tag > Comment
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"Anything not specifically forbidden is mandatory. Which means, if it's possible, it's probable." - Merlin
"Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainly is a ridiculous one" - Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
#Comment: Assorted high weirdness, which in all its colorful "out-there-ness" is by and large more fun and sane than most of the current mainstream post-humanist AI cyborg science extremism. Valid or not, it is certainly thought provoking "post-materialist age" entertainment - enjoy!
- DARK OPS - Clandestine Explorations in Chapel Perilous - by Iona Miller
- Techno Telepathy - ESP INDUCTION through Self-Hypnosis - by Richard Alan Miller
- Quantum Bioholography - A Review of the Field - by Richard Alan Miller
- Quantum Bioholography - by Iona Miller, Richard A. Miller, Burt Webb
- Holonomic brain theory - Wikipedia
- Quantum biology - Wikipedia
- Embryonic Holography - by Richard Alan Miller
- Tao of Resilience - by Peggy Southwick & Iona Miller
- Stealth was His Name & Mission - by Iona Miller
- The Art of Inquiry - by Iona Miller
- The fog of lore: ancestral memories? do the math & get over it - By Iona Miller
- Mind control for dummies - Iona Miller
- Synthetic telepathy and the early mind wars - by Richard Alan Miller
- Schumann's Resonances & Human Psychobiology - by Iona Miller & Richard Alan Miller
- EVP - Remote Viewing the Future - by Iona Miller
- Chaos as the universal solvent - by Iona Miller
- The diamond body: a solid state mandala - by Richard and Iona Miller (1981)
- Holographic Archetypes - DNA - by Iona Miller
- Collected writing of E. Stanton Maxey, M.D.
- A Review of Psi Activity in the DNA - by Bradley Y. Bartholomew
- How To Build A Psychotronic Generator
- The Global Consciousness Project - Meaningful Correlations in Random Data
- Manifesto of the Matrix City Ra and The law of the Temple RA - by Dr. Irene Caesar.
- Laser Polarized Bioholography as a Diffraction of Geometric Optics with Chromosomes.
- Spiritual Implications of Parapsychology - interview with Charles T. Tart.
- https://augtellez.wordpress.com/
- Paranoia Magazine
CONSPIRITUALITY - Compassionate Intelligence Activity.
An essay by Iona Miller (original text here)SpyCoSomatix: People's actions are strongly influenced by their knowledge and beliefs. They can be manipulated by corrupting their knowledge base, warping historical truth, or ignoring it completely and spinning compelling new myths of consensus reality. This is mind control aimed at crowd control and exploitation.
"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle." -- George Orwell
CHAOS & CONTROL
Uncertainty is the zeitgeist of our day. We are anxious and unsure. We face potentially catastrophic climatic and environmental change, incurable viruses, pandemics, bioterrorism, endless wars, urban violence, soil and water depletion. Rampant population growth, genetically-engineered food and organisms, and hazardous waste raise profound doubts about Earth's ability to sustain life.
Many species are already going extinct at the rate of 5000 per year. We wonder about own own and our grandchildren's futures, health, and well-being. Mourning the loss of our freedoms, we feel the impact as loss of our cherished dreams for a better future.
Society itself, changes in unpredictable ways, including through human frailty or perversity, such as crime and war. Political figures, in particular have the ability to affect great masses of people with their policies and dictates. How we mediate and ameliorate these societal disruptions is a major part of our personal stories, and the story of humanity, in general.
We did not anticipate this transition from the arrogant certainty of the rational enlightenment promise of techno-utopia to disquieting uncertainty. We have realized only empty promises of solutions to life's fundamental problems, such as world health, food, and peace. Despite all our knowledge we have not been able to control or dominate our environment successfully. Knowledge is not wisdom, or even understanding. We need to recognize our innate spirituality. By changing our internal image of reality, we can change the world. There is a deeper current in life and it is embodied in Mystery-- the unpredictable, the unknown, and perhaps unknowable.
THE BIG PICTURE
The Long War is an Intelligence War. We can all participate in more intelligent intelligence. It doesn't belong exclusively to the apostles of the cult of intelligence. Personally and collectively, Intelligence involves information collection and analysis. It helps us determine The Big Picture by synthesizing the forces at play in the world today so we can make prudent decisions about the future of our security.
ANTICIPATORY THINKING
The parallel tracks of roughly seven forces are running the world: Governments, Military, Law Enforcement, Business, Academia, NGO and Media, and Civil (Class, Religion, Labor). Each has its own worldview and agenda which sets the priorities in its point of view, from plutocrats to technocrats and bureaucrats. Many have failed so utterly they have become Roadmaps to Nowhere. We have to step beyond the bounds of elite greed and failed ecology to a less narcissistic, more mature citizenship.
