Chapter XXIII: The Scientific Ethic | The Philosophy Of Science by Steven Gussman [1st Edition]

        “But is groupthink the best way to create really new science?  Risking heresy, I hereby dissent.  I

        believe the creative process usually unfolds in a very different way.  It arises and for a while

        germinates in a solitary brain.  It commences as an idea and, equally important, the ambition of a

        single person who is prepared and strongly motivated to make discoveries in one domain of

        science or another.  The successful innovator is favored by a fortunate combination of talent and

        circumstance, and is socially conditioned by family, friends, teachers, and mentors and by stories

        of great scientists and their discoveries.  He (or she) is sometimes driven, I will dare to suggest, by

        a passive-aggressive nature, and sometimes an anger against some part of society or problem in the

        world.  There is also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team sports and social

        events.  He dislikes authority, or at least being told what to do.  He is not a leader in high school or

        college, nor is he likely to be pledged by social clubs.  From an early age he is a dreamer, not a

        doer. His attention wanders easily.  He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker.  He is prone to fantasize.

         He is not inclined to focus.  He will not be voted by his classmates most likely to succeed.

         When prepared by education to conduct research, the most innovative scientists of my

         experience do so eagerly and with no prompting.  They prefer to take first steps alone.  They seek

        a problem to be solved, an important phenomenon previously overlooked, a cause-and-effect

        connection never imagined.  An opportunity to be the first is their smell of blood.”

        – E. O. WilsonI


        “If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking can undo it... A similar tendency to shoot the

        messenger is displayed by other critics who have objected to what they see as the disagreeable

        social, political or economic implications of The Selfish Gene... the late John Maynard Smith...

        replied characteristically in a letter to New Scientist: 'What should we have done, fiddled the

        equations?'”
        – Richard DawkinsII

        “Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
        – Vincent van GoghIII


        The scientific ethic is a term I'm borrowing from E. O. Wilson, it is a chapter name in his great book, Letters To A Young Scientist.IV  There are two facets of the scientific ethic: the first are the innate or otherwise prerequisite personality traits, or the personality profile that is required to do good science; and the second are the normative ethics that one has to learn, cultivate, and intentionally try to embody so that one may embody the philosophy of science in their work and life.  This bares on the difference between a work-a-day “scientist” and a true discoverer (or as mathematician Eric Weinstein would say: expertise versus genius).V  The most impressive scientists are the paradigm-shifting geniuses—and they have a very different character than your normal biology student, or even researcher.  The fact is that tons of resources have been spent on lowering standards (grade inflation and the mismatch hypothesis).VI  I can say this from experience—I got grades in certain science classes that were way too high for what I had achieved (two examples being the “Computational Geometry” and “Biophysics” courses I took in college, neither of which I seem to have retained any actual knowledge from).  At the same time that we are failing to teach basic philosophy of science, the students in our ever-more specialized sub-fields (many of which have spurious foundations to begin with) are being admitted on lower standards, passed on lower standards (and fewer people feel comfortable criticizing all of this, because the super-specialty of the fields is supposed to make an evolutionary biologist, for example, feel too much of a lay-person to comment on the work of cultural anthropologists).  The continual shift from a well-rounded liberal education towards super-specialty has ironically not made everyone experts, it has made everyone a lay-person, outside of a very narrow area of knowledge that they are comfortable in.  Unfortunately, many academics are biased and simply following their emotions, later fooling themselves by using what look like the tools of science to confabulate evidence to verify what they already believed.VII  It is quite clear that we have produced too many elites,VIII and that many of them are engaged in kayfabe (essentially pretending to be doing what their job description entails).IX  Unlike some, I do not see this as evidence that 'scientists are no better at following the scientific method than anyone else' (which is absurd by definition), but that we have conferred scientific credentials to people who never understood (let alone embodied) the scientific ethic, never learned the proper scientific method to follow, and then we have allowed those very researchers to perform “research” excusing their bad behavior (and we focused on credentialism over competence in the first place).

