Growth and the expectation of growth in scientific knowledge

We have become used to growth in scientific knowledge, and expect growth in scientific knowledge. This expectation at first shaped reality, then became reality, and eventually displaced reality. The link between expectation and actuality was broken and the world of assumptions took over.

***

The expectation that scientific knowledge will grow almost inevitably (given adequate 'inputs' of personnel and funding) is epitomized by the professionalization of scientific research (making scientific research a job) and the expectation of regular and frequent scientific publication – the expectation of regular and frequent publication would only make sense if it was assumed that scientific knowledge was accumulating in a predictable fashion.

We nowadays expect a growth in the number of scientific publications over time, and a growth in the totality of citations – these are fuelled by increases in the numbers of professional scientists and of journals for publishing science. We assume that there is an infinite amount of useful and new science waiting to be discovered, and an infinite pool of people capable of making discoveries.

The economist Paul Romer – and many others – have built this into theories of the modern economy – they argue that continued growth in science and technology fuels continual improvement in productivity (economic output per person) and therefore growth in the economy. And this is kept going by increasing the investment in science and technology. The idea is that we are continually getting better at scientific discovery, investing in scientific discovery, therefore modern society can continue to grow. (Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense, but...)

***

But how would we really know whether science was growing? I mean, who is really in a position to know this?

Who could evaluate whether change is science and increased amounts of self-styled scientific *stuff* actually corresponded to more and better science?

When – as now – scientific growth is expected, and when society acts-upon the expectation, we have an overwhelming *assumption* of growth in science, an assumption that science *is* growing – but that says nothing about whether there really is growth.

Because when people assume science is growing and when they think they perceive that science is growing, this creates vast possibilities for dishonesty, hype and spin. Because people expect science to grow, for there to be regular breakthroughs, they will believe it when regular breakthroughs are claimed (whether or not breakthroughs have actually happened).

***

But how if there is really no growth in scientific knowledge? Or how if the real growth is less than the assumed growth? How if there is actual decline in real scientific knowledge – how would we know?

Science – as a social system –resembles the economy. In the credit crunch of 2008 it was realized that the economy had not really been growing, but what we were seeing was actually some mixture of increasing inflation, increasing borrowing, and rampant dishonesty from many directions. (It is the rampant dishonesty that has prevented this from being understood – and this tactical dishonesty is itself no accident.)

So we discovered that we were not really getting richer, but we were living off ever more credit, and the value of money was less than we thought; and we (or at least I) discovered that we could not trust anybody to tell us anything about what was going on or why it had happened. They were not even trying to discover the truth, they were trying to build their careers (politicians, economists, journalists – all careerists). (To be fair, most of them are explicitly nihilists who do not believe in the truth – so why should we expect them to tell it?)

Truth about the credit crunch was something we amateurs needed to work out for ourselves, as best we could.

***

I believe that science is in the same bad state as the economy, but probably even worse.

In science, what masquerades as growth in knowledge (to an extent which is unknown, and indeed unknowable except in retrospect) is not growth in knowledge but merely an expansion of *stuff*, changes in the methods of counting, and so on.

Almost nobody in science is trying to discover the truth, and is embarrassed even by talking about the subject. Not surprising that they are embarrassed!

For instance, virtually every influential scientific article is now hyped to a variable but vast extent (the honest ones are buried and ignored).

Multiple counting is rife: progress in claimed when a grant is applied for and also when a grant is awarded, and even when the work is still happening – since scientific progress is assumed to be predictable – a mere function of resources, capital and manpower; credit for a scientific publication is counted for all of its (many) authors, for all the many forms in which the same stuff is published and republished, for the department and also for the university where it was done, and also the granting agency which provided the funds and for the journal where it was published – everyone grabs a slice of the ‘glory’.

Credit is given for the mere act of a ‘peer reviewed’ publication regardless of whether the stuff is true and useful – or false and harmful.

Thus the signal of real science is swamped utterly by the noise of hype.

***

Let us suppose that doing science is actually much *harder* than people assume; much harder and much less predictable.

Suppose that most competent and hardworking real scientists actually make no indispensible contribution to science – but merely *incremental* improvements or refinements in methods, the precision of measurements and the expression of theories. And if they personally had not done it, it would have slightly-slowed but would not have prevented progress, or somebody else would have done it.

If science is really *hard*, then this fact is incompatible with the professionalization of science – with the idea of scientific research as a career. Since science is irregular and infrequent, science could only be done in an amateur way; maybe as a sideline from some other profession like teaching, practicing medicine, or being a priest.

Professional science would then be intrinsically phony, and the phoniness would increase as professionalization of science increased and became more precisely measured, and as the profession of science expanded – until it reached a situation where the visible products of science – the *stuff* bore no relationship to the reality of science.

Professional scientists would produce stuff (like scientific publications) regularly and frequently, but this stuff would have nothing to do with real science.

Or, more exactly, the growing amount of stuff produce by the growing numbers of professional science careerists, whose use of hype would also be growing – the amount of this stuff would be so much greater than the amount of real science, that the real science would be obscured utterly.

***

This is precisely what we have.

The observation of growth in scientific knowledge became an expectation of growth in science and finally an assumption of growth in science.

And when it was assumed that science was growing, it did not really need to grow, because the assumption framed the reality.

***

But if science is as hard as I believe it is; then scientific progress cannot be taken for granted, cannot be expected or assumed.

Our society depends on scientific progress – when scientific progress stops, our society will collapse. Yet so great is our societal arrogance that we do not regard science as something real. Instead science is the subject of wishful thinking and propaganda.

Science is a way of getting at certain kinds of truth, but the way that science works is dependent on honesty and integrity. Our societal arrogance is such that we believe that we can have the advantages of real science but at the same time subvert the honesty and integrity of science whenever that happens to be expedient.

Our societal arrogance is that we are in control of this dishonesty – that the amount of hype and spin we apply is under our control and can be reversed at will, or we can separate the signal from the noise, and re-calculate the reality of science. This is equivalent to the Weimar Republic assuming that inflation was under control when prices and wages were rising unpredictably by the hour.

But we cannot do this for the economy and we cannot do it for science. In fact we have no idea of the real situation in either science or the economy, except that in a universe tending towards entropy we must assume that the noise will tend to grow and swamp the signal. The Western economy was apparently growing but in reality it was increased inflation and borrowing and deception; science has appeared to be growing but the reality is increasing hype, spin and dishonesty. The link between stuff and substance has disappeared.

***

When the signals of economics and science (money and ‘publications’ and other communications) lose their meaning, when the meaning is detached from underlying reality, then there is no limit to the mismatch.

The economy was collapsing while the economic indicators improved; and science can be collapsing while professional science is booming.

But if science is very difficult and unpredictable, and if the amount of science cannot be indefinitely expanded by increasing the input of personnel and funding, then perhaps the amount of real science has not increased *at all* and the vast expansion of scientific-stuff is not science.

If so, then the amount of real science (intermittent, infrequent, unpredictable) has surely not stayed constant but will have actually declined due to the hostile environment. At the very least, real science will be de facto unfindable since the signal is drowned by every increasing levels of noise.

So, the economy was a bubble, and science is a bubbles, and bubbles always burst; and the longer delayed the burst, the bigger the bubble will become (the more air, the less substance), and the bigger will be the collapse.

***

When the economic bubble burst, the economy was much smaller than previously realized - but of course the economy was still enormous. In effect, the economy was set back several years.

But when the scientific bubble bursts, what will be left over after the explosion? Maybe only the old science - from an era when most scientists were at least honest and trying to discover the truth about the natural world.

And, in an era of mindless technical specialization, will there be enough scientists even to understand what was left over?

At the very least, science would be set back by several decades and not just by a few years. But it could be even worse than that.

Fr Seraphim Rose on the spiritual poverty of our times

"I must tell you first of all that, to the best of our knowledge, there are no startsi today—that is, truly God-bearing elders (in the spirit of the Optina elders) who could guide you not by their own wisdom and understanding of the Holy Fathers, but by the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. This kind of guidance is not given to our times—and frankly, we in our weakness and corruption and sins do not deserve it.

"To our times is given a more humble kind of spiritual life, which Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov in his excellent book The Arena (do you have it?) calls life by counsel—that is, life according to the commandments of God as learned in the Holy Scriptures and Holy Fathers and helped by those who are elder and more experienced. A starets can give commands; but a counsellor gives advice, which you must test in experience.

