The following is the script for an extended version of the video essay posted above. I had spent some time working on it before deciding to devote the majority of my time to developing courses for Lifeology.

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The purpose was to expand on some of the arguments I put forward in the video, as well as to introduce some new ones that I had developed only after publishing the original project. I want this essay to serve as my treatise against the prevailing paradigms of scientism and materialism that currently infect our academic institutions, and now culture at large in many ways.

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Some editing on the video has been done, but it will still require a bit of work. I hope to get to it in the near future when developing the science modules isn't a full time job. In the meantime I felt it would be a good idea to at least "get it out there" in some capacity. What better way to do it than to use it as a means of kicking off the Lifeology Blog - another task I've been meaning to get done for a while now.

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When going through it, you will see some editing notes I left in, written in [brackets], they're just there to remind me which images and footage to pair with the particular point being discussed.

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Enjoy! ~Ian

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“Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect...The mind that seeks the deepest intellectual fulfillment does not give itself up to every passing idea.” - Richard Tarnas (Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View)​

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I. INTRODUCTION

 

In this season clip 8 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the ostensibly thick-headed gang of misfit degenerates engages in what I believe is one of the most cleverly written commentaries on the honest pursuit of knowledge ever expressed in a pop culture production. Although this is a show most would not immediately consider to be philosophical in any serious way, it has on numerous occasions throughout it’s now 15 seasons held a mirror to its audience in a way that only the cleverest of comedies can do. Although I take some exception to their latest season's move to needlessly shill for the mainstream pandemic narrative, I will shelf this disappointment for now with the resignation that anything touched by the open airwaves has capitulated to this ridiculousness whether they would have liked to or not. As I see it, the overall argument that they’ve re-presented here is that all worldviews are to one degree or another based not upon objective facts, but rather on some form of faith, even if their adherents are unwilling to admit to this. Our world is full of those who will take any opportunity they get to share their view of current events, history, government, economics, science, what have you. But how many of them can say they make their claims with complete and utter assurance that the foundations they have built their arguments on are as stable as they’d like to believe? Many may wish to, but in this video, I will be asserting that it is a rare person indeed who engages honestly with this kind of self-reflection. Those who do are delving into the branches of philosophy known as Ontology and Epistemology. These are fields that hearken back to some of our most classical historical figureheads. The earliest known thinker and writer to formally discuss it, it seems, was Plato himself in his works The Republic, the Theaetetus, and the Meno. Over the years the field has developed into various offshoots, arguments, and counterarguments, some of the most well-known are Rene Descartes' Discourse on Method in 1637, Immanuel Kant's 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, and William James lectures of 1901 and 1902 termed The Varieties of Religious Experience. And these are but a few noteworthy examples in a virtual ocean of material that has been proliferating well into the modern day. There are numerous video resources I have linked in the description if listeners wish to hear a crash course on the topic, as I don't wish to simply rehash what others have already done so well. To pose a working definition however, I will paraphrase the words from a particularly concise comment I came across that read: Ontology asks, "what is real?" and epistemology follows up by asking, "How do you know?" And when combining your answers to these two questions, you arrive at your paradigm.

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II. CLARIFICATIONS

 

Now firstly, I don't want to misrepresent my position here. Although I side with Mac's reasoning against Dennis' ontological view, I don't find his alternative answers - those of a fundamentalist Christian - to be any better. As a matter of fact, I would urge any Christian to at least make themselves acquainted with the numerous authors and lines of evidence pointing to the perhaps discomforting origins of their religion, namely in how it connects to astrology, entheogens, gnostic cults, secret societies, and other traditions which they have labelled under the umbrella term of "Paganism." But all those topics have been discussed at length by numerous scholars both historical and modern, and is not something I will spend time on here. The criticisms I'm instead going to be laying out can be easily levied against both the hardcore materialist atheist, as well the most stringent Biblical literalist. I have come from an evangelical Christian upbringing with a bent on your typical intelligent design/creationism views, followed by about six years of work and study in the natural sciences at university and professional level. I came to see the two sides both had something to offer, but were equally limited in their ontological worldviews, casting themselves merely as reflective "oppi-sames" of each other. They both failed in that they extended their sources into realms they were not meant to answer, and relied solely on sources and arguments that supported their stances. So, my goal here is to push back against type of dogmatism that leads to both. Dogmatism can here be understood as a set of beliefs on which the adherents refuse to doubt or question, most often due to inbred bias and emotional attachment. One content creator I stumbled on named Clarky Clark more succinctly defined it as the "atrophy of the mind" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APx3bpNUCRE&lc=z230hx0oko34hveyy04t1aokgaevqp5q5ykvurw1pshwrk0h00410.1631550916965299]. This type of paradigm is often accompanied by an arrogant and overly assertive attitude in their expression of opinions. As a matter of fact, one might even postulate that there may be a positive correlation between a dogmatist's arrogance and a suppressed realization that they are living disingenuously. But that's a hypothesis to be explored elsewhere. This all too human tendency is perhaps the largest handicap in the pursuit of Truth, trapping otherwise well-intentioned, good natured men and women into mind-prisons from which many never free themselves. The only way that we can hope to attain something that even approaches such freedom, is to be willing to perennially call into question even those ideas and beliefs we hold to be most sacred. When we fail to do so, any debates we engage in tend to devolve into emotionally charged shouting matches of faith-based claims, ad hominems, and assumptions about our opponent’s worldview and general intelligence. This is not at all productive, and it now feels as if those voices who shout the loudest are also the most ignorant and nescient on both sides.