        The scientific method has been hard won over time by people who embodied the scientific ethic, and it must be enacted and preserved by men and women of such character, today.  A great example from our own time is evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers.  Trivers was politically far-left-leaning, particularly in his youth: indeed, he was one of very few white members of Black Panthers.X  Yet his evolutionary theories, which do much leg-work bringing psychology and sociology down to hard sciences (Trivers was instrumental in the development of the theories of reciprocal altruism and parental investment, just to name a couple of his larger contributions).XI  Ironically, many find such theories “conservative” (in the political sense), even accusing such fields of political bias in a rather stunning display of projection (the psychological phenomenon when one accuses others of the very thing they are guilty of).XII  In fact, evolutionary theory does at least put some slightly conservative views on natural footing (which is not to be confused with moral footing), such as views about the importance of family over strangers, and often unsurprising evolved sex differences in morphology and behavior.XIII  This should not be terribly surprising because animals tend to be far more “conservative” than contemporary humans, and they are our basis.XIV  The two obvious and related questions are: why would a Black Panther be confabulating theories to strengthen conservative political arguments?; and conversely: why wouldn't a Black Panther cook up a theory which directly asserted his every left-wing political bias?  The obvious explanation is that Trivers embodies the scientific ethic and enacted a dispassionate, objective scientific research program, quite aside from his politics.  His hypotheses were informed and confirmed by the logical implications of previous theoretical work, and empirical evidence.  Whether Trivers likes it or not, is irrelevant, and he knows that.  Real scientists, rather than naval gazers, are rare, and such people posses a very particular ethic and are as a result capable of discovering deep truth.  I repeat again the rarity of the extreme side of this: one does not tend to live during the time of a particularly genius person—a Newton or an Einstein (who were themselves separated by some two centuries).

        I suspect that those who best embody the scientific ethic have an innate propensity towards the scientific method.  There is simply something deep in Einstein that predisposes him to convening with the cosmos.XV  There is something that Einstein gets ahead of time, and then cultivates; he was passionately dispassionate.XVI  In this state, one's passions, their emotional motivators, are in favor of truth-seeking.  Sagan was great at communicating the romantic feelings associated with this state, but this is not to be confused with reason-by-emotion; it is the people for whom their heart swells with excitement and passion at the epistemology who are predisposed to the scientific ethic.XVII  The truth is, to be good at anything, one has to be passionate about it—and I am frankly not convinced that everyone has the capacity for true passion, let alone finds their great tradition.XVIII  I hate to say it, but I have simply met too many vacuous people in the world who cannot be brought to talk about something serious as though they genuinely care about it—and anyway, the widespread fitness such things would confer is not obvious, from an evolutionary standpoint.  My advice to people is to find their great tradition—that which one would be able to die happy failing at; this is the life well-spent.

        One will meet a lot of people I call, “pop culture queens,” who are obsessed with consuming one or another facet of popular entertainment; be it rap music or Marvel movies.  I say this as an avid player of video games.  Such people have seen all of the shows, read all of the online forums (although I would hazard a guess that they are generally unlikely to have contributed much to them), and know all of the trivia.  Yet they're not really passionate about any given subject—not interested in the implications, or even particularly the aesthetics, at play; they're largely enjoying their obsession at base level.  There is, by the way, nothing wrong with rap music, Marvel movies, or popular culture generally—it is the consumer mindset that I could never relate to: such people do not eye such artifacts so as to learn anything about the craft of music-making or film-making.  They do not aspire to make anything, themselves.  Such people really appear to simply enjoy these works as an audience member; such people are simply content to go to work, come home, enjoy their free time, and repeat.  It makes evolutionary sense; we should expect most people to generally serve their fitness by producing and providing for a family, and for this to be a generally enjoyable and fulfilling endeavor.  Not only is there nothing wrong with this, it is a noble goal for an individual, and the backbone of a society.  The issue today comes from the fact that we want to make everyone feel like they're a brilliant leader, treating everyone as intellectually ahead of their time (despite the fact that the vast majority of people must, by definition, lack the requisite intelligence and curiosity attendant to such superlatives).  Treating everyone as though they belong in (let alone should be awarded a degree from) university makes about as much sense as treating everyone as if they belong on an Olympian running team—which everyone would immediately find absurd.  Lying to the general populace that they are all going to discover, invent, or otherwise contribute to knowledge (and going as far as to pretend they have when they have not) only helps such people materially, but it harms them and society via delusion in the long run, as we will come into dissonant contact with reality, sooner or later.XIX  I am a big believer in public liberal education for the masses, thereby democratizing access to knowledge; but I have no delusions about the differential outcomes of student performance—here, unfettered meritocracy must reign.XX  Just as empirical evidence must be respected in validating or falsifying a hypothesis' predictions, a scientist must be empirically tested on whether or not they are following the scientific method, and further, whether their application of it actually leads to discovery or not!  In the end, it is simple: a musician, a painter, a scientist, must be passionately obsessed with what they do, or they are hardly doing it at all.XXI

