It matters that the educational system encourages signaling knowledge of the priesthood to a priestly gatekeeper. The new whizzy AI just strengthens the feedback loop.
Your warning is quite apt, it's hard to overstate the concern. Fraud is easier than ever, but actual useful results seem even more out-of-reach. In some ways it feels like a good thing, the flaws that have been festering for quite some time have eventually cultured something that exposes it all by taking advantage of them...If anyone cares to heed the warning.
If this is half as dangerous as you put it, the best-case-scenario may very well be simply ensuring important methods and ideas aren't outright lost in the darkness to come.
Oct 16, 2022·edited Oct 16, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
From Steve Kirsch's slide 32 at https://www.skirsch.com/covid/TheData.pdf , I note a striking similarity in thought process between the academic vax cultists and the virus skeptics.
1. VAERS use by vax skeptics is "dumpster diving." But when VAERS is used by mainstream "scientists," VAERS is useful. Cherry-picking data, which virus skeptics do when they point at local infection in households as being caused by local poisoning, but ignore infection that occurs when people travel, which cannot be due to local poisoning. The ebola outbreak in Haiti is an example of UN peacekeepers infecting Haiti. There would be no need for travel bans if all disease were caused by local poisons.
2. "You don't know how to interpret the data." Steve calls this "gaslighting," which may be based on the fact that the academic critics can't point out exactly what's wrong with the vax skeptics' interpretation. The virus skeptics say that viralists are reading the data through a virus lens, which implies that the viralists are misinterpreting the data.
3. "It's just over-reporting." This is a statement with no justification, which we see a lot with vax skeptics, "it's just 'epitomes", despite PCR showing nucleic acid multiplication after cell culturing, which doesn't occur with epitomes.
4. "Correlation isn't causation." Surely, correlation is a problem when there are many confounders, which is why temporality is so important in proving vaccine harm. Also, a mechanism for harm has to be determined in order to answer how vaccine harm can occur. There is a lack of curiosity by vax cultists about the 17% elevated excess mortality in the US working age population in 2021 v. 2020 and they aren't concerned that the CDC isn't talking about that mortality nor examining causes for the mortality nor giving guidance about how to investigate covid vaccine injury. Both the virus skeptics and the vax cultists follow the maxim, "Ignorance is bliss." Yet they claim that they are doing science.
Oct 16, 2022·edited Oct 16, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
I see you write often about the science wars as you observe them in the pandemic. But I've not seen you write about what academia knows as the Science Wars that appeared in public discussions in the 1990's. And have continued since. Though one side now dominates and it lacks the combustability of two evenly matched competitors that the 1990's entailed.
A war between natural science and social science. Unfortunately, as Marx and Engels wrote, "there can be only one science, the science of history." And natural science has been subsumed into the science of history, subordinate to social science agendas of Marxist leaders determined to remake the world as they wish it, not as God created it. They will fail. But at great cost to us all.
This link is to a Marxist presentation of those early science wars. It's a surprisingly balanced treatment and the links are to credible sources to explore the topic in more detail.
This understanding of the science wars explains all we see in the science wars today. It's not just grade inflation, cheating or other problems in the system. It's ideological capture of the natural sciences that has done the greatest harm.
I could not agree more that the way the education system is set up is the root of many of our problems, and what we are doing to the kids and the way we are sacrificing them is horrorific (indeed, I did also try to make the general case here in a recent interview https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/in-conversation-with-a-bioenergetics :
"My friend, and child psychotherapist, Louis Weinstock has recently written a book all about this, called "How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About It: A field guide to raising empowered children and growing a more beautiful world" (highly recommended). He suggests that parents need to attend to themselves and their own nervous system regulation if they want to help their children the most.
I also make the case that we need to radically overhaul schooling and education. I often say that telling kids they need to sit still and be silent for long periods is training their nervous systems how to inhabit Parkinson's like freeze states. This is not good. If only we started teaching kids how to self-regulate themselves, and co-regulate others, through training them in breathwork, meditation, etc, and arming them with empowering knowledge of physiology and stress responses, early, we would see a different world. Indeed, the kids could then hold the grown-ups to account for their behaviours and antics." )
An exquisitely important article. And jeez, this feels so validating for practicing autonomous learning with my own kids that if you were in front of me, I’d hug the math out of you.
