Multiplicities In Paradise

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 he...

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 evid...

  H istory repeats itself, often in a strikingly similar way. Democracy lasted 250 years in ancient Athens until privilege, corruption and mismanagement strangled it.  American democracy, is now approaching 250 years, and it is desperately ill. D emocracy is under assault. We may think that these clashes are an aberration, a Mar-A-Lago Mussolini thing. But they are actually part of a troubling dichotomy that seems to be intrinsic to democracy itself.  D emocracy is more than a bundle of laws, norms and institutions. It is an open culture of communication.  Democracy affords people the right to think, speak and act and it allows every possible means of persuasion. Going all the way back to Plato's Republic, it's understood that the seeds of democracy include the roadmap to destruction in it's very DNA.  It's understood that every democratic society  is inescapably vulnerable to the consequences of communication. We may not like it, but something li...

 Americans have always been center left, they just no longer believe they are. The cause of this is largely that language has been systemically sabotaged to manipulate and deceive. America has a particular version of liberalism that has always been divergent from the norm. It's always been a term that is a little puzzling. This is true of "conservatism" in America as well frankly.  The words have particular meanings in the US that are dissimilar to the rest of the world's understanding. It seems if you nonchalantly ask folks to describe their political views, many respond with "conservative". What they really mean has more to do with with the broader meaning of the word 'conservative", rather than the meaning of a political conservative which is primarily about strengthening and protecting an existing social hierarchy.    In Europe, the word "Liberal " has traditionally meant a preference for things like limited government, separate privat...