Science vs. Soyence
There's nothing necessarily wrong with science, reason, knowledge etc. To
some degree, they're fundamental for survival in this world in one way or
another. But one of the more worrisome problems which have arisen since the
Enlightenment, and especially in the past several years, is the fact that
whenever scientific knowledge has increased, human arrogance has accelerated
even faster. This isn't a metaphysical, moral arrogance; it's one that is more
and more jeopardizing the human cosmos.
We live in a pop-scientific and pop-technological world. Because common people
are constantly weighing themselves down with new gadgets and state-of-the-art
genetically engineered food, there's a tendency to want to pay homage to the
amorphous blob of "knowledge." Of course, much like the Greek Gods, we cannot
seem to speak to "knowledge" directly, or to mentally murky academics, but only
to official mediators: journalists and "science communicators" and the like.
The religious metaphor is intentional. Of course the actual view of Popperian
science is that scientific "advancement" is less of an increase in knowledge
than a decrease in falsity. We can never be sure of what is true, but we can
gradually establish what is false and contradictory; science does exclusively
the latter. Real scientific work refutes and calls into question established
fact and is in a constant self-regeneration. Facts mean nothing in themselves.
And scientific models, from our models of the atom, to models of the Earth's
weather and climate, to models of our body are highly circumstantial, and as a
rule, will nearly all inevitably be proven false. Theories are the narratives we
cast over facts which have not yet been ruled false. We know nearly nothing of
how the brain works. Sure, we know there are synapses, and we know what brains
end up doing in some circumstances, but we haven't begun to scratch the surface
of how a brain is actually engineered (computational models be damned). The same
is true of the human body and is especially true of human society.
Now Neil deGrasse Tyson has the annoying mantra that he repeats at every
possible opportunity, which goes something like: "the good thing about science
is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." First off, I don't know
what's good about that; it'd be pretty damn convenient to live in a world where
we could imagine away gravity or CO2 or cancer, but aside from this, science,
actual science as a critical methodology is manifestly not true and is
not the truth. Science is a way of marginally approaching truth by
discovering falsity, and in most endeavors, this approachment is so marginal as
to be inert in all our daily lives. There is nothing to "believe in" in science
anyway, because it's an exposer of non-truth.
But in pop-science, Science® is "knowledge" and deviation from the scientific
catechism is "irrational." It's not just irrational to dispute consensus, but
irrational to fail to implement it in your personal life.
In Practice
The greatest danger of pop-science is the unquestioned assumption that life
should be led "scientifically." That we should "look for evidence," "question
everything," and universally "challenge authority" (unless that authority is a
professor). The problem should be blatantly obvious in hindsight.
An obvious example: in the 20th century, Western societies had to deal with the
very real problem of a bizarre increase in lung cancer rates. We "know" now that
smoking tobacco and other substances apparently cause drastically higher lung
cancer rates, but this was lost on the people at the time.
The relationship between smoking and cancer was highly circumstantial; there
were some statistical correlations established, but as any pop-science guru will
tell us "correlation is not causation!" For decades, scientifically minded
people looked for evidence while millions more died. Smoking companies took
refuge in the fact that there was no mechanism understood behind how
smoking could cause lung cancer. With all scientific rigor, they insisted for
decades that the increase in lung cancer was due to something else, or merely an
increase in diagnosis capacity. And they were on the side of scientific
skepticism!
Only now that there is some understanding of how carcinogens in smoke can damage
the lungs can we say that the "scientific consensus" is that smoking causes
lung cancer. Cute, but if people had been "irrationally" cautious, the
human tragedy would've been substantially mitigated.
The problem is that "looking for evidence" before acting or non-acting is
personally and socially dangerous. In nearly all circumstances, our intuition
(crafted by millions of years of evolution) or social norms (which keep us to
established safe routes) are much better guides to life than the scientific
consensus, despite them being "irrational" (and sorry, religion is part of this
too). When someone guzzles down some newly fabricated energy drink or gallons of
soda, they're nearly certainly damaging their bodies in ways science does not
yet understand. Don't wait 40 years for some longitudinal peer-reviewed study to
prove that eating plastic is bad for you. Trust your instincts before you give
credence to some YouTuber who says inane things like "There's no evidence
that..."
