How Could Science be Different? Is a new path of science and reason/nurture possible with the existence of agenda-distorted causeways. Is using the scientific method to build new off-ramps and recognize the biases and dangers of past agendas enough before climate change destroys us and the new paths? And what system of government will make this possible?

a month later

I'll answer my own question, a real democracy is the system of government that could make independent thought in science possible but not the current authoritarian direction, nor the corporate forces that dominate our direction, favoring an authoritarian approach. Intolerance of diversity is toxic to the fundamentals of philosophy and must be stamped out. Hawking and Weinberg followed the logical positivism that early scientists established that set us in the right direction, fundamentals of philosophy that Aristotle brought early on.

James Hoover

Dear Apricot Capybara,

I finally found the time to read your essay and the picture you are drafting is indeed the "dark side" of what the "mistake minimiser" and my essay sketch. Quite intriguing that we are tackling similar issues but describe complementary aspects and differing viewpoints.
After reading, I was reminded of Durrenmatt's Novel "The Physicists". Maybe you know it. The moral of the story is the same as your essay: science is a danger to humans and anything even discovered in the best intentions can be misused. Has it always been that bad or is it just a newer development when population densities raise to a certain level that there is no room for individuals to achieve their goals without interfering with someone else's objectives?!
And after all, as far as I know, we live in the least belligerent world we have had over history despite all wars going on at the moment. Hence, it seems that there is an evolution towards a more tolerant humanity. 🙂

But I definitely agree that short-term goals often attached to direct personal gains prevail when it comes to funding options and that this is not the best path for an efficient and encompassing progress. The UAP/UFO debate is an excellent example in that context, as people often reject it on the basis that nothing useful has come out of these investigations for us over all these decades. While the search for an UFO-needle in the cosmic haystack may still take a lot of time and the analysis of many false alarms, in my view, we learn a lot about anomalous phenomena in our atmosphere, the more detailed structure of our own planet and technological devices. Actually, the idea of navigating a vessel with variable charge on its surface in earth's electric field is not too far off our state of knowledge, we even know appropriate materials to build such vessels.
Last but not least, I currently see this evolving research field joining many different branches of science and even engineering in an unprecedented way. This synthesis and dialogue is highly valuable and other fields should take this endeavour to resolve UAPs as a positive example for fruitful collaborations!

Bests,
Beige Bandicoot.

    Jenny Wagner It is indeed a shame that scientists and science hasn't done more to investigate UFO technology in terms of scientific advancement. Several essays have mentioned wholistic approaches, one using the term interstitial realism looking for harmonic wholeness.

    James Hoover

    Dear ApricotCapybara,

    I read your essay and I think your analysis of the current social and political situation of humanity is up to the point. You clearly lay out that human self-centeredness can be and is dangerous, in its ability to disrupt the social climate as well as the ecological climate. Especially if it is driven by ideology and hidden agendas.

    Even if UFO's should exist, what should this mean for how to solve the above problems, for the case that Aliens are not what we expect them to be – namely helpful? And even if they should be helpful, it would not be guaranteed that they have a recipe that changes the hearts of the human beings. The latter is obviously a huge part of the problem (in my opinion), since we live in an age of materialism, nihilism and many of us don't believe anymore in something that is more intelligent than we are and has created nature. This is really hubris to me, and it results in total disorientation. I think in this respect, believing in Alien visitors does not help much, except these Aliens themselves believe in God and have recognised that they are mortal beings that sometimes can be vicious. On one hand, materialism does worship nature in a bigotry-like manner, on the other hand materialism does destroy what it worships – a striking antinomy in my opinion, and vicious in the sense that people think that nothing what they do can later be blamed on them, since when they die, they stop to exist.

    I rather belief that the hearts of many human beings had to change towards more humility and acceptance that we will never be all-knowing and omnipotent, since otherwise we always could think that the problems that we cause can well be solved at any later time!!! Another problem is that many people think that there can be no real responsibility for their actions, since within a materialistic world view, there is no place for God or any judgement of what one has done during his short life. Anyways, moral standards clearly are deteriorating more and more in our world. I could go on for pages.