"We do not know of anyone in particular who would be especially able to counsel you in the English language. If this is really needful for you, God will send it to you in His time, according to your faith and need, and without your making too deliberate a search for it."

From a letter excerpted at: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/frseraphimspeaks.aspx

Comment: The modern lack of guidance from an 'enlightened' elder, in direct lineal discipleship with the greats of the past, is a feature of many aspects of contemporary life including science and medicine; and something which is likely to get worse.

Then the aspirant must remember and accept that "To our times is given a more humble kind of spiritual life"; also a more humble scientific life, or life as a physician or surgeon.

The modern heroism is then to accept humility, and not to strive for an impressive status which can only be fake.

My favourite television - Cricket Writers on TV

My favourite television show - from the perspective of purely self-indulgent entertainment - is Cricket Writers on TV.

Indeed CWoTV it is the only thing I regularly watch

This is a discussion that is currently broadcast on a Sunday morning at about 09.00 hours (Sky Sports 1) and which lasts for one and a half hours.

That is to say, I am provided with one and a half hours (minus advertisments) of four cricket journalists sitting around a table (apparently provided with some coffee and croissants) chatting about the week's news in cricket in great detail (c. 70 minutes worth of detail!).

Yesterday's episode was particularly fine since it featured the genial regular host Paul Allott with my favourite modern cricket writer: Scyld Berry who is the Sunday Telegraph Correspondent and the editor of Wisden. In addition there was the personable and opinionated Stephen Brenkley, and also Vic Marks who provided a contrasting view to my own on the perennial issue of four versus five bowlers for test matches.

(In fact my own cricketing views are closely modelled on/ copied from those of Scyld Berry!).

I realize that this programme would be regarded as a form of torture by everbody other than myself - therefore although I provide a link to the audio podcasts below I do not exactly _recommend_ it; because Cricket Writers on TV is not really intended for you, it is for me - http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12172_6174957,00.html.

I find it heartening, fascinating, and almost magical that Sky Sports would go to the trouble and expense of assembling four journos each week (just the right number for conversation) and producing this show uniquely for little old *me* - and, despite the temptations of commercialism, to have continued broadcasting it for at least the past three seasons.

Well, I am very grateful; and will continue to enjoy it while it lasts.

Remember the name: Cricket Writers on TV.

But you need not bother watching it because it is *my* show.

What kind of pathology causes depression?

For several decades, most psychiatrists have propagated the idea that 'depression' (Major Depressive Disorder, Endogenous Depression, Melancholia) is a brain disease.

For example it is often said that depression is caused by some kind of chemical abnormality involving serotonin (5-HT) or its receptors, or involving norepinephrine or dopamine or something.

But if depression really is a brain disease, then it would have to be a disease of the brain substance, and this pathological process would necessarily need to be detectable using normal medical science.

There are only a limited number of pathologies recognized by medical science, and 'neurotransmitter abnormalities' is not one of them. Abnormalities of messenger chemicals are a consequence, not a cause.

When I was a medical student we were taught a diagnostic scheme called the 'surgical sieve' since it was often used in creating a list of possible ('differential') diagnoses for someone with an unknown problem that might be admitted for surgical assessment. Another name is the pathologic(al) classification.

What happens is that each of the potential pathological causes is considered in tune. There are many versions and many use acronyms to make them memorable - for use in actual clinical practice.

Here is the 'surgical sieve' described in Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_sieve

1. There are two basic categories of disease - congenital (inborn - for example genetic) versus acquired.

Among acquired pathologies there are:

2. Neoplastic (eg cancer)
3. Metabolic (chemical)
4. Infective (germs)
5. Traumatic (accidents)
6. Autoimmune
7. Vascular (caused by blood vessels)
8. Inflammatory
9. Degenerative (due to age)
10.Idiopathic (caused by medical treatment - side effects)


Classic melancholia or endogenous depression is rare - probably less than 1 percent of the population would have an episode during their lifetime and it is devastating; usually it requires hospitalization or equivalent, and lasts for several months at least - but not more than a year or two (unless the person commits suicide, or dies of dehydration or starvation). It is perhaps the most intense suffering which a human can experience, survive and recover-from.

So, in melancholia which of the above might be a causal brain disease?

The point is that the pathological cause of melancholia needs to be relatively long lasting (months, a year) but also fully reversible.

What pathological processes fit that pattern?

The short answer is that none of them have been detected in the brain as a cause, not even metabolism (which is not a primary cause anyway - or when it metabolism is regarded as a primary cause it is usually congenital and usually long lasting and not spontaneously reversible, self-curing).

Whatever is the primary cause must be of a type that leads to a disease which lasts some months but potentially completely goes away - so the cause is *not* going to be neoplasia, for instance.

On this basis the clinical pattern of classic depression best fits with either infective or autoimmune disease.

For example an untreated infection will get worse for a while, then will eventually be defeated by the body - in pre-antibiotic days it might take months to recover from some infections.

Autoimmune disease exacerbations (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis) are not well understood, but the diseases may also wax and wane over a timescale of months.

However, it seems unlikely that there is a primary infective cause in the brain, because this is an encephalitis, and that produces different symptoms from melancholia (especially delirium).

However, depression might well be caused by infective causes elsewhere in the body since immune chemicals travel in the blood; and indeed it is well known that many infections can produce depressive symptoms (as a consequence of immune activation).

Perhaps some people with melancholia also suffer an autoimmune disease - could this primarily be a disease of the brain itself? It seems implausible, since autoimmune changes would produce inflammatory changes that would probably produce encephalitis type symptoms of delirium.

So as with infection it seems likely that melancholia may be a consequence of autoimmune disease elsewhere in the body, but not the brain itself.

In conclusion - it is not plausible that depression (classic melancholia) is a primary brain disease since the pattern of disease does not plausibly fit any of the possible causes; and it is more likely to be a consequence of pathological processes (one or more pathological processes such as infective or autoimmune disease) elsewhere in the body.

On these grounds, I would not be surprised if some episodes of serious endogenous depression/ melancholia turned out often (not always) to have an infective cause - or rather, a variety of infective causes.

This may even apply to autoimmunity, since autoimmunity can be caused by an infection.

So a fruitful investigative strategy might be 'search for infection'; and then treat it, if possible.

Or maybe even try treating presumed infection blind, by trying-out several different antimicrobial agents that cover a range of presumed infective causes?

Humility versus submission

For Christians, repentance is a first step on a short path to forgiveness; but modern secular leftist guilt has no answer.

Repentance and forgiveness versus perpetual guilt - a big difference.

While a Christian aims for humility before God, modern secular leftists can only settle for submission to those people who make them feel guilty.

Humility before God versus submission to Man - a big difference.

Why I read the History of Middle Earth

The History of Middle Earth (HoME) is a series of 12 books (preceded by a similar book named Unfinished Tales) consisting of the writings of JRR Tolkien edited by his son Christopher.

I have been reading them for several years, slowly, off and on, in a piecemeal fashion - and with tremendous satisfaction.

I read Lord of the Rings (LotR) when I was thirteen and for the remainder of my school years re-read it several times, plus everything else by and about Tolkien which I could find. While I was at college I did not read Tolkien very often, but returned to him after finding a copy of Unfinished Tales in a rented cottage, buying a copy of the selected letters secondhand, and borrowing TA Shippey's Road to Middle Earth from the library.

The problem with LotR was that by age 18 I had learned it almost off-by-heart, and it had begun to lose its effect. But now I have seen the movies several times, listened to the radio dramatization, and - most important - been reading early drafts of LotR in the HoME plus much other material on the earlier mythologies - so I have thoroughly confused my memory between what is in the real and finished LotR and all these alternative versions and extra ideas.

I can therefore become completely 'lost' in Tolkien's world, on a long term basis!

Reading the letters, and Shippey, also opened my eyes to the profound intelligence, creativity and wisdom of Tolkien as a man - and his inspired prophesy - so there is a secondary 'philosophical' level which I now explore Tolkien's world (and there are several good secondary sources to help - perhaps the best being Verlyn Flieger's books).

Essentially, the HoME has become a way to overcome the habituation – the getting-used-to – which is a consequence of mere repetition. Because, when I return to re-read the ‘real’, finished, published Lord of the Rings; I find myself astonished by its quality and coherence – an experience which recaptures some of the freshness of a first reading.

Driclor is an effective treatment for shaving cuts

I have already blogged about the totally-effective antiperspirant sold under the trade name of Driclor - but this remarkable substance has another use, which my wife heard about on 'doctors' net' - a UK forum restricted to qualified physicians.

Driclor can stop bleeding - presumably by drying rapidly (in a few seconds) to form a transparent coating and block the blood flow.

It works very well for facial shaving cuts. Although pretty painless, these razer accidents are usually very difficult to stop bleeding, even when small - since they are sliced skin; and when skin is cleanly sliced (rather than torn or crushed) it does not release the various chemicals which assist in blood coagulation.

A shaving cut is usually a thin slice off the top of a protruberance like the chin - leaving a raw patch of oozing dermis; or a linear slice caused by the razer slipping sideways. These linear slices in particular often well-out drops of blood in an annoying way.

The traditional answer is to put a scrap of tissue paper onto the cut and leave it there until the blood has coagulated (maybe 10 minutes). But if the cut is one of those linear slices, then the tissue will often become sodden with blood and fall off onto your shirt - aaargh!

The other alternative is to stick an elastoplast/ band-aid on the bleeding area - which does rather attract the eye...

But, if one dabs the bleeding area dry, then immediately applies Driclor to the graze, slice or cut (it comes from a roller ball applicator - so you need rapidly to take some Driclor on a finger tip, and very quickly smear it over the bleeding area), it will usually dry instantly to form an invisible layer and will stop the bleeding.

I do not (ahem...) have any direct experience of the matter - but would I imagine that Driclor would be equally useful at stopping bleeding spots caused by shaving of the legs, as well as the face.

All that can be seen is the shape of the wound with a little surface oozing; and the invisible Driclor 'shell' is slightly shiny, so the result is not absolutely perfect cosmetically.

Still, it is a tremendous improvement on the alternative. To (almost) quote a famous English policeman of the 1970s - 'I am convinced that Driclor is a major contribution to road safety'.

Atheism provides zero guidance for life - suck it up!

Although I managed to evade admitting the fact and avoided contemplating its consequences for more than 40 years, the fact should be acknowledged that atheism provides zero guidance for life.

Atheists ought be man enough to suck-it-up (although I did *not* do so - and so I am here asking others to be more honest and rigorous that I myself managed to be).

Consider: What does atheism not do?

Atheism provides no basis for being 'good' or virtuous rather than evil (indeed atheism is squeamish about the reality of evil precisely because it cannot conceptualize good).

Atheism provides no basis for preferring altruism over selfishness, no basis for aesthetic judgement and preferring beauty over repulsiveness, no basis for seeking and telling the truth rather than propagating lies.

For atheists, such matters are – at root – arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preferences – since if they are justified in terms of their consequences (as leading to outcomes like peace, prosperity or ease), then any preference of consequences is merely an arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preference (i.e. the preference for happiness, peace, prosperity and ease over misery, war, poverty and hardship is for an atheist itself merely subjective – merely ‘my opinion’ or ‘my gang’s opinion’).

Expediency is merely an unsupported subjective preference.

Atheism provides no basis for respecting individuals, since individuals are regarded as a minority of one - insignificant and short-lived organisms compared with a planet full of powerful nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs. Expediency will always sacrifice the individual to the ‘greater good’.

(By contrast, a Christian will – or should - regard nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs as utterly insignificant and short-lived by comparison with a single potentially-immortal soul.)

Atheism provides no reason for rejecting a focus on short term, selfish pleasure – if that is what happens to appeal; nor for rejecting cowardice, parasitism and victimization. Atheism provides no reason, except expediency, to consider other humans as anything other than something to be exploited or evaded according to our spontaneous – or acquired – impulses and urges.

Yet atheism also provides no reason why we should follow, or reject, our evolved impulses and urges.

Atheism cannot combat demotivation and alienation – since it undercuts and destroys any attempt to discover or provide purpose and meaning to life. Even a simple hedonism of seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering is rendered utterly pointless for mortal creatures in the infinite context of time and space.

An atheist life is intrinsically incoherent – suck it up!

Evidence, experience and common sense

Medicine has, for several decades, been fixated on establishing the validity of treatment - in answering the question 'does this work?'.

How do we know whether a medical intervention works?

The correct answer is: in the same way we know anything in life - which is to say by observing what happens, compared with what we expected to happen.

If somebody's finger is cut off; but is then re-attached by a surgeon and works reasonably well - we know to attribute the result to a surgical intervention.

Or if someone suffers an agonizing pain in a particular part of their abdomen, and experience tells us that everyone in the past who got this unique kind of pain had died, but cutting out the appendix stops them from dying - then we assume the operation was life-saving.

If we expect (from experience, from knowledge) that when we get this kind of headache it will last 24 hours, but when we take tablet X it disappears in 1 hour; then we think it is probably the tablet that helped.

***

This is first order knowledge in medicine, but there are pitfalls. For example a drug may make someone feel better at first, but they become addicted to or dependent on the drug, and cannot stop taking it. This was noticed for morphine and cocaine - healthy people who took these drugs for the psychological effects would feel terrible when they tried to stop taking it, or needed increasing doses to get the same effect.

Problems of dependence and addiction therefore can usually be detected only when healthy people take the drug, or when an illness is expected to be short term but drug treatment seems to prolong the need for drug treatment.

The placebo response is also a complicating factor - where taking a drug benefits the patient, but the benefit is not due to that specific drug but to the patient's expectation of getting better.

The placebo effect is suspected when a drug's action is weak or unreliable, and varies a lot between people - when a drug effect makes a large difference to situation where we were confident of the outcome, and when it does this reliably time after time, and between many patients - then a placebo effect is usually ruled-out.

***

My point is that the conditions of medical practice and common sense are usually adequate for doctors and patients to sort-out what treatment do, and how effective they are.

Problems arise when the link between treatment and outcome is more remote due to the unpredictability of outcome in many diseases such as diabetes and breast cancer. This makes it hard to know for sure whether treatment has been helpful or not. And this is where medical science comes in, by providing proxy measures of disease such as blood sugar levels, or biopsy samples and x-ray visualization of tumours.

But uncertainties remain, and in situations of unpredictability, knowledge can never be sure. This fact is not affected by studying large numbers of patients in clinical trials and averaging the results - individual uncertainty is the same as ever it was!

***

During the golden age of medical discovery, in the mid-twentieth century, evaluation of treatments was a combination of common sense and experience aided by specialization; such that a specialist could build experience of rare conditions, and see patterns of outcomes which would not be apparent to the general practitioner.

Yet modern medicine is now dominated by vast empires of medical evaluators doing formal randomized trials - and progress has either ground to a halt or gone into reverse.

Large randomized trials are only one method among many, can be distorted and biased by selection of patients and methods used, and is bedevilled by poor control; yet they are still ‘officially’ regarded as the best evidence.

And clinical trials can only be done by those with large resources: big corporations and government.

***

This is a problem across all of our society, not just medicine. We are taught that evidence is only good if it relies on formal, large scale, expensive methodology - and such methods are the preserve of large corporations and government.

So we are in a situation where - supposedly - individual people (doctors, patients, citizens) know nothing whatsoever except what they are told by corporations and governments and those they employ.

So advanced is this process that formal, official knowledge is regarded as correct, even when it is unsupported or actually contradicted by common sense and experience. Common sense and experience in medicine now officially count for *nothing at all*. In some government agencies it is not even permitted to look at any kind of clinical evidence except randomized trials (all of which are conducted using funding from government or industry, and being ruled and regulated by them).

***

Common sense and personal experience have been officially denigrated to the level of being regarded as utterly irrelevant in understanding our society, just as formal evidence was used to attack common sense and experience in medicine.

We have now reached the point in medicine, in society, where direct personal knowledge is officially regarded as having zero significance, and where official knowledge (e.g. formal surveys and statistics) is the only admissible evidence.

The cost of this is that the worse has displaced the better because the validity of formal methods derives from their underpinning in common sense and experience. Formal methods which are not underpinned by common sense and experience, or which contradict them, are worthless. Indeed, they are deadly – since that was the system of official lies deployed to such devastating effect in totalitarian USSR or China.

