Propaganda, memorization have replaced scientific method

Over a month ago (Sept. 18 “Climate Change a Serious Threat”), a fellow citizen’s letter asserted that the Climate Change issue (formerly called the Global Warming issue) had not been given enough importance in an earlier Frontiersman essay by U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Now I usually strip the vested interest propaganda grafted to honest citizen viewpoint to get at the value of the free speech presented. So I find I agree with the author that we need to be more sensitive to our custodial responsibilities for planet Earth — as the pressures for needful resource development mounts. Frank discussions — seeking workable compromise measures — do need to be had between people who don’t want humanity pissing in our planetary soup bowl, and people seeking to provide the wherewithal needed for the perpetuation of human existence.

But selfishness and cause blindness afflict too much of humanity when groups of its members square off against each other. Two means of coping with this have arisen. One is government —where one faction gains the upper-hand (called being in authority) in using socially sanctioned physical force/threat to implement some measure. The other is the discipline of the scientific method — where individual humans are constrained to methodically use their senses to see for themselves a common reality (called exercising common sense) which supports reason-controlled forces to implement some measure.

Unfortunately, though urged to do so by history’s wise men, most individual people fail to energetically comply to “Man, know thyself.” This sabotages the consistent use of individual reason — disciplined by the scientific method — and encourages mob-rule and anarchy. In turn, the severity of these conditions — or the fear of them — has ever driven society to the desperate resort of using the threats and forces of government authority.

You can plainly see this in the reference to (and dependence on) authority to motivate social action in the referenced letter “Climate Change a Serious Threat.” The letter hints at the veneer of “science” in the theory that the trouble is centrally manmade. But it commits the scientific blasphemy of pushing authority rather than publicly verifiable facts. The significance of this is that public education is supposed to make every one of us a basic level scientist. So for any so-called “scientists” to lend themselves to a nebulous scientific majority, which in turn is offered as an authority to make the public think one way, brand themselves as scientific sell-outs. They are sell-outs because they have obviously succumbed to being mouthpieces for special interests for money. So let’s talk about virtuous science before continuing any further discussion about climate change.

Virtuous science consists of inductive conclusions derived from openly repeatable observations of reality, as gathered and organized by disciplined experimentation and research. These inductive conclusions — usually called scientific laws, principles or theories — are constantly subject to any un-confronted or more accurate observations being found that then force modifications. This paraphrases Rule IV of Isaac Newton’s Rules of Scientific Reasoning.

The discipline of inductive reasoning also serves as an anchor for accurate decision-making in all other human activities. We refer to this when we talk of common sense, critical thinking, and logical thinking. Deductive reasoning — using pre-existing conclusions or generalizations to judge specific matters and concerns — can be perverted by using un-inspected conclusions, principles, and positions. The irrational conduct from superstition, prejudices, false information, and intellectual slavery comes from this.

Therefore, mental honesty requires any decision-maker — child, adult, government official, or military leader — to personally verify the validity of any law, principle, conclusion before using it. You do this by partly recreating the inductive reasoning that originally established that law, principle, or conclusion, and crosschecking the observations behind secondhand facts to verify them. Mental processes are lightening-quick unless you have inadequate data for them to run on, or have a self-generated unwillingness to think things through.

Pursuit of mental honesty is thus the vital educational process of acquiring true conceptual understandings. Consequently, it is plain why propaganda, indoctrination and memorization don’t permit real education. This reveals why billions have been spent “educating” Americans — who now so often show they can’t utilize secondhand knowledge to effectively solve moral, familial, political, scientific, economic, and military problems. This lazy perversion of education is the poison that is assuring American disappearance from the world stage.

Stuart Thompson lives in Wasilla.