The God Blunder (The God Series Book 5)

203 Pages·2012·2.051 MB·English

by  Mike Hockney

The God Blunder
by
Mike Hockney
Published by Hyperreality Books
Copyright © Mike Hockney 2012
The right of Mike Hockney to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright
Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case
of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or
in a review.
Quotations
“Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold.” – W. B. Yeats
“An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the
grand fallacy.” – Weinberg’s Corollary (Arthur Bloch)
“In any calculation, any error which can creep in will do so.” – First Law
for Naïve Engineers (Arthur Bloch)
“Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.” – Seventh Law of Computer
Programming (Arthur Bloch)
“Given any problem containing n equations, there will always be (n+1)
unknowns.” – First Snafu Equation (Arthur Bloch)
“If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious
idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.” – Troutman’s Fifth
Programming Postulate (Arthur Bloch)
“Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.” – Farber’s Fourth Law
(Arthur Bloch)
“What, ultimately, are man’s truths? Merely his irrefutable errors.” –
Nietzsche
Table of Contents
The God Blunder
Quotations
Table of Contents
The Illuminati
Introduction
The Meta Paradigm
The Singularity
Alien Visitation?
No Moon
Universal Semen!
Chaos
The Infinite Human
The Science of Feelings?
The Null Zone
The Fallacy
Illuminism
The Illuminati
THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BOOKS outlining the cosmology,
philosophy, politics and religion of the ancient and controversial secret
society known as the Illuminati, of which the Greek polymath Pythagoras
was the first official Grand Master. The society exists to this day and the
author is a senior member, working under the pseudonym of “Mike
Hockney”.
Introduction
Is it possible for an error to be “divine” – to be so beautiful, ingenious,
beguiling, compelling and apparently irrefutable that everyone who
encounters it, no matter how intelligent, is deceived by it? Does the final
throw of the dice of an entirely false view of the world throw up a
“solution” that represents the perfect last stand of that ideology – the
glorious “Alamo” defence? If so, this solution becomes the biggest possible
obstacle to progress because it’s not just a question of showing that it’s false
but of overthrowing a ferociously well-entrenched paradigm.
People will cling desperately to the prevailing paradigm because it’s
how they make sense of the world, and without it they’re lost. Also, many
people’s careers are predicated on that paradigm, so they have a vested
interest in maintaining it at any cost. Tellingly, Max Planck wrote, “A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a
new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” What that means is that
scientists – supposedly highly rational people – are not convinced by
“facts” and “evidence” at all (no matter how much they might claim
otherwise), and fanatically adhere to indefensible positions, even to their
dying breath.
If a scientific head of department in a prestigious university has built his
whole power base, reputation and lucrative job on a certain paradigm – in
which he is an acknowledged expert – do you imagine he’s in any hurry to
encourage research into a counter paradigm in which he has no status at all?
This is the reality of science. Like everything else, it is based on status,
salary, career prospects, professional reputation, “office politics” and so on.
Those in power in science do not intend to abandon their power, so they
create science in their own image, reflecting their own ideas, no matter how
wrong they might be.
Thomas Kuhn, in the breathtaking The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions dealt a fatal blow to the illusions of scientists that they are
some band of noble questers impartially following the truth wherever it
leads. On the contrary, they are highly partisan and partial, and the WHOLE
of professional science revolves around an accepted but unproved
paradigm.
Kuhn wrote, “In science … novelty emerges only with difficulty,
manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.
Initially only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under
circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed.”
In other words, scientists have a habit of seeing what they want to see,
believing what they want to believe and resisting anything that challenges
the ruling paradigm. The parallels between science and the Catholic Church
are horrific. Science is an institution that reviles heretics, apostates,
freethinkers and infidels. It gives them no sustenance and excommunicates
them. Science has only one saving grace: eventually, it comes to its senses
and realises that a paradigm is no longer tenable. This is when what Kuhn
labelled “revolutionary science” takes place – when the old paradigm is
killed and a new one is born. It is both the most exciting and unsettling
phase of science. The Catholic Church, Islam and Judaism cannot accept a
new paradigm: science, fortunately, can.