The deadliness of a system of official lies (contradicted by common sense and personal experience) is not only material - things like famines, shortages, oppression - but it is deadly to the soul. Officially, a person's own judgment of what is happening, what is right and wrong, true or false, beautiful or hideous - their memories of what has happened to them... all this is officially ignored, denied, extinguished. Only officially-sanctioned statistics are really-real...

This process of denying the validity of common sense and personal experience has all-but destroyed medicine, and is destroying society.

The cancer of epistemology

Much has been written (including a wonderful little book by Jacob Brownowski) on the Common Sense of Science. And there is a case that science is the opposite of common sense - that the most powerful science is counter-intuitive yet un-refutable or exceptionally explanatory.

But I have observed (common-sensically) that reflection on the philosophy of science has been associated with the destruction of science, and an increasing focus on questioning the validity of decision-making in clinical medicine and medical research has been associated with the destruction of these activities.

In other words science and medicine have been consumed by 'epistemology' - discourse which purports to examine the nature and validity of knowledge.

What has actually happened is that the failure to answer philosophical questions has led to the arbitrary manufacture of ‘answers’ which are then imposed by diktat. So that a failure to discover scientific methodology led to the arbitrary universal solution of peer review (science by vote), the failure to understand medical discovery led (ineter alia) to the arbitrary imposition of irrelevant statistical models (p < 0.05 as a truth machine).

Yet, science is not a specific methodology, nor is it a specific set of people, nor is it a special process, nor is it distinctively defined by having an unique aim - so that common sense does lie at the heart of science, as it does of all human endeavor.

By common sense I simply mean the spontaneous evaluations of the generic human mind.

***

It is striking that so many writers on science are so focused on how it is decided whether science is true, and whether the process of evaluating truth is itself valid. Yet in 'life' we are almost indifferent to these questions - despite that we stake our lives on the outcomes.

Once we start examining each decision to check whether it is certainly correct, life falls apart in our hands - we get the characteristic nihilist metaphysic: there is no reality, truth is relative, all is subjective, nothing matters...

So, starting out with an attempt to attain certainty, modern culture arrives at willful subjectivism.

How do we decide who to marry? How do we decide whether it is safe to walk down the street? How do we decide whether or not something is edible - or perhaps poisonous?

Such questions are - for each of us - more important, much more important, than the truth of any specific scientific paper - yet (if we are functional) we do not obsess on how we know for certain and with no possibility of error that our answers are correct.

***

It is not that these questions of life and science are unimportant - quite the opposite: my point is that very important decisions are made all the time by each of us; and these decisions have not been assisted by ‘epistemology' – by theories of how we know what we think we know.

Philosophy is fraught with hazard – and is perhaps mostly driven by pride and hidden agendas. This applies to specialist philosophers and also to everyday questioning of the kind engaged in by so many people. The result of detached, isolated, undisciplined philosophical enquiry is usually to undermine without underpinning.

The results can be seen all around, where philosophical questions of the ‘how do you know that?’ type are tossed around (with an air of intellectual sophistication) leading to futile but deeply dispiriting interchanges, to de-motivation, to de-realization – to the detachment from life itself.

Of course matters are made much worse by the fact that these gestures of philosophical enquiry are tossed out under great pressure of time and in situations where attention is fickle and easily distracted. The enquiry is designed to demolish, not to discover.

***

Philosophy only escapes destructiveness when it is subordinated to a world view, and functions within that context. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by asking ‘how we know’ when we lack any context of the purpose and meaning of life – because without a sense of the nature of life then no answer could possibly be reached.

(Yet we are deluded into believing that the purpose and meaning of life might, somehow, be built-up from the results of piecemeal philosophical enquiry – Ha!)

We must beware of general philosophical questions posed without any metaphysical (theological) basis.

If asked more than once and in a secular context, questions of the ‘How do you know that, for sure?’ type are typically used as weapons – not as enquiries. Each putative answer can be repeatedly confronted by exactly the same question. Such interchanges (if followed-up to conclusion, rather than – as usual – cut short with some kind of impatient and scornful gesture of triumph) lead back, in just a few steps, to the ultimate nature of life.

In a secular context, and this includes science and medicine, epistemological questions cannot be answered and answers should not be attempted. These questions are valuable only on the basis of a possessed and shared metaphysic including shared specific as well as general aims.

***

The rise of epistemology to prominence in the media and daily discourse has been inverse to, and a consequence of, the decline of theology. But the growth of epistemology has been cancerous: once a question of epistemology has seeded a discourse, that discourse is eaten and consumed by it.

Epistemology has grown not because epistemological enquiries were useful (in fact they are parasitic), but because a lack of shared theology means its growth cannot be prevented.

Epistemology currently functions as a weapon which favours the powerful - because only the strong can impose (unanswerable) questions on the weak; and ungrounded and impatient epistemological dicourse is terminated not by reaching an answer - but by enforcing an answer.

Reason to be joyful - we could be living 'a blessed life', 'heaven on earth'

"But why should we speak of the end of the world? Are we really living in the last times of this world? Why do we bind together the future of Russia and the end of the world?

Even secular writers speak of our “apocalyptic” times. And truly, the problems that plague the world today — the exhaustion of resources and food, overpopulation, the literal monsters created by modern technology, and especially weapons capable of destroying entire countries or even the whole civilized earth — all point to the approach of a crisis in human history quite beyond anything the world has ever seen, and perhaps to the literal end of life upon earth.

At the same time, religious thinkers point to the blossoming of non-Christian religious movements in our times and predict a “new age” in which a “new religious consciousness” will dominate men's minds and put an end to the 2000-year reign of Christianity. Astrologers refer to the “Aquarian Age’ which they think is to begin around the year 2000. And the very approach of the year 2000 is enough to inspire in many minds the idea of a new epoch, somehow different from all the rest of human history.

Among many non-Orthodox Christians these ideas take the form of a teaching called “chiliasm” or “millenarianism” — the belief that Christ is soon to come to earth and reign right here with His saints for a thousand years before the end of the world. This teaching is a heresy that was condemned by the early Church Fathers; it has its origin in a misinterpretation of the book of Revelations (the Apocalypse).

The Orthodox Church teaches that the reign of Christ with His saints, when the devil is “bound” for a thousand years [Apoc 20:3] is the period we are now living in, the whole period (1000 being a number symbolizing wholeness) between the first and second comings of Christ. In this period the saints do reign with Christ in His Church, but it is a mystical reign which is not to be defined in the outward, political sense that chiliasts give to it.

The devil is truly bound in this period — that is, restricted in the exercise of his ill will against humanity — and believers who live the life of the Church and receive the holy Mysteries of Christ live a blessed life, preparing them for the eternal heavenly Kingdom.

The non-Orthodox, who do not have holy Mysteries and have not tasted of the true life of the Church, cannot understand this mystical reign of Christ and so look for a political and outward reign."

The future of Russia by Fr. Seraphim Rose 1981


"The actual thousand years of the Apocalypse is the life in the Church which is now, that is, the life of Grace; and anyone who lives it sees that, compared to the people outside, it is indeed heaven on earth. But this is not the end. This is our preparation for the true kingdom of God which has no end."

Signs of the Times by Fr. Seraphim Rose 1980

Solzhenitsyn on authoritarian regimes

"Together with virtues of stability, continuity, immunity from political ague, there are, needless to say, great dangers and defects in authoritarian systems of government: the danger of dishonest authorities, upheld by violence, the danger of arbitrary decisions and the difficulty of correcting them, the danger of sliding into tyranny.

But authoritarian regimes as such are not frightening - only those which are answerable to no one and nothing.

The autocrats of earlier, religious ages, though their power was ostensibly unlimited, felt themselves responsible before God and their own consciences.

The autocrats of our own time are dangerous precisely because it is difficult to find higher values which would bind them.

It would be more correct to say that in relation to the true ends of human beings here on earth (and these cannot be equated with the aims of the animal world, which amount to no more than unhindered existence) the state structure is of secondary significance. That this is so, Christ himself teaches us. 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's - not because every Caesar deserves it, but because Caesar's concern is not with the most important thing in our lives.

(...)

The state system which exists in our country [i.e. USSR, 1973] is terrible not because it is undemocratic, authoritarian, based on physical constraint - a man can live under such conditions without harm to his spiritual essence.

