The Hierarchy of Science Matters In The Culture War (If You Aren't Corrupt).

Centralized science is corruptible. Let's Decentralize It.

There is a hierarchy to the sciences, which is kind of hard to illustrate in a diagram because often the item on top of a pyramid is considered the most important, but in this case it is the opposite.

Auguste Comte's hierarchy of the sciences, also known as the "Great Chain of Being," was developed in the 19th century. It proposed a hierarchical order of scientific disciplines based on their complexity and generality. According to Comte, the most fundamental and foundational sciences were those that studied the most general phenomena, while the less general sciences relied on the knowledge derived from the fundamental sciences. In other words, each science was predicated on top of the layers below it.

Studies have shown that the degree of scientific consensus is highest in the physical sciences (near the bottom of the pyramid), intermediate in the biological sciences (in the middle), and lowest in the social sciences (near the top). Thus, making mathematics the foundation of all the sciences (and the one with the highest consensus), and social science the weakest and the one with the least scientific consensus.

Bring this forward to the culture war of today.

In the context of gender ideology and biology, Comte's hierarchy of sciences would place biology as a more fundamental and foundational science compared to gender ideology. Biology is the scientific discipline that studies living organisms, including humans, their structure, function, behavior, and characteristics. It provides a framework for understanding the physical and biological aspects of human existence, including the differences between males and females.

Gender ideology, on the other hand, is a term that encompasses various theories, beliefs, and perspectives on gender and its role in society. It explores the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of gender identity and roles. To put it another way, gender ideology is built upon the foundation of biological differences between males and females. Thus, it relies on biological facts and observations as its starting point.

Therefore - according to Comte's hierarchy of sciences - biology would be considered a more fundamental and valuable science than gender ideology. The knowledge derived from biology provides a basis for understanding the biological foundations of gender, while gender ideology builds upon this knowledge to explore the complex social and cultural aspects of gender. In terms of scientific hierarchy, biology takes precedence due to its foundational role in understanding the physical and biological aspects of human existence.

So why are the institutions of higher education so hellbent on reversing this order? And how is it that no one from inside these organizations have been able to successfully reverse this push?

It is rather simple. They are being held hostage.

These institutions are being incentivized (with grants and other funding) to give equal (and often more) credence to the social sciences than the physical sciences below it. There is an obvious financial advantage to pretending like there is no hierarchy of science, and these once great academic institutions are selling out using the social sciences as their cash cow.

Not only has this destroyed their credibility (and the credibility of all science and studies that come through the universities) but it has also been destructive to the overall ability to examine difficult questions and solve complex problems by all who accept this new credence as truth.

In order to move forward and get past this culture war, the hierarchy of science needs to be respected once again by these institutions, society, or both.

---

Let’s zoom out the lens for a moment.

Besides humans, every other organism on earth can only function in a range of environments that are hospitable to it. But humans - using intelligence, imagination, and by transferring information between people - have the unique ability to transform inhospitable environments into support systems using knowledge and technology.

This is how it is possible for people to inhabit Death Valley, The International Space Station, Submarines, the Arctic circle, or even San Francisco! (Yeah, sometimes we got jokes).

This explanatory knowledge is passed on through culture, and it is vital for each generation to build upon the knowledge and wisdom of the previous one. However, this entire system becomes vulnerable when we allow a culture war to use science as a weapon for stratifying society.

This culture war isn’t happening organically. When you have all of the big banks, mega corporations, and universities singing the same tune and being pushed by the corporate media, it becomes clear. This is all happening as a result of deep seeded corruption.

When we hear about whole swaths of science and academia who are afraid to defend their positions in debate, it becomes even more obvious. As we discussed last week with the whole RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, and Pharmaceutical community, millions of dollars have now been raised for a simple debate over the science behind vaccine safety. Yet the scrutiny is being shunned. In fact avoiding the debate is now being defended by the corporate media in such a dishonest way, saying things like “You should not give them the moral equivalence.” Claiming it is below their authority to even consider a debate. Saying things like “Imagine debating with a flat Earther.”

This is laughable of course because for $2.6 million dollars - or whatever has been raised at this point - any one of us would happily debate a flat Earther, no matter how pompous we believed our level of authority was.

There is only one real explanation for their squirming cowardice: They have been corrupted.

In fact, the “appeal to authority fallacy” has become a hallmark to help us identify the corruption in all kinds of areas. Mantras like “Trust the Science” or “Vaccine Deniers” or “Conspiracy Theorists” or even the 1984-esque “Fact Checkers” have all become calling cards of the corrupted systems and their shepherds.

Like academia and the corporate media, the centralized peer review process has been corrupted as well (just look at Surgisphere and the Lancet).

People will often use the ‘appeal to authority fallacy’ to point to peer review as the pinnacle of science. It isn’t. The pinnacle of science is being able to independently replicate experiments. For example, how many papers did Einstein or Maxwell have peer reviewed? Yet their experiments are replicated millions of times a day each time we use electronics or the internet. That’s science.

We need to face off against this corruption with added fervor, with calls for transparency in science being at the core of the revolution. But further, we should remove the centralized control peer review has over science and look to a more decentralized system. Imagine a system that uses a ledger such as blockchain to record data. Balaji Srinivasan explores this idea of decentralized science here, and we believe in order to save science from the obvious corruption that has taken place something like this must happen. The possibilities for better systems of science are endless. For example, imagine decentralized funding, or the reemergence of the “cowboy scientist” who starts the journey of exploration off with simple curiosity instead of corporate or academic funding pushing the direction of the experiments.

Until then, we encourage everyone to use the hierarchy of science pyramid to wage an intellectual war against those who continue to try and corrupt science and academia. Let’s keep pushing for debates, discourse, and transparency in everything - but especially in science. After all, science is scrutiny; and without transparency there can be no scrutiny.

Thanks for reading!

---

Do you hunger for solutions?
As always the entire purpose of this is to connect with other solutions-minded people like yourself! For 4 billion years on this planet there were only single-celled organisms. Then one day they somehow learned to work together and make complex multi-celled creatures like you and me. Right now we are like those single-celled organisms. Our next evolution is finding how to work together, better (like we wrote about here).

If you enjoyed this explore some other awesome topics with us such as the articles here, here, and here.

COMMENTS ARE FOR EVERYONE AS A PLACE TO THINK TANK SOLUTIONS. They will never be for paid-only subscribers and we will never charge a subscription.

#WarOnCorruption #UnifyAgainstCorruption #ResultsMatterMost #DecentralizeEverything #DemandTransparency