OVERT INTELLIGENCE
Technology, markets, resources and policy interact dynamically. All prediction markets agree that nano-neuro-bio-info products will shape the future. These forces and ideas then filter into manufacturing futures, politics, business, academics, the media, science and military where they take root (or not) in our minds and become part of our cultural mandate. They acquire traction and velocity as people jump on the bandwagon. Despite the techno-utopianism, the economic keyword for 2008 is "debt."
GOD IS AN AMERICAN
The war for your mind has moved from the outside to inside the mindbody of each and every one of us. Propaganda controls the message but the message itself is control. We really have been programmed from the cradle to the grave to worship GOD -- Gold, Oil, & Drugs. We worship and seek solace outside ourselves when the answer is within in our hearts and spirits.
RUNNING ON EMPTY
It's no accident we feel empty and can't get enough. These are the addictions of our culture. We are running on empty, overextended in energy and credit, and militarily. We have traded social safety nets for unsustainable imperialism. We have sheepishly accepted the curtailment of our former freedoms out of fear, or by believing the fear-mongers who create public opinion. Our nation has hostage syndrome. We've been sold a bill of goods and the balance is coming due.
CONSPIRITUALITY
In the Age of Intelligence, modern IO is not about the old messages of psychological operations (PSYOPS), but rather about empowering billions of people with both information tools and access to truthful information. It is about education, not manipulation. It is about sharing, not secrecy. Reality is up for grabs. The present is revealed only after acquiring the entire past. Then the constituents fall into place in a holistic context. The imaginary future influences its creation, from toxic visions like The Matrix to false techno-utopianism. Computers were supposed to save us work, but we wind up working more for less. But, the one who dies with the biggest toys is not the winner. We are living on borrowed time.
THE LONG WAR
The power struggle of The Great Game set up an ongoing quiet war between Britain and Russia for Afghanistan. And after the Soviet defeat, the US was sucked into the continuing quagmire of events involving Iraq, Iran [Persia], India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia described in Zbigniew Brzezinski's book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. This neoconservative strategy has failed utterly as a foreign policy.
INFOTEL
Intelligence in The Age of information is a vision of the convergence of computers, media, and telecommunications - hacking and tracking. It means the ultra data-glut of the net-centric war of information. But where do we go from here? Do you live a white-picket fence / big screen TV fantasy in a militarily-defined world with optimistic delusions of victory? What comes after the fetishizing of information technology and looming economic meltdown of the Greenback?
Instead of the greater free time for creativity imagined in the Cold War era, people have come to work harder and for longer hours for less net gain. But, Voltaire said that, "Man is free the instant he wants to be."
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Quote from the Eulogy of William C. Patrick III, Expert on Germ Warfare and bioweaponeer for the U.S. Army during the Cold War:
"Mr. Patrick expressed no regrets about his arms work, saying he was comfortable with memories of killing animals and finding new ways to produce death. He said it was all part of doing his duty for his country in perilous times."
#Comment: I wonder if his personality-type was related at all to the likes of Shirō Ishii (a microbiologist and army medical officer who served as the director of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army) or Josef Mengele. Biological warfare seems to require and attract very special types of "doctors".
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"Technological Masturbation" - by Robert Anton Wilson (1993)
The vibrator — first as shady joke, then a growing fad — has already prepared us for the technologization of sex, so introduction of the artificial sex partner will come as little surprise.
Rudimentary doll-like models are already for sale, one [called the Deep Throat model — naturally] is even capable of performing fairly realistic fellatio. Hedy Lamarr’s autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, reveals that a former lover of hers had a very elaborate imitation Hedy manufactured to give him solace when their affair went on the rocks. Such developments indicate that in sex, as elsewhere, desire plus money equals results — or, as George S. Kaufman once said of a friends‘ new estate, “This is what God could have done, if He’d had the money.”
Are we talking about substitute sex for the crippled, the malformed, the hopelessly ugly or neurotic? Only in the first generation of such technology. Brain-wave and other bio-feedback studies lead inevitably into the concept of cybernetic sex robots programmed to scan neural signals from the human partner and provide exactly, precisely, exquisitely what is desire in every second of sexual union. In fact, reports from Masters and Johnson indicate that their crude and pre-cybernetic [brainless] ACE model [artificial coital equipment] produced no frustration in the women who tried it. Eventually such mechanized substitutes can be programmed for an effect “better than the real thing,” as William S. Burroughs fantasised in his sixties science fiction novel “The Soft Machine.”
