Challenging Pseudo-Skepticism, its Agency and Cultivated Ignorance
Wind Whispers
I did not know. I went and looked. Everything else was vanity.
Accurate, is simple. But that does not serve to make simple, therefore accurate.
Among explanatory alternatives, elegance is always preferable over simplicity.
If it is simple, everyone can understand it, and most people believe it, but it still cannot be tested – then it is most likely wrong.
Bridgman Point – the point at which a principle can no longer be dumbed-down any further, without sacrifice of its coherence, accuracy, salience, or context.
When human intervention is the critical feature of a hypothesis, human intervention to a priori obfuscate that hypothesis forces it into becoming the null.
An idea cannot be a conspiracy theory if it is also the null hypothesis.
If science won’t conduct the experiment, society will force the experiment. One can only embargo an idea for so long.
Danger trumps conspiracy. That which introduces a danger (hazard, risk and/or uncertainty) constitutes a more extraordinary claim (demands more extraordinary evidence) than that which is deemed ‘conspiracy theory’.
An ignorance of risk/uncertainty or absence of risk strategy, is itself a risk strategy.
Once plurality is introduced under Ockham’s Razor, it cannot be dismissed by means of skepticism alone.
If the right term does not exist, then it must exist.
The level of quality placed into scientific work and/or inference is inversely proportional to how much it is called ‘The Science’.
That which is the official narrative bears the greater burden of proof.
When the act of simply remaining neutral (skepticism) itself constitutes magical, heretical, or conspiracy theorizing – one has broached despotism of the narrative.
An ideology that cannot be defended by means of evidence and deductive logic, will inevitably be enforced by violence.
One cannot be a victim of what they have earned.
Inside a political climate, science can never be settled. Science must ever operate inside the public trust.
The direct derivation of belief from mere ‘fact’ is one level of competence below ignorance.
In order to skillfully distort the truth, one must first also know it.
Only the truth demands active, trained and organized suppression. In a free thought and information society, lies will eventually falsify themselves. Suppression of an idea usually involves fear of some element or form of truth.
One’s implicit claim to have proven the null hypothesis, especially by means of an absence of evidence, constitutes the most extraordinary of claims.
In those places where direct observation is in short supply, experts will abound.
When a person says, “Where’s the evidence?”, they are not wanting any evidence at all, as only fear and narrative compel their will.
Passive apothegm skepticism is dissonance-based denial, nothing more.
Skepticism is unrelenting, disciplined, incremental, and critical path foolishness. It is the eye of neutrality, inside the mercenary tempest of curious passion.
Pseudo-theory is a mandatory idea that explains anything, everything, and nothing, all at the same time.
Reward most always outweighs uncertainty or miscalculated/ignored risk.
Exploit stakes seldom go uncaptured.
Stakeholders placed at risk, are peers in its review.
If a scientific field refrains from testing its preferred hypothesis, it is petitioning for royal status.
Before there was money, envy was the root of all evil; even moreso after.
The least scientific action one can undertake is to actually believe the null hypothesis.
We are all madmen, just some are more honest about it.
To achieve assent via logical deduction means your case is powerful, but to manipulate assent via restraint means that you are powerful.
Give me reason to ponder it, and I will. Give me two reasons, and I will not.
If you gain your understanding from a clique, you are at the bottom of that clique.
Coincidence is the mother of ignorance.
If you want something known, tell one person in confidence. If you want it concealed, tell parts of it to many persons.
When one tenders an authoritative claim as to what is incorrect – one must be perfectly correct.
Novelty is the soul of will.
The supreme test of a descriptive model resides in its ability to accurately predict what fraudulent actors will need to do in order to make it show the wrong answer.
Anything but the thing…
Erasure, dysphoria, cancellation, and gender elastration are the primary weapons of modern genocide.
When virtue-shielded systems fail, those who operate them fail to observe that failure.
A virtue posed too frequently becomes hollow and cheap. It argues against you.
Time renders the truest of peer review, surpassing the collective savvy of all experts.
Evolution of the data reveals far more secrets than does the data alone.
A mildly inductive stand-alone statistical study is one level of confidence below ignorance. One hundred of the same, a level of confidence below that.
If they are willing to censor you, they will certainly stoop to falsifying their data as well.
It is not complexity, but complicatedness, that we should fear.
A lack of faith must be adorned in the most ironic and dazzling of attire.
A lack of competence must be adorned in dazzling heuristic and clever apothegm.
Problems are complicated, solutions are complex.
It is amazing how those with a distaste for the complex, will luxuriously wallow in the complicated without hesitation.
One cannot launch a new world by means of old world thinking.
Each solution comes with its own set of problems.
‘Simple’ is often ‘complicated’, wearing the most clever of disguise.