 

But if we look past Mac's own shaky ontological positioning, the essence of his argument has far reaching implications that, while simple, can be used to comment on a wide array of topics relevant to us today. It's one I believe just about everyone could learn something from if they honestly ponder its implications. To summarize, he is pointing out to Dennis, and the audience by extension, that it doesn't matter what it is we believe, if we have not as Mac says “[poured through the data yourself]”, and instead choose to rely on second-hand sources, then they are entirely faith based. It does not matter if our worldview is derived from one the many religious prescriptions available to us, the perceived popular view of what the scientific or academic community holds as truth, or any number of other persuasions that come from outside of our own personal experience. Dennis is forced to concede that all his beliefs in biological evolution are based on faith in claims made by others, and therefore he cannot indisputably confirm them, as he fatuously assumes he can. His argument that they are widely accepted by so-called “academic authorities” [insert clip ‘because the smartest scientists] is not a legitimate one, but rather a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority. In other words, “these people believe X; therefore, X is true.” 

 

Now, I feel it’s necessary to provide another disclaimer: It's also not my intention to argue that we should forgo reading and learning about the findings and claims of others. I would argue the exact opposite, that we should be seeking out and researching as many ideas and theories as possible and seeking an understanding of all of them through constant revisitation and reconsideration. But then to also never hold any of them as a final argument, but rather as potential pieces in a patchwork of variables that may or may not be useful in painting an accurate picture of our reality. The problem I do want to address however, is that of "confirmation bias," which is a tendency to lend more weight to sources and arguments that support our own presuppositions. While this phenomenon is virtually impossible to overcome completely, one might say an important signpost of philosophical engagement is having enough self-awareness to admit to ourselves and others what our biases are while making an effort to stand outside of them at appropriate times to gather knowledge, wisdom, and perspectives that might help to hone our understanding of reality, or at least expand our awareness of possibilities. Refusing to do so leads to a pathological psychic outcome of dogmatism, a mindset which I will spend a majority of this video defining and critiquing.

 

In a comedic twist however, Mac does display enough self-awareness to admit not only to his bias, but to his dogmatism as well ["I won't change my mind because I don't have to."] But I'll leave this aside for now as more of a comedic element, noting that such an anomalous person, if any exist within the real world, deserve their own typological analysis in themselves. To get back to the topic at hand, one must, when introspecting on such things, call to mind the timeless Socratic dictum that a thinker must be able to understand and consider any idea without necessarily accepting it as truthful.

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III. WHAT IS SCIENTISM?

 

Now when we think of dogmatists, we all have the image in our minds of the religious zealot, and the harm and idiocy they have sowed across human civilizations for as long as there has been this penchant toward authoritative religious structures. These have come in the form of historical figures such as Girolamo Savonarola of the Italian Renaissance, the perennial street preachers, and the modern phenomena of western evangelical apologetics movements and organizations. While I too have major apprehensions towards these types, one must not turn a blind eye to the other ways which dogmatism manifests in our world. Political dogmatism now runs rampant within the mind-sphere of almost all major western nations. It can also be seen in the politically aligned "activist" revolutionary groups such as the Social Justice Warriors, neo-feminists, BLM, Extinction Rebellion, and antifa on one side, and groups such as the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and so-called Alt Right on the other. This is not to say that EVERYONE who in some way aligns themselves with the SPIRIT of the ideologies of any of these groups are necessarily dogmatic or even immoral, but by and large what these types of groups have become, and indeed encourage, is nothing more than roving bands of ideologues, hijacked perhaps by some of the most mentally unstable or morally bereft individuals of our day. Dogmatism is a tumorous growth that can arise wherever an ideology exists. I don't see it disappearing any time in the near future for a multitude of reasons. I also don't expect this video or anything else will shake a staunch dogmatist out of their worldviews, but this is not its purpose. Rather, I wanted to put this together for those who are interested in truly walking the path of wisdom to hopefully better identify dogmatism and call it for what it is when confronted.

 

In addition, and of equal importance, I feel compelled to lay down arguments against one ideology in particular, that is a fairly new occurrence historically speaking (though in truth at its core it is kept afloat by the same type of priestcraft as has ever been implemented by self-proclaimed rulers) and is clearly represented by the scene played at the beginning of this video. This topic is highly relevant to us today, and if left unchallenged could easily lead the whole of humanity into a very dark and unwanted place, and as a matter of fact already has in many ways. What I'm speaking of is the ideology that has come to be termed "Scientism." In its milder and more reasonable form, scientism is simply the belief that the scientific method is applicable to all fields of inquiry, and that it is also perhaps the superior means by which all things can be understood. But there is a more extreme manifestation of scientism that has evolved in much more recent times, going beyond this first premise by holding that the popular conception of what the scientific “authorities” have "concluded" is the highest form of truth, and that anyone who is not within the scientific research field has the right or ability to question these conclusions. What this boils down to in essence is that scientists have become a new priest class, and modern science a new religion. Writer and scholar Michael Tsarion has aptly referred to this structure as the cult of the experts, but points out that although the masks they wear may be new, their ideology and history is ancient. The only difference between the old and new is that the black robes of the church have been traded for the white coats of the laboratory. This cult can possess anyone, those who hold multiple PhD's, or someone who has never read a single scholarly article. The only prerequisite is that one lacks the philosophical fortitude to admit that they may have missed something when constructing their ontological worldview. 

