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THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

~ Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

Category Archives: Anti-scientific

Search versus Research

26 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by Gary Herstein in Anti-scientific, Critical Thinking, Logic

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Critical Thinking, Research

Please do not confuse your Google search with my doctoral degree.

So proclaims a t-shirt of mine; one of my favorites, I should add.

In this age of anti-vax infantilism, few things can set my teeth on edge as some uneducated buffoon declaring, “I’ve done my research!” (Some “unprofessional” language is going to appear in this blog post. So prepare yourselves.)

“I’ve done my research!” No, in point of fact, you have not, you ridiculous turdwaffle. Because it is damned near a mathematical certainty that you have never done any REsearch in your entire life. You did an internet search, at best, and counted yourself special for having done so.

The company name “Google” has become synonymous with an internet search engine in much the way the company Xerox became synonymous with a photocopier, long after the company itself had lost any real dominance in the field. They were knocked of their thrown by Canon, in particular, yet photocopying remained “xeroxing,” even unto this day. Google, despite its despicable and absolutely ruthless pillaging of its users’ privacyi has yet to suffer such a well deserved fate, but time may yet tell. In the meantime, I will resort to common usage, and speak of “googling” something, without necessarily speaking of Google itself. (You’ll know which one I speak of by whether or not the word is capitalized &/or comes with a gerund.)

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Yellow

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Anti-scientific, GMO crops

≈ 2 Comments

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anti-scientific, conservative, GMO crops

The method of liars, cowards, bullies, and hypocrites, is ever and always to block the road of inquiry. I see in the news that a Missouri State Senator wishes to obstruct the completion of a Ph.D. candidate’s dissertation, a study of the effects of how the state’s 72-hour wait period on abortions actually effects women. It of course goes without saying that the senator creating this obstruction is a Republican, which is to say, a conservative. Conservatives have never been shy about suppressing academic speech (political correctness is not an exclusively liberal problem), and others before me have written about the “Republican war on science.” This latter has been objected to on the grounds that liberals are as likely to hold anti-scientific views as conservatives. I’ll address this in a moment.Cowardly_lion2

The question to ask right here is: if truth is on your side, why would you demand that research be terminated before it is even published? The liars, the cowards, the bullies, and the hypocrites, will all proclaim that the results are nothing more than mere propaganda. But how would they know that? Where is their research to show as much? The answer, of course, is that they have no research; their conclusions are nothing more than vicious ideology which they have imposed upon the world by force, rejecting out of hand any form of inquiry. Perhaps the dissertation, once finished, will be flawed in some respects. Such flaws, by the bye, need not in any way undermine that dissertation’s qualities as a piece of research. All research is, in some very real sense, flawed, because no line of inquiry – insofar as it is rational – can ever be the final word on a subject. Inquiry advances our state of knowledge by enabling us to ask better questions. And herein lies the objection of the liars, cowards, bullies, and hypocrites: they don’t want better questions, because they refuse to permit any questions at all. Continue reading →

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