There is a growing sense that there is a crisis in science, with science being broadly defined to include the soft sciences. The reproducibility crisis, as pointed out by the statistician W. M. Briggs, is close to universal. Across the academy, there is a plague of faulty and fraudulent studies being produced. Worse yet, the systems for controlling fraud seem to be encouraging it. Peer review now means nothing more than politically acceptable in the soft science fields.
Briggs offers one reason for what is happening. He notes that engineering is not having this problem. The reason is the bridge has to actually work as predicted or the engineers suffer a heavy price. Engineering is not science, but it relies upon the sciences to produce practical things. Those practical things must hold up to reality, which controls what comes out of engineering as accepted theory. In other words, everything in engineering gets tested against reality.
The academy, on the other hand, never has to face reality this way. Even in the hard sciences, reality avoidance is common. Theoretical physics has entered a world that is beyond the ability to test. Math is still math, but much of what is done is purely speculative or requires unproven assumptions. In the soft sciences, the rules have collapsed entirely and most of what comes out is narrative framing. The “science” is limited to providing cover for current fads.
Another reason for the crisis in the sciences is modeling. Anyone who has worked with models knows that the model maker can quickly become a god. He creates a model of the world based on what he would like it to be rather than as a reflection of the bit of reality he is trying to understand. Of course, model makers often have a boss who needs to be pleased. That boss could be in a corner office or the boss could be an angry mob of blue-haired harpies patrolling campus.
The point is you can make models do anything. The model maker is like a script writer in that he can make the rules do what he needs to reach his desired end. Bad script writers use clunky plot devices to solve problems for their characters. Bad model makers create a set of rules and data selection methods to close the gap between theory and reality. Since the model will never be tested against reality in the soft sciences, bad model makers can quickly become stars.
Here is where the question of causality comes into play. Is the corruption of the academic domain a symptom of larger societal trends? Has the steady decline of standards in society dragged down the academy or has the corruption of institutions subverted society, including the people in the sciences? Is it simply the natural product of multiculturalism, which needs narratives to hold it together, due to the lack of natural social bonds found in homogenous societies?
You can model this many ways, depending upon how you as the model maker feel about these topics. The last bit is a clue to the problem. The rise of narratives in social discourse tracks with the rise in diversity. Read anything from a century ago and it is free of the narrative structures we find common today. A story about an athlete was mostly the facts about his life. He was not cast as a character in a drama about social justice or the fight against exploitation.
The ubiquity of narratives gets lost in the flood of them. There is a real war going in Europe and the political class speaks of nothing but narratives. They have meetings followed by press conferences to inform the public on the status of their latest narratives and the battle of narratives surrounding the war. Meanwhile, the Russian army slowly grinds down the Ukrainian army. The same can be said of the energy crisis, which is ignored in favor of narratives about climate change.
You get the sense that the people talking about their narratives and messaging, a subset of narrative framing, think that if they get enough people to believe their story, reality will bend to that story. Put another way, if they can model reality with a set of rules and assumption in such a way that only their preferred conclusions are possible, then reality will have no choice but to comply. Like the model makers, the narrative creators have become gods in their creations.
This does not answer the question of causality, but it is clear that the problem of modeling in the sciences has a related problem in the public realm. In elite society, the focus is no longer on the things that are true, like the axioms of mathematics, but rather on the things that are true within the context of accepted rules, like the equity in the distribution of advanced degrees in the sciences. One is true whether you believe it or not, while the other is only true if you accept the assumptions.
A century ago, smart people understood this difference. Models of realty had to account for those things that are axioms of the universe. Over that time a steady shift has gone on where objective reality is excluded from the discussion of the narrative and at the same time, the narrative challenges objective reality. Put another way and getting back to the Briggs post, models are no longer tested against reality, but reality is being tested against the models.
This helps explain why supposedly serious academics sit in front of congressional committees and claim to not know the definition of a woman. They are not simply clinging to fashionable politics. At the heart of it is the claim that reality simply does not comport with the new model of society, so we have to dismiss that bit of reality, in this case biological sex. Just as the model makers can feel like a god, the narrative makers believe they can bring reality to heel.
There is a lot here that deserves further examination, but it is clear that the crisis in science correlates with the crisis in the West. The causality is not clear, but what is clear is that what passes for the smart fraction is no longer willing or able to accept that there are things that are true regardless of opinion. They are questioning the very basics of reality by claiming there is no difference between relations of ideas, their models and narratives, and matters of fact and observable reality.
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I think this bridge collapse was using from women engineers. Expect more of this
But all these people with their narratives, the gnostics, the utopians,the Marxist the socialists all the way to the cult of transgenderism is always been about the quest to change the nature of man. That is their fight against reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki
Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse
5
I wouldn’t be so sure engineering will remain free of Woke magical thinking.
Medicine is a practical field – treatments must kill fewer patients than the illness or injury does. And medical schools have been overrun with wokeness – “People with uterui”, “All health outcomes that are different between races are due to White racism”, etc., etc., etc..