My favorite little "irrationality" that we all commit is of course, sleep. After
millennia of trying to understand it, there is no established scientific reason
or justification for why humans "need" sleep. Sure there are hypotheses (memory
processing, repair, maybe even something Freudian), but none close to common
currency. In the words of one of the world's most prominent sleep researchers,
William Denent, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is
really, really solid is because we get sleepy." Of course the absence of logical
evidence to the necessity of sleep keeps no NdGT fan from wasting their time on
the "Bronze-Age Myth" of the importance of sleep.
(Not) (Mis-)Understanding Complex Systems
The human body is a complex system in which every "system" is overlapping,
somewhat redundant, all-affecting and fundamentally beyond linear analysis. Our
scientific studies can find binary variables that correlate with a low p
value, but that tells us nothings about what's actually going on and nothing
about the underlying mechanisms. Again, the same is true of the human brain and
the same is true of human society. Nothing is a simple input-output system.
What this means is that basically nothing from the world of pop-science can
ever affect the basics of our lives because the interaction of our component
parts are just non-amenable to any kind of generalizations that make intuitive
sense to us. Everything we do affects our bodies in ways we can't predict so the
proper strategy is always an "irrational" precaution and avoidance of novelty.
Things, of course, get especially touchy when talking about the "rational"
management of society. Every good denizen of the post-Enlightenment world, even
most of those on the "Right" have the idea that the economy and social
relationships are simple one-to-one hydraulic systems that can be managed like a
little steam engine. Now we've been rationally managed to hell and not back
(and the solution is always more rational management).
The terrible truth is that traditional social norms are irrational and
still do exist for a reason in the perennial gale of social evolution.
Social change and social progress (note the lack of scare quotes) have always
been happening, but only now do we have the naive idea that the units of society
(people) have the competence to design and contribute to an otherwise
unconscious evolution of social memes.
Anyway, I'll give the last word on this issue to Noam Chomsky, who somehow
manages to say something clear and admirable on the subject:
“Science is a very strange activity. It only works for simple
problems. Even in the hard sciences, when you move beyond the simplest
structures, it becomes very descriptive. By the time you get to big
molecules, for example, you are mostly describing things. The idea
that deep scientific analysis tells you something about problems of
human beings and our lives and our inter-relations with one another
and so on is mostly pretense in my opinion—self-serving pretense
which is itself a technique of domination and exploitation and should
be avoided. Professionals certainly have the responsibility of not
making people believe that they have some special knowledge that
others can't attain without special means or special college
education or whatever. If things are simple, they should be said
simply; if there is something serious to say that is not simple, then,
fine, that's good and interesting. We can perhaps find deep answers
to certain questions that do bear directly on issues of human interest
and concern, but that is rarely true.”
"'Science' 'Communicators'"
One of the worst aspects of all of this is that this understanding of
pop-science encourages people to distrust what they know or can judge of the
world in favor of the caricature of the consensus of institutionalized
academics. People have this idea that there are these intellectual,
peer-reviewed demigods in universities who discover the secrets to the universe
and communicate them through their messengers stationed at BuzzFeed and the
Huffington Post. Betraying their infinite wisdom would make you "irrational" or
a "fundie." The reality is that these demigods really just went to graduate
school because they were lazy and initiativeless, and even in the abstract, most
of their real work has nothing to do with your life whatsoever. It's only the
messengers that convince you of that because it stimulates their power trip.
Science journalists, much like journalists generally, are people too incompetent
and emotional to work in the private sector, too dumb to be academics (and the
standards are abysmally low these days), too full of themselves to work in
charity and too bumbling, weak and arrogant to work in a blue collar or manual
occupation. Journalism is an attractive career to many because it demands the
least rigor and honor and promises the greatest power and influence.
Their self-ordained duty is to overwhelm the public with a confusion of
"studies" that increasingly seem to micromanage a neurotic person's life.
"Studies show that" classical music may help infant brain growth, or that gluten
ravages the intestines, or that simply owning more books causes higher
scholastic achievement, or that Vitamin C or antioxidants or kale or whatever
health-food de jour solve all the world's problems.
At the end of the day, the worst part is that we talk about "science" as if it's
some kind of anthropomophic creature with desires and feelings and a plan for
us all. It's a uniquely modern flaw to say things like, "Science tells us
that..." "Science is about.." "Science is against..." Does this not strike
anyone else as creepy? The interpretation of science forced on the public is a
scriptural one, where law to live life by are codified in "peer-reviewed"
journals and communicated by intermediaries. 'Science's' purview is infinite and
any failure to conform is some congenital failure or reason.