I’ll just come out and say it.
I’m sick of academic arrogance. Academic. Scientific. Intelligence mafia.
I don’t know why authority seems to be the foodstuffs of ego. But it sure seems like it is.
I am so tired of being talked down to — as a society member — by those who are supposedly smarter than me.
And it isn’t just the false dualism of ‘I’m smart and you’re not’. Or even that other people might know more about things than I do.
I TOTALLY GET THAT.
No, it’s an attitude. A TONE, if you will. A tone of voice.
And I certainly could be reading into this. I’ll admit this could be, at least in part, about my personal past trauma. I used to be an academic, after all.
I quit being a ‘practicing scientist’ for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that I don’t want to be around arrogant people. And I do believe the scientific community selects for arrogance.
It’s kind of how politics seems to select for assholes.
Surgery seems to select for Gods.
All that to say, I don’t like arrogant bullies who are so attached to their own beliefs that they place themselves higher than others and close their minds to alternatives.
And I say that knowing full well I may be doing that exact thing right now. I sincerely hope I am not.
This is critical because arrogance can bully people into believing. And that ain’t how science is supposed to work.
Science is not the truth. Science generates evidence.
Evidence creates belief.
Beliefs change.
Truth, like God, is absolute.
Absolutes are outside human understanding.
Truth, proof, God, perfection . . . . why bother with such things?
I believe we cannot know them, yet we believe we can. Why not admit we cannot? Why accept that we are limited?
We can get close! Our estimates and models can be very useful in understanding how things work.
But we must — with as much universality as possible — leave the door open for new knowledge. For change.
Because that is the only thing we can really know that approaches the truth.
Things change.
All that and more in this episode. Podcast and video formats below: