Tag: science

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general freedom ideological culture

Spoiler Alert — Making Socialism Work

Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction, TV, internet, devil, socialism, Common Sense, illustration

Despite the hoopla, I did not get a chance to watch Childhood’s End, the miniseries that aired this week on the SyFy channel.

But I didn’t really need to — and not just because it failed to receive critical or popular acclaim.

This is the age of the Internet, and — Spoiler Alert! — many cats get let out of many a bag. Facebook, Twitter, water coolers … we all hear things outside the designated venues.

Of course, many people knew the plot line of SyFy’s miniseries — simply because it’s based on a 1953 novel by Arthur C. Clarke.

So, when we notice that one of the show’s creators interprets the story’s stark ending as being more personal than cosmic, that it is about accepting the inevitability of death, we are not going to go into a snit about “spoilers.” We can all can handle it like … grown-ups.

Yes, the tale is in the “out there” branch of science fiction. Aliens come. They bring mankind a Golden Age, an era of plenty, curing disease and ending the need to work. And then, after a long stretch, they reveal themselves, in full-​frontal corporeality: they look like devils, with huge horns, red gnarly skin, cloven hooves, wings and a tail. But finally the big truth dawns: the last generation of children becomes clairvoyant, ascend into the air, and, while destroying the planet, become “as one” in the universal Overmind.

Accepting death? Why not this interpretation: sure, socialism can work — but only by stripping us of our individuality and destroying humanity along with all life on the planet.

The devil, you say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction, TV, internet, devil, socialism, Common Sense, illustration

 

Categories
responsibility

Who’s Really Doing Science?

Recently, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher defended his questioning of the wisdom of mass vaccination by saying it’s “not settled science, like global warming.”

And, around the world, scientists and critical thinkers and just generally knowledgeable folks fell out of their chairs, like so many calving icebergs.

Climate science remains controversial. Maher’s trendy gambit claiming that the science has been “settled” is absurd.

To really settle the matter, a whole lot more scrutiny would be required. And the critics who have mounted attacks on the anthropogenic — “human-​caused” — hypothesis for global climate change would have to have their work considered more openly to earn any credit for the now-​dominant hypothesis.

Why? Because science is all about open, public testing. As Karl Popper explained, science is the process of conjecture and refutation. When those who criticize a theory are castigated as being unscientific simply because they criticize, science is no longer happening. Then we have pure ideology, non-​science if not pure nonsense.

Though the critics of anthropogenic global warming catastrophism often get dubbed as kooks and crazies by current scientistic prophets of doom, they are, in fact, doing the work of science. Even if they are eventually proved wrong.

And Bill Maher is no more the judge of “settled science” than I am. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t got my flu shot yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.