| Going through the piece, he builds upon things that make sense but then just completely goes off the rails at the end. I don’t even know what the point of the article is. It comes across as science/intellectual shaming. > Possibly illiterate dilettantes on the internet might see and bring to attention legitimate theoretical flaws. And if the flaws are legitimate, no matter how much work a scientist has done, then he has to take these into account now. Science is incremental and self-correcting. Is it a flaw if someone points out something wrong? > All the years you spend in graduate school counting angels on pinheads in your respective theoretical framework is mostly a waste of time. What is the point of saying this? There are dead ends to science and some of these dead ends may seem like wastes of time but it’s all about incremental knowledge and discoveries. If something revolutionary comes along that disproves years of work, then that for science is a success. > Most of the scientific work is not meaningful outside of the theoretical framework that gave rise to it. What does this mean? Isn’t this “theoretical framework” based on our observations? Sure there is this chance that it might be wrong but if most of our data and observations show that this is true, then it is until proven otherwise. If someone tells you that the earth might be flat and what we can see with our eyes and what we currently know might not be true, is that sufficient evidence to make you think, “oh the earth might be flat after all”? |
This is about priming people to buy into some propaganda system, for instance one constructed for political purposes, and reject their existing assumptions. The weird swerve at the end is the payload.
The reason to do this is, if you're knowingly maintaining a propaganda system that works towards some known purpose, and you want people to fall into it more readily. This doesn't discount the validity of the initial concepts: local maxima are real, and our ability to thoroughly understand things is limited.
But we remain functional through pretending we can indeed understand things, and there's usefulness in that. Generally, axioms are brought into question when specific details don't line up with our theory.
In a vacuum, 'abandon all theories!' is a fine position to have. In reality, 'abandon all theories!' is a set-up for getting fed a pile of information that benefits somebody else, because you become a willingly useful idiot ready to be programmed by anyone.
Running into somebody like this, I find the initial 'abandon all theories!' attitude to be refreshing. I even agree with some of it. If the NEXT THING he tells me is all about how Pepe's face is on the Moon outlined in craters, I've learned to be extremely suspicious of what the guy is really selling. Because even if he is himself sincere… there is somebody up the chain pursuing 'Nigerian spam' techniques and finding out by this who's credulous enough to be used for their own purposes.
And that's what I get from the 'going off the rails at the end'. The point of the article is to hook the truly credulous, and the writer may or may not be in on that.