The proponent dies but once, while the denier must die a thousand deaths.
Be reluctant to declare that which is good, for no sooner is this done than evil will kill it and wear its skin as a virtue or religious costume.
Pull what they may need, but push what they really want.
Nothing asserts one’s divine authority better than pointing out another person’s sins.
The person who acts with integrity will also necessarily be authentic.
He who boasts of his tools first, bears little knowledge as to how they are best used.
This expression stands as a proxy for a principle of wisdom so profound that we dare not utter it.
Ridicule is the bitter end of one’s line of argument.
The right kind of people don’t require your apologies, while the wrong kind will take advantage of them.
Don’t complain, don’t explain, don’t blame. Instead, stand resolute and bring the pain.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat you and leave you bloodied on the pathway to your doorstep.
The inauthentic persists by the finest veneer until they’re tired, tested, or there’s money on the table.
One insightful creator outweighs forty idle critics; the worthwhile life demands more than a series of nattering ‘nuh-uhs’.
The number of persons willing to lie in support of the prevailing Narrative far exceeds those willing to lie in dissent. A conspiracy is not required.
Those who argue by means of making others look foolish are often the most subject to anchoring bias, driven by their own fear of appearing foolish.
Nothing betrays one’s intellectual and emotional shortcomings more than being threatened by competence.
If the flaws observed in another were truly genuine, compassion would be warranted; instead, rage betrays that these flaws are mirrored within oneself.
The angle, draft and camber of the sail remain foolishness to those who seek to control the wind.
Posing a complex issue in its most articulate, basic, and transparent form – is our responsibility. Entertaining the masses by means of something familiar to them – is not.
Do what you are tasked to do, and let that be enough; otherwise, nothing will ever quench the shortfall within.
If you want to know who rules over you, observe the most ubiquitous advertisers.
If the highlight of ethical achievement in one’s life constitutes standing firm for the Oxford comma, self-reexamination is neglected, crucial and inevitable.
AI has already replaced millions of people in their jobs, and the fact that neither these employees nor their employers fully realize this yet serves as a prime example of why.
Taking a middle position does not inherently make one more objective; instead, it often suggests that one is merely a prisoner to the same bifurcation they are pretending to buck.
The detractor, in declaring every thought and action of their quarry wrong and regarding every least little sin as mortal, remains unaware that they have lost the conflict.
True skepticism asks: ‘If I was wrong, would I even know it? If I was wrong, would I be enabling harm?’
Where one is corrupt in their skepticism, there also will they be corrupt in their heart.
Those vaults which are constantly filled does their currency ever fade.
A greater illness hunts those who seek no illness at all.
The perpetual victim schemes tirelessly to inculpate their oppressor.
Access to performances is metered by those who cannot perform.
Equity is that which is apportioned by those with their thumb on the scale.
Equality is demanded by they who wish no equal.
Egalitarianism is a virtue imposed by those of the highest caste.
Truth is the destination which possesses no journey.
The weapon of supreme destruction also holds its wielder hostage.
Inflation is the state where margins flow to neither value provider nor risk bearer.
There is always a hidden Royalty.
Loan to a fool and you inherit a fool’s wage.
Work attracts stability like enslavement attracts flies.
Skepticism is unrelenting, disciplined, incremental, and critical path foolishness.It is the eye of neutrality, inside the mercenary tempest of curious passion.
Quality is not an add-on feature.
Never accede to the plaintive pleas of God or Science’s representative on Earth. Rob them of their problem, or you will become subject to their solution.
The cleverest of thief does not steal mere possessions.
The study of evolution has led humanity to the brink of many realizations, among the least sound of which is the notion that there exists no imperative to fathom the mystery of his own sudden and talented emergence.
Fanaticism is the best method of obfuscation.
Pseudoscience may be a fallacy, but syndicate science is a pathology.
Virtue mocks its devotees long into their white washed sepulchres.
Be serious about your craft, or go play video games. Don’t half-ass it and blame the shortfall on everyone else.
I don’t hire B-students. Every success is theirs and every shortfall is yours.
There are students who have never failed at anything, students who know how to manipulate the system just enough, and students who require a higher purpose than a mere grade. The world is run by the first two.
Fascinate fools while discrediting dissent, and you have consensus in the making.
If the essence of your culture involved herding sheep over a fifty-year lifespan, stoning people to death for having had sex, and sacrificing animals to appease deities, then I am likely going to reject your claim to spiritual authority.
They say you can’t take it with you. However the envy, vitriol, and disrespect dispensed to gain celebrity and profit become one’s immortal entourage.
All things being equal, when faced with two alternatives, the Pollyanna choice is not only likely to be incorrect, but also most likely harmful.