My twins are 11. Their dad convinced them to try school this year. One of them quit after two weeks, said the teachers yell too much and tell you to sit down and shut up for long periods of time and so it wasn’t for him. He is now happily turning my kitchen into a chemistry lab, learning to play piano on his own, and auditioning and getting cast in a play. The other is still at it, mostly to please his dad, but also to please his teachers who are now incentivizing him with things like ‘thumbs up’ on homework assignments which consume all of his time. Labor Day weekend, I spend about 20 hours of my own time to help him with HW and I couldn’t believe what a time suck it was. For things that he will inevitably forget. I know he will, because he asked his dad to help him first and he said he couldn’t remember how to do the math. This is 6th grade simple stuff, multiplying fractions and such. Even when I suggested I teach him the short cuts (not cheating!) he insisted he does it the way the teacher explained. So now, I catch him cheating at his homework all the time. He isn’t learning, he’s training for peon life and I hate it. He comes home with crippling anxiety from being overwhelmed with busy work and with kids bullying him. I told him it’s his choice to stay or leave and he is still there, so self imposed imprisonment.
I’m sure there’s plenty of judgement for having my kids undergo what feel like a social experiment. I’m glad they retained empathy, love for learning, and curiosity and I hope the school system doesn’t beat it out of the one that is still at it. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Back in the '80s, a large body of paleontological research was found to be fabricated.
"Distortion of the paleontologic literature in most of the 450 papers bearing V. J. Gupta as author or co-author during the past 30 years has been documented by Agarwal and Singh (1981), Talent (1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, in press), Talent et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991), Ahluwalia (1989), Bassi (1989, 1990), Brock et al. (1991), and Radhakrishna (1991). Replies to the charges of fabrication and distortion by Gupta (1989, 1990a, 1990b) were futile attempts to distract the reader, rather than to provide information to refute the charges."
I cheated on the homework assigned for a 200 level version of a class as it was time consuming and hard. Did awful on the tests but the homework grades balanced it out and got a C. The next class up I played it straight. Tried my best on the HW but got lower grades. But did better on the tests and came up with a C. Maybe a B-...getting old don't quite remember. Basically the same. I felt a lot better about the latter but it took way more time.
A few down-home simple "country" thoughts from the belly of the beastie (New Cheat City where all the leaders 'r cheaters!)...
"Temptation" is a tee-riffic song written by Arthur Freed n' Herb Nacio Brown AND it 'splains the immediate (an' immediately human) appeal of cheatin' an' succumbing to baser human in-stinks purdy darn FAST. Somethin' temptin' often is out thar (funding! good grades! bribes! better jobs! sexy Sadies!). What AI does is jus' make it near-instant...and more rewardin' an' harder to "police." It's a self-perpetuatin' crime!
A simple crackpotty idear is to jus' pull all the plugs and take out them 'splodin' batteries too! Old-skool semi-luddite homeschoolin' mama here thinks 'at computers n' tablets (the kind kids swaller as well as the 'lectronic kind!) are purdy antithetical to larnin'.
Here'bouts there ain't no cheatin' as we use real books, real paper, real pencils (so's ya can erase) and there's nothin' to cheat "on." Makes honest larnin' easier fer sure! Indeedy, we do watch viddeyo's but only fer research after all the lesson's 'r done (or fer fun a' course) so "tech" (but not AI) has a limited place in our schoolin' and the focus is on the larnin' itself--no rewards (I don't give'em out and I ain't a "good jobber" neither!). Gotta be yer own internal compass (on all points) or ya won't develop one!
When ya add in all the 'lectric gew-gaws eyes go to screens and not on each other (people 'r meant to LOOK at each other!). The dang gadgets are like fancier fidget spinners (they just spit out numbers n' words when they gyrate). Also, people who gotta look each other IN THE EYE ain't gonna cheat half as much as those equipped with jus' keyboards n' stylus'es. Wife see her "mister" eyeballing some purdy young thing atta party's gonna grab him by the elbow in' short order n''ll walk'im right over t' the cheeselog n' crackers and give'im a cheerful earful. Look'a chagrin follers... Iff'in Miss Crabtree spies them lousy yeller "Cliffs Notes" peekin' out from under a desk, she's gonna con-fee-skate 'em and give that student a lek-tchure. Digital stuff's harder to detect--sleight o' hand.
