By now I’m sure most of you will have seen the extraordinary statements issuing forth from some Supreme Court Justices in the US during the recent hearing on the legality of the covid mandates.
Speaking as an ex-physicist, I realized in May 2020 that science was dead, that I would never consume any MSM "news" for the rest of my life, and that except for like-minded people on Twitter, Substack, etc, I would never be able to open my mouth to anyone again about this horrific, willful abandonment of the scientific method. Non-scientists cannot fully appreciate how appalling a development this is, although many have been vocal about the humanitarian arguments against lockdowns. You'd need a kind of Maxwell's Demon to put everything back to where it was. What is the point of any research endeavour when everything published is now suspect? I think "mass formation psychosis" is just the phrase du jour. We always knew, at some level, how irrational people are, but to experience the cataclysmic impact of it is another matter entirely.
Is this why China and Russia are getting ahead of us militarily? We're not trying new things to stay equal or ahead? No, "What if we try this?", so to speak?
I also wonder where we go from here. It's not much of an answer perhaps, because you might not see the real fruits of it for two decades yet, but there is a rapidly growing classical education movement in the US that is really bringing back true education, as opposed to the credentialism and therapy often pretending to be education in the US. I serve on the board of directors of one such school so I have some personal interest here, but the growth rate is quite incredible, the quip that "every new classical school that opens immediately has a waitlist" is probably darn close to the truth, people want something the public system isn't giving them. So that is one thing I find encouraging but, unfortunately, "wait 20 years" and we'll see what we've accomplished.
That's awesome David - seems like the kind of mass movement that is absolutely critical right now. Hope it takes off in a really big way. It will take time to turn round the woke and covid juggernauts, but it can be done. It has to be done.
"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like one of us."--St Anthony the Great, 3rd-4th century A.D.
He was a prescient fellow, it would seem. I am going to spend some time tomorrow to try and find out if he made any predictions on this year's Super Bowl...
“ It’s quite bizarre to see that these (allegedly) deluded “anti-maskers” had a better understanding of what science actually IS than the researchers at MIT.”
Read the paper again. I think you missed what the authors were doing. They’re on our side.
They’re not the ironing board, they are the irony board.
Oh, thanks for that Lon - I really hope you're right and I completely missed the irony. I will read it again and this time turn my irony meter up a few millisarcs.
It's a while since I read it. If I think it's a clever parody poking subtle fun I'll have to do some serious edits on my article haha - but that's OK, I'd rather put things right when I've got them wrong.
True story: a friend of mine sent me an article from the NYT that gave me a headache from all the eye-rolling nonsense in it. When I complained to him he said “No, no, no! Read it as satire!”
I did and it was hilarious. The most savage and biting takedown I had ever read. Now the NYT (I call it the New York Lampoon after the long-defunct and much-missed National Lampoon) is my go-to when I need a laugh.
Perhaps the authors wrote the MIT thing straight (I don’t think so) and it was just my NYT experience that made me see it it as a big piss-take. Who knows? There certainly was something quite different about it.
I re-read the paper (a fairly quick read - not what I would call a "proper" read where I would pore over every paragraph). If I read the discussion section 5 with the assumption that the authors are being ironic to the point of parody, then yes I can see what you mean here. They do seem to be making a very good case for the "anti-maskers" being the scientific ones.
But the conclusions section seems then to completely undermine that perspective.
Curious. Still not 100% sure, but at the moment I think my initial impressions about the paper were correct.
Are you just trying to find a way to explain the cognitive dissonance? Sadly, I took it the same way as Rudolph -- if they were being ironic, I missed the /sarc. All too easy to believe the authors are full-on cult members, as so many are.
Scrolling down on this post, it's incredible how little of Biden's pate one needs to reveal in order for him to be completely recognizable.
Oh, right. Sorry. Perhaps it's a sign of my current mental state that I got distracted playing that game. I hadn't seen that MIT study and find it simultaneously comforting and dispiriting (as confirmation of one's fearful suspicions can be: I was right that he was cheating on me! HA! Oh. I was right that he was cheating on me). As for Ibn al Haytham, it's a good thing he's not alive today to be pilloried as a conspiracy theorist and accused of spreading misinformation.
