Reflections From a Murky Pond

Neil deGrasse Tyson, a fairly adequate scientist, a pretty solid administrator, and a generally effective and quite respected science communicator, just got owned on Twitter by the social media coordinator for Steak-umm. 😆

Tyson: The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.

Steak-umm: Nope. Science itself isn’t “true”; it’s a constantly refining process used to uncover truths based in material reality, and that process is still full of misteaks. Neil just posts ridiculous sound bites like this for clout and he has no respect for epistemology.

The irony of Neil’s tweet is that by framing science itself as “true”, he’s influencing people to be more skeptical of it in a time of unprecedented misinformation. Science is an ever refining process to find truth, not a dogma. No matter his intent, this message isn’t helpful.

NOTE: I’ve corrected capitalization and punctuation in transcribing this sequence of tweets. I have, however, left “misteaks” in place under the assumption that it was intended.

Sure. It would have been more succinct and probably more fitting for Twitter if Steak-umm’s response had been just, “The real thing about science is that it’s probably wrong, whether or not you believe in it.” But, that wouldn’t have been as much of a burn I guess.

And it’s true. Science as we understand it in any field or context within a field is almost certainly wrong. That’s why what science “says” changes all the time. Perhaps the most fundamental example of this is the Law of Gravity. Sir Isaac Newton originally codified it, but a generation later Pierre de Laplace had to correct the formulae, then, a century-and-a-half later, Albert Einstein, changed our whole understanding of what gravity actually is, and various experts in Quantum Mechanics are again altering our understanding of the fundamental nature of gravity.

Or we could just turn Tyson back onto his own, earlier words:

The scientific method is do whatever it takes– whatever it takes– to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or into thinking that something is not true that is. That’s the scientific method, whatever it takes. And that pathway– it’s not straight. It’s curved. It has off-ramps that lead nowhere.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Scientific Method Master Class

Honestly, like way, way, way too many people of notoriety and influence, Dr. Tyson really should log off of Twitter. The platform encourages short, inevitably stupid statements like the one he recently made.

And, to dispel certain sorts’ accusations, I actually like Dr. Tyson. Not only have I greatly enjoyed his lecture series, which I have watched so very many times, my admittedly quite few, personal interactions with him were eminently pleasant and sometimes educational.

And, again to dispel certain sorts’ accusations, I and my wives at various times pre-Panicdemic, volunteered at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) which the Hayden Planetarium (Dr. Tyson’s bailiwick) is part of.

Tags: deGrasse-Tyson | Science | Scientism | Social Media | Society | Truth | Twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Ah yes! Sadly, this is the way it is. But then, we should have expected it. Our enemies have always rejected beauty and reject any truth that doesn’t bow to their narrative. And, of course, it naturally follows that they reject any law that interferes with their insane and unholy desires to turn our nation into some twisted, only quasi-sovereign, socialist, dystopian shithole.

Tags: 2020 Elections | Biden | Civil War | Coup | Coup D'Etat | Democrats | Dystopia | Election Fraud | Liberals | Politics | Progressives | Sarcasm | Socialists | Society | Trump | Truth | Usurpation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 at 9:00 am and is filed under 2020 Elections, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

It’s a hard truth that most won’t conscious accept and all the Socialist sorts will violently deny that it is the work that is worth the wage, not the worker. No worker has any intrinsic value, on their work does. And, Ladies, Gentlemen, and Leftists, this is true for exactly 100% of us, irrespective of what sort of labor we perform or for whom.

And yes, that sucks! Then, more often than not, the objective truth sucks for somebody because they’re on the down side of it.

It’s truly simple. It’s the work you do – the product you produce or the service you provide – that has value to the consumer and, hence to the business, be it your employer or your own business. You, yourself are worthless in this equation; you have no value. You are replaceable, either by another worker or, as is more and more common, by an automated process.

But remember, as I said, this applies to all of us. This is totally equal and egalitarian, spanning both genders, all races, and all social classes.

If what you do and the amount of it you do isn’t worth both your wage and your amortized share of materials costs and overhead, you won’t be likely to have a wage anymore. And, by “wage” I do mean your total compensation package, every single dime that an employer has to spend upon you. Your employer – or you, if you own your own business – has to be able to sell the fruits of your labor for enough more than the fully-weighted cost of producing or providing it to make it worth doing so in the first place. Or the business will fail and you will have no wage.

Honestly, this is Economics 101R, but it seems to need to be taught again, and again, and again, because way too many people have serious and deep-seated illusions of worth.

But, and this is both a big and important but, a worker’s work may have more value than the employer either knows or is willing to admit in the absence of force. The effects upon both prices and profits at McDonald’s indicates that some employers can bear to pay more for the work their employees provide.

So, the correct way of thinking is what ones work is actually worth, not pretending that one as a worker has intrinsic worth in a business context.

Tags: America | Democrats | Economics | Employers | Employment | Liberals | Progressives | Socialism | Socialists | Society | Truth | Workers

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2022 at 8:30 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

To start with, understand that AOC is just the currently most visible, incessantly vocal, and most publicly hubristic example of what is inherently wrong with our domestic enemies, the Left and their non-White Coat-Tail Riders. They’re all like this. They always have been. And they always will be.

These sorts have always held and stridently preached that the truth is secondary to- and must be, at best, forcibly held in subordination to their and their chosen ones’ narratives.

In sad truth, they’re not only morally ignorant, their morality is based upon deliberate ignorance and rejection of the truth and any and all facts that evidence that truth. And, that means you can no more successfully argue with them than you can with any other religious fanatic.

Tags: America | AOC | Blacks | Democrats | Ethics | Ethics & Morality | Ignorance | Liberals | Minorities | Politics | Progressives | Society | Truth

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2022 at 5:00 am and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Separate But Equal doesn’t always means what you think it means and it doesn’t always refer to previous attempts to protect the Races from each other and each other’s cultures. 😉

Yeah, though they seem utterly unrelated promises, there’s really no difference between a fishing man’s “One last cast,” and woman’s “I’ll be five minutes.” In either case, it means in all truth that you’re going to be there waiting for a fair bit of time. Five minutes, one last cast – same ol’, same ol’.

Tags: Fishing | Gender Equality | Humor | Men | Truisms | Truth | Wisdom | Women

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2022 at 7:30 am and is filed under Humor. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.