So if ya make it harder to cheat an' more pleasant to foller yer "better" instincts n' higher motivations, it makes the entire "wurld" more honest. (Nuttin's gonna be perfect, we'z humans...)
Kids today (and their grown-up versions as bigger brats n' bullies! --in academia, science, publishin' the whole enchilada!) have'ta cheat because they lost all skills to listen, sit an' attend, discuss (and debate!) and defend their ideas n' "show their work" an' allow the scruitiny (vs the screw-tiny) of their peers n' elders an' look 'em in the EYE. Even "zoom school" (which needs to zoom away fast!) doesn't allow that important exchange n' eye contact.
All that's real n' human's gone out the winda! I think comin' back to what's REAL an LIVE could make a dandy difference--something we "un-"schoolers know even within the homeschooling community.
Makin' it all less temptin' is part of it. Now if only procrastinatin' (another challenge o' the human condition) could have a remedy as lordy that's one I'd certainly welcome!
In short: That is because all smart decisions were made by the programmer and data-selectors. Via complex series of algorithms and statistics these decisions are hidden. But these decisions determine everything. And this means that by definition, there is no real intelligence in AI.
The problem with AI use in science: With scientists using AI to find new things or make "smart" decisions. Because their programmed AI is just repeating their own bias, the scientists will fool themselves. One example is the black hole image, that is just generated by the AI and not by actual data. Very similar to "this person does not exist" website. See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlrTe1mi5EQ But that is not what you see in the papers, that just use the same erratic image-generating tool to repeat the same mistake on other projects. Because the scientists get famous with imaginary images and not with actual science.
In response to a comment on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CodyPor96677782/status/1581632285220085760?s=20&t=l0loLg1qt0j6bLbxUidT2w
It doesn't matter what technology we write with.
It matters that the educational system encourages signaling knowledge of the priesthood to a priestly gatekeeper. The new whizzy AI just strengthens the feedback loop.
Your warning is quite apt, it's hard to overstate the concern. Fraud is easier than ever, but actual useful results seem even more out-of-reach. In some ways it feels like a good thing, the flaws that have been festering for quite some time have eventually cultured something that exposes it all by taking advantage of them...If anyone cares to heed the warning.
If this is half as dangerous as you put it, the best-case-scenario may very well be simply ensuring important methods and ideas aren't outright lost in the darkness to come.
Thoughts as destiny...
In game design, cheating is blamed on the designer, not the player.
I haven't even read past the first bit and just had to comment.
THANK YOU.
I have homeschooled all three of my boys. My priority from day one has always been LOVE.
Learn to love.
Love of learning.
Learn what you love to do.
Do it.
Make a life that you love.
People think I'm crazy.
That's ok.
I'm over here being crazy, doing what I love.
Ok. Now that I've made a comment that potentially has very little to do with this article, I'm going to read the rest.
From Steve Kirsch's slide 32 at https://www.skirsch.com/covid/TheData.pdf , I note a striking similarity in thought process between the academic vax cultists and the virus skeptics.
1. VAERS use by vax skeptics is "dumpster diving." But when VAERS is used by mainstream "scientists," VAERS is useful. Cherry-picking data, which virus skeptics do when they point at local infection in households as being caused by local poisoning, but ignore infection that occurs when people travel, which cannot be due to local poisoning. The ebola outbreak in Haiti is an example of UN peacekeepers infecting Haiti. There would be no need for travel bans if all disease were caused by local poisons.
2. "You don't know how to interpret the data." Steve calls this "gaslighting," which may be based on the fact that the academic critics can't point out exactly what's wrong with the vax skeptics' interpretation. The virus skeptics say that viralists are reading the data through a virus lens, which implies that the viralists are misinterpreting the data.
3. "It's just over-reporting." This is a statement with no justification, which we see a lot with vax skeptics, "it's just 'epitomes", despite PCR showing nucleic acid multiplication after cell culturing, which doesn't occur with epitomes.
4. "Correlation isn't causation." Surely, correlation is a problem when there are many confounders, which is why temporality is so important in proving vaccine harm. Also, a mechanism for harm has to be determined in order to answer how vaccine harm can occur. There is a lack of curiosity by vax cultists about the 17% elevated excess mortality in the US working age population in 2021 v. 2020 and they aren't concerned that the CDC isn't talking about that mortality nor examining causes for the mortality nor giving guidance about how to investigate covid vaccine injury. Both the virus skeptics and the vax cultists follow the maxim, "Ignorance is bliss." Yet they claim that they are doing science.
