Good article overall, but would have been better with about half the number of anecdotes. Far too long to attempt a summary, so I will just add a few key points about the scientific, materialist, rational world view :
- The basic assumption is that the world is objective, measurable, and real. Our knowledge of the world is imperfect and incomplete, but out measurements are still meaningful. Everything else has to be understood within the framework of this assumption. And yes, it is an assumption. That does not invalidate it.
- Scientific findings are evidenced-based and provisional because of this imperfect knowledge. Explanatory mechanisms are subject to revision pending new evidence, but this does not mean that all ideas are equal. It doesn't even mean that some ideas can't be rejected or accepted absolutely, within the basic overarching assumption.
- Consensus is achieved not through democratic vote but through independently attacking ideas as far as is reasonable. The primary goal is which idea is best, not which is right or wrong. Those cases, though possible, are much harder to establish.
- People ask, "Who watches the watchers ? Why do scientific ideas deserve this exalted position ? Don't we need to know which idea is really true to proceed - surely "best" just isn't good enough ?" as though this were complicated. It is not. Who watches your doctor ? Who watches your aeronautical engineer ? How does an atomic bomb work ? The answers are that everyone watches everyone else, public and experts alike, but more weight is given to expert opinions. It may not seem sensible that we can proceed on a "best guess" basis... but it works. Incomplete understanding does not mean no understanding at all; you don't have to know the name of your local librarian's aunt's cat to work out how to take out a book, and you don't need to know everything about atomic physics to work out how to wipe out a city. You can see the effects for yourself every time you get medical treatment, fly on an aeroplane, or right now while you're reading this on the internet. If you prefer the evidence of your own mind to your senses, then you are lost.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
I've saved this to pocket to read later, but something is already missing from your summary and I'm doubting the article already.
ReplyDeleteA very large factor in the American Right's sudden fall to solipsism and anti-intellectualism has been twenty-thirty years of our institutions of higher learning decaying into toxic waste dumps of Marxist ideology and boot camps for very poorly educated people who emerge with few skills, a lifetime of debt, and a misguided obsession with politically driven, reason-inert "social justice". Simply put: as a result of over the top ideological and cultish jihads from "humanities" departments (sociology departments, gender studies, etc) academic institutions in America have, for the most part, pissed away their role as trusted authorities. And the more rational fields of study....sciences, maths, etc, who remain relatively free of ideology...have suffered the blowback. It's very difficult to take an institution seriously when a university has both a legitimate biology department and also a humanities department teaching that there are no biological differences between genders. You can't have both these things and be a trustworthy place to learn.
Any analysis of the "alt-right" that doesn't examine this replacement of higher education with political ideology first and foremost is not a solid analysis, because I promise you it's at the heart of the problem. The "crazy Right" is a reaction to the "crazy Left".
Note: I'm a classical liberal, but because of my location, background, and general station in life, I've seen our currently political climate evolve from a peculiar...and useful...perspective. Many, many people on the Right in the US have simply grown tired of be shouted down as bigots, sexists, and racists, simply because they do not immediately bow to the accepted paradigm of whomever happens to be screaming at them.
I did say I didn't offer a summary - just my own related comments. The article contains many interesting comparisons between the crazy left and crazy right. The damn thing is simply too long to pick out the most relevant bits - it's a serious weakness of the article - so I decided I'd go for the "what is scientific reality ?" angle since a great many people don't seem to understand that. I've come to largely reject the "backfire effect" theory of crazy people though. I may or may not attempt to add a proper summary, if time permits.
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