We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – truth about science We are so far down the slippery slope of “having not been allowed to speak the truth about science because it must be subsumed to ideology” that re-entry into any sort of objective assessment is going to be incredibly jarring.
The foundations of modern technocracy are invalid and if your stock in trade has, for decades, perhaps centuries, lain in deriving authority and influence from peddling uncriticizable frameworks to induce others (and perhaps yourself) to inhabit hallucinations. this return to reality poses grave threat to currently ascendant political & ideological power bases.
This, of course, dovetails right into the heart of the omnipresent octopus of the government industrial censorship complex, the other group deeply insistent on getting to be the one who decides what’s true and what may be spoken. it too fears unmoderated content perhaps above all else as unfettered facts are technocratic kryptonite.
– El Gato Malo
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Jarring – as in potentially thermonuclear.
I don’t see this ending well.
The reproducibility crisis in science is monstrous. It’s driven by government funding paradigms (and greed and too many poor quality scientists) and I can’t see it changing without a real crisis.
I can’t see how Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on this crud are going find a way to the truth unless there are some systematic indicators of fraud/intellectual laziness/concupiscence (which there might be)
government industrial censorship complex, the other group deeply insistent on getting to be the one who decides what’s true and what may be spoken.
A group who over the last couple of days have decided to use “right-wing antisemitism” as their chosen stick to beat down Xwitter.
I forget who said, “Don’t just trust science. Instead, challenge science. That’s how you get science.” .
You can make a reasonable argument that modern science arose out of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment ideas today include:
– The belief in the power of reason
– The emphasis on scientific inquiry
– The value of individual liberty
– The importance of religious tolerance
– The concept of representative government
While these may not be the full measure of man, a common thread appears to be that the ideas are all under challenge by the modern Romantics whose ideas include:
– Emphasis on emotion and individualism
– Glorification of nature and therefor Climate
– Interest in the past and spirituality
– Rejection of reason and rationality
– Focus on the subjective experience
– Emphasis on imagination and creativity
Perhaps we are living through a time when Enlightenment and Romanticism are contending once more for a gip on (mostly) Western culture?
I have also noticed climate scintists treating data from computer models as the same thing as data in the experimental sense and not seeming to even recognise the difference. That is extremely worrying because I don’t think they were even being deliberately dishonest. I mean they weren’t lying – exactly. A fantasist who really believes he is Napolean is tougher to catch-out than someone who is just pretending.
I have a lot of stuff to do today. If anyone can find stuff to back this up I would be very pleased. Because I’m sure I’m not making this up.
It’s not really “science” as the term meant, classically. It’s more “SCIENCISM”, a religious faith adopted by those who reject traditional religion in favor of doing whatever they damn well please. The problem is that this quasi-religion is divorced from the actual scientific method, where you constantly evolve your ideas based on evidence and experiment.
Modern “SCIENCISM” instead substitutes a religious fervor for thought. If some white lab-coated acolyte or high priest says something in a press conference, then… That must be the revealed truth!!!!
You can’t question that. And, since most of the journalists and “SCIENCISM” faithful are woefully ill-equipped intellectually and lacking in the mental horsepower to do their own thinking, then… Yeah. It’s a religion, now. All that changed was the costumes and the permissions. Note how they do carbon trading with about the same sort of enthusiasm they once showed for trading indulgences inside the church… And, similar honesty.
Something to think about, here: Note the success of “SCIENCISM”, leftism, and Islam as religions. Most of their success stems from the fact that all three are enablers for man’s worst excesses; they all three give you permission to do the things you want to, but know you shouldn’t. They’re all three faiths for people that are generally sociopathic thugs. Remember how Nazism dressed itself up in “racial science” and all the rest of that crap, in order to justify what they did? How leftism does the same? Communist envy and the “class struggle” were all justified by “the science” of Marxism… Same, too with Islam: It’s a religion fueled by envy and the idea that self-gratification is the highest good you can achieve. There’s very little aspirational appeal to man’s better nature, asking him to do better as opposed to giving him permission to marry 9-year-old girls and have sex with them…
All three of those “faiths” are enablers for bad people to do bad things and feel good about doing them. The “SCIENCISM” types all want to control you, “for your own good” and “Mother Earth”. They get off on telling you what to do, what you can have in your home for heating… That’s their pleasure; they get a sexual frisson every time they ban something, anything. Same with the left; they get off on that stuff, controlling others. They don’t know what they’re doing, but they want control. Islam is much the same… They want control, which is why you don’t see the Islamic types coming around door-to-door to persuade you of the merits of their faith; they come with bombs and machineguns, to kill you if you don’t agree with them, converting you by force.
Same side of the coin, I fear. Rationality and reason, aspirational betterment of the human condition? All on the other, despite what they claim.
People wonder why the left and Islam work together, thinking they’re mutually self-exclusive. The reality is that they recognize each other, under the skin. It’s all about control, and doing exactly as you please, without rules. All three of these “religions” are enablers for sociopathy, taken up by the mentally ill. It’s all Allah’s will, you see. The science tells us so, and the prophet Marx laid it all out in his holy books…
I spent most of my life defending corporations – defending them against Dr Sean Gabb and others.
I bitterly regret my efforts now – as it is clear that the vast international corporations are (contra to the late Milton Friedman) not motivated by seeking profits for “Aunt Agatha” style individual shareholders, and are, instead, motivated by a totalitarian political and cultural agenda. Partly because most shares, due to tax law and Credit Money expansion (the Cantillon Effect) concentrated in the hands of institutions (not individuals) – and partly because, as the late F.A. Hayek noted, the vast international Corporations internally are much like states (governments) – they are bureaucracies where most people (including most senior people) have little contact with individual customers.
Is there any chance that the United Kingdom will opt out of the totalitarian World Health Organisation agreement amendments which will allow the powers that be to censor the truth about health matters?
Sadly I believe there is no chance that the United Kingdom will opt out of this – although I would be delighted to be proved wrong.