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degringolade
Republic of China (1912–1949) / Lin Fengmian/ Seated Lady
Today’s post was written yesterday while I was waiting for the second round of laundry to come out of the dryer. It has kind of an odd genesis, because Sunday morning chores are a great time to think while still keeping occupied. So this post has two fathers Willy and Ugo (Damn those Europeans and making me think!!!)
The first bit of background is from an NYT article about Wilhelm Reich that was written back in 2011 (BTW...fuck the NYT and their sneering, self-important posturing and oh-so-subtle character assasinations, what is really sad is that they now seem to even lack subtlety.. On top of that, they want to charge you to read articles from nine years ago..so much for the “newspaper of record”)
"He was a nineteenth-century scientist; he wasn't a twentieth-century scientist. He didn't practice science the way scientists do today. He was a nineteenth-century mind who came crashing into twentieth-century America. And boom!"
The second was over at Ugo’s new place (Ugo, I still say you should have moved to a small-time provider. Google is going to do the same for you on your new blog as you were afraid of them doing on your old blog). Now, for some of you who choose read this piece of Ugo’s mind, the title itself will drive you into incandescent rage. But Ugo hits on what I have been trying to say for a long time. Just because someone disagrees with you, for the most part, what you see is a disagreement, not an embodiment of evil.
The two go hand in hand. You might not like the idea, those of you who have spent your life in the pursuit of the rational and scientific. Because folks tend to use science as the same kind of club as the folks in religion use their faith. I can see no difference. Sorry if you get offended, but there it sits.
Most human endeavors are not amenable to the tools of science. They can be studied, but they aren’t really available to things like positive and negative controls and reproducibility. We are a creature of judgement though. We neatly categorize things into good and bad and once we make that decision, we choose to dehumanize those whose judgement has been found wanting.
We are in a strange place, where we have been taught that the fulfillment of our desires is the main goal of life and that others should only think good thoughts about us. We live in a world of make-believe equality and all of these things taken together require that we lash out at those whose views from their outsider perspective seem to oppose ours.
We are in a strange place here in America. I think that how we treated a German Psychiatrist in the 1940’s might offer us a view as to who we have become. From a quick browsing of Doktor Reich’s corpus of work. I think that, aside from his still unproven theories, he made a great deal of sense on a philosophical level.
But views outside of the tainted flavor of science being currently practiced are not welcome. It appears that they weren’t then either. What we have is an attempt to rigidly define orthodoxy and a concurrent effort to silence heretics. I can’t imagine Democracy surviving if either of these become fact.
JUST SHUT UP AND GET IN THE ORGON ACCUMULATOR
Date: 2021-02-22 08:06 pm (UTC)Nobody should suppose that behavioral science is superior to … anything actually.
The idea that science can explain behavior presupposes there is a systematic approach to understanding behavior – that behavior is systematic.
There is a big difference between the correct idea that behavior can be systematic, and the wrong idea that it must be.
The way to outsmart a theoretical calculation involving operant conditioning or any science-based theory of learning, is to calculate the answer, and then do something other than the answer.
What good is a science, if the prediction the science provides about an entity, depends on whether the entity understands the science?
The answer is that the science can be used to outsmart and confuse scientists who believe that behavior is systematic.
Science can predict what will happen when a rock is dropped from a height of 100 feet.
Science cannot predict as precisely what will happen when a person is dropped from a height of 100 feet.
Likewise, science cannot predict a behavior if the behavior might depend on what science will predict. Caution: Do not try to imagine this scenario using gummy bears.
A science of behavior is like an infinite stack of nested boxes where the subject can always be the next smallest box to the behaviorist’s box. In other words, the science is useless, if the subject wants it to be.
This being the case, the science will have to always admit that the scientific answer might be wrong.
This being the case, the answer is not scientific.
This being the case, just shut up and get in the accumulator.