Multiplicities In Paradise

Why were the OUTER LIMITS so wonderful? Let's just look at this one episode "The O.B.I.T." The ‘all-seeing eye’ has been a source of science fiction for many years. Consider George Orwell’s 1948 classic, 1984. The Outer Limits episode, O.B.I.T.  (which initially aired during the first season of the classic sci-fi television series on 4 November in 1963)  takes the idea to an even more sinister level. Wikipedia gives a very nice synopsis of the episode: Opening narration: In this room, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense Department’s Cypress Hills Research Center keep constant watch on its scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have remained but for the facts you are about to witness. Plot: While inquiring into the murder of an administrator at a government research facility, a U.S. senator is confronted with paranoia, secrecy, an

S usceptibility to disinformation is the illiteracy of the internet age. We have a tendency to view conspiracy theories as theories, statements about the world that can be either true or false. Since they are typically false, we treat them as flawed explanations, premised on logical inconsistencies or faulty evidence. The expression “conspiracy theory” was coined by a philosopher of science, Karl Popper, to designate the incapacity to understand social events as the outcome of a many interdependent processes. He saw them instead as the expression of a single and omnipotent will. The “conspiracy theory of society,” Popper wrote , was something akin to “a primitive kind of superstition.” This has remained the prevalent view ever since: in an influential article published ten years ago, two Harvard scholars—Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule— called them “crippled epistemologies.” This is certainly how I've seen them. With increasing occurrences of people whom I would think would know

W e have been discussing the willful disregard of factual evidence by ideologically motivated groups or individuals. Whether it's science denial, election denial, reality denial, or history denial it all causes harm.  The world is confusing enough without the pollution of disinformation. L et me clarify in part 2 that we are not talking just about cognitive biases here. This isn’t a question of the human tendency to pay more attention to evidence supporting one’s view while attempting to ignore contrary evidence. Intelligent human beings have the ability to rationalize the discrepancy between what we want to believe and what the world is like. These type of issues effect all human beings, and can be accounted for and at the least partially dealt with in the course of normal discussions about whatever it is we disagree about. Rather, the Oxford dictionary defines a denialist as “a person who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of

"Denialism is an irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality." That's how psychology defines it. Most of our modern problems are a result of clinging to a desperate denial of something. Reality and Science in particular.  D enialism is a sort of expansion of denial. We might say denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves. Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully. Denial can be as unfathomable as the multiple ways we avoid acknowledgement of our own  weaknesses, fallibilities, or control scandalous desires. Some degree of denial may serve a function, in that it lets socialization occur more smoothly. Denialism however, is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions that occur in the

  The Many Splendored Worlds of Hugh Everett Though celebrated now, when Hugh Everett first introduced his theory of multiple universes, he was met with scorn and mockery. Hugh Everett abandoned the world of academic physics and turned to top secret military research. His private life was tragically lamentable. Fifty years ago Hugh Everett devised the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which quantum effects spawn countless branches of the universe with different events occurring in each. Although this theory sounds like a bizarre hypothesis, more suited for science fiction than real science. It is in fact, inferred from the fundamental mathematics of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, most physicists of that time dismissed it, and he had to abridge his Ph.D. thesis on the topic to make it seem less controversial. Discouraged, Everett left physics and worked on military and industrial mathematics and computing. Personally, he was emotionally withdrawn and became a heavy

T he universe is deteriorating.  A mere 10 years ago, any decent search engine would reveal 100s of YouTube videos and thoughtful articles from people like Christopher Hitchens , Stephen Hawkins, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris if you searched for Intelligent Design or Creationism. Today, most of those entries have disappeared or moved 100s of pages back in the queue and instead there is a plethora of pseudoscience nonsense much of which intentionally being passed off as science, much of which can be traced back to the Discovery Institute or Discovery Science - anything from these sources is propaganda masquerading as science. It's a con job. And like in the political realm, people are apparently easy marks. Don't be duped. The pressure is on. The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike. I find this particular type of con job must disdainful.  Here's the deal. I don't believe, nor do I elevate the subject matter by disbelief,  There is NO evidence one