Comment on Theories on Theories
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 17 hours agoI think a major casualty of the war on science funded primarily by fossil fuel interests has been that the kneejerk pro-science response has become a lazy appeal to authority.
People say “99% of scientists all agree listen to them you are not worthy of having an opinion on this!” and while it is true, it also sends an undermining message to the interests of science.
Science is the practice of skepticism not of finding facts. Facts are the inevitable residue of science after science has subjected a theory to extended and diverse torturous inquisition.
I wish people defended science by saying it isn’t a set of Correct Facts but a system of Skepticism that has thoroughly examined a shared body of knowledge and that you should assume that if the more fantastic sounding theories contained within that arena of Skeptical Melee haven’t been dismantled that you can probably trust that they are real as fantastic as they sound.
This when you shortens it sounds like an appeal to authority where the scientists are given undue authority but it is not the same thing. What matters is the environment of genuine skepticism that scientific theories and “facts” are subjected to in order to establish their validity that matters not the theories and facts themselves.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
Ugh, yes, when I was in university I had the audacity to attempt to have original thoughts, and everyone was like “Nuh uh, no one has ever said that anywhere in the source material.”
But it’s like “Someone said A, another person said B, and a third person said C. I’m just putting those together in a new way and telling you ABC.” But they’re like “None of the sources say ABC.” So I’m like “Look at the world around you, and you can clearly see that ABC.” And they’re like “that’s just anecdotal, not a peer-reviewed double-blind study.”
I called it academic gatekeeping. I also said it’s gaslighting ourselves into ignoring reality. They didn’t like either of those things. They seemed to think I was some flat earth anti-vaxxer (I’m not).
Modern academia has become downright anti-intellectual and extremely averse to divergent or non-conforming outlooks. It’s kinda sad.