Research scientist Oxford Advanced Research Foundation
What are facts? Einstein said to Heisenberg that theory determines what we see.
However ordinary day to day experience such as a friend dying is not to be denied because of quantum mechanics or relativity theory.
Statistics and overt marketing by pharmaceutical corporations cannot take away the disability or death of a friend.
Such ordinary facts escape all manipulation of thought.
When programming one has to create the object first before trying to access it. If the object has accessible parts one has to create those parts before trying to access them. In programming one can name things or reference things that don’t yet exist. If you try to access such nonexistent objects, the program crashes or gives an error.
In our world as well, we can easily refer to things, phenomena or events that don’t exist. If we then act on the basis of assumptions about ontology that are false there can be hard crashes, failures and misfortune.
Alternatively, one can live in a fantasy and stay there by never acting in a way that would challenge our delusions. Social spaces can be formed by false communication systems that create a pseudo reality including pseudo facts and a pseudo history. As long as all agents agree and do not challenge this pseudo social reality, and the real world does not impose on it very much, all seems to confirm this social space.
A flicker of reality can easily be eliminated as false data. In programming we can catch the error of using nonexistent things and avoid its consequences as long as the rest of the program does not rely on it too much.
In social-psychological space there is a great flexibility that allows maintenance of coherence even if reality contradicts many of its ontological foundational assumptions.
Semantics and pragmatics of language can be played with, redefinitions easily postulated that changes the apparent ontology of social-psychological reality.
Just a rich men can easily be fooled by their sycophants, so whole groups can easily be manipulated by selectively true and false communication.
Contrarians can be silenced by intimidation, ostracism, turning off their modes of communication or manipulating their potential audience by discrediting and minimizing the contrarian himself, his character, competence, person and/or his message.
Best, if the audience does not know of the contrarian’s existence (is not in their ontological, social space).
Second best, if the contrarian exists in the social space, manipulate the potential audience to ignore and refuse to even listen or acknowledge the existence of the message.
Finally, if all other manipulations fail, discredit the message itself by any means available in the arsenal of persuasive communication and propaganda.
Of course, for the powerful other methods are available: The contrarian can be socially and/or physically imprisoned, banished or eliminated.
When we introduce the relativity of ontology, that theory determines what we can observe (Einstein in conversation the Heisenberg), the availability of manipulative communication is almost boundless.
My recent post on the Mysteries of 9/11 has resulted in two good friends (Al and Ben, pseudonyms) getting into an argumentative email exchange that ended in personal insults and an, hopefully temporary, end of their many years of friendship.
A small group have been mailing each other about Covid Vaccines their side effects and the politics of Big Pharma. Both Al and Ben are good people who want a better world. Al leans to the right and Ben is apolitical. I, as I have said before, am a Democrat, but with a mind open to all sides of an argument.
I have lived in the U.S., Australia, Africa, France, Germany, Italy and England. I have worked in some of the world’s very best research institutions and in some excellent universities, the latest being the University of Oxford (voted again as number one in the world).
I say that because, I am used to open discussion on many topics (computer science, biology, physics, philosophy, mathematics). As a logician, scientist and philosopher, I am used to debating hypotheses. I usually don’t take it all that seriously -unless someone steals my ideas (i.e., publishes my novel and significant scientific ideas as if they were their own without properly citing me as the source. Scientists, like any artist, work hard to create their ideas and theories and acknowledgement is often the only public reward.)
After my seminars in Balliol College, often my chief antagonist and I would joke and exchange stories in the dining hall. No problem that we were at opposite ends of the debating spectrum. That is what academia should be. The truth is often hidden and takes time to unfold. The hypotheses and theories change as more is learned and understood. Often both are simultaneously wrong and right. As it turned out to be in our case.
Recently, talking about Covid Vaccines has become a political and personal issue. Few are able to look at the topic dispassionately.
Getting back to Al and Ben, when I then added the additional hypothesis that 9/11 has some unexplained mysteries and cited architects and engineers for 911 truth, it was too much for poor Ben. He flipped out. And poor Al was the target of his fears and aggression.
The biggest mystery with 9/11 is Building 7. It came down like a controlled demolition without being hit by a plane. Its free fall has never been adequately explained. That being said, I don’t much care if it is ever explained. But it does make some people like Ben very uncomfortable -so much so that they refuse to look at it.
As for Covid Vaccines the issue is: Which is worse, getting a severe side-effect from Covid or getting a severe side-effect from one of the Vaccines? To choose, one has to do a probability assessment. Am I more likely to be harmed by the Vaccine or by Covid? For most healthy, not too obese, young people the answer may be different than for old, immunocompromised and overly obese people. That is up to you. Don’t ask me, because I don’t have the answer.
The point is more that hypotheses are just that and no more. Reality will enter and give the answer. You die or don’t. You have side-effects or not. Fear of one or the other or both generates strong emotions. This can lead to poor decision making. We are all irrational and rational. Such is the human condition.
But to loose a friend over a discussion about hypotheses, goes too far. Friendship is more important than differences about hypotheses.
This describes my theory of how animals develop into bilateral symmetric organisms, like humans for example.