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious *lie*. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent.

When Caesar, having extracted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render unto him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make!"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As breathing and consciousness returns (essay). 1973.


My comment:

It is hard for a decadent Westerner to understand what is being said here, having been brought-up in an atheist society dedicated to the pursuit of happiness via freedom of lifestyle.

Although Solzhenitsyn personally experienced some of the worst and most sustained 'physical and economic constraints' imposed by an 'authoritarian' government, Solzhenitsyn's fundamental criticism was that the Soviet regime demanded total surrender of the *soul*.

He (I believe) was saying that a condition of surrender of the soul to 'the general conscious lie' was in itself worse than (for example) his experience of the Gulag.

He was pointing out the ultimate danger of rule by those who have no higher values to bind them - not God, not their conscience, not even patriotism.

He is saying that freedom is a means to an end, and that the end or aim of life is more important - but that 'happiness' is merely an aim of 'the animal world'.

He is saying that to have a Christian society with Christian rulers is more important than the organization of the political system.

Nihilism and Science

Science (including technology) is a part of modern secular culture – indeed, perhaps the ultimate cause of modernity.

Therefore science has participated in the nihilism (denial of reality and objective truth) characteristic of modernity, and has been itself destroyed by the incoherence of nihilism – like many other good things have been destroyed.

The four types of nihilism* are liberalism (=relativism and non-discrimination), realism (=materialism, and ‘scientism’), vitalism, and destructive nihilism.


Liberalism

Relativism has corroded science from being concerned with discovering the underlying and unifying truths about the world into… well, authoritarian careerism. Since it is characteristic of objective truth that competent and honest enquiry will converge onto it to give a free (uncoerced) consensus – when objective reality is denied then consensus becomes the only measure of ‘truth’.

So modern science has become merely consensus generating – in other words, peer review. Now, if a consensus of (supposedly authoritative) scientists state something, then that becomes operationally-‘true’ – and there is no further court of appeal.

From the earlier insight that ‘science generates spontaneous consensus’ we have now moved to the inverse state of ‘managed consensus defines science’.


Realism/ Scientism

The tremendous success of science through the 19th century led to scientism, in which truth was declared to be unique and specific to science. This was self-subverting, in several ways.

Scientism developed into the idea that truth was the product of scientific method – except that it later emerged that there was no such thing as the scientific method. So, scientific method was (arbitrarily) defined, and people began to suppose that truth could be manufactured by applying the method. Science was rendered into a sausage-machine: observations were fed-in, the handle of scientific method was turned, and sausages of truth emerged at the other end.

Since this does not work, the next step is that evaluation and validity of results must also be controlled – so that the sausages are pre-defined to be good, useful and original – even without need to taste (or test) them.

But scientism is most clearly self-refuting when it renders science pointless and worthless. Since human purpose, meaning and motivation are all rendered meaningless by science; scientism means there is no reason to do science.

Or scientism makes some kind of arbitrary assertion of the value of ‘science for science’s sake’ (equivalent to ‘art for art’s sake') – the idea that science is _obviously_ a supreme and necessary human (or humane?) activity (just *look* at the triumphs of science*); therefore _obviously_ we ought to do science...

But while it may be persuasive, 'look at the triumphs of science' is itself not an example of scientific method; thus scientism destroys any basis for asserting that science or indeed *any* human activity is supreme or necessary.

Truth cannot be a coherent supreme human value, and neither can science – simply because the statement that truth is the supreme value them attacks itself, and cannot validate its own truth; similarly the statement that science is the supreme value or methodology is itself a non-scientific (metaphysical) assertion, which is self-refuting.


Vitalism

Vitalism is the pursuit of emotional gratification, of ‘life’, as the basic human motivation. As a justification fro science it is seen in the rather desperate assertions that science is ‘great fun’, and that scientific truth is life-enhancing.

Skeptical secular scientists and scholars are often reduced to this – to a simple assertion that they do it because they like doing it: Wittgenstein said philosophy was useless and he did it from inner compulsion, Hardy said mathematics was useless and he did it from sheer delight, Feynman said (or implied) that he did physics because he found it fun.

Of course, such a justification from personal gratification would equally well serve to justify any human monstrosity or evil, or would justify being continually intoxicated, or doing nothing at all.

And, truth be told, there are few people who find philosophy, mathematics or science to be ‘fun’, or feel compelled to do them.

And – if someone is doing science for ‘fun’ suppose they find the most fun from management, or money, or attracting admiration, or speaking at conferences, or showing-off in print, or from seducing their students? Supposing they find these peripheral and inessential aspects of a scientific career to be more ‘fun’ than discovering the truth about the world – what would happen then?

To see the answer – just look around at modern science.


Destructive nihilism

There are plenty of people working in and around science (I hesitate to call them scientists) who are clearly mainly operating as destructive nihilists. That is to say they almost entirely lack positive aspirations (except as an excuse) but are primarily motivated by their desire for destruction.

There are many gangs in science whose main unifying feature is hatred of others and desire to harm them. This hatred and aggression is, of course, packaged for public consumption as contributing to some positive good - some speculation about the looming disasters which the hated ones are contributing-to.

But, tellingly, these speculations about the future harms to be caused by others are themselves unscientific; being various mixtures of uninformed, incompetent, arbitrary, undisconfirmable, imprecise, wildly hypothetical, and plain dishonest made-up stuff.

At an early stage, destructive nihilism is a normal component of sophomoric science or technical training – when a partly-trained (and still uneducated) prideful young scientist feels superior to the unenlightened, and delights in publicly and unrestrainedly savaging those with whom he currently disagrees.

Invariably, because it is a consequence of pride, this sophomoric over-aggression is combined with extreme personal sensitivity to slights (real or imagined) – the sophomoric pseudo-scientist can dish it out, but cannot take it.

(I am thinking here of many of the most prominent science and medical bloggers/ journalists; as well as some of the well known successful psychopaths of Big Science and medical research)

And I am also talking about the ‘anti-denialism’ phenomenon, in which people in-and-around science have generated gangs devoted to defining and detecting ‘denialism’, to creating hideous scenarios of disaster causally attributed to denialism, and organizing and stimulating hatred of the denialists.

Of course, destructive nihilistic energies feed upon their own expression, and as the activity expands it requires a growing and changing supply of new enemies.

This activity of destructive nihilism is often charged with demonic energy, because being given a license to hate and harm exerts a direct appeal to the dark side of human nature. So, in the short term, destructive nihilism can seem like creation, and is tempting for the enervated liberal, the bored materialist or the jaded vitalist.

If continued for long, destructive nihilism leads to the utter disintegration of the individual and culture who embrace prideful, demonic hatred – as depicted by Thomas Mann in his novel Doktor Faustus.


If not nihilism…

With nihilism all paths lead to incoherence and collapse. What instead? To be sustainable and energizing and creative over the long term, science must be based on an ultimate vision of the good; and this vision of ultimate good must itself derive from revelation, not from reason or observation – since the validity of reason and observation themselves depend on revelation.

*http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/nihilism.html

Nihilistic vitalism and the modern 'anti-hero' of prestigious self-gratification

Nihilism* is unbelief in reality, unbelief in truth and the assumption that questions asking ‘why?’ cannot be answered. Nihilism is mainstream in secular modernity.

Earlier phases of nihilism include liberalism (relativity of truth, primacy of non-discrimination) and ‘realism’ or materialist rationalism – neither of which provide a basis for individual meaning, purpose or motivation.

Neither liberalism nor realism provide a reason to get up in the morning, or to do one thing rather than another – they offer no place or role for the individual except (tenuously) to serve the needs of abstract processes.

Vitalism is the antitheses of impersonal altruism, since it locates meaning, purpose and motivation in the satisfaction of human appetite – whether these appetite are spontaneous or culturally-refined and elaborated. Vitalism is the assertion that life is about each individual (but especially *me*) feeling good, doing what comes naturally, following their impulses, expressing themselves, and so on.

It follows that the ‘anti-hero’ of vitalism is the exemplary human – the ‘cynical’, selfish hedonist who does what they want to do (and not what they do not want to do) but is nonetheless is socially-indulged and admired (especially by women).