        A true scientist must be passionate about objectively understanding the world; one must be horrified that one's understanding of the world might be in error for too long, horrified by the idea that one might be walking around in a delusion, that one might die before it is later found that the world you lived in and thought you understood is false.  One must be disgusted by that prospect such that one will try to use every scientific tool at one's disposal to form an inference to the best explanation, an accurate model of the world.  It is okay and indeed part of the process to be at least partially in error, but one must have done their due diligence to justify their beliefs in their time (and to admit when they are wrong—far worse to continue to believe in error than the nobility of admission).  As long as one continues this process of due diligence, one must (in keeping with the provisional nature of knowledge) understand the fallible nature of man, and that men are of their time, and that there will be things that one believes that will in fact turn out not to have been true.  But this may only be accepted after one does their utmost to prevent and minimize it.  A related trait of importance is curiosity; one has to actually be interested in understanding the world for its own sake—here, again, any ulterior motives are a hazard to the scientific project (even though they may never be everywhere fully weeded out).  Feynman called this experience, “the pleasure of finding things out,” whereas E. O. Wilson called it “the Ionian Enchantment.”XXII  Similar to how adrenaline junkies get their fix performing extreme athletic stunts, the true scientist is in pursuit of his own kind of fix.  There may be many intelligent people capable of dispassionate analysis, but whom are just not that interested.  Such people make use of their skills to getting along with their life (and they will do quite well!); they are content to succeed living in Dawkins', “middle world,” the human-scale and human-concerned world we evolved to live in, the world of family and friends and work and so forth (in fact, capable people may be no less likely to be content in this work-a-day world, because they are so competent at navigating it).XXIII  Many of these people would never imagine that they could or would make historic discoveries (as they understand the vast improbability of such a thing), and to continue the sporting analogy, such people may enjoy academia the way most of us enjoy playing a pickup game of football at a family party—that is, with no aspirations of joining the NFL.  And it is useful to have a realistic view of what one's relationship to their pursuits in the world is.  But no one who ever succeeded did so without believing in themselves, and trying with great difficulty to achieve.  Get in touch with yourself and your abilities; be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses, your curiosities and ignorance, and then cultivate a working knowledge of any topic you are interested, and competent in.  If you enjoy this enough that you could die happy failing, then one may try their hand at contribution (and regardless of the attitudes of the establishment, negative and null results are also contributions—typically, they pay lip-service to its importance ).

        Penultimately, the most obvious ingredient of the scientist is intelligence (estimated by psychologists with IQ tests).  Many pretend that IQ tests are nonsense: that they simply measure one's “test-taking ability,”XXIV or are bigoted or otherwise biased in their results in the present day,XXV that such tests miss the importance of so-called “emotional intelligence” (or “EQ”),XXVI or otherwise that such a single measure misses the “multiple intelligences” allegedly independent from one another.XXVII  As it turns out: positive correlations between IQ scores and multiple life-outcomes are among the most replicated findings in psychology;XXVIII IQ tests have been updated and refined so as to remove measurement of variables other than intelligence;XXIX “emotional intelligence” does not appear to be a new measure but simply a certain configuration of the big five personality traits plus IQ, whose correlations with life-outcomes are known;XXX and while the IQ test is a composite of correlated tests of mathematical and language measures, so-called “multiple intelligences” do not appear to be independent (i.e. uncorrelated) to the point of falsifying the general-intelligence IQ value.XXXI  Yet it certainly is true that, for all its importance as raw-processing power, IQ is not enough to produce a great thinker all on its own.  Finally, one needs a proper education, that is, one needs to have been taught the right epistemology and provisional ontology, otherwise it is very easy to get started down a bad path.  Once one has gone far down some partisan path, they may dig their heels in, becoming entrenched in some group-ish conceits.  One issue on this front is that our teachers of younger children don't tend to know all that much more about the topics they're teaching than their students, and anyway, they certainly aren't passionate about all of them (often, none of them).  On the bright side, I suspect that great scientists will tend to be autodidacts, to teach themselves and find their way, nonetheless.XXXII  We are in the golden age of the availability of information, true and false; much can be found on the internet (whether at home or in a library).XXXIII  Whether or not it is curated (and sometimes one receives an edge by having studied different sources than their competition)XXXIV one can go find any book, movie, documentary, that one wants and learn from it (positively or negatively).