 

We have been taught to believe that scientists and doctors possess the enlightened minds of pure objectivity, that they value Truth above all other earthly desires. The purpose of this video will be to deconstruct this notion so that we as individuals can know their language and discern when they are speaking falsehoods.

 

IV. PERSONAL BACKGROUND

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I have a formal education, as well as professional research background in biology and sociology. I also spent my most formative years growing up an evangelical Christian household. So I have had the opportunity to study both sides of this culture war, and even found myself siding with one or the other at different periods in my life. More specifically related to my argument against scientism though, I also want to call on this point to impress that fact that I have been trained to use the scientific method, and I understand well it’s remarkable value when applied correctly, with ideological neutrality. We still need a way of filtering ideas so that only the best are eventually acted upon, and avoiding the old adage of “being so open minded that our brains fall out.” In a wonderful discussion between Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Ralph Abraham titled “The Balkanization of Epistemology”, McKenna decries the advent of quote “unanchored eccentric revelations” overtaking well-grounded new propositional models of nature. A verbose statement, that can be summed as his way of saying that new ideas are needed to challenge stale and outdated thinking, but we should not consider it a good idea simply because it is new. It must also make sense and be supported by evidence. In this “trialogue” as they call it, the men also cover a lot of ground in exploring ways in which we may address many of the issues I will be discussing in this video, so would refer my listeners to add that to their queue, which I’ve included a link to below.

 

Empiricism and positivism may have their applications when approaching certain questions, and so should remain an addition of any thinker's tool belt. But bear in mind the old axiom that when the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; it is a poor craftsman indeed who keeps very few tools in his workshop. Frankly, there are certain phenomena and problems that these approaches simply cannot adequately approach. For example, in a previous video I discussed synchronicity, and my own experiences with it. For such a matter, your average materialist-positivist thinker would be at a loss as to how to provide an explanation for such a thing. A true and honest scientist may indeed be able to study it, as Jung did in his seminal essays on the topic, followed by others who took after him (https://www.nourfoundation.com/events/A-Scientific-Look-at-Synchronicity/The-Search-for-Meaning-in-Coincidence.html). Science was developed to be a tool for describing causes and effects of observed phenomena. Its purpose is not, and never was, meant to provide an all-encompassing explanation for the whole of reality. 

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V. ISSUES WITH SCIENTISM

 

To begin gaining an understanding of scientism, I believe it's important to define some of the underlying philosophical assumptions that have worked to create it. Note that they will bear many similarities to each other, and they do have a great many overlaps in how they approach epistemology. Also, I should add the disclaimer that these are meant to be simple, very generalized definitions, as it is with almost everything there are additional nuances to be derived from such simple statements, but I don't have time to explore in-depth every highway and by-way mentioned in this video. First, Materialism is the philosophical view that the physical world, the solid matter we interact with every day, is the primary vehicle of all of reality. Any aspect of our experience that is more abstract, such as that of consciousness, is simply an outgrowth of the material world, a mere accidental byproduct. This is where the popular view arises that all of consciousness is due only to the bioelectrical activity of our brains and nervous systems which evolved out of much simpler molecules and non-living matter. Empiricism is a type of epistemology that says the only way we can "know that we know" something is by way of our five physical senses, and then filtering it through logical reasoning. Adherents tend to give little to know weight to things such and intuition, "gut feelings", or any other proposition that arises from within the mind. Positivism builds off of empiricism by stating that the only source of reliable information about the world is derived through the five senses but then filtered through the lens of the scientific method and logical deduction (You can read more about this through the link provided in the description: https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-positivism-and-empiricism/). Finally, scientific reductionism is a paradigm that posits that all experiences and phenomena can or should be described in a materialistic or positivistic manner. In other words, if it can’t be objectively measured, it cannot happen. When you put these four overlapping philosophies together, it paints a fairly accurate picture of how people generally tend to arrive at worldviews nowadays. As it is with dogmatists, they most fervently and emphatically claim that their worldview is one of unassailable truth, and view anyone who expresses interest in understanding reality through a different perspective as foolish at best, and dangerous at worst.

That these isms now have such a stranglehold on the scientific world is the real danger however. In the words of the late, great Carl Sagan, very often held in very high esteem among these types, “We make the world significant by the courage of our questions, and the depths of our answers.” For as long as science remains a “wholly owned subsidiary of the materialist worldview” to quote Rupert Sheldrake, Scientism will continue, our questions will remain cowardly, and our answers shallow.