My teenage daughter came home today after being with some friends for the afternoon, and the first thing she said to me was, "Mommy, would you disown me if I got vaccinated!?" I knew she wasn't serious because her tone and attitude weren't. But her question shocked me. She was with her best friend, who has been double vaccinated because she wants to be able to travel to places like Germany and Austria and France and Italy.
Then my daughter proceeded to explain, "We want to go on a cruise around Madeira and they require everyone to be vaccinated. Would you disown me mom?"
And I replied, "Listen, if you want to go on a cruise with your friends, I'll buy you a goddamn boat and you guys can go on your own damn cruise without that shit being injected into you."
They both laughed.
Then I explained to them in all seriousness, "Listen, if you guys really want to go on a cruise, just be patient. You're young. This whole thing should blow over in a year, maybe 2, and I really don't think they will keep these requirements for years to come. Things will change."
Do I really believe that? Well, I think I said it to those two young adventurous women — who have a thirst for fun, excitement, and traveling everywhere — hoping they'd buy it. But, I'm really not sure where we go from here either. Hopefully I am right, and this will all blow over, and those 'experts' swallow it all.
Well I had a quick look at the ItsBS channel (first link) and watched the first bit of the "debunking" of Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Oh dear.
The guy rearranges a dimensionally correct equation to achieve a dimensionally incorrect equation. At this point I don't even need to check his maths to know he's made a mistake. It is a mathematical impossibility to take a dimensionally correct equation and rearrange it to yield a dimensionally incorrect equation.
However, what's very strange is the commenter points out the apparent dimensional inconsistency as his argument that Einstein got it wrong!!!!!!!
Speaking as an ex-physicist, I realized in May 2020 that science was dead, that I would never consume any MSM "news" for the rest of my life, and that except for like-minded people on Twitter, Substack, etc, I would never be able to open my mouth to anyone again about this horrific, willful abandonment of the scientific method. Non-scientists cannot fully appreciate how appalling a development this is, although many have been vocal about the humanitarian arguments against lockdowns. You'd need a kind of Maxwell's Demon to put everything back to where it was. What is the point of any research endeavour when everything published is now suspect? I think "mass formation psychosis" is just the phrase du jour. We always knew, at some level, how irrational people are, but to experience the cataclysmic impact of it is another matter entirely.
Me too - I really haven't got my head round it all still.
"I have learned more about human nature in the last two years than in my previous 47", as Paul Kingsnorth said.
Is this why China and Russia are getting ahead of us militarily? We're not trying new things to stay equal or ahead? No, "What if we try this?", so to speak?
I also wonder where we go from here. It's not much of an answer perhaps, because you might not see the real fruits of it for two decades yet, but there is a rapidly growing classical education movement in the US that is really bringing back true education, as opposed to the credentialism and therapy often pretending to be education in the US. I serve on the board of directors of one such school so I have some personal interest here, but the growth rate is quite incredible, the quip that "every new classical school that opens immediately has a waitlist" is probably darn close to the truth, people want something the public system isn't giving them. So that is one thing I find encouraging but, unfortunately, "wait 20 years" and we'll see what we've accomplished.
That's awesome David - seems like the kind of mass movement that is absolutely critical right now. Hope it takes off in a really big way. It will take time to turn round the woke and covid juggernauts, but it can be done. It has to be done.
"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like one of us."--St Anthony the Great, 3rd-4th century A.D.
He was a prescient fellow, it would seem. I am going to spend some time tomorrow to try and find out if he made any predictions on this year's Super Bowl...
“ It’s quite bizarre to see that these (allegedly) deluded “anti-maskers” had a better understanding of what science actually IS than the researchers at MIT.”
Read the paper again. I think you missed what the authors were doing. They’re on our side.
They’re not the ironing board, they are the irony board.
Oh, thanks for that Lon - I really hope you're right and I completely missed the irony. I will read it again and this time turn my irony meter up a few millisarcs.
It's a while since I read it. If I think it's a clever parody poking subtle fun I'll have to do some serious edits on my article haha - but that's OK, I'd rather put things right when I've got them wrong.