        And so this new and popular idea among “scientists” that individual scientists don't and can't exist is an absurd admission of their own low standards and the atrophy of our institutions.  Just as one may focus their efforts on becoming an austere religious monk, so one may focus their efforts on embodying the scientific ethic, attempting to weed out and counteract their own biases before seeking the peer-reviewed corrections of their friends and foes.  I can say from experience that I have certainly had the occasion to slow down and recognize a wrongful bias of my own, stopping it before its consequences manifested.  The research of Kahan turned the tides in this direction, recognizing that measures such as educational attainment or IQ did not alone necessarily correlate with objectivity (unsurprisingly, particularly given lowering standards and over-production of elites) in the absence of curiosity; if one truly values truth-seeking, they can and will truth-seek.XXXV  I again mention E. Weinstein's difference between “expertise” (intelligent people who follow the beaten path of the elite) and “genius” (those who make fundamentally new discoveries, blazing a new trail for later excellent people to follow).XXXVI  Those who make great discoveries are often lampooned by the academic establishment before they are celebrated.XXXVII  To, “experts,” “contrarian,” is the worst insult that could be leveled; to, “geniuses,” “contrarian,” properly construed, may be the greatest of compliments.  If by, “contrarian,” we mean someone playing hard at devil's advocate, then I agree that it is a bad thing to always take the opposite position of the mainstream, or of whoever you happen to be talking to—this is the mark of someone merely obsessed with, “looking smart,” “being right,” and, “winning” conversations as though they are all debates.  What I mean by, “contrarian,” is someone willing to go off the beaten path and take an alternative position even if it is unpopular, not for the sake of it, but because one generally believes there is value in considering this alternative viewpoint—we must realize that this is how every great discovery begins.XXXVIII  On top of that, one may appear to be more contrarian than they are in sum because someone who is trying to contribute will not waste time regurgitating that which everyone agrees on (even if he also agrees), instead opting to broadcast those ideas which are original and may bear fruitful areas of original research.XXXIX  The only reason to repeat what is already widely agreed upon is to educate someone new (good) or to signal group-membership to a tribe (bad).  How useful would a society of physicists be if all they did was pledge their allegiance to the inverse square law all day long, just to be sure they're all perfectly on the exact same page on largely closed cases?

        Along these lines, I believe the true scientist to be anti-elitist and especially anti-credentialist.XXXX  While expertise, properly understood, is real, authority is not.  To my horror, upon mentioning deGrasse Tyson to a peer in college (a physics major, whereas I was minoring in physics), she said that she did not like Tyson because he teaches the unwashed masses about science.  She proceeded to literally tell me that she was a self-described “elitist” who was only interested in physics because she wanted to feel superior when walking into a classroom with complicated equations on the board, to be the only one who could understand what it said, and to enjoy sitting in her sense of greater worth than her fellow man.  She thought she was insulting me when she called me, in front of others, “little Carl Sagan”.  She was unimpressive outside of a moderate level of mathematical capability; someone with such an ethic will not tend to discover anything, if they even try, as their motivations are deeply misplaced.  Such people, not uncommon among high-IQ college majors, are playing a different game and merely calling it, “science.”  It has often been remarked through the ages that the best way to learn is to teach; even before I had read of this bit of wisdom, I discovered it for myself in high school.  I fell in love with computer programming, with the tight mechanical philosophy of it all—teaching as much to university students, as explaining it to my sister as a teenager, has always revealed new angles and deeper insight on the fly—one finds themselves teaching something they've only just learned in that moment.  So there is a selfish reason to teach as well, though I do believe the ethic of passing on these tools and this knowledge is an ethical good in and of itself.  One who is truly secure would not fear passing these gifts on.  I have no problem with the use of titles and honorifics (in fact, I prefer to), but it is telling that Sagan walked the talk as his books tend to have the byline, “Carl Sagan,” rather than, “Dr. Carl Sagan.”
        Of paramount importance in the scientific ethic are
intellectual honesty and epistemological humility.XXXXI  As B. Weinstein says, “bad faith changes everything.”XXXXII  The fundamental pre-requisite for any truth-seeking discussion is honesty; honesty allows each person to take what their interlocutor says more-or-less at face value, without having to worry that they are lying to serve some ulterior motive.  It is okay to be wrong in a discussion (indeed, someone is likely to be), but only so long as you are actually in error and not being dishonest about your beliefs for one reason or another.  Further, when you know significantly less than your interlocutor about a topic, it's not that you should defer to them, it's just that, as ever, both sides should be openly admitting what they don't know, and transparent about when and why they are leaning on heuristics.XXXXIII

        Some of the most common pitfalls thinkers may fall into are the all-too-human bad habit of committing epistemological fallacies when in debate or discussion.  Perhaps the most common (and well-known) is the straw-man, in which one sets up a bastardized and more easily demolished version of their opponent's argument so that they may more easily dismantle it (which may be done intentionally or unintentionally).  One must commit due diligence and provide evidence for their understanding of their opponent's position and beat them on those terms.  A nice antidote is to practice what Harris calls steel-manning an opponent's argument: this is the placing of the opposing argument the best you can, as if you are an advocate yourself, 'in such a way that your opponent would sign off on it,' before attempting to falsify the strongest version of the position.XXXXIV  Another common fallacy is that of ad-hominem, or the use of unsubstantial insults in place of a real counter-argument.  This may range from cursing one's opponent off to mentioning some immutable, stigmatized characteristic of their identity which has nothing to do with the argument at hand.  Sometimes, it is necessary to bring one's ethic on display (if not their character), but it must be pertinent and evidenced.  Other times, ridicule is a useful tool against silly ideas widely held with no (or against all available) evidence, to demonstrate that something is indeed ridiculous.XXXXV  But such tactics must be judicious and are best left as a last-resort, as it is all-too-easy to slip into the ad-hominem fallacy.  There are many other fallacies to be avoided which lie outside of the scope of this chapter.