7
>Another reason for the crisis in the sciences is modeling. Anyone who has worked with models knows that the model maker can quickly become a god.
There was a scandal a while back where the someone in the Climatic Institute in East Anglia leaked emails and computer code where they were busy creating climate models.
The main takeaway was, as much as scientists tout about Peer Review, that the statistical code was written by essentially one guy and didn’t even go through the most basic code review process that every decent sized organization uses. It was just a mess of slapdash numbers and assumptions clearly designed to come to a certain conclusion. The worst part was when scientific organizations circled the wagons and came out saying they did nothing wrong.
In a sane world every paper would have, as a minimum requirement, documentation on the software suite used, ALL applicable data, and strict instructions on how to reproduce it. And this does not even get into controls in place to verify the actual data is trustworthy, which should also be a hard rule for any paper that has the possibility to impact social policy.
Using these rules would bring academic papers to probably a tenth of the current output in the sciences, but one needs to ask if this is a feature as opposed to a bug.
6
A good model needs to be tested. Run your model using historical data. Compare your model results to what happened historically. Repeat these experiments. Each time you run your model you adjust your parameters, until you get a “good” fit. When you are satisfied or run out of money, you have a model useful within the confidence limits you have calculated.
1
Note. Once you have confirmed your model, you may NOT tinker with it anymore because you don’t like what it predicts.
2
It’s an empire of lies
2
Well, you also need to distinguish between the larger reality of society and the narrow reality of individuals. The individual reality of our rulers does, in fact, comport with their models.
A PhD candidate in the various soft sciences at one of the top school will get their degree and a job by peddling models and papers that fit the narrative. Their own reality rewards this behavior. The same is true of members of the foreign policy establishment. Their models are disastrous for others but work great for their career.
These people live in nice houses, in nice areas and enjoy great career success. They are honored members of various associations. They have interesting, successful neighbors. Etc. Their use of these models works just fine for their own personal reality.
Until their use of faulty models harms their own personal reality, the game will continue.
10
A philosophical question that has alluded man since the beginning of time! Freedom of association is not only needed but necessary in that we all create a unique reality since we only have the ability to see fragments of it. Therefore, living with others that see what we see is imperative. Races, generally see reality differently, nothing wrong with that, but it won’t work together. Then you may ask, what model of reality is the clearest to live by? That model is to abide by the laws of nature as much as possible for the continued health and well being of us as a society to continue to further our species.
To me that is the closest to reality that we can come. Social interest, having a family, and living a healthy life is what gives us meaning. When I am around others with those same values all is right with the world!
Last thing, reality is tethered to consciousness. To be truly conscious is to see the world or nature in all its beauty or terrifying suffering. A wise man accepts both!
Thomas Sowell loves the distinction between the engineer and the intellectual. He and Walter E. Williams are/were great Americans.
3
Man, you CivNats love Sowell and Williams. “Look, everyone, it’s two black guys who say that I’m not racist so quit calling me names!”
You do realize that neither Saint Thomas nor Williams ever acknowledged or even postulated that there are average differences in IQ and other personality traits among the various races of the world. Both of them blamed black underperformance on culture.
Hell, Saint Thomas had the gall to blame black underperformance on blacks picking up the culture of Southern whites, i.e., rednecks. Yep, according to Saint Thomas, it’s blacks acting like the “worst” whites that causes black underperformance.
You don’t have to live under the other side’s morality.
2
The politicization of science became prominent with Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and its demonization of DDT. Shortly thereafter there was a great concern over mercury in fish, as if one could get rid of his mother-in-law by feeding her Lake Superior trout five times a week. The biggest impetus was the “ozone hole” of the 1970s. In spite of the total ban on chloroflourocarbons in most of the developed world, there is still a fluctuation in the ozone layer, as if anyone can actually know how much ozone there is anywhere. There are now many politically derived scientific “facts”, like AGW and the Chinese flu, requiring huge responses at an international level. The latest, and funniest, is the determination that the level of testosterone in the blood is what determines an individual’s sex.
You’ll notice that none of these things can be observed or analyzed with the use of the human’s five senses. They all require esoteric machinery accessible to only a few trained technicians. Elizabeth Holmes can tell you all about the reliability of sophisticated scientific measurement devices.
3
I think that narrative framing and reality, practically defined, can be compatible. Take the “what is a woman” nonsense. The narrative or category of “woman” now includes “non-women,” but if you need a historectomy, you aren’t going to quibble about definitions.
My friends know, because they’ve experienced it, that the vax offers no protection against covid. The most boostered are the ones most frequently getting covid around here. Everyone acknowledges it. Still, to take part in most activities, you need to be “currently” boostered according to the CDC’s advisory. This is just cognitive dissonance applied to the given narrative.
When I was a grad student, it was taken for granted that your findings would promote your career goals. People weren’t cynical about it. It was just the way it was.