True story: a friend of mine sent me an article from the NYT that gave me a headache from all the eye-rolling nonsense in it. When I complained to him he said “No, no, no! Read it as satire!”
I did and it was hilarious. The most savage and biting takedown I had ever read. Now the NYT (I call it the New York Lampoon after the long-defunct and much-missed National Lampoon) is my go-to when I need a laugh.
Perhaps the authors wrote the MIT thing straight (I don’t think so) and it was just my NYT experience that made me see it it as a big piss-take. Who knows? There certainly was something quite different about it.
I re-read the paper (a fairly quick read - not what I would call a "proper" read where I would pore over every paragraph). If I read the discussion section 5 with the assumption that the authors are being ironic to the point of parody, then yes I can see what you mean here. They do seem to be making a very good case for the "anti-maskers" being the scientific ones.
But the conclusions section seems then to completely undermine that perspective.
Curious. Still not 100% sure, but at the moment I think my initial impressions about the paper were correct.
Well thanks for keeping an open mind on it. It is something of a curiosity.
LMK what you think after you re-read it. I'm past you on the cynical scale. I think you read it right the first time. (My cynicism talking.)
Are you just trying to find a way to explain the cognitive dissonance? Sadly, I took it the same way as Rudolph -- if they were being ironic, I missed the /sarc. All too easy to believe the authors are full-on cult members, as so many are.
No way of knowing for sure. To me it seemed obvious, but that’s just me.
I think the thing about thinking science is some kind of process was what clued me in.
Scrolling down on this post, it's incredible how little of Biden's pate one needs to reveal in order for him to be completely recognizable.
Oh, right. Sorry. Perhaps it's a sign of my current mental state that I got distracted playing that game. I hadn't seen that MIT study and find it simultaneously comforting and dispiriting (as confirmation of one's fearful suspicions can be: I was right that he was cheating on me! HA! Oh. I was right that he was cheating on me). As for Ibn al Haytham, it's a good thing he's not alive today to be pilloried as a conspiracy theorist and accused of spreading misinformation.
My teenage daughter came home today after being with some friends for the afternoon, and the first thing she said to me was, "Mommy, would you disown me if I got vaccinated!?" I knew she wasn't serious because her tone and attitude weren't. But her question shocked me. She was with her best friend, who has been double vaccinated because she wants to be able to travel to places like Germany and Austria and France and Italy.
Then my daughter proceeded to explain, "We want to go on a cruise around Madeira and they require everyone to be vaccinated. Would you disown me mom?"
And I replied, "Listen, if you want to go on a cruise with your friends, I'll buy you a goddamn boat and you guys can go on your own damn cruise without that shit being injected into you."
They both laughed.
Then I explained to them in all seriousness, "Listen, if you guys really want to go on a cruise, just be patient. You're young. This whole thing should blow over in a year, maybe 2, and I really don't think they will keep these requirements for years to come. Things will change."
Do I really believe that? Well, I think I said it to those two young adventurous women — who have a thirst for fun, excitement, and traveling everywhere — hoping they'd buy it. But, I'm really not sure where we go from here either. Hopefully I am right, and this will all blow over, and those 'experts' swallow it all.
Quantum physics is broken https://youtube.com/channel/UCcSIkt24P3WzN1n07l2C97Q
Virology is broken https://drsambailey.com/2022/01/05/why-nobody-can-find-a-virus/
Oh and these scientists, engineers, and doctors have an average IQ similar to the average of everyone lol https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/dec/13/brain-surgeon-or-rocket-scientist-study-tries-to-find-out-who-is-smarter
Or perhaps they're FIXED. Aka dogmatic religion of "science"
Well I had a quick look at the ItsBS channel (first link) and watched the first bit of the "debunking" of Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Oh dear.
The guy rearranges a dimensionally correct equation to achieve a dimensionally incorrect equation. At this point I don't even need to check his maths to know he's made a mistake. It is a mathematical impossibility to take a dimensionally correct equation and rearrange it to yield a dimensionally incorrect equation.
However, what's very strange is the commenter points out the apparent dimensional inconsistency as his argument that Einstein got it wrong!!!!!!!
Wow. Just wow.