        I will close by advising this: be passionately dispassionate; be curious; be intelligent; and go discover something about the world, or die trying.  But before you begin down the unbeaten path, it is key that you are sure that you will be happy with the idea you may never achieve any particular discovery or invention, that you will have lived a fulfilling life knowing and enjoying that you tried, and learning all that you can along the way.  If a life where you end up falsifying every idea you ever had sounds just fine to you, if the love of science is enough, take the risk.  Choose the scientific journey.


Footnotes:

0. The Philosophy Of Science table of contents can be found, here (footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2022/04/table-of-contents-philosophy-of-science.html).

I. See Letters To A Young Scientist by E. O. Wilson (pp. 92-93).

II. See the “Introduction To The 30th Anniversary Edition” in The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (pp. xv-xvi).

IV. I think “the scientific ethic” ought to become a commonly used term for an overlooked topic, see the “The Scientific Ethic” chapter in Letters To A Young Scientist (pp. 235-240).

V. See "Excellence" by E. Weinstein (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23879) in What Should We Be Worried About? edited by Brockman.

VI. Grade inflation is as it sounds, the tendency for lower quality work to earn higher quality marks over the years, see “Grade Inlfation” (Wikipedia) (retrieved 11/18/2022) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation) which further cites “Is It Grade Inflation, Or Are Students Just Smarter?” by Karen W. Arenson (The New York Times) (2004) (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/weekinreview/is-it-grade-inflation-or-are-students-just-smarter.html) (though I haven't read these articles). Economist Thomas Sowell's mismatch hypothesis is the idea that the “beneficiaries” of affirmative action are actually hurt by, for example, being placed at the bottom of an Ivy League class rather than the top of some lesser university class that they are better suited to, for example, by leading to higher rates of dropping out of sciences, or school altogether, see “Thomas Sowell - MISMATCH THEORY Explains Affirmative Action's Failure” uploaded by YouTube user Liberty Library Clips (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-Epi5no_g). I am here hypothesizing that the general lowering of standards now means even those who are not the beneficiaries of affirmative action per se are being placed in environments above their abilities (there are simply too many people in college; there is no way this proportion of the population is academically impressive).

VII. This is the kernel of truth to the idea Haidt popularizes—but he is wrong that we cannot expect our experts not to engage in this behavior; we are just evidently conferring “expert” credentials to people who did not earn it. For examples galore, see The Blank Slate by Pinker and Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (Pitchstone Publishing) (2020).

VIII. Clyodynamicist Peter Turchin argues that there are negative consequences to the overproduction of elites, see for example his October 22nd, 2021 tweet (and surrounding thread): https://twitter.com/Peter_Turchin/status/1451682685139787783?s=20&t=8nER3yU1YcL0-cv3XibrzA which further cites “Bret Stephens: New York's Superstar Progressive Isn't AOC” by Bret Stephens (Post Gazette) (2021) (https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2021/09/24/Bret-Stephens-New-York-s-superstar-progressive-isn-t-AOC/stories/202109240004), which in turn appears to be based on “New York’s Superstar Progressive Isn’t A.O.C.” by Bret Stephens (The New York Times) (2021) (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/opinion/Ritchie-Torres-AOC.html) (though I have not read this article aside from that excerpted in Turchin's tweet).

IX. See “Kayfabe” by Eric R. Weinstein (Edge) (2011) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783) from This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking edited by John Brockman (Harper Perennial) (2011) (pp. 321-324) (though I have read this particular essay, I have not yet read this collection of essays).

X. See The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp. 111, 301).

XI. See The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp. 233-234, 241-268, 271, 285, 297, 320, 335, 357, 458) which further cites “Human Universals” by Donald E. Brown (Temple University Press) (1991) (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-98084-000) (though I haven't yet read this full article); and The Ape That Understood The Universe by Stewart-Williams (pp. 68-74, 109-115, 161-172, 193-202, 209). For more on reciprocal altruism and parental investment, look forward to the “Psychology”, “Economics”, and “Sociology” chapters in the “Ontology” volume.

XII. See “Projection: Pyshcology” by Nancy McWilliams (Encyclopedia Britannica) (2019 / 2022) (https://www.britannica.com/science/projection-psychology) (though I have only read the opening paragraph of this article) and The Blank Slate by Pinker (at least pp. 283-305).