The vitalist anti-hero is the mainstream protagonist of the mass media – the ‘coolest’ and most yearned-after character in movies, novels, TV stories, popular music, sports... Even in high art – opera, drama, art novels - the cynical, selfish, hedonic, comfort-seeking vitalist has been a prominent character: in the past, as a subordinate sidekick (Sancho Panza, Leporello, Papageno...) but since the romantic movement often as the central focus.

Indeed, the ‘artist’ himself is a modern anti-hero, and the major appeal in being an artist is that it offers the hope of being admired for doing what you want and behaving self-indulgently.

Furthermore the rebellious ‘hero’ of official liberal modernity is most often actually an anti-hero of self-indulgence; someone who pursues their own gratification to extreme lengths, perhaps being persecuted for their intransigence in doing what they want instead of what is asked of them.

For example, pacifist conscientious objection is regarded as heroic when it is usually simply expedient. For example, the eminent English composer Michael Tippett (1905-1998) was regarded by his admirers as heroic for having been imprisoned for three months for his pacifist beliefs during World War 2.

Yet the most cowardly, selfish expediency would surely prefer three months in a London prison to the prolonged deprivations and hardship of wartime military service including a much increased chance of mutilation and death.

Why should it be regarded as heroic to make what was obviously the cushiest and most selfish choice? Presumably because this validates and socially-sanctions the easy selfish vitalism which is now socially-dominant.

Other modern ‘heroes’ include those who have suffered some degree persecution in pursuit of drug-induced euphoria or non-mainstream sexual gratification – in other words, their short term hardship was endured in the hope and expectation of longer term self-indulgence.

Selfish-hedonic vitalism is very obviously incoherent and destructive – but the strange thing is how (especially since the mid 1960s) we have been in a prolonged phase in which a counter-culture of nihilistic vitalism coexists with the mainstream culture which is characterized by nihilistic liberalism and rationalism.

The characteristic modern nihilist (i.e. the characteristic modern person) is therefore liberal in politics, a ‘realist’ at work, and a vitalist at weekends and on holiday.

But the covert ultimate nihilist fantasy is to be a an anti-hero of socially-prestigious hedonistic self-indulgence: to do just exactly what you want and when you want, especially to do that which is forbidden or impossible to liberals and realists, and yet to be adored for it.

In sum: the modern (nihilist) anti-hero is a rebel against realism in the name of vitalism under an excuse of liberalism.

-----

*For a profound discussion of Nihilism see: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/nihilism.html#2

Science and the One Ring

I do not (any more) believe that science - discovering reality - is intrinsically good. Sometimes it is good, sometimes very bad indeed; for the simple reason that humans, as such, are intrinsically corrupt.

Tolkien's elves are real scientists who are skilled in discovery and take delight in craft, but the results of their researches may be good or evil, depending mainly on their motivation. The greatest elven scientist/ craftsman was Feanor - and he ended-up consumed by pride, possessiveness and hatred; and caused more evil than any other elf.

In Tolkien's world, science is one of the noblest human endeavors (and remember that Tolkien was himself a professional scientist - a philologist; as well as having many more obviously scientific hobbies such as astronomy and botany) yet he depicts science as fraught with danger because - in so far as it succeeds - it enhances human power over nature - especially power over other humans (note: elves are 'human' - albeit very long-lived).

The paradox is exemplified by the One Ring - that when someone gains power through science (through 'the machine' as Tolkien terms it) then he himself is diminished - he has (in effect) infused his native vitality into the making of the machine.

Morgoth (who was a fallen god, the greatest in power under the creator god) expended his power in the corruption of the world (his darkness permeating its substance and all creatures) and in making armies of orcs, dragons, trolls and balrogs. But when he was finally defeated, this god was shockingly diminished and cowardly – a puny thing.

Sauron (a fallen angel) put so much power into the One Ring, that when the ring was destroyed, so was he.

The high elves (from the undying lands, or descended from these elves) made the same mistake - they put so much power into the Three Rings, which they used to preserve the beauty of Middle Earth, and make it more like the undying lands, that when the master One Ring was destroyed they were diminished to the level of the 'wild' elves.

The greatest men, the men of Numenor, became invincible in war and outstripped the elves in many types of technology. However most of them became utterly corrupted by their desperate craving for immortality; and ended worshipping the 'devil' (Morgoth), creating an evil totalitarian state, invading the undying lands, and being destroyed by the gods.

We moderns have put the main part of our power, our vitality, into our rings: technology. We use technology to control nature, and other people. But if our rings were taken from us, if technology is destroyed, we will find ourselves sadly diminished.

We will 'fade' like Tolkien's elves; indeed we are already fading because the power now lies in our 'rings', and has been lost from us creatures who are using the rings. We are wistful, passive, nostalgic like the high elves - or demonic in our perverse energy like the Numenoreans.

A ring of power appears to confer immortality, but in actuality it merely spreads life thinner and thinner, until the owner becomes a wraith out of contact with reality and living mainly in an insubstantial spirit world.

Modern man minus his technology is a puny thing.

Why the future is theocratic not libertarian

Societies with a transcendental aim or purpose (i.e. some kind of 'theocracy' aiming for the salvation of mankind) will eventually displace secular modern societies based on the primacy of lifestyle freedom and guided by the pursuit of individual gratification.

This will happen (like it or not) because only ‘theocracies’ are potentially (although not necessarily) coherent, large-scale, self-renewing and expansive in aspiration.

Secular modern societies will continue to tear themselves apart with nothing to arrest the process or generate coherence – they will self-weaken until they self-collapse. More likely before this is complete they will taken over by a theocracy.

Secular modern societies very clearly have *for a while* potential capabilities far beyond that of any theocracy past or present; but they are not stable, nor self-renewing. They cannot/ will not (it amounts to the same thing) – over the long term - use these superior capabilities to sustain themselves.

The triumph of secular modernity was therefore only a temporary phase - contingent upon cultural inertia. And once the inertia of religious tradition was overcome, and individual gratification by free lifestyle choice was established as primary; then secular modernity became first weakened, then directionless, and now is actively self-destroying.

Mainstream left-liberalism is self-hating and suicidal in its aspiration for universal (undiscriminative) egalitarian altruism. The incoherence of this ideology is obvious, and the stronger that liberalism gets, the faster will society destroy-itself.

Although mainstream liberalism is mostly passive in its guilt, any dynamic social cohesion that it is able to generate depends upon using lies, propaganda and indoctrination to inspire people to unite in the objective of organizing their own ideological-destruction and physical replacement.

(Liberals have ignored Karl Popper’s warning that for toleration to survive it must not tolerate the intolerant – that when intolerance is tolerated it grows in strength until it displaces tolerance. But such a view of discriminative tolerance requires belief in the reality of ultimate, transcendental values such as truth, beauty and virtue – and these are dissolved by secularism and the principle of universal tolerance as a primary process. When universal tolerance becomes a positive lifestyle choice, the days of tolerance are numbered. What remains is a choice between varieties of intolerance – and that is indeed the future of humanity.)

The dark side of liberalism (liberal fascism) adds the unifying fervor of organized hatred, systematic scape-goating and zealous persecution of those who oppose cultural suicide. These attributes characterize the mainstream intellectual group movements of the past 45 years.

But libertarianism is not a viable alternative to liberalism. (I speak as an ex-libertarian, one whose libertarian writings are all over the internet!) Libertarianism replaces the self-loathing, paralysis and ideological group submission of liberalism with a high-minded but actually psychopathic selfishness and a focus on personal, individual gratification. Libertarians escape the enervating psychological trap of liberalism (tender-minded hedonism, wishful-thinking, suicidal guilt and submission), and instead promote a guilt-free, ‘tough-minded’, cynical, worldly, hard-nosed self-gratification.

Since this is socially unacceptable, indeed criminal, libertarian theory (based on a broadly utilitarian ethic) necessarily purports to show how a *process* of competition and evolution will combines numerous instances of short-termist selfish individualism to benefit the long term interests of the group.

But a libertarian society would be self-destroying to the extent it was implemented, since libertarianism positively encourages free-riding. Libertarianism merely hopes-for long-termist utilitarianism, but it guarantees short-termist selfishness.

