{"id":17216,"date":"2022-12-28T17:29:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T01:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=17216"},"modified":"2022-12-29T16:38:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T00:38:11","slug":"science-anti-science-and-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2022\/12\/28\/science-anti-science-and-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Science, Anti-Science, and Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><video controls=\"controls\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\"><source src=\"https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/clips\/63a3ecb87f646437c1fcc069\/360p\/pass\/EOY_2022_Science_resize.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\" \/>Your browser does not support the video tag.<\/video><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>The New Yorker, Matthew Hutson, 28 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/2022-in-review\/eight-times-science-exceeded-expectations-in-2022\">Eight Times Science Exceeded Expectations in 2022<\/a>, subtitle &#8220;From asteroids to A.I., this was a year of scientific superlatives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The article expands on these achievements in 2022:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We nudged an asteroid<\/li>\n<li>Magic mushrooms reduced depression<\/li>\n<li>Earth got hotter &#8212; and hotter<\/li>\n<li>Brain cells in a dish played pong<\/li>\n<li>A blockchain reduced its energy use by 99.95 per cent<\/li>\n<li>We found two-million-year-old mastodon DNA<\/li>\n<li>Artificial intelligence learned diplomacy<\/li>\n<li>We generated fusion power (finally, sorta)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hutson wrote one book, <b>The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking<\/b>, a decade ago (reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/02\/15\/nonfiction-notes-matthew-hutsons-the-7-laws-of-magical-thinking\/\">here<\/a>), then went back to being a journalist.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Atlantic, Yasmin Tayag, 23 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2022\/12\/covid-deaths-anti-vaccine-republican-voters\/672575\/\">How Many Republicans Died Because the GOP Turned Against Vaccines?<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Party leaders are unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of their own supporters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Related to yesterday&#8217;s piece. Details are in the article, but the gist is in the title and subtitle.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Political links:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 28 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2022\/12\/28\/worst-of-2022-its-just-so-hard-to-choose\/\">Worst Republicans of 2022: It&#8217;s just so hard to choose!<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;This column doesn&#8217;t even mention Marjorie Taylor Greene: She can&#8217;t compete with the true depths of GOP horror&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The article does discuss Trump, Musk, Carlson, Rokita, Abbott, and DeSantis, naming the last the &#8220;worst of the worst.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p><strong>Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 19 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/tucker-carlson\/misinformer-year-tucker-carlson\">Misinformer of the Year: Tucker Carlson<\/a><\/p>\n<p>He of the &#8220;great replacement&#8221; white supremacist conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p><strong>Salon, Amana Marcotte, 28 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2022\/12\/28\/george-santos-is-the-partys-future-a-shameless-con-man\/\">George Santos is the Republican Party&#8217;s future: A shameless con man<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Trump opened the door \u2014 and now every grifter and two-bit criminal sees job security in pandering to the GOP base&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p><strong>New York Post, Jon Levine, 24 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/12\/24\/house-gop-leaders-aware-of-george-santos-fabrications\/\">House GOP leaders aware of George Santos fabrications: \u2018A running joke\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p><strong>NYT, 27 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/27\/us\/politics\/george-santos-mccarthy-republicans.html\">G.O.P. Leadership Remains Silent Over George Santos\u2019s Falsehoods<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;The muted response from party leaders suggested that so far they were prepared to mete out little, if any, punishment to the congressman-elect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Where Religion and Politics Meet<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jerry Coyne<\/strong> calls out the New York Times&#8217; pandering to religion, again: <a href=\"https:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.com\/2022\/12\/26\/nyt-touts-religious-miracles-as-proof-of-god\/\">The New York Times touts religious miracles as proof of God<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Coyne sets the stage before tearing into the <strong>NYT<\/strong> essay by Molly Worthen, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/24\/opinion\/miracles-neuroscience-proof.html\">How Would You Prove That God Performed a Miracle?<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Worthen\u2019s title question mentions two important issues. First is that of \u201cproof\u201d, which is really irrelevant to a scientist since we don\u2019t think of empirical \u201cproof\u201d of God\u2014or of anything.\u00a0 We speak of the strength of evidence, which, to me, is strong for the formula of a water molecule having two hydrogens and one oxygen, and far, far weaker for an omniscient and omnipotent being who cares for each one of us.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, we can in principle get empirical evidence for gods. In <em>Faith Versus Fact<\/em> (pp. 118-119), I consider (as did Darwin and Carl Sagan before me) what evidence would convince me that there was a God. Indeed, I lay out a scenario that would convince me that this God would be the <em>God of Christianity<\/em>, i.e., the father of\/part of Jesus.\u00a0 Now this would be \u201cprovisional\u201d convincing, for \u201cabsolute proof\u201d is beyond the realm of science. But it would make me a believer.\u00a0 The scenario involves restoring the limbs of amputees and so on, and of course we don\u2019t see that (see below).<\/p>\n<p>Second, the question remains that if there are inexplicable cures, Worthen wants proof that those cures were effected by God. I presume she doesn\u2019t mean Vishnu or John Frum, as she mentions only Abrahamic conceptions of God.\u00a0 There are of course medical remissions for which doctors have no clear explanation, but that still leaves us with either a naturalistic explanation we don\u2019t understand, or God. Given the absence of evidence for God (see below again), and the prevalence of evidence that things once imputed to God (lightning, disease, evolution, etc. ) are now understood as naturalistic, I think the priors rest with naturalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>NY Times, David Brooks, 28 Dec 2022<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/28\/opinion\/george-santos-lies.html\">The Sad Tales of George Santos<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What would it be like to be so ashamed of your life that you felt compelled to invent a new one? &#8230; A reasonably accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative is one of the most important things a person can have. If you don\u2019t have a real story, you don\u2019t have a real self.<\/p>\n<p>George Santos, on the other hand, is a young man who apparently felt compelled to jettison much of his actual life and replace it with fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>People may wonder how Santos could have been so dumb. In political life, his fabrications were bound to be discovered. Perhaps it\u2019s because dissemblers often have trouble anticipating the future; they\u2019re stuck in the right now.<\/p>\n<p>In a sense Santos is a sad, farcical version of where Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party \u2014 into the land of unreality, the continent of lies. Trump\u2019s takeover of the G.O.P. was not primarily an ideological takeover, it was a psychological and moral one. I don\u2019t feel sorry for Trump the way I do for Santos, because Trump is so cruel. But he did introduce, on a much larger scale, the same pathetic note into our national psychology.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230; finishing with:]<\/p>\n<p>Karl Marx famously said that under the influence of capitalism, all that\u2019s solid melts into air. I wonder if some elixir of Trumpian influence and online modernity can have the same effect on individual personalities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Brooks and Coyne links are not unrelated; they are both about living in worlds that are not true, preferring fantasy (&#8220;evidence&#8221; of miracles; made-up resumes) to reality. That the audiences for these largely overlap is why Santos might well get away with his shameless mendacity. Republican voters don&#8217;t mind Santos&#8217; lies, it may well turn out, as long as they can count on him to vote to support their (largely fantastic) worldview, in which science is an elitist conspiracy, and dicey second-hand testimony is evidence for angels and gods and life after death. Some people &#8220;believe&#8221; things they wish were true, and claim their sincerity of belief as get-out-of-jail-free cards from the weight of actual evidence and the norms of civil society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your browser does not support the video tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,54,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-resistance","category-politics","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17216"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17230,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216\/revisions\/17230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}