XIII. As expected when an empirical science takes aim at an ideologically split philosophical battle, evolutionary psychology sometimes happens to lend credence to right-wing beliefs, other times to left-wing beliefs, see The Blank Slate (pp. 283-305).

XIV. When I call animals “conservative” here, I mean to say that while many left-wing political intellectuals consider traits such as nepotism, trade-economics, territoriality, and even sex differences to be the products of culture caused by historical accident, they are clearly traits shared across much of the animal kingdom and explained by evolutionary theory. When these traits do differ, and animals seem less “conservative”, evolutionary theory too must explain these differences. One example are the eusocial insects such as ants, which appear to (at least within the same colony) treat each other with perfect altruism, expecting nothing in return. Putting aside that such colonies exist as pure caste systems (read: strict hierarchies) in which workers serve a queen, it turns out that such colonies also consist of clones (or otherwise especially close relatives); sterile workers help the queen reproduce (without themselves reproducing) for a reason similar to that followed by the cells in the human hand helping the human genitals and gametes reproduce: they are really part of the same super-organism, serving a shared genetic interest (the works cited provide a more thoroughly accurate explanation of the details), see Letters To A Young Scientist by E. O. Wilson (pp. 132); The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (223-235, 392-393); The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp​. 223-234, 392-393, 413-421); The Ape That Understood The Universe by Stewart-Williams (pp. 24-27, 176-177, 185, 212); and The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach Of The Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press) (1982 / 1999) (pp. 108-120, 214, 228-229, 311-317). At the same time, while we are closely related to the “conservative” chimpanzee, we are about equally related to the “liberal” bonobo (though of course much of their behavior is far from “progressive”), see for example Different: Gender Through The Eyes Of A Primatologist by Frans de Wall (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.) (2022) (at least pp. 10) (though I have only read half of this book, and cannot recommend it as a politically-neutral science book) and this February 23rd, 2019 tweet by Heying (@HeatherEHeying), in response to science writer Bo Winegard: https://twitter.com/HeatherEHeying/status/1099400274337095680?s=20&t=AfK-9RzMV69Y3-Fhrz4ySA.

XV. deGrasse Tyson is famous for saying ,“commune with the cosmos,” see for example his Februrary 10th, 2019 tweet: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1094799050723987456?s=20&t=EbP-Qb8vIoceUK2GAaWZwg.

XVI. In fact, “passionately dispassionate,” is the tagline of my blog, The Footnote Physicist (2020 – present) (https://footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/).

XVII. See “Foreword” by Ann Druyan (Ballantine Books) (2013) in Cosmos by Sagan (pp. xviii) and The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 25).

XVIII. I borrow (and generalize) this term, “great tradition,” from philosopher Roger Scruton, see Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition by Roger Scruton (All Points Books) (2018) (though I have not yet read this work).

XIX. See (and look forward to) The Sophistructure by Gussman and, for example, B. Weinstein's August 6th, 2020 tweet: https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1291417496768016385?s=20&t=vPnB71G_EO4VrWMmyjdkaA. My high school physics teacher, Mr. Jeff Thompson, would tell us that we should not have been indiscriminately given self-esteem because I we needed to earn it through competence. I am reminded of the great Mr. Show sketch, “Imminent Death Syndrome (IDS),” see “Mr Show - Nil's Guitar School/Imminent Death Syndrome” by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (uploaded to YouTube by user F33bs) (HBO) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDaFMZfIsV4).

XX. See for example The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (at least pp. 305) (on the objective nature of scientific answers).

XXI. Aristotle said, “men become builders by building,” see the goodreads entry for his larger quotation: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1206862-again-of-all-the-things-that-come-to-us-by; and The Dream Of Reason by Gottlieb (at least pp. 160, 274-278).

XXII. See “In Defense Of Philosophy (Of Science) by Gussman (https://footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2021/05/in-defense-of-philosophy-of-science.html#FN26A) which further cites “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures Of A Curious Character by Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.) (1985 / 2018) (though I cannot seem to locate the specific examples) and Consilience by E. O. Wilson (pp. 4) (who further cites, “physicist and historian Gerald Horton,” though I am not familiar with this work). See also The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works Of Richard P. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman, edited by Jeffrey Robbins (Perseus Publishing / Basic Books) (1999) (this is an example of the use of the term, though I have not yet read this collection). See also Our Mathematical Universe by Tegmark (pp. 202).

XXIII. See “Why The Universe Seems So Strange | Richard Dawkins” by Dawkins (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APOxsp1VFw) (especially 5:04 – 18:56).

XXIV. People making this erroneous claim is a hobby-horse of psychologist Stuart Ritchie's (@StuartJRitchie), see for example his April 5th, 2019 tweet, in which he criticizes entrepreneur and politician Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang): https://twitter.com/StuartJRitchie/status/1114329060287569920?s=20&t=WPNtG1_90AUfhIoSzbElVA.