The libertarian ethic is that the highest value is each individual being maximally free to take the choices which best enable self-gratification. While the libertarian may sincerely *hope* that other people will exercise these choices in a way which promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number (however that might be measured) it is a more direct route to personal gratification simply to seek gratification for oneself rather than for society. Even in the ‘perfect’ libertarian society it is always possible for an individual to further increase their own gratification at the expense of others – while some choices (e.g. to be the highest status, most desired, most creative) intrinsically entail the deprivation of others.

And if gratification is the goal of human life, because human life is unpredictable then *immediate* gratification – right here, right now - is vastly surer and more dependable than undergoing the risks and uncertainties involved in pursuing long term gratification. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

In other words, social cohesion in a secular libertarian society depends on individuals being long-termist utilitarians rather than selfish short-termist gratification-seekers. Yet libertarianism will self-destroy from free-riding; each zealous libertarian individual rationally seeking to gratify themselves at the present moment - not later – and selfishly at the expense of the gratification of others.

Where are the libertarian saints and martyrs? Libertarians are intrinsically and on principle cowardly and hedonistic loners who will not suffer privation, take risks or undergo personal suffering either for the good of the group or for transcendental goals (unless they subjectively, arbitrarily happen to enjoy doing so!). Instead, libertarians tend to minimize their losses, to cut and run. In sum, libertarian group goals are continually undercut by the selfish-short-termism which is itself the prime directive of libertarianism. Hence libertarianism is unable to generate cohesion beyond the level of a leisure club - not even enough cohesion to run a political party!

This is why so many libertarians are ‘pacifists’ and isolationists, fantasize about emigration and other forms of personal escape, and consider suicide/ euthanasia as an obvious – first-line - solution to suffering. Libertarians have no compelling reason why they themselves should suffer for a larger or longer term cause – indeed libertarians cynically regard heroic self-sacrifice with pity or scorn, as evidence of stupidity or insanity.

The consequence is that libertarianism – a collection of self-interested and self-preserving individuals – will submit (one at a time) to any group that can mobilize relentless heroic self-sacrifice in pursuit of group goals.

So, liberals are crushed with a guilty conscience to the point of denying their own right to exist, but libertarians are conscienceless hedonists for whom life has no point except to attain that state which most pleases them and escape from states which are distressing. Devout liberals are morally restricted, warped and incoherent; but devout libertarians are just plain amoral!

Neither can withstand pressure from an unrelenting foe prepared to sacrifice themselves or to die for a cause. Both will submit: liberals will submit on principle, libertarians from expediency.

***

The medium term alternatives (over the next few decades) are chaos or theocracy.

Over the longer term theocracies which can maintain their devoutness will win.

The ultimate choice is therefore between theocracies.


Note of clarification: I believe the future is a choice between theocracies. And my preference is for something like a Byzantine monarchial Christian Orthodox theocracy. Other alternatives include Orthodox Judaism, Islam and (perhaps) Roman Catholic Christianity (where national rule is divided between the national monarch and an international religious hierarchy ultimately under papal authority).

However, even the ideal theocracy would probably not suit me personally very well, and might indeed make me very unhappy. I fully acknowledge that most theocracies would be unpleasant for modern intellectuals such as myself. Neither do I believe that theocracy is the *happiest* kind of human society (when happiness is conceptualized in this-worldly terms).

I believe that the happiest societies, overall, were the simple hunter gatherer groups – i.e. the kind of social arrangements in which humans evolved. I also believe that – in an everyday sense) secular modernity in its decadent phase (i.e. now) is probably overall happier than many or most theocracies – especially in terms of the relief of suffering.

Theocracy is based on the primacy of human salvation, not human happiness; therefore if this-worldly individual happiness is your objective, then theocracy is not likely to appeal.

However, appeal or not, the main point I am trying to make here is that a society based-on pursuit of individual happiness through lifestyle liberty is incoherent: at first merely fragmentary and weak but eventually organized in self-destruction (a process led by the intellectual ruling elite, whether liberal or libertarian). Secular modernity will therefore decline to either a ‘Dark Age’ state of segmentary, tribalistic chaos; or (at a higher level of social complexity) a more ‘Medieval’ type of monarchial theocracy comprising large states or empires which will sooner or later displace small-scale chaotic tribalism.

Again I emphasize the choice for the long-term future: which is your preferred theocracy? Or, to put it another way – which is your preferred variety of intolerance?

The Texas Sharpshooter society of secular modernity

Yesterday I mentioned the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy - a joke which suggests that the TS fires his gun many times into a barn door, then draws a target over the bullet holes, with the bulls-eye over the closest cluster of bullet holes to make it look as if he had been aiming at the bulls-eye and had hit it, when in fact he drew the bulls-eye only after he took the shots.

But in fact the sharpshooter fallacy is unavoidable and everywhere, it characterizes secular modern society throughout, because secular modern society has no aim but instead idealizes process and retrofits aim to outcome.

Secular moderns - in public discourse - 'believe in' things like freedom, or democracy, or equality, or progress - but these are processes, not aims. Aims are retrospectively ascribed to whatever emerges from process.

It happens all the time: liberation of slavery emerged from the American Civil War therefore people retrospectively ascribe liberation as its purpose. Destruction of the Jewish concentration camps emerged from the second world war, so the liberation of the Jews is ascribed as its purpose.

Libertarians 'believe in' freedom not as a means to some end, but as a process which by definition leads to the best ends; so that they 'believe in' whatever comes out of the process. People are made free, stuff happens as a result, then that stuff is retrospectively defined as good - because it is the output of a free system. In other words, the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

In democracy, people believe in a system, there are elections and so on, someone is elected, stuff happens – much of which appears to be disastrous but good or bad it is retrospectively defined as the best outcome because it is the result of democracy (or it is a bad outcome because the system was not real democracy, or not full democracy, or democracy had been subverted or corrupted. If it is not a democracy then it is bad, because it lacks the process.). In other words, the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

The example I gave was science. The modern attitude is that the best thing is for science to be free and to do what science does, and whatever comes out of the process of science is retrospectively defined as 'truth'. In practice, science is defined as what scientists do, and what scientists do is defined as generating truth. In other words, the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Or law. Law is a process, and justice is defined as that which results from the process of law. Lacking a transcendental concept of justice, nothing more can be said.

Or education. What is education? The answer is ‘what happens at school and college’. And whatever happens at school and college is what counts as education. Since what happens at school and college changes, then the meaning of education changes. But since education is not aiming at anything in particular, these changes cannot be evaluated. Whatever happens is retrospectively defined as what needed to happen.

Or economics. Economic ‘growth’ is pursued as the good, and whatever comes out of economics is defined as prosperity. What people 'want' is known only by what they get - their wants are retrospectively ascribed. If what is measured and counted grows, then this counts as growing prosperity. So the economy fifty years ago wanted more A, B and C but the modern economy instead provides X, Y and Z – however, economists retrospectively re-draw the target around X,Y and Z and proclaim the triumph of economics. TSF.

Certainly this was the kind of view I held and argued for in my atheist days, not very long ago. It seemed ‘paradoxical’ even then, but it is not just paradoxical - it is nonsense.

The primacy of process is simple nonsense - it is simply trying to do without aims because all aims point to the necessity for underpinning transcendental justifications for those aims. (Or else aims are arbitrary and subjective statements.)

Atheists cannot have real aims (if they are thoughtful and join up the dots in their thinking) - and so are always and inevitably pushed into trying to substitute processes for aims. I was always aware this was the case, but had to live with it since – being an atheist - there was no alternative.

Over several decades, I sought always, somehow, to generate purpose from process (trying one trick then another, adding layers of complexity, smuggling-in assumptions) but of course the thing is impossible.

One reason that atheists are usually intellectuals is that the incoherence of atheism as a basic underpinning for individual and social life is so simple and so obvious that the fact can only be ignored by those intelligent enough to deceive themselves indefinitely with layers of complex and changing obfuscation.

Secular modernity is fundamentally based on the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, and the fallacy is simple and obvious. However, since the fallacy is intrinsic and pervasive, it must be concealed, and it is concealed.

Measuring human capability: Moonshot versus 'Texas Sharpshooter'

The reason that the Moonshot was a valid measure of human capability is that the problem was not chosen but imposed.

The objective of landing men on the moon (and bringing them safely back) was not chosen by scientists and engineers as being something already within their capability – but was a problem imposed on them by politicians.

The desirability of the Moonshot is irrelevant to this point. I used to be strongly in favour of space exploration, now I have probably turned against it – but my own views are not relevant to the use of the Moonshot as the ultimate evidence of human capability.

Other examples of imposed problems include the Manhattan project for devising an atomic bomb – although in this instance the project was embarked upon precisely because senior scientists judged that the problem could possibly, maybe probably, be solved; and therefore that the US ought to solve it first before Germany did so. But, either way, the problem of building an atomic bomb was also successfully solved.

Again, the desirability of atomic bombs is not the point here – the point is that it was a measure of human capability in solving imposed problems.

Since the Moonshot, there have been several major problems imposed by politicians on scientists that have *not* been solved: finding a ‘cure for cancer’ and ‘understanding the brain’ being two problems at which vastly more monetary and manpower resources (although vastly less talent and creativity) have been thrown than was the case for either the Moonshot or Manhattan Project.

The Gulf of Mexico oil leak is another imposed problem. And, so far, this has not been solved.

But modern technological advances are *not* imposed problems; they are instead examples of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

The joke of the Texas Sharpshooter is that he fires his gun many times into a barn door, then draws a target over the bullet holes, with the bulls-eye over the closest cluster of bullet holes.

In other words the Texas Sharpshooter makes it look as if he had been aiming at the bulls-eye and had hit it, when in fact he drew the bulls-eye only after he took the shots.

Modern science and engineering is like that. People do research and development, and then proclaim triumphantly that they have achieved whatever-happens-to-come-out-of-R&D, and then they spin, hype and market whatever-happens-to-come-out-of-R&D as if it were a major breakthrough.

In other words, modern R&D triumphantly solves a retrospectively designated problem, the problem being generated to validate whatever-happens-to-come-out-of-R&D.

The Human Genome Project was an example of Texas Sharpshooting masquerading as human capability. Sequencing the human genome was not solving an imposed problem, nor any other kind of real world problem, but was merely doing a bit faster what was already happening.

Personally, I am no fan of Big Science, indeed I regard the success of Manhattan Project as the beginning of the end for real science.

BUT those who are keen that humanity solve big problems and who boast about our ability to do so; need to acknowledge that humanity has apparently become much *worse*, not better, at solving big problems over the past 40 years – so long as we judge success only in terms of solving imposed problems which we do not already know how to solve, and so long as we ignore the trickery of the many Texas Sharpshooters among modern scientists and engineers.

Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.

This may sound bizarre or just plain false, but the argument is simple. That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans. 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have *not* been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability.

Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer *wanted* to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something…– but I am suggesting that all this is BS, merely excuses for not doing something which we *cannot* do.

It is as if an eighty year old ex-professional-cyclist was to claim that the reason he had stopped competing in the Tour de France was that he had now had found better ways to spend his time and money. It may be true; but does not disguise the fact that an 80 year old could not compete in international cycling races even if he wanted to.

Human capability partly depends on technology. A big task requires a variety of appropriate and interlocking technologies – the absence of any one vital technology would prevent attainment. I presume that technology has continued to improve since 1975 – so technological decline is not likely to be the reason for failure of capability.

But, however well planned, human capability in complex tasks also depends on ‘on-the-job’ problem-solving – the ability to combine expertise and creativity to deal with unforeseen situations.

On the job problem-solving means having the best people doing the most important jobs. For example, if it had not been Neil Armstrong at the controls of the first Apollo 11 lunar lander but had instead been somebody of lesser ability, decisiveness, courage and creativity – the mission would either have failed or aborted. If both the astronauts and NASA ground staff had been anything less than superb, then the Apollo 13 mission would have led to loss of life.

But since the 1970s there has been a decline in the quality of people in the key jobs in NASA, and elsewhere – because organizations no longer seek to find and use the best people as their ideal but instead try to be ‘diverse’ in various ways (age, sex, race, nationality etc). And also the people in the key jobs are no longer able to decide and command, due to the expansion of committees and the erosion of individual responsibility and autonomy.

By 1986, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, it was clear that humans had declined in capability – since the disaster was fundamentally caused by managers and committees being in control of NASA rather than individual experts.

It was around the 1970s that the human spirit began to be overwhelmed by bureaucracy (although the trend had been growing for many decades).

Since the mid-1970s the rate of progress has declined in physics, biology and the medical sciences – and some of these have arguably gone into reverse, so that the practice of science in some areas has overall gone backwards, valid knowledge has been lost and replaced with phony fashionable triviality and dishonest hype. Some of the biggest areas of science – medical research, molecular biology, neuroscience, epidemiology, climate research – are almost wholly trivial or bogus. This is not compensated by a few islands of progress, eg in computerization and the invention of the internet. Capability must cover all the bases, and depends not on a single advanced area but all-round advancement.

The fact is that human no longer do - *can* no longer do many things we used to be able to do: land on the moon, swiftly win wars against weak opposition and then control the defeated nation, secure national borders, discover ‘breakthrough’ medical treatments, prevent crime, design and build to a tight deadline, educate people so they are ready to work before the age of 22, block an undersea oil leak...

50 years ago we would have the smartest, best trained, most experienced and most creative people we could find (given human imperfections) in position to take responsibility, make decisions and act upon them in pursuit of a positive goal.

Now we have dull and docile committee members chosen partly with an eye to affirmative action and to generate positive media coverage, whose major priority is not to do the job but to avoid personal responsibility and prevent side-effects; pestered at every turn by an irresponsible and aggressive media and grandstanding politicians out to score popularity points; all of whom are hemmed-about by regulations such that – whatever they do do, or do not do – they will be in breach of some rule or another.

So we should be honest about the fact that human do not anymore fly to the moon because humans cannot anymore fly to the moon. Humans have failed to block the leaking oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico because we nowadays cannot do it (although humans would surely have solved the problem 40 years ago, but in ways we can no longer imagine since then the experts were both smarter and more creative than we are now, and these experts would then have been in a position to do the needful).

There has been a significant decline in human capability. And there is no sign yet of reversal in this decline, although reversal and recovery is indeed possible.

But do not believe any excuses for failure to do something. Doing something is the only proof that something can indeed be done.

Only when regular and successful lunar flights resume can we legitimately claim to have achieved approximately equal capability to that which humans possesed 40 years ago.

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Note added August 2013: This argument is amplified in my book Not Even Trying: the corruption of real science. University of Buckingham Press, 2012.

Society and sin

One society may be more sinful than another, but the reason is not because it breaks more of the commandments, laws or rules.

That kind of statement would invite quantitative statistical investigation, adding up the number of transgressions, which is surely not the right way of thinking about it.

The focus on laws also stirs-up unresolvable arguments about which specific breaches are most important, and whether - or to what extent - obedience in one domain (e.g. kindness), cancel-out disobedience in another domain (e.g. sexuality, courage).

As I understand it, the core of sin is orientation: an orientation towards this world and a focus on optimizing pleasure and minimizing suffering.

The opposite of sin is an orientation towards the other world and a focus on salvation.

Modern Western Society is therefore sinful not because of the specific things which people do or fail to do, or whether society encourages or enforces these dos and don'ts; but from the underlying cause that modern society (and modern people) cannot even understand the idea of being orientated towards the Kingdom of God and primarily concerned with salvation.

Religiously-motivated activity is therefore always explained-away and instead attributed to economic, political or other causes.

Insofar as a religious perspective is recognized it is regarded either as dumb and despicable or crazy and dangerous.

Sinfulness has therefore gone qualitatively beyond denial and disbelief of the religious perspective; modern societies - modern individuals - now display utter, blank incomprehension.

The role of asceticism

Perhaps the importance is that a person may learn to stop seeking this-worldly pleasure and stop avoiding this-worldly suffering as the *primary* aim of their life. This enabling the person to seek other-worldly values. It is a disengagement from the relentless focus on this world; necessary, permissive of further steps, but not in itself generative of the Kingdom of God. Asceticism should therefore be voluntary, and any voluntary act of turning from pleasure or acceptance of discomfort in any mode can perhaps be asceticism; or the beginning of asceticism. Imposed hardship, even of the most extreme, is not asceticism at all unless it is voluntarily accepted and consecrated. The point is that withdrawal from the Kingdom of Man is necessary but must be accompanied by a turning toward the Kingdom of God; a turning from the concerns of psychology in this world to a perspective of eternal concerns.