 

Where once there were popes and priests, you now have so-called ‘science communicators’, university professors, and other such 'experts' whose words often go unquestioned, and their beliefs held as gospel. It is thought that questioning what is perceived to be the orthodoxy of 'scientific consensus' is tantamount to lunacy, or even heresy. In the early months of 2022 as I sit here writing this, these charges have reached an unmistakably frenzied pitch. What is most truly puzzling is that embedded within the fundamental axioms of science, as mentioned before, there is the decree that no claim is ever settled, all "conclusions" must be tagged with an asterisk and left open for revision. In scientific vernacular we express this by saying that all claims must be falsifiable or refutable. The everyday adherents to scientism have on the whole forgotten, ignored, or failed to recognize this most crucial point, and have fallen into the trap of allowing a new priesthood to overtake them using the same formula that has proved ever effective against the unsuspecting mind. A weak-willed individual is one who seeks desperately for a paradigm they can consider rock solid, and will not rest until they're able to lose themselves in some group ideology, where their reality is assured through the unrelenting insistence of their fellow members. To relinquish their freedom of thought and expression, to lose themselves in a prescribed identity in which all answers and actions are laid out for them in neatly packaged chants and rhetoric. This will happen in the halls of a university just as easily as a church or synagogue. This indictment has been levelled against the religious "conservative" folk for a great many years now, and rightly so. But it's high time that those who wield these accusations most readily now have the mirror turned back at them, to realize that they have, as old wisdom warns, become the very thing they set out to destroy. In the scene showed at the beginning of this video, Mac holds up this very mirror, to the absolute bewilderment of Dennis.

 

A slightly more genuine objection people might level against those who criticize scientism’s worldview is that they have no grounds or qualifications to do so. I agree there is some legitimacy to this argument as there are many who make knee-jerk reactions against the scientific worldview from a position of complete ignorance. However, the same can be said for the people who, “in the name science” as they say, argue against such topics as astrology, synchronicity, and UFO encounters from equally ignorant grounds on the topics. Ultimately this argument again gets so easily turned against anyone who argues from a position of nescience or ignorance on ANY topic. And now given that we live in the aptly named, Information Age, it is now technically possible for anyone to gain whatever knowledge they so desire. Gone now are the days where an education as we think of it is the sole domain of academic institutions. For the skilled and committed learner, it may even be better this way as they can learn at their own pace, and not have their information filtered through social or occupational pressures to conform to this or that paradigm.

 

I want to next contrast this definition of scientism to actual science as both a process and a body of knowledge. The term science, according to the online etymological dictionary means "what is known, knowledge acquired by study, or the corpus of human knowledge." I would add to this that science is also a process by which such knowledge might be obtained. And it may be derived from an Old English word which meant to divide or cleave. I take this to mean that as this word evolved with our language, the propensity to break things down into smaller and smaller parts, to deconstruct reality, became married to the western idea of what constitutes knowledge. The scientific method is then conceptual tool we use to determine said knowledge. This method is pliable where need be, but the end goals remain the same.

 

To summarize very briefly, the general steps normally start with asking  a question, and then researching as much background information relevent to it as they can find in the existing literature. If it turns out no one has answered their particular question, then they may use what they know to make a prediction of what the answer to it will be. Then once they believe they have deduced a potential answer, they form a hypothesis as an attempt to explain what interactions will affect their system to bring about that prediction, then they will create a means by which they can test or observe the variables necessary to find this out while gathering data, then they will use their data to draw conclusions, which they would then ideally communicate to others. From there they can either determine that they will share their results or rework their question, hypothesis, or methodology and run the experiment again. These steps and some critiques of them will be explored in a later part of this video. Therefore, a 'scientist' in the truest sense of the word is someone who is simply interested in asking questions and seeing them convincingly addressed. There is no attached dogma, no unquestioned assumptions they must hold to. Their one and only goal is the pursuit of knowledge, regardless of where that pursuit leads them.

 

I'd like to explore some other limiting factors built into the scientific worldview as well, so I'll share an excerpt of a video from the channel Academy of Ideas on this very topic called "The Limits of Science - A Critique of Scientism", where the author and narrator provides a fantastic summary of one of its major flaws [Play video]. To this fantastic set of arguments, I would like to add another: If the modern scientific view takes the approach that knowledge must be based on sense experience alone, then the inherent limitations of senses themselves must throw a wrench in this belief. It is accepted knowledge that there are certain light and sound frequencies that humans cannot sense. For example, so-called Dark Matter is proposed to make up roughly 85% of the known universe, and yet orthodox scientists are unable to give much of a clear definition of what it is or how it works. The reason we have been able to determine that these types of phenomena exist is through the combined use of mathematical models, and advanced instrumentation. So by way of technology, we have extended our natural senses into areas we might not have ever thought possible. But even so, there is no way or knowing just how far this "unknown" actually goes, and regardless of how far we push ourselves into that unknown, I can't foresee a way that humanity, or whatever comes of us down the line, will be able to gain any irrefutable certainty that we have discovered everything that is possible to know, that our senses couldn't be extended further. In other words we will never eliminate the unknown unknowns, or at least it's nearly impossible to imagine how such a task could even be possible.