Miguel de Unamuno declared, “Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.”
Yet wrong ideas do not die nearly quickly enough in science. Any ideas that
become the key scaffolding of the prevailing paradigm can take centuries to
perish. A paradigm falls only when they fall. They are the last things to fall.
They are precisely those ideas in which people have most confidence, in
which their faith is most invested.
Keith J. Pendred wrote, “Successful research impedes further successful
research.” This, sadly, is all too true. The more successful a paradigm
becomes, the less anyone challenges it or is capable of seeing beyond it.
Anyone who speaks out against a paradigm is mocked and banished. Their
career is over.
“Enough research will tend to support your theory.” – Murphy’s Law of
Research (Arthur Bloch)
Putting this another way, science supports the prevailing paradigm of
science, and designs research programmes specifically to support it. (How
many scientific funding bodies give grants to projects challenging the
scientific wisdom? – NONE!)
Yet science sees itself as objective, neutral, dispassionate and unbiased.
Scientists are apparently unaware of the endless unwritten laws of their
profession that encourage groupthink – or, if they are aware, they go along
with them anyway. Science as a career is much more important than science
as a vehicle for understanding reality. Scientists enjoy excluding those who
don’t agree with their paradigm. Yet, as the history of science shows,
paradigm after paradigm has fallen. So, why not accept that all scientific
paradigms are provisional and actively set up scientific groups to
undermine and attack the prevailing paradigm so that its demise can come
about all the sooner? Why wait until the paradigm is a cruel, old, dying man
that has ruthlessly killed all rivals (and all their great ideas and potential)
for decades and even centuries, before overthrowing him?
The answer is career, mortgage, salary and status. Just as no religion
wants a rival, so no scientific paradigm wants a rival, and just as the pope
brooks no opposition, so none of the “priesthood of the paradigm” want
their authority – and lucrative and prestigious careers – to be challenged.
Science, despite some of its rhetoric, sees itself as quintessentially involved
with the search for the TRUTH. But if science countenanced a rival
paradigm with as much credibility then it would no longer enjoy its
unchallenged and imperious status.
Science OUGHT to be dialectical, but it isn’t. The dialectic is all about
finding the opposition and creating a system that drives forward on the
basis of resolving thesis and antithesis in a higher synthesis, which then
becomes a new thesis, and so on. The scientific method itself is a perfect
example of a dialectical process, but the scientific method is, ironically, not
applied to the institutions of science, and to the careers of scientists.
The scientific method calls for the most stringent tests to be applied to
all hypotheses, experiments, “facts”, “evidence” and theories. The scientific
method is supposed to invoke something akin to the Devil’s Advocate
mechanism of the Catholic Church where any candidate for sainthood is to
be attacked as strenuously as possible – as if the Devil himself were
mounting the prosecution case and doing everything in his power to block
the would-be saint from earning his rightful reward of canonisation.
Yet what does science do in practice? It hires only those people who
accept the prevailing paradigm. Anyone who attacks the paradigm is called
a “crank” and excluded. Scientific funding bodies give assistance only to
projects advancing the paradigm, and everything else is ignored. You can
rise high in science only by being a recognised priest of the paradigm. No
true mavericks ever reach the top in mainstream, careerist science. The
alleged mavericks – such as Richard Feynman – are not mavericks at all
when you examine their record. They turn out to be fanatical advocates of
the prevailing paradigm, and refuse to challenge it even when it is woefully
incapable of making any sense at all.
Consider these remarks by Feynman concerning quantum mechanics:
“But the difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual
torment that results from your saying to yourself, ‘But how can it be like
that?’ which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in
terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy
with something familiar; I will simply describe it. There was a time when
the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of
relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have
been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who
caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of
people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly
more than twelve.
“On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands
quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that
you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to
describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature
behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this,
you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to
yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because
you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet
escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the
silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum
theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”
Why didn’t Feynman call for radical new thinking to unlock the apparent
mysteries of quantum mechanics? Why did he simply surrender? – because
he knew that a new paradigm was required, but he had no interest in any
new paradigm. He preferred to remain ignorant within the existing
paradigm.
Charles Caleb Cotton wrote, “Professors in every branch of science
prefer their own theories to the truth: the reason is that their theories are
private property, but the truth is common stock.” The conclusion isn’t valid,
but it’s certainly true that professors prefer their paradigm to the truth, and
even persuade themselves that it IS the truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith provided the true but rather grim image of
science, “The real accomplishment of modern science and technology
consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and
then, through appropriate action, arranging to have their knowledge
combined with that of other specialised but equally ordinary men. This
dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less
inspiring, is far more predictable.”
This can be linked to Max Gluckmann’s observation, “A science is any
discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point
reached by the genius of the last generation.”
In others words, science is about the relentless progress of rather
ordinary people. It certainly isn’t going out of its way to identify and
support geniuses. If such people nevertheless succeed, it’s often despite the
scientific establishment rather than because of it.
In the world of writing, Zamyatin said, “There can be a real literature
only when it is produced by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels
and skeptics and not by patient and well-meaning functionaries.”
Science is completely dominated by “functionaries”: apparatchiks,
bureaucrats, conformist careerists, “mortgage men”. Why not have
advanced institutes for scientific “madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers,
rebels and skeptics” whose precise job is to continually attack the prevailing
paradigm and call it into question? Let them be the Devil’s Advocates. Let
them test the ideas of the establishment to destruction. You cannot oppose
the establishment form INSIDE the establishment.
The scientific method has been subverted by science as a professional
career since all of those who would be best at subjecting scientific ideas to
proper scrutiny have been more or less deliberately excluded. Only those
who accept the paradigm are allowed to pursue the scientific method,
meaning that the method now possesses an inherent bias contrary to the
raison d’être of the method. Supporters of the paradigm are not looking to
undermine the paradigm. They are putting in no effort to do so. If they do
so, it’s by accident, not design.
In order for the scientific method to be consistent with its own professed
aims, philosophy and purpose, it MUST challenge itself in the most radical
way, and that means by establishing a shadow science involving those who
are not scientific careerists and conformists.
Science must be made dialectical. It must be purged of its excessive
“establishment bias” where only orthodox opinions are heard and all
heretics are purged. Science has taken on the mantle of a dogmatic faith in
the prevailing scientific paradigm. Only during a scientific revolution is the
faith challenged and overturned. Why shouldn’t that be happening ALL of
the time? Why wait for a revolution? Using Kuhn’s term, science should
never be “normal” (i.e. careerist and conformist, involving group think and
slavish adherence to the prevailing paradigm): it should always be
“revolutionary” i.e. seeking to overthrow the prevailing paradigm at all
times. That way, it will be maximally productive.
An American Air Force saying asserts, “It takes a great enemy to make a
great airplane.” This encapsulates the dialectic perfectly. The better the
opposition to something, the better the “something” has to be to win.
Science – full of conformist careerists – needs to be challenged by
nonconformist geniuses. The scientific establishment must be opposed by
the scientific anti-establishment. Both sides will benefit from the dialectical
struggle, and the whole world will be the ultimate beneficiary.
*****
“If a scientist uncovers a publishable fact, it will become central to his
theory.” – Mann’s Law (Arthur Bloch)
This sums up careerist science. Science, as actually practised, is all about
writing papers, attending conferences, making the most of “publishable”
facts, and so on. Thomas Kuhn exposed the great myth of science, but
science has subsequently reformed itself no more than Catholicism did in
the face of Protestantism. It’s about time Kuhn’s ideas were placed at the
very heart of science as it exists as an institution.
Never forget that science and institutionalized science are not one and
the same, just as political philosophy (about political ideas and their
coherence) has almost nothing in common with politics as an institution
(revolving around populist, incoherent political parties). The same goes for
religion. It has often been said that the institutionalized Catholic Church