doing but apparently they have their fair share of scientism too. Scientism’s “message” is conveyed to the world through scientific literature. Social terrorists have some power over the scientific literature. Therefore, Scientism will result in social terrorists being given great power in society.
Frankly speaking, I do not believe this to be a desirable end-state. I think the biggest hurdle is actually getting past the Scientism. Because people are always willing to accept the words from those they consider to be experts. Appeal to Authority might be a fallacy but it is human nature to recognize “OK, this guy has way more experience than me, I’m gonna trust what he says”. I’m not suggesting we should reject the experts either. Research is typically a problem that solves itself through peer-review, though some peer-review is more rigorous than others. However, I think people get caught up in single-variable analysis. We need to base public policy on more than just one factor. Obviously wildfires are bad, but one common strategy with wildfires is to let them burn in a controlled manner. This isn’t done because fires aren’t bad but because we’d rather a sorta bad fire than a really bad fire.
I think another thing is that we need to exercise more skepticism while at the same time stop trying to shut down skepticism as conspiracy theories. This is ironically one of the big failings of Scientism, in that most people seem to stop being skeptical, thus sorta defeating the point of science. If you’re not skeptical, you just have faith. And if you’re taking things on faith, it’s not science anymore is it. Conspiracy theories often fall victim to things like Occam’s razor, so I don’t know why people are so intent on shutting them down. Maybe you don’t think that there was enough time to count the 6 million votes. But maybe you’re just missing information. If people shut you down just for questioning, well, are you onto something real? The irony being that those most susceptible to conspiracy theories will probably be more vigorous if they’re shut down since the underlying basis tends to be Illuminati-level coverups. Frank and open discussion is always the best way to shut down conspiracy theories. Who knows, maybe the conspiracy theory is true after all.
Anyway, I just wanted to kinda vent my concerns about Scientism and the way it’s opened the door to social terrorists running our states. I’d really like very much for this not to be something I will be worrying about when I finally decide to raise offspring, so… let’s try to keep this in check guys. Thanks for reading.
Artemis Hunt
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