 

Another issue with scientism is that scientific knowledge is meant to be ever-shifting, constantly updating, and rearranging itself as new information is collected and analyzed. Sometimes whole theories and explanations need to be amended, overhauled, or even completely abandoned in light of novel information. True scientists are those who remain constantly open to new possibilities and modalities, even those that may lie outside of their experiences or imagination. At the basis of their worldview ought to be the constant awareness that the amount one DOES know will always be dwarfed beyond comprehension by the amount they DON'T know. It is problematic for a populace to construct all of their opinions based simply on appeals to whatever it is the body of self-proclaimed experts finds to be the most fashionable or reasonable explanation at a given time. Especially in cases where there are equally credentialed individuals who put forth opposing opinions [Flouride papers]. There are a great number examples of very well credentialed researchers in the fields of science and history who have published articles in the same journals that are held up as the gold standards of academia which dissent from the mainstream view of what “the science” says. But if these publications are not being disseminated by the media or other gatekeepers of information, then the public at large will never become aware of them.

 

It cannot be understated how powerful a role the media plays in how we frame the world we live in. As it was mentioned, most people have never read a single primary source in their lives, and instead get their “scientific information” from secondary or tertiary media sources which interpret scientific findings for them, and not always in the most accurate way [farts curing cancer example]. This being the case, even more layers of faith must be added to those I’ve already spoken of. Now one is in a position of having to take a journalist’s interpretation of a scientific article as accurate. Or like a game of telephone, as this article is summarized and shared again and again, it may be going through even more layers of dumbing down, to the point where when it finally gets to you, you have no way of knowing that you have a mental picture of the topic that in any way resembles the original. Even if the original researchers of said article were completely honest and transparent with their data and did everything to the letter as far as methodology was concerned; it won’t matter if the wider audience’s understanding of their findings is inaccurate. There is a study that even found indication that journalists on average possess lower cognitive executive functioning, which included things such as bias suppression and emotional regulation. If these findings are accurate (in light of the limitations of scientific study I have already laid out), then journalists as a group may not be the demographic one would want to get secondary information from in the first place, as these traits hold so much potential for them to fall sway to ideological dogmatism. (https://kettlemag.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Report-Study-into-the-mental-resilience-of-journalists-Dr-Tara-Swart.pdf). And yet these are the same mouthpieces that have implanted that most asinine of self-contradictory mantras into the minds of the world: “Trust the Science.”

 

Along a similar vein, I would distrust anyone on any particular side of an argument who casually tosses around the claim that this or that proposal has been “debunked,” as if their own perspective on it is the final say on the matter by default. This is another common tactic I’ve witnessed being used by people of wide-ranging ideologies to dismiss evidence that may be contrary to their worldviews. A classic example is when the religious creationist groups say that Evolution has been debunked, or atheists claiming that the idea of Noah’s flood has been “debunked.” More recently, the gatekeepers like to espouse that claims of a link between 5g towers and this so-called pandemic have been “debunked.” Once again, I am not here arguing for the truth or falsehood of any of these statements per se, only pointing out the type of rhetoric that is commonly used. These types of folks will say that something has been debunked, but in my experience, they will be unable to thoroughly or decisively explain to you WHY it has been debunked. If they are able to summon up some form of explanation, it is far more often the case that they betray their ignorance on the subject in doing so by blatantly misrepresenting the arguments they claim opposition to. Once again, as with all the rest of these tactics, it is more a means for them to deny and run from evidence that discomforts them, rather than a genuine statement stemming from reason.

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VI. CONSPIRACY THEORIES

 

Let’s now apply what we’ve discussed to an often derided and misunderstood topic by vast swaths of the human population, something called “Conspiracy Theories.” These have gained a lot of attention in recent years, working their way into every day mainstream conversation for an enormous segment of the population. There are some who have been interested in conspiracy theories for a very long time, others have only recently come on board with learning about them, some avoid them, and others belittle and attack them. But what exactly are they? As it is with many things, beginning with etymology and literal definition of terms is very useful here. The word “conspiracy” is a noun derived from the verb “conspire,” which combines “con” meaning “together,” and “spire” which we get from spirare meaning “to breathe” (same as with the word respire, perspire, and even Spirit – which originally simply denoted one’s breath). Thus, we can plainly see that the word “conspiracy” simply means “breathing together.” What it means in modern vernacular is an instance of certain groups planning to gain an advantage over others in some way more or less secretively. Consider the use of the phrase “conspiracy to commit fraud” in court cases where companies or individuals are indicted on charges that they were actively planning to commit such a crime. (online etymological dictionary)

 

“Theory” on the other hand seems to share a Greek root with the word “theatre”, as both originally were associated with the action of viewing. By way of this we can see that a theory can be looked at as “a way of viewing” events. In other words, a conception that proposes to explain observations and events. This applies to scientific theories; in that they are conceptions that seek to explain things by way of scientific findings.

