The sheer frequency with which the new high priest class of the fabricated cosmos industry–commonly referred to as “modern science”–employ condescension tactics to intellectually distance themselves from those who they refer to as “laypersons”, while backpatting themselves and running cover for each other about how their perceived monopoly over what does and does not constitute “research”, has never been more brazen, one dimensional and insulting.
“Even those of us with excellent critical thinking skills and lots of experience trying to dig up the truth behind a variety of claims are lacking one important asset: the scientific expertise necessary to understand any finds or claims in the context of the full state of knowledge of your field. It’s part of why scientific consensus is so remarkably valuable: it only exists when the overwhelming majority of qualified professionals all hold the same consistent professional opinion. It truly is one of the most important and valuable types of expertise that humanity has ever developed.”
Ethan Siegel, “You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”, Forbes, July 30th 2020–(yes, that is the actual title of the article)
Full URL link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/amp/?fbclid=IwAR2Z8b43eulxADSsxlBwBgU-kp6y00cSHbmDE9FG81AuQhtxiXJGOnIia9s
The presumptions and presuppositions behind this highly aloof attitude epitomized in the obtuseness of the contemporary academy that pre-approves “fields of study” in the form of “specialist training” and requires (utterly absurd) monetary as well as excessive temporal investment in order to be initiated into their “fields” are as follows:
1. The presumption that people have to be told what to think in order for certain objectives within the field to be accomplished.
2. The presumption that any given collectively assembled consensus is automatically on better epistemological, functional and investigative footing than outlier analysis (even if there is pertinent data that is systematically or deliberately excluded from said consensus due to its inability to conform to the preset agreements within the consensus).
3. The presumption that any learned technique derived from this aforementioned consensus production is the proper basis upon which knowledge about a particular subject is to be recognized in the form of an institutional degree or certification which acts as a direct signifier for sufficiently inculcated information.
4. Said degrees are presupposed monikers of acceptability in relation to reputation via functionality in a given arena of study and is thusly considered a credential by which authority can be disseminated.
5. The presumptive maintenance of said credential is the continual application of this internalized consensus production as the deciding factor for establishing expertise.
6. So-called “peer review” is therefore the presupposition that scientific discernment can be established regardless of the general refusal to scrutinize the very process whereby the definition of expertise in the context of what constitutes a peer is considered efficacious.
In exchange for fealty to disciplinary specialization in conformity to the various formal limitations implied within the construct of any given expert “field”, the upside position of experthood is that one gets to enjoy the tacit comfort in which the expert in question is privileged, a priori, to assume the role as the best arbiter of the very same premises that continue to constitute their respective fields. How convenient that these presupposed myopic frames of reference are upheld as the only appropriate lenses by which review of the legitimacy of any given field in question can be ascertained. This self-contained, closed feedback loop that typifies the vast bulk of “knowledge” within the intellectual-praxeological arenas demarcated as scientific expertise is rarely more than a variated form of the petitio principii fallacy in combination with belief preservation, conformity conditioning and the Semmelweis reflex. These conformity defects in human psychology and epistemology are still absolutely and utterly endemic to modern materialistic sciences.
If one cannot see the obvious vulnerability to echo chamber bias preference and the susceptibility for longheld, multi-generational errors that underpin this process of manufacturing supposedly credentialed legitimacy in the form of so-called expertise and consensus, one is still under the pervasive spell of expertocratic mentalism and authoritarian power of suggestion.
True skepticism is not really epitomized by formal refutations of conclusions with an appeal to reasonable doubt, as we are commonly led to believe (solipsism for example maintains that there is reasonable doubt of an independent existence of anything since everything could just be a projection of one’s self, but this notion is clearly not synonymous with a skeptical approach in the vein of Pyrrho).
Rather, a better characterization of skepticism is the suspension of contentment with explanations that are seen as irrefutable or “settled”. Therefore, we can supply the observation accordingly: consensus constructs that are seen as being “settled by science” have the highly probabilistic tendency to be merely conventional stipulations between opportunistic authority addicts who reciprocate the conviction that their respective expert statuses are reliant upon the preservation of pivotal presumptions that rely entirely on premises that, when discredited, no longer grant them any legitimacy.
To a great extent, the construction of expertise is a kind of psychological-epistemological pyramid scheme in which even the most trivial form of expertise exists as an allusion to a revered status, honorary achievement or respectable esteem within any given arena of study. This is why we can assert that expertise is both an ephemeral phantasm and an inchoate pursuit. In the case of the earlier cited article by Siegel, his astrophysicist label is dependent upon not wanting people to research for themselves the pervasive fraud, technosophistry and false premises that predicates his entire identity as a scientist of grandiose guesswork. This protectionist condescension is a pattern that exists in all fields where experts are constantly fingerwagging their construed authority to “non-experts”.
With the exception of a few handful of notable critics within modern academia like Marshall McCluhan and the earlier work of Noam Chomsky around the manufacturing of consent, this systematic process of synthesizing fraud via normalizing fallacies like ad populum, fostering nepotistic favoritism that includes conflict of interest and peddling appeals to authority (in the form of consensus mongering, expert friendomization and credentialist confidence games for example) as sophisticated, highly esteemed methodologies that generate so-called evidence (deemed efficacious enough to set public health policies for example) continues unabated and has indeed grown exponentially to this day. What many of these academic figures miss is that it’s not just consent or public opinion that is manufactured by propaganda in the media, the same principle applies to cosmology, epistemology and science as we know it en toto.
This topic of renegade expertocracy and the perils of authoritarian scientism are dovetailed into nearly all of our episodes and content here on ZNN. This article represents a introductory but nevertheless rigorous philosophical critique of the epistemological underpinnings of various areas of study within the one world cryptoreligion we call “science” and will certainly not be the last!