XXV. See “A Tale of Two Bell Curves” by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard (Quillette) (2017) (https://quillette.com/2017/03/27/a-tale-of-two-bell-curves/) and “The Mismeasurements of Stephen Jay Gould” by Warne (https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-stephen-jay-gould/); Our Minds, Our Selves by Oatley (pp. 59-61); and The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp. 107, 146).

XXVI. See “The Illusory Theory Of Multiple Intelligences: Gardner's Theory Of Multiple Intelligences Has Never Been Validated” by Scott A. McGreal (2013) (Psychology Today) (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-multiple-intelligences?amp) which further cites “Why Emotional Intelligence Is An Invalid Concept” by Edwin A. Locke (Journal Of Organizational Behavior) (2005) (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4093837); “Emotional Intelligence: Not Much More Than g And Personality” by Melanie J. Schulte et al. (Personality And Individual Differences) (2004) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886903004422?via%3Dihub); “Inadequate Evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence Theories” by Lynn Waterhouse (Educational Psychologist) (2010) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_5); and “Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review” by Lynn Waterhouse (Educational Psychologist) (2006) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_1) (though I have not read these source papers).

XXVII. See “The Illusory Theory Of Multiple Intelligences” by McGreal (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-multiple-intelligences?amp) which further cites What's Your IQ?: Self-Scoring Tests For Intelligence, Personality, And Skills by Nathan Haselbauer (Barnes & Noble) (2005); “The Validity of a New, Self-report Measure of Multiple Intelligence” by Adrian Furnham (Current Psychology) (2009) (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-009-9064-z); “Beyond g: Putting Multiple Intelligences Theory To The Test” by Beth A. Visser et al. (Intelligence) (2006) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289606000201?via%3Dihub); “g And The Measurement Of Multiple Intelligences: A response To Gardner” by Beth A. Visser et al. (Intelligence) (2006) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028960600050X?via%3Dihub); “Inadequate Evidence For Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, And Emotional Intelligence Theories” by Waterhouse (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_5); and “Multiple Intelligences, The Mozart Effect, And Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review” by Waterhouse (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_1) (though I have not read these source works).

XXVIII. See “The Illusory Theory Of Multiple Intelligences” by McGreal (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-multiple-intelligences?amp) which further cites “g And The Measurement Of Multiple Intelligences: A Response To Gardner” by Beth A. Visser et al. (Intelligence) (2006) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028960600050X?via%3Dihub) (though I have not read this paper); “A Tale of Two Bell Curves” by Winegard and Winegard (https://quillette.com/2017/03/27/a-tale-of-two-bell-curves/); “The Dangers Of Ignoring Cognitive Inequality” by Wael Taji (Quillette) (https://quillette.com/2018/08/25/the-dangers-of-ignoring-cognitive-inequality/); Our Minds, Our Selves by Oatley (pp. 62); and The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp. 106-107, 134-135, 302, 474) which further cites “Bell Curve Liberals” by Adrian Wooldridge (The New Republic) (1995) (https://newrepublic.com/article/119332/iq-excuse-egalitarianism-vs-meritocracy) (though I have not read this article). I knew Lehmann (@ClairLemon) to have argued that IQ research is the most well-replicated in psychology, such as at the following tweet: https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1160368248828788736 (though this can no longer be viewed, as she recently deleted her Twitter account).

XXIX. See “The Mismeasurements of Stephen Jay Gould” by Warne (https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-stephen-jay-gould/) and Our Minds, Our Selves by Oatley (pp. 61).

XXX. See “The Illusory Theory Of Multiple Intelligences: Gardner's Theory Of Multiple Intelligences Has Never Been Validated” by McGreal (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-multiple-intelligences?amp) which further cites “Why Emotional Intelligence Is An Invalid Concept” by Locke (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4093837); “Emotional Intelligence: Not Much More Than g And Personality” by Schulte et al. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886903004422?via%3Dihub); “Inadequate Evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence Theories” by Waterhouse (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_5); “Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review” by Waterhouse (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4104_1) (though I have not read these source papers); and Our Minds, Our Selves by Oatley (pp. 272).

XXXI. See “The Illusory Theory Of Multiple Intelligences” by McGreal (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-multiple-intelligences?amp) which further cites What's Your IQ? By Haselbauer; “The Validity of a New, Self-report Measure of Multiple Intelligence” by Furnham (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-009-9064-z); and “Beyond g: Putting Multiple Intelligences Theory To The Test” by Visser et al. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289606000201?via%3Dihub) (though I have not read these latter three works). For more on the topic of intelligence, look forward to the “Psychology” chapter in the “Ontology” volume. I am certainly not obsessed with IQ scores, and presently have little interest in knowing my own. I simply believe above-average intelligence is an important ingredient in science, and that IQ represents an actual correlate of this property.