 

So now, we have a working definition of what a “conspiracy theory” is: simply a proposition that an event has occurred by way of certain individuals coming together to accomplish something secretly. That is all, and yet it has now become a talismanic phrase that one can attach to any explanation of events that falls outside of those given to us by the “authorities” in our institutions. If we cut to the chase, at our current juncture in history, the use of this phrase seems to have been weaponized by these same authorities to dismiss particular explanations, choosing to artificially redefine the term to mean “a clearly false and baseless proposal.” There is a large percentage of the world populace who seem to have a strong aversion to being labelled a “conspiracy theorist,” and so behave in accordance with the dictates of the authorities by ignoring alternative explanations – and even going one step further by attacking those who do, in most cases verbally but there are precedents of it becoming more physically violent as well [video of the guy who got his car window broken with a bike]. This behavior can be diagnosed simply as a fear of social ostracization, which has been claimed to induce a higher anxiety response in people than thoughts of literal death. And so many prefer to abdicate the personal responsibility to research claims independently.  However, that’s not to say this tendency towards group think is not present among the so-called “Truth Movement”, where many of the ranks within, seem to also latch on to in-group rhetoric and beliefs in much the same way. This is a hinderance to any sort of so-called Great Awakening, as the mental patterns that drew people into dogmatism are not being adaquetly addressed by most people in the conspiracy research community.

 

When reading or listening to the words of those who have these tendencies to villainize conspiracy theories, I have seen three recurring arguments. The first is an assumptive strawman fallacy one might see if they express a belief in or consideration of a particular alternative viewpoint. Its formula is “If someone believes in X, then they must also believe in Y.” This happens to me often when I express skepticism towards the mainstream covid narrative and am met with a response claiming that I must also believe in things such as Bigfoot or Flat Earth Theory. In other words, “conspiracy theories” as they understand them are to be lumped together into a single monolithic worldview in order for them to feel they’ve discredited one theory by way of discrediting another, completely non-interdependent theory. It should be clear to see the disingenuousness intent behind this tactic. Obviously, a belief in one theory does not imply that a person must also adopt a belief in something which is at best only loosely related. It also may be safe to assume that these same individuals are unlikely to be the type to have even given any serious consideration or research into the topics of Flat Earth, Bigfoot, or any alternative so-called “conspiracy theory for that matter. That only increases their disingenuousness. This is not my way of arguing for or against either of these two proposals, I’m simply once again pointing out the level of willful ignorance from which people now attempt to make arguments.

 

The second will take some form of the statement, “People only believe in conspiracy theories because they have the need to feel that some group is in control of everything, rather than face the existential crisis of admitting that life is random, and no one is charge.” This has also been extended into full blown presentations and supposed exposes where self-proclaimed “experts” seek to psychologize away conspiracy theories instead of addressing the claims themselves. One may point out discrepancies in the 9/11 Commission for example, but an institutional gatekeeper may simply claim that person is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. If that person happens to have an institutional stamp of approval such as a degree, many will have the tendency to adopt his or her conclusion, regardless of the veracity of their arguments, and turn a deaf ear to anyone who would say otherwise. This strategy does not disprove alternate theories in any way, even if the person who is presenting them out did indeed suffer from schizophrenia. The objective truth value of any claim is what matters in determining its , not psychological profile of the people making it. One might even respond that there are potential psychological reasons why such deniers might have this tendency to avoid facing the possibility of the existence of criminal conspiracies or alternative explanations, including an unwillingness to face the reality of evil’s existence, or a fear of having to step outside the paradigms that make them feel grounded and secure in an otherwise ambiguous world. And so, their very same strategy can quite easily be turned around on them. For an excellent in-depth discussion on this topic, I recommend this two-part series of the Truth Warrior podcast between David Whitehead and his colleague Michael Tsarion, entitled “The Psychology of Conspiracy Deniers” which I have included in the description below (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NnifQshm6w; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH1fQihbKGI).

 

Finally, the third states that for any large-scale conspiracy to be achieved, such as that associated with the so-called New World Order, someone would have to talk. In other words, it would be impossible to expect thousands of public servants, corporate employees, researchers, doctors, lawyers, and whoever else to keep quiet and not divulge the secret plans to the world at large. There are two responses one can make to this. The first being that of compartmentalization, which can be most easily explained with a story from history. It goes that during the construction of the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Japan by the U.S. forces at the end of the second world war, each of the major components were created at different plants all around the nation. The workers each had no idea why they were making what they were making, only that the order had come down from the military, and that it was to be shipped off to another lab once they were finished. Only then were all these disparate pieces put together to create the bombs. Ask yourself as well how many average people might find themselves employed at a restaurant that might happen to be a laundering front for a mafia, or any number of similar examples. Even in more run of the mill organizations, lower-level employees will have little to no knowledge of what the big picture is beyond their daily expected tasks. The reality is that in any hierarchical system, your access to the inner workings and larger agendas only increases as you increase in rank. If there are indeed the types of worldwide criminal conspiracies that have been proposed throughout history, only a very small number of those involved in it need to have even the faintest clue about what is actually happening. The second retort to this argument would simply be pointing out that such whistleblowers have and do exist [https://www.illuminatirex.com/illuminati-whistleblowers/], and thanks to them we now have testimonies about what goes on behind the closed doors of governmental bodies and secret societies. However, these are not names that one would expect to be found on best seller lists or featured on primetime television. On the contrary many of these individuals have been publicly ridiculed, hinter landed, censored, and even assassinated before their warnings could reach a wider audience. If you are the type to dismiss the possibility of the existence of these types of conspiracies off-hand, then I find it difficult to imagine you would be seeking out such suppressed speakers and writers, and we must be forced to ask the age old question of trees falling in forests.

 

The apprehension against so-called conspiracy theories also seems to correlate nowadays to a particular political allegiance, namely from those on the so-called “left” side of the spectrum. If we look back just a few short years ago, in the United States, this same group spent the better part of four years emphatically claiming at every opportunity that Donald Trump had rigged the 2016 presidential election by way of collusion with elements of the Russian government. After millions spent on the investigations, and near non-stop media coverage, it was eventually decided that there was paltry evidence at best to support the claims. So, for all intents and purposes, many of the left-leaning supporters of the Democratic party were obsessed with proving the validity of a conspiracy theory, as the term has been here defined. The validity or non-validity of their claim does not bar it from being correctly labelled as such. And so, we see, many of the very same people who now decry conspiracy theories and those who espouse them as a dangerous menace to society, seem to be quite comfortable entertaining them if they fit the mold of their worldviews.

 

Knowledge has never been a democracy, nor should it be. One million people casting a vote that 4+4 is equal to 10 does not change reality. If only one person in this hypothetical community maintained that it actually added up to 8, they would still be correct. In similar fashion, claiming that there is some percentage of “scientific consensus” on a matter means very little. Even within the mythos of scientific history, there are the oft cited instances of persecution of such saintly figures as Galileo Galilee and Giordano Bruno by the status quo gatekeepers of their age. Only many years after their death would their heretical ideas, equivalent to our modern conspiracy theories, come to be adopted by society at large. An interesting read on this subject might be Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” where he argues that scientific progress does not happen at a slow, uniform pace, as is commonly imagined, but rather during concentrated periods where new paradigms completely overtake previous ones. This will often be due to the fact that the older generations of academics simply age out of the profession, so that fresher minds with challenging ideas may finally take the stage.

 

It is also important, and somewhat darkly comical, to point out that this same demographic by and large were the ones sounding the alarm against the pharmaceutical corporations of the world just a few short years ago, only now to side with them completely in the wake of what they claim to be a pandemic. A pandemic which now even the gatekeepers are admitting may have begun in a Chinese laboratory funded by the NIH, that is if the virus itself even exists at all. A position which had prior been labelled “misinformation.” Amazingly, this seems to have left their adherents completely unphased. There are numerous other examples, which I won’t go into depth here about [pictures of covid passports], of prior “dangerous conspiracy theories” coming true just months after they were floated, which should highlight either the amnesia of our mainstream media sources, or their complete lack of any and all integrity. And as for those who still consume it as if it were giving them an accurate picture of reality, one is inclined to ask what is happening with them.

 

Conspiracy theories then can be true or false, just as any proposition about any topic can be true or false. In order to make such a determination one is required to research any such claim from a multitude of sources and perspectives, and only after a long and laborious process of removing the dross of the untrue can one arrive at what is potentially true. But even at this stage, the seeker of knowledge must be willing to put the question aside with the resignation that there may be a call to revisit it at a later point in time to completely change their perspective on it once more. If you’ll forgive the cliché, critical thinking is of the highest importance when approaching any topic, conspiratorial or otherwise.

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VII. STATISTICS

 

One thing that should not go unstated is the importance of inferential statistics within many fields of science, particularly within biology and the social sciences, which are the most relevant to the everyday choices the average person will make in their day to day lives, as well as determining which policies are instituted by authorities. To illustrate this, I'll use a made-up example of the type of question you might encounter within the field of ecology. Let's take a hypothetical forest that is split in half by a river. While hiking through this forest you get the feeling that the maple trees on the western side of the river appear to have a wider circumference than those on the east side of the river. Perhaps you're interested in what factors might cause this difference, but first you must measure the circumference of the trees and compare them in order to determine if the initial intuition you had was true. Your next step will be to start measuring trees on both sides of the river and use a statistical analysis to figure out if what you felt that you observed has some quantifiable evidence behind it. Now the limitation here is that you would not be able to realistically measure the circumference of every single tree within the forest within a reasonable amount of time, even if you brought in a team to help you collect this data. While yes, it is technically achievable, the amount of either time or assistance that would be needed in order to do this is virtually untenable. This is why researchers use sampling, where they task themselves with finding a large enough though still realistically workable number of specimens (trees, in this example) that are randomly selected across the entire area of study (in this case, the two sides of the river within the forest). So, let's then say you and perhaps a team of research assistants decide to take circumference measurements of 300 randomly selected trees on the western side of the river, and 300 more on the eastern side. After you have collected a standardized measurement for each sample, you could take the mean value of both groups, and plug those values into a statistical formula used to compare averages, in this case a two-sample t-test would suffice. The value you get as an output can be used to determine what’s called a probability value, or p-value. In statistics, the smaller this p-value is, the more likely it is that the measurements of your two populations are mathematically different, with a p value of 0.05 or less being a common benchmark for declaring that this is the case. Another way of thinking of this is to say there is a 5% or less chance that the two maple tree populations have the same average circumference. What is important to also note is that a p-value can never be equal to exactly 0, rather it can only infinitely approach zero. This means that in no scientific study that relies on statistical analysis (which is virtually all of them) can any conclusion be 100% proven, they can only ever be possibilities or suggestions which become stronger as your p-value decreases. It is very likely that unless you have a background in statistics, this section of the video has been very difficult to follow, and I kept the steps and explanation brief as it’s not my aim here to teach a mathematics lesson or overwhelm viewers with unnecessary information. But providing a mathematical explanation for why data can never capture reality with perfect accuracy, thus providing another reason why scientific conclusions must be viewed as fallible, is an important point. If you do find yourself curious about the details about this type of analysis is done in detail, I have provided resources in the description.  https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/t-test/    https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/p-value/; https://byjus.com/maths/p-value/; https://byjus.com/maths/t-test-table/; http://www.mathandstatistics.com/learn-stats/hypothesis-testing/independent-samples-t-test-by-hand).