In recent years, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore possessed a 100-pound robot affectionately dubbed The Beast, that knows how to “feed” itself, i.e., to seek electric outlets and recharge its circuits when its power runs low. Sim one, an experimental robot at University of Southern California, has the external features of a man, stands over six feet tall and has a normal pulse rate, blood pressure and heartbeat; is white-skin coloured, moves its diaphragm and chest in simulation of breathing, and even possesses a tongue, teeth, and vocal cords. Sim’s keepers plan improved models that will sweat, bleed, cry out in pain, and eventually replace cadavers in training medical students. The Sim One of today combined with the Masters and Johnson ACE of today would already constitute a crude artificial playmate for women. A more complex Hedy Lamarr doll [or Linda Lovelace, or Raquel Welch or..] cannot be far away. [Recall the movie Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick) where NASA coerced Earth’s inhabitants to leave the planet by providing them with a humanoid playmate.]
Yes; why not a totally programmed sexual environment? Saul Kent, who has described this concept as “multi-media masturbation”, envisions sex tapes for the household computer, programmed for the all- around sexual trip — with or without partner. Already, X-rated motels in California provide water beds and closed circuit TV featuring porn films, so that a shy couple can have a simulated orgy and share their real selves with each other and the images of Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems, and Marilyn Chambers. The next step, easily obtainable for the rich even now, is to program the whole inner environment of the bedroom for a fantasy that goes well with the sex act. ESB control of brain centres via this computer-programmed artificial environment would give, in Burrough’s perfect phrase, “precise control over thought, feeling, and apparent sensory impression” [his italics]. Reality in that room would be whatever you wanted it to be.
Of course, in a sense we already live inside that room, as the Buddhists know. That is, the human nervous system, properly programmed, can edit and orchestrate all experience into any gestalt it wishes. We encounter the same dismal and depressing experience over and over because they are repeating tape loops in the central programmer of our brains. We can encounter ecstasy over and over by learning the neurosciences that orchestrate all incoming signals into ecstatic tape loops. The contact has already happened right where you are sitting now. Whether it is tuned-in or not tuned-in depends on your skill as metaprogrammer.
Multi-media pornography will enthral millions when it first appears; porn light shows, porn 3-D, and porn holograms are the dawning intimations of a revolution that will climax — certainly by the early years of the next century — when the difference between porn and the artificial sex mate will no longer be visible. Multimedia solipsism and all-channel masturbation will be the pleasure norms.
- Technological Masturbation - by Robert Anton Wilson appeared in TOTAL, Volume 2 (1993).
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#Comment: Fun to discover Wilson discussing the idea of cybernetic/augmented total hedonism. A concept people like Robert Nozick explored in "Experience Machine" (1974) or David Pearce in "The Hedonistic Imperative" (1995) or even Daniel Kahneman "Hedonic psychology". Wilson's post includes a reference to the JHAPL's classic robot "The Beast", that knew how to “feed” itself, i.e., to seek electric outlets and recharge its circuits when its power runs low - an idea somewhat related to Shannon's Ultimate Machine, alas far less genius and fun. In my playbook, "augmented" or "optimized" hedonism is an extremely naive and boring concept, which quickly leads to experience mono-cultures and nonsensical discussions around "artificial love" - deep down in a hyper-commercial total-surveillance simulacra of meaningless bullshit. Growing calls to "end suffering through tech" are a clear sign of a crass misunderstanding of the most basic lessons of Buddhism, which such people love to frequently quote (meanings easily lost in translation and history to the gullible seeker). Somewhat related: Samim’s Law of Diminished Experience.
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#Comment: The same old highly non-diverse ("inbred") group of techno-capital fundamentalists celebrating them-self once again - while the US forth reich roman empire collapses in real-time. A truly fantastic #Technology #Politics #Comedy show!
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"If we declare the whole of the world’s development to be art, we’re done; art is finished" - Henk Peeters
#Comment: The "Manifesto Against Nothing" (like so many outputs of the zero movement) is a nice illustration of the utterly confused and dysfunctional state which western #Art and #Philosophy are in for the past centuries. Endless, highly exclusive and complex but totally pointless intellectual masturbation ("reductio ad absurdum") replaced an essential praxis, which for millennia guided human culture and life. With all "lebendigkeit" long gone, the western (art) circus has turned into a macabre spectacle for the super rich and their parasites. The exploration of "Zero" & "Nothing" (even intellectual ones) in the east is certainly more fun, useful and #Mindful.