XXXII. See Letters To A Young Scientist by E. O. Wilson (pp. 92-93).

XXXIII. Sagan was worried about a world based on science in which the populace was not educated in science, see The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 25-27). For why falsehoods enjoy a competitive advantage against the truth, see "The Virial Theorem" by Seth Lloyd (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2017 / 2018) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27222) in This Idea Is Brilliant edited by Brockman (pp. 16-17).

XXXIV. See Our Mathematical Universe by Tegmark (at least pp. 185).

XXXV. See “Why Smart People Are Vulnerable To Putting Tribe Before Truth” by Kahan (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-smart-people-are-vulnerable-to-putting-tribe-before-truth/).

XXXVI. See “Excellence” by E. Weinstein (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23879) from What Should We Be Worried About? edited by Brockman.

XXXVII. See “Bret And Heather 6th Live Stream: Death And Peer Review - DarkHorse Podcast” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc6nOphi0yE) (30:40 – 59:56, 1:35:30 – 1:39:35); “Bret And Heather 11th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Choose Your Own Black Mirror Episode” by B. Weinstein's and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYQJSobQgAc) (at least 57:49 – 1:02:52, 1:05:45 – 1:08:10); “Bret And Heather 81st DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Permission To Think” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoaKtBMk53Y) (15:31 – 19:54); “#84: Hey YouTube: Divide By Zero (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS80MjQwNzUucnNz/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC04NzMwNTYw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiY2uSX-Pn6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQcg) (somewhere between 40:38 – 1:23:45); and The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 296-298, 302-304).

XXXVIII. See “Bret And Heather 6th Live Stream: Death And Peer Review - DarkHorse Podcast” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc6nOphi0yE) (30:40 – 59:56, 1:35:30 – 1:39:35); “Bret And Heather 11th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Choose Your Own Black Mirror Episode” by B. Weinstein's and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYQJSobQgAc) (at least 57:49 – 1:02:52, 1:05:45 – 1:08:10); “Bret And Heather 81st DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Permission To Think” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoaKtBMk53Y) (15:31 – 19:54); “#84: Hey YouTube: Divide By Zero (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS80MjQwNzUucnNz/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC04NzMwNTYw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiY2uSX-Pn6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQcg) (somewhere between 40:38 – 1:23:45); and The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 296-298, 302-304). For venture Capitalist Peter Thiel's views on ,“contrarianism,” see “Peter Thiel On being Contrarian” uploaded by YouTube user Paul Therond (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqmk__eVe3E) (though I do not know the ultimate source of this clip).

XXXIX. See my August 26th, 2020 tweet, in response to original Xbox designer Jonathan “Seamus” Blackley's (@SeamusBlackley) charge that I am an intentional contrarian: https://twitter.com/schwinn3/status/1298489979711229952?s=20&t=n-ltH1ZHZ9QBTFgdHoKHeA.

XXXX. See “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman” by Feynman and Leighton (pp. 321) and AZ Quotes' four Feynman quotations about the topic of authority: https://www.azquotes.com/author/4774-Richard_P_Feynman/tag/authority.

XXXXI. For more on these chapters, see the “Intellectual Honesty” and “Dispassionate” chapters.

XXXXII. See the “Intellectual Honesty” chapter which further cites “Interview Excerpt: Bad Faith Changes Everything - Bret Weinstein” by D. Fuller and B. Weinstein (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ak2e8W9Hw) from “What Happened to the Intellectual Dark Web? Bret Weinstein” by D. Fuller and B. Weinstein (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WigprYZPaLc) (though I have not listened to this full podcast).

XXXXIV. This concept came to me by way of the Making Sense podcast, and I believe the quotation is a direct quote of Sam Harris', though I have no idea where to find it (and so I left it in single-quotes). Lukianoff and Haidt champion philosopher John Stuart Mill as the thinker most associated with the importance of understanding one's opponent, see The Coddling Of The American Mind by Lukianoff And Haidt (pp. 248). Mill said, “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that,” see the goodreads entry for this quotation: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66643-he-who-knows-only-his-own-side-of-the-case, which further cites “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill (John W. Parker And Son, West Strand) (1859) (though I have yet to read this work).

XXXXV. See the “Intellectual Honesty” chapter which further cites Dawkins' April 25th, 2015 tweet about the utility of ridicule: https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/591923321299705856?s=20&t=sEKIQ0ZhZ1sC1LKSDbKcGg and The Madness Of Crowds by Murray (pp. 240).

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  1. Change Log:
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