 

In this case, our t-test calculation yielded a result indicating that your intuition was correct, showing a statistically higher average circumference among the western maples vs. the eastern maples. Can you now say beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is the case? The answer is no. In addition to the caveat provided by the explanation of the p-value, there is also the issue brought about by sampling. As was stated, you're not measuring every tree in the forest. Perhaps if you did, your mean calculations would have been different, giving you a completely different mathematical outcome that might not support your original hypothesis. Or what if someone on your research team measured incorrectly without you noticing? The point being, there are a myriad of ways that your data could be obscured, resulting in false negatives or false positives. When researchers are careful and precise in their designs, data collection, and analysis however, the chances of this happening are diminished. 

 

But what if there was a research team that on some level wanted to obscure their data points? What if a certain conclusion was desirable for them? You should now be able to imagine that simply fudging some data points or using numerous other methods of mathematical manipulation can lead to an outcome that is not actually reflected by reality. I don't want to take too much time away to go into these examples, but I will include more resources in the description, and would recommend that everyone start with Darrell Huff’s book "How to lie with statistics."

 

You might now ask yourself why someone might do this. Afterall, don't scientists enter their fields for the sake of knowledge and truth? The naive idealist in me used to believe that as well when I first began my studies. But a former research mentor once shared with me a story of when she was a graduate student, one of her peers was able to fabricate his entire data set for his research, and was not actually found out until he was just about ready to defend his PhD. That firsthand story was an enormous red pill for me to have to swallow as a budding scientist myself. This is where we must begin to talk about corruption within the scientific community. In my own experience, many people falsely equate the scientific method itself with scientists as people. A proper parallel, returning to the "scientism as the new religion" theme, would be a populace of devout Christians believing that anything the church authorities proselytized must be the word of God, for their source material was divinely inspired and uncorrupted in their view. In much the same way, the scientific method and other means of objective analysis and observation are in fact quite pure, but that does not mean clever agents would be unable to figure out how to twist these tools to suit their dubious ends.

 

How many people have actually read the scientific literature that they claim to base their worldviews on? Have they gone through the methodologies and critiqued them? Have they learned how to interpret the language of the articles they are interested in? Or do they, as is much more often the case, state that they "are not experts" so they are doomed to be forever unqualified to do such a thing, and stop at simply reading the article title, or at best the abstract, before using it to back up their positions? Even scientists themselves are guilty of doing this, of assuming certain prevailing paradigms are true simply because "that's just what the scientific community believes." And so those paradigms are disseminated en masse. Only then on rare occasions when someone decides to critique a paper or replicate results, are mistakes ever actually caught. And now, given how over saturated and cutthroat the research community is becoming across many disciplines, there is very little financial incentive for investigators to perform such studies, instead preferring to publish some novel piece of information, which offers far more prestige in the scientific community. To add to this, there is a great amount of incentive to get one’s research published, as professional scientists largely advance in institutional rank by getting more and more of their papers into journals. So, ensuring their work is finding its way into journals is a primary concern within the industry.

 

So, it's bad enough that there are financial incentives for career scientists to massage their data to keep their income flowing from time to time. I'm not making the claim that all scientists do this, many truly are committed to doing legitimate work and they should be commended for doing so. But what if instead of it being a lone research professor at a university somewhere, we move up to corporations that rely on certain outcomes to maximize their profits? What if there are political or ideological agendas that certain groups have a keen vested interest in making sure get accepted by a wider audience of individuals who they know will not actually run through their studies with a fine-toothed comb? Are there certain entities you might imagine exist in today's world? Is it possible that there are very real conspiracies at work now to manipulate the scientific process to reach conclusions that are anything but true? I cannot dwell on too many examples that I feel are important to suggest, as I currently use YouTube as a primary platform at the moment, and they have a precedent of flagging or removing content that calls certain groups and narratives into question. But anyone watching this in early 2022 when this video is set to be released, should know exactly what I'm inferring here. Suffice it to say that when you hear phrases such as “trust the science” in relation to accepting a proposition without question, you can very confidently contest that such a mode of thinking is in complete and total opposition of what true science is. For those who have no background in science, their ignorance on its philosophy can be a buffer of forgiveness, but for anyone who does, and has been using this “trust the experts” phrase to convince others of a particular worldview, should as I see it, feel ashamed of their hypocritical betrayal to their station, on par with the gambling or whoremongering priest from a church pulpit.

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