That last paragraph was really, really on point, and hilarious!
I see you write often about the science wars as you observe them in the pandemic. But I've not seen you write about what academia knows as the Science Wars that appeared in public discussions in the 1990's. And have continued since. Though one side now dominates and it lacks the combustability of two evenly matched competitors that the 1990's entailed.
A war between natural science and social science. Unfortunately, as Marx and Engels wrote, "there can be only one science, the science of history." And natural science has been subsumed into the science of history, subordinate to social science agendas of Marxist leaders determined to remake the world as they wish it, not as God created it. They will fail. But at great cost to us all.
This link is to a Marxist presentation of those early science wars. It's a surprisingly balanced treatment and the links are to credible sources to explore the topic in more detail.
This understanding of the science wars explains all we see in the science wars today. It's not just grade inflation, cheating or other problems in the system. It's ideological capture of the natural sciences that has done the greatest harm.
https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol22-1/science-wars-the-next-generation/
I could not agree more that the way the education system is set up is the root of many of our problems, and what we are doing to the kids and the way we are sacrificing them is horrorific (indeed, I did also try to make the general case here in a recent interview https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/in-conversation-with-a-bioenergetics :
"My friend, and child psychotherapist, Louis Weinstock has recently written a book all about this, called "How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About It: A field guide to raising empowered children and growing a more beautiful world" (highly recommended). He suggests that parents need to attend to themselves and their own nervous system regulation if they want to help their children the most.
I also make the case that we need to radically overhaul schooling and education. I often say that telling kids they need to sit still and be silent for long periods is training their nervous systems how to inhabit Parkinson's like freeze states. This is not good. If only we started teaching kids how to self-regulate themselves, and co-regulate others, through training them in breathwork, meditation, etc, and arming them with empowering knowledge of physiology and stress responses, early, we would see a different world. Indeed, the kids could then hold the grown-ups to account for their behaviours and antics." )
An exquisitely important article. And jeez, this feels so validating for practicing autonomous learning with my own kids that if you were in front of me, I’d hug the math out of you.
My twins are 11. Their dad convinced them to try school this year. One of them quit after two weeks, said the teachers yell too much and tell you to sit down and shut up for long periods of time and so it wasn’t for him. He is now happily turning my kitchen into a chemistry lab, learning to play piano on his own, and auditioning and getting cast in a play. The other is still at it, mostly to please his dad, but also to please his teachers who are now incentivizing him with things like ‘thumbs up’ on homework assignments which consume all of his time. Labor Day weekend, I spend about 20 hours of my own time to help him with HW and I couldn’t believe what a time suck it was. For things that he will inevitably forget. I know he will, because he asked his dad to help him first and he said he couldn’t remember how to do the math. This is 6th grade simple stuff, multiplying fractions and such. Even when I suggested I teach him the short cuts (not cheating!) he insisted he does it the way the teacher explained. So now, I catch him cheating at his homework all the time. He isn’t learning, he’s training for peon life and I hate it. He comes home with crippling anxiety from being overwhelmed with busy work and with kids bullying him. I told him it’s his choice to stay or leave and he is still there, so self imposed imprisonment.
I’m sure there’s plenty of judgement for having my kids undergo what feel like a social experiment. I’m glad they retained empathy, love for learning, and curiosity and I hope the school system doesn’t beat it out of the one that is still at it. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Back in the '80s, a large body of paleontological research was found to be fabricated.
"Distortion of the paleontologic literature in most of the 450 papers bearing V. J. Gupta as author or co-author during the past 30 years has been documented by Agarwal and Singh (1981), Talent (1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, in press), Talent et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991), Ahluwalia (1989), Bassi (1989, 1990), Brock et al. (1991), and Radhakrishna (1991). Replies to the charges of fabrication and distortion by Gupta (1989, 1990a, 1990b) were futile attempts to distract the reader, rather than to provide information to refute the charges."
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/abs/an-evaluation-of-the-v-j-gupta-conodont-papers/1BDCFBE89DCC5DAAF89FC83B247680CE
Gupta's papers were highly cited, leading to the suspicion of a vast corruption of the paleontological database which likely continues to this day.
Feeling a need to preserve what we can of the "good real stuff" of education . Feeling doom here. 😞
Children do not need to learn to love, they need protecting from adults who have forgotten how to do it.
