Amazing!

Lately I’ve noticed that New Scientist has departed from its normal purely political stance, spending much less time on fashionable shit like Climate and Die-Versity.

In this article they take a HUGE step in the right direction. For the first time in print, a big science magazine admits that science has ALWAYS depended on the whims of politicians.

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It is easy to slide from there into garment rending about how my country is turning into the kind of place where the authorities might execute the next Galileo. Or maybe we are going to embrace a 21st-century version of Lysenkoism**, a pseudoscientific ideology that supplanted genetics in the Soviet Union. I suppose both of those outcomes are possible, but before we get into doomer vibes, let’s consider the evidence.

What the situation in the US reveals is that science is, and always has been, fuelled by politics and economics. I don’t mean this in a deprecating way; it is purely descriptive. In order for people to become scientists, they need institutional support, which is political, and they need resources, which are economic. For a few decades in the 20th century, there was strong alignment between US science, government and industry. In the wake of the second world war, our leaders cast the scientific project as downright patriotic: it made the US military strong and our people healthy. Plus, there were economic advantages to funding research in areas like pharmaceuticals, chemistry, agriculture and microprocessors.

When politics and science align, it is easy to pretend that science is apolitical. But when they diverge, scientists quickly discover what it is like to lead a life of precarity, just as artists do.

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When the dominant politicians agree with the required academic view, it doesn’t feel political. Goldfish in water. But when the water takes on the wrong flavor, you start to notice it. The dependence is perfectly well known inside academia, and most people joke about it. They rarely allow the truth to escape into their outside propaganda. Why? Same reason. When the powerful people share your tastes, you want to please them.

The article is not only unprecedented, it’s SCIENTIFIC. The author is following Carver.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here.

About you = academia. Things that are here = total craven dependence on political favors.

Implicit in Carver: DON’T look inside your mind. DON’T waste time on imaginary nonsensical theories, whether those theories are Quantum, Dark Matter, Democracy or Die-Versity.

Unfortunately the author doesn’t seem to propose a good answer. She advises science to follow the humanities. Well, the humanities are failing, and they deserve to fail. They haven’t offered ANYTHING remotely useful in many decades.

Canada shows us the better path, which is unsurprisingly ALSO the Carver path and the FDR path. Instead of depending on US Deepstate, SERVE YOUR OWN PEOPLE. Some parts of science never stopped serving real people. Industry still supports a fair amount of research, especially in petroleum and agriculture. Those areas are STRICTLY VERBOTEN by Goddess Gaia, who wants all real industry to move to China.

Fuck Gaia. Aim research at advancing our own manufacturing and mining and farming, not Deepstate’s war and “public health” torture and surveillance. Instead of yet another purposeless Moon Shot, how about a Steel Shot or a Textiles Shot or an Appliance Shot? Restore the industries that employed and paid REAL PEOPLE before Deepstate and Wall Street conspired to destroy them.

Not coincidentally, this approach was best stated by Carver’s employer Booker T.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DEFEAT TRUMP, PROVIDE A GODDAMN ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP.

Start improving the lives of REAL Americans, not enriching spies and bankers and tech psychpaths.

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** Fussy footnote: Both “sides” use Lysenko as an insult, but the plain SCIENTIFIC fact is that Lysenko was right. Soviet science was following the correct line, probably taking it too far, while we were stubbornly refusing to recognize epigenes. By our Enlightenment lunacy, evolution must be purely random, depending solely on cosmic rays from Dark Matter randomly striking a gene and Quantumizing it. Genes couldn’t serve a purpose, couldn’t be adjusted by negative feedback. Purpose and feedback forcibly imply a Designer, which is wildly unthinkable to the Enlightenment.