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The ‘X17’ particle: Scientists may have discovered the fifth force of nature
"In 2016, observations from Hungarian researchers suggested the existence of an unknown type of subatomic particle. Subsequent analyses suggested that this particle was a new type of boson, the existence of which could help explain dark matter and other phenomena in the universe. A new paper is currently awaiting peer review."
#Comment: The slow motion collapse of the cult of the standard model and materialism continues. The Fifth Force (no, not that bad scifi movie 'The 5th Element') or any other magical quick fix most likely won't change that. In infinity, there is always one more mysterious particle waiting to be discovered - a sisyphusian endeavor. In summary, "I got 99 problems but a X17 ain't one". #Science #Space
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Cognitive Bias Codex
Wikipedia: "A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own 'subjective social reality' from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the social world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality."
#Comment: Why do scientists tend to describe cognitive bias as if they were a terrible pathological condition? Why do they casually dismiss their crucial role for serendipity, creativity and joy? One beings "perceptional distortion" or "illogical, subjective reality" is another's unique evolutionary path. Narrowly defining and enforcing normal is a job for dictators. Wisely negotiating the politics of experience requires simplicity, compassion and patience - not reason, norms, metrics, objectives and force.
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Deutsche Bank To Replace 18,000 Workers With Robots (via)
"The bank's head of operations said that using AI 'massively increased productivity in certain sectors'. Deutsche is pushing to 'automate large parts of its back-office' via a new strategy called 'Operations 4.0', as part of its $6.6 billion savings initiative."
#Comment: This is a shameless, peak bullshit way of announcing corporate collapse and bankruptcy. Long term mismanagement, corruption and criminal activities at a massive scale brought them here - and no fictitious "AI" will fix that.
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New Tag on Samim.io: #Comment. Used to mark all things i commented on, in the ocean of links i post here. Inspired by the "firstperson" tag on jwz's blog.
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Ride-Hailing Apps Have Allowed More Binging and Increased Demand For Bartenders.
"A study published last week analyzed ridesharing's effects on binge drinking and found that it increased heavy drinking by around 20% and increased employment at bars and restaurants by an average of 2%."
#Comment: A nice illustration that every technological augmentation comes with a side of amputation, the topic of a recent talk i gave: "Augmentation, Amputation, Dehumanisation - Towards Life Centered Design". #Augmentation #Health
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Ctrl-labs CEO: "We’ll have neural interfaces in less than 5 years."
#Comment: Ctrl-labs CEO Thomas Reardon is the poster child snake oil salesmen, hence a good fit for facebook which recently acquired his startup. He is always perversely overselling the basic #BCI capabilities they aim to eventually productize - stuff that has been around for 25+ years and is progressing only gradually. While "move a cursor with your mind" is a neat party trick, it isn't all that useful from a #HCI perspective (we evolved to use eyes/hands over millions of years, a highly fine-tuned modality). And using BCI for more complex tasks ("general thought to action") is still very much in basic scientific research territory (and an ethical nightmare). Certainly, BCI makes #VR (fb's other complex long-term bet) look like child's play.
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Too Much Screen Time May Be Stunting Toddlers’ Brains - Study by Harvard Med
"A new study using brain scans showed that the white matter in the brains of children who spent hours in front of screens wasn’t developing as fast as it was in the brains of kids who didn’t. It’s in the white matter of the brain where language, other literacy skills, and the process of mental control and self-regulation develop, researchers say."
#Comment: Calling Captain Obvious: An entire generation of technologists, designers and business people, who are willingly driving kids into tech addiction to maximize profits, belong in a mental institution and/or jail. Kids hooked on tech is a ticking time-bomb, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg. #Health #Technology
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The Vectoralist Class - by McKenzie Wark. p1: http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/the-vectoralist-class/ p2: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60567/the-vectoralist-class-part-ii/
#Comment: At the top row, instead of saying "property, wealth and power", we can have "ecology, health and wisdom". An achievable goal.
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#Comment: The Nazi elites, which by and large continued to govern the German economy in the decades after 1945, often had peculiar biographies and beliefs - Hermann Josef Abs illustrate this nicely. Similar patterns can be observed in Italy and across Europe. One can only wonder, why ultra-rich sociopaths are so drawn to far-right politics, which dominated the 20st century in the west.
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New research from Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research: "Ayahuasca compound changes brainwaves to vivid ‘waking-dream’ state": https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/193993/ayahuasca-compound-changes-brainwaves-vivid-wakingdream/
"A total of 13 participants were given an intravenous infusion of DMT. DMT affects human consciousness by significantly altering the brain’s electrical activity."