    All in all you gave a realistic and true view of the current state of human civilisation for all people who are open for the truth! I gave your essay a good rating, a “9”.

    Best wishes
    AquamarineTapir

      I gave this Essay a 10 because I find it complementary to mine. If in my Essay I discuss the dependence of science on "politics" and economic interests, in this Essay the Author emphasizes the need to give a social role to Science in order to free it from selfishness and business, making it useful for improving both the world as a whole and the lives of individual humans. I also appreciated the proposal to investigate cosmology beyond the standard model and the supposed existence of unknown ingredients such as dark matter and dark energy.

        Stefan Weckbach Thanks for your thoughts and comments. Re "I rather belief that the hearts of many human beings had to change towards more humility and acceptance that we will never be all-knowing and omnipotent, since otherwise we always could think that the problems that we cause can well be solved at any later time," I think we all feel this way, but I believe using and applying science and scientists to research the problem lends a great understanding of the toxic forces that impact human development and our toxic turns and that with this understanding, we can more effectively correct these problems.

        Christian Corda I appreciate your interest and your thoughts. Certainly, in this agenda-based world, it is refreshing to have serious discussions about science and human problems rather than the rants often seen in popular media. FQXI offers such a refreshing forums for such discussion.

        5 days later

        You have to think big!
        It is known that Newton determined the gravitational coefficient through the parameters of the orbits of the planets of the solar system. If the gravitational coefficient is determined in a similar way from the parameters of the orbits of electrons in the Hydrogen atom, then the gravitational coefficient of the planetary system of the Hydrogen atom becomes 40 orders of magnitude greater than in the solar system. Then the Planck parameters of the Hydrogen atom are the parameters of an electron with its radius equal to the radius of the Compton wave of the electron. Those. each level of fractal matter has its own “Planck parameters”, and the generally accepted Planck parameters are an abstract delusion and have no real meaning at all. Indeed, what relation does the gravitational coefficient from the parameters of the Solar system have to the parameters of the planetary system of the Hydrogen atom? None!!!

        You have to think big!
        The fine structure constant can be easily calculated with an accuracy of up to 7 digits, assuming that all elements of matter have a fractal structure. Then, therefore, "black holes" do not exist, and there is no event horizon. Those. inside putative "black holes", there is deterministic matter that obeys the simple quantum laws of fractal matter, which unify gravity and quantum phenomena of the deterministic functioning of matter on all scales of the universe [ appendix: https://s3.amazonaws.com/fqxi.data/data/essay-contest-files/16/reference_id_2304.pdf
        https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/entry/2304#control_panel ].

        James Hoover I have read your essay and given it a rating. I believe you have already seen my essay "Efficient funding produces better science." I hope you have given a rating.

          I really enjoyed your essay, Apricot Capybara!

          I agree that the prevalence of selfishness in the form of economic and political forces overly constrains science shoving science for the sake of understanding out of the way. I appreciate that you discussed the benefits of diversity, which did not fit naturally into my essay on the mishandling of anomalies. I would hope that having a greater diversity among scientists would foster a greater diversity of ideas and theories... more exploration!... which is one feature that I noted to be surprisingly missing when anomalies are encountered. And your mention of neurodiversity struck me! Bravo! So often forgotten, as well as still maligned. I get angry when I hear people go on about how vaccines cause autism---as if that is worse than the disease the vaccines are made to prevent! Shame! Last, I enjoyed some of your language, such as "roil the fauna and flora of our planet". You paint an accurate picture! You covered a lot of ground in this essay and did it well!

            Kevin Knuth
            Coming from the author of a superior essay, I fully appreciate your comments and the fact that you didn't just scan my essay. It's encouraging that we share the same concerns and hope others feel the way we do about the selfish forces that demean and weaponize science pursuing selfish agendas.

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