I cheated on the homework assigned for a 200 level version of a class as it was time consuming and hard. Did awful on the tests but the homework grades balanced it out and got a C. The next class up I played it straight. Tried my best on the HW but got lower grades. But did better on the tests and came up with a C. Maybe a B-...getting old don't quite remember. Basically the same. I felt a lot better about the latter but it took way more time.
A few down-home simple "country" thoughts from the belly of the beastie (New Cheat City where all the leaders 'r cheaters!)...
"Temptation" is a tee-riffic song written by Arthur Freed n' Herb Nacio Brown AND it 'splains the immediate (an' immediately human) appeal of cheatin' an' succumbing to baser human in-stinks purdy darn FAST. Somethin' temptin' often is out thar (funding! good grades! bribes! better jobs! sexy Sadies!). What AI does is jus' make it near-instant...and more rewardin' an' harder to "police." It's a self-perpetuatin' crime!
A simple crackpotty idear is to jus' pull all the plugs and take out them 'splodin' batteries too! Old-skool semi-luddite homeschoolin' mama here thinks 'at computers n' tablets (the kind kids swaller as well as the 'lectronic kind!) are purdy antithetical to larnin'.
Here'bouts there ain't no cheatin' as we use real books, real paper, real pencils (so's ya can erase) and there's nothin' to cheat "on." Makes honest larnin' easier fer sure! Indeedy, we do watch viddeyo's but only fer research after all the lesson's 'r done (or fer fun a' course) so "tech" (but not AI) has a limited place in our schoolin' and the focus is on the larnin' itself--no rewards (I don't give'em out and I ain't a "good jobber" neither!). Gotta be yer own internal compass (on all points) or ya won't develop one!
When ya add in all the 'lectric gew-gaws eyes go to screens and not on each other (people 'r meant to LOOK at each other!). The dang gadgets are like fancier fidget spinners (they just spit out numbers n' words when they gyrate). Also, people who gotta look each other IN THE EYE ain't gonna cheat half as much as those equipped with jus' keyboards n' stylus'es. Wife see her "mister" eyeballing some purdy young thing atta party's gonna grab him by the elbow in' short order n''ll walk'im right over t' the cheeselog n' crackers and give'im a cheerful earful. Look'a chagrin follers... Iff'in Miss Crabtree spies them lousy yeller "Cliffs Notes" peekin' out from under a desk, she's gonna con-fee-skate 'em and give that student a lek-tchure. Digital stuff's harder to detect--sleight o' hand.
So if ya make it harder to cheat an' more pleasant to foller yer "better" instincts n' higher motivations, it makes the entire "wurld" more honest. (Nuttin's gonna be perfect, we'z humans...)
Kids today (and their grown-up versions as bigger brats n' bullies! --in academia, science, publishin' the whole enchilada!) have'ta cheat because they lost all skills to listen, sit an' attend, discuss (and debate!) and defend their ideas n' "show their work" an' allow the scruitiny (vs the screw-tiny) of their peers n' elders an' look 'em in the EYE. Even "zoom school" (which needs to zoom away fast!) doesn't allow that important exchange n' eye contact.
All that's real n' human's gone out the winda! I think comin' back to what's REAL an LIVE could make a dandy difference--something we "un-"schoolers know even within the homeschooling community.
Makin' it all less temptin' is part of it. Now if only procrastinatin' (another challenge o' the human condition) could have a remedy as lordy that's one I'd certainly welcome!
Just as an addition, as scientists increasingly use AI for projects. Which is another related problem. Artificial intelligence is not smart after all. https://thescienceanalyst.substack.com/p/how-smart-is-artificial-intelligence
In short: That is because all smart decisions were made by the programmer and data-selectors. Via complex series of algorithms and statistics these decisions are hidden. But these decisions determine everything. And this means that by definition, there is no real intelligence in AI.
The problem with AI use in science: With scientists using AI to find new things or make "smart" decisions. Because their programmed AI is just repeating their own bias, the scientists will fool themselves. One example is the black hole image, that is just generated by the AI and not by actual data. Very similar to "this person does not exist" website. See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlrTe1mi5EQ But that is not what you see in the papers, that just use the same erratic image-generating tool to repeat the same mistake on other projects. Because the scientists get famous with imaginary images and not with actual science.