#Comment: The comedy show which is psychedelic science continues. Ever since Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris fell in love with Friston and they are seriously trying to explain subjective experience of highly isolated agent brains with probabilistic (machine learning) models, things are rapidly becoming full Monty Python. Their approaches rely so heavily on myriads of highly arbitrary reductionist choices, it would make any renaissance alchemists giggle. Even DARPA is taking a much more interesting approach at this point and people like Dr. Michael Persinger must be laughing from their graves. I suppose let them dive down the fractal of knowledge in search of some illusive "final hard truth". If mathematicians and neuroscientists would only accept that the thing-in-itself is infinite (not a bug, but its essence) - and that there is everything in infinity (incl. nothing) - their entire house of cards would collapse. The only thing left to-do at that point, is to live a simple, humble and compassionate life.
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"Homo Cyberneticus: The Era of Human-AI Integration" - position paper by Jun Rekimoto, University of Tokyo, Sony CSL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.02637.pdf
#Comment: Generations of researchers feverishly chasing the dream of "merging" with inanimate matter (silicon etc.), eager to trade the living for the dead. From Golem and Frankenstein to Cybernetics and A.I: Necrophilia is the name of the game.
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Online Knowledge Management Thoughts & Links
#Comment: That feeling when one finally closes a browser tab, after weeks of keeping it open in search of a moment to read it (which never arrived). Repeats 3 times: The web is a river, don't try to hold on. Browser Tabs don't age well: When a site is added to the "will read later" tabs, it seems vitally important. Yet only days later, the site starts to feel irrelevant & eventually the tab is closed. (Spatio-temporal) Context is key for knowledge management - Browser are horrible at it. When one thinks about knowledge management long enough, one starts to understand that management is the wrong method and knowledge the wrong question: My essential needs for such tools are around personal knowledge praxis (highly action oriented & context depended), not so much knowledge management (archiving/data hoarding oriented).
- Open tabs are cognitive spaces: https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/
- How Your Travels Around the Internet Expose the Way You Think: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/clive-thompson-5/
- A Spacial Model for Lossless Web Navigation: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lossless-web-navigation-spatial-model-37f83438201d/
- Browser.html is a speculative browser for nightly builds of Servo based on trails: http://patrykadas.com/browser.html
- Manufactured Recollection: https://reallifemag.com/manufactured-recollection/
- Context & Annotation - links by Maxim Leyzerovich: https://www.are.na/maxim-leyzerovich/context-annotation #KM #Design #Ideas
- Open tabs are cognitive spaces: https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/
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The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20961788/us-government-ai-copyright-patent-trademark-office-notice-artificial-intelligence #Generative #ML #Creativity #Bots
#Comment: A far more interesting question is if angels and disembodied spirits can own the content they create. Generative copyright is peak late capitalist madness at its finest - the works of greedy petty lost souls. I spoke previously about related topics here & here.
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George Church and Eric Schmidt Talk Synthetic Biology at SynBioBeta 2019: https://synbiobeta.com/video-former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-talks-synthetic-biology-at-synbiobeta-2019/
#Comment: A ceremony at high temple of materialism, in a country where techno-capital replaced religion, civil society & sanity. The stark irony of super wealthy Jeffrey Epstein friends discussing how to control the wonders of life with machines owned by very few - in search of profits & the illusive ghost in the shell. Joe Mengele laughing from his grave.
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Thoughts on physicist Mario Livio talking about "Why Is There Anything At All?":
#Comment: So many fancy words used to essentially just say "we don't know - at all". Particularly contemporary western scientists with their "knowledge fetishism" seem to have a very hard time acknowledging, that there are a great many questions which are fundamentally "unknowable" (situated right at the base of the "pyramid of knowledge/science", threatening to collapse the entire game built upon them). One would think, things like Gödel's "incompleteness theorem", Asimov's "The Last Question" or countless Zen Buddhist texts would have made the case rather clear by now, but apparently not. Scientist pretense of knowledge is especially comedic, such as when they tell us what happened a femtosecond after big bang or what happens inside the event horizon. They state their wild speculations as facts while they clearly just confuse their models and equations with reality. In praxis, contemporary scientsist resorts to the very same tricks the christian church used for millennia: First make up fictive ghost stories that sounds important but way too complex for anyone to understand. Then convince the public that they are the only ones that can make sense of this and use this to grab respect, authority and power. This comic summarizes this silly game nicely: https://samim.io/p/2019-10-30-proposal-for-a-monument-to-logical-fallacies-by-san/