Does the corruption of language precede or post-cede the corruption of thought? I’m guessing both. Most narrators seem to realize that their narratives are slanted frames some whihc, intentionally or incidentally, conform to reality practically speaking.
7
Language always has been one of the strongest influences on how people see reality, not so much by what it includes but by what it omits. For example, in Greek there are several different words for kinds of love (eros, philia, agape, etc.). English is not as rich in this regard, which gives an avenue for equate sexual lust with selfless love.
The transformation of terms like woman to be completely separated from biology will, in time, make it so ambiguous as to be meaningless. There may come a time when the phrase “Marriage is between a man and a woman” will just be a nonsense phrase because man and woman have no concrete meaning. One could argue with the modern dilution of the word Marriage in the past 50 years, it already doesn’t have any meaning with a large number of people.
4
Eisenhower warned about a scientific industrial complex and centralizing science. The scientific universe will bend towards the largest source of dollars. The number that really matters in the climate debate isn’t temperature but the really large wad of cash bestowed on the model makers over the last couple decades.
6
Cui bono?
After we lost the war in Afghanistan, we needed another one. How about Ukraine?
Headline. “Lockheed wins a multi billion dollar contract for new jet fighters.”
1
“…if they get enough people to believe their story, reality will bend to that story.”
This sounds like it’s derived from Orwell’s “Thoughtcrime”. Our modern brainwashers have invested heavily in the idea that if hostile thoughts are made literally unthinkable, the negative things the thoughts represent will be unable to exist. They might have had some success in the field of emotional reactions: like desensitizing therapies, you might be able to brainwash people to remove feelings of revulsion from repellant behaviors. But naturally, these people have no idea where to stop, so now they’ve carried it to the point of trying to imagine away reality.
I think this is likely to boomerang in the worst way on those who farcically consider themselves in charge. When reality crashes through their carefully constructed fantasy defenses, they will be unable to “snap out of it” fast enough to respond constructively. They’ve proudly distanced themselves from vulgar Nature, and will not have time to relearn the natural responses that could save them from destruction.
6
The large number of adjustable parameters in complex mathematical models allows the modeler to achieve almost any outcome desired. The LOVECLIM climate model has something like twenty adjustable parameters. I knew an outstanding experimental physicist in grad school who liked to say, “You can model an elephant wiith three adjustable parameters. With four, you can make its trunk move.”
1
Ed Dutton say average IQ has dropped 20 points since 1880. Throw in the vast expansion of universities since WWII and you have a vast army of morons with graduate degrees running everything.
6
The educated idiot phenomenon is real. Compounding it is the fact that people can find something clever on-line and then think they are clever for finding it.
2
I keep hearing that “astrophysicists” are still looking for “dark matter” and “dark energy” because the observed behavior of the universe isn’t matching their models unless they posit some magical stuff to make the numbers right. This magical stuff that makes their models work has never been observed by astronomers. But it has to exist, otherwise their models are wrong.
I think their models are wrong, and it’s about time reality took all these arrogant nerds to the locker room.
2
The problem in science is bad enough that I have become very skeptical of science that does not lead to demonstrable engineering.
SCIENCE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83JR2IoI8k
The model says races are equal but the reality of crime does not fit the model.
The dust bowl of the 1930’s wiped out thousands of farmers at a time where there was no climate change model, yet this years drought must fit the climate change model.
And we all know about the gender models that don’t fit reality.
We in the dissident movement have the truth.
And the truth and reality will eventually win out.
3
Standardized testing has been catastrophic in that regard. Since all grades are padded you probably can’t see it in the numbers, but anyone teaching in the mid-2000s knows exactly what I’m talking about — you can easily identify kids who went to high school pre- and post-No Child Left Behind. The ones after were like dumber versions of the grinders who were in the SAT prep pipeline from birth. To that kind of kid, there are only four possible answers to any question — A, B, C, or D; “all / none of the above” isn’t an option — and “education” consists entirely of learning how to game the very odd, very particular rules of that closed system. He is “smartest” who figures out the most clever way to game the system.
“There is a growing sense that there is a crisis in science, with science being broadly defined to include the soft sciences.”
Well, there’s your problem. The “soft sciences” aren’t sciences. To pretend they are is akin to claiming that men can get pregnant.
After the success of “sciences” in the 18th and 19th centuries, man told themselves, “Wow! Aren’t we special? Look at all the marvels we’ve created. I bet we could do the same with psychology and sociology. Wouldn’t it be great to predict individual and sociological behavior?” And they did make a little progress. In Psychology, Behaviorism became an actual thing and data was collected and results were quantified. In Sociology, TPTB invested in mathematical formulas to make dialectic materialism useful to them, in similar fashion to the pamphlet Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars. But, Psychology and Sociology have too much non-quantifiable data to ever be true “sciences”. Today, they have been reduced to herding the sheep, and admittedly, very successful at that. However, it seems that their success relies on the herds’ need to belong and live a life where they don’t have to think. And those kind of sheep seem to be the most numerous and tend to ostracize those that are capable of thought.