I was looking up a post of mine about the “scientific method” and the reality of political scientism yesterday when I came across a long set of comments by Longtime Reader and friend of the blog Dire Badger, who responded at length on the subject of the lies upon which we have built our world. Partly out of, I admit, sheer laziness and lack of desire to write anything substantial myself today, I decided to compile those comments into a post, because they are rather good and well worth reading.

While I do not go perhaps quite as far as DB does in describing ours as a world completely built on lies, especially with respect to the value and meaning of money, there is no doubt that civilisation is, at best, a very polite fiction, a veneer of more-or-less universally accepted lies that allow us to live together, alongside each other, in significant numbers without slaughtering each other or dying like flies.

Many thanks to Dire Badger for these thoughtful, and thought-provoking, comments.

Philosophically, I think the entire concept of civilization is built upon lies, that most people can agree upon, and that keep people running smoothly alongside of each other.

Currency, the foundation of large scale civilization, is built upon the lie that bits of metal or paper are somehow EXACTLY THE SAME THING as a cartload of Grain, a bull, or the effort required to construct a barn.

Telling polite lies is how gentlemen avoid murdering each other, far more than simple fear of punishment. Lying about having a social connection, lies that two people both agree to honor, is the foundation of honest and honorable behavior.

In a very real way, almost all communication other than directly relating known facts is filled with lies… even language itself, assigning meaning to symbols simply to communicate those symbols, is in essence a sort of lying. The word “bear”, for example, is not an actual bear… the word does not eat honey or threaten your life, but it is understood that it is a virtual term to communicate the concept of bear.

The thing is, the foundation of civilization involves telling lies that actively improve our ability to socially cooperate and are not provably or proven utterly false. It’s sort of like there are good lies and bad lies, the good lies are called ‘truths’ (not facts) and the bad lies are called ‘untruths’ or falsehoods’.

Engineers deal in facts. Because facts will make a bridge collapse. Scientists don’t care even the slightest about facts… Their interest is solely in providing ‘Truths’ because truths don’t have any critical effects to them, by themselves… They are simply agreed-upon lies that may or may not have any facts attached to them. The Hard part is figuring out which ‘Truths’ are actually supported by facts, and which ‘truths’ are not supported by facts.

Scientists don’t care. People don’t die when a scientist’s ‘truths’ are untrue. They are not the point of the spear for applying those ‘Truths’. Engineers and cultural engineers are. All Scientists care about is providing the sort of ‘Truths’ that get them tenure or money or fame.

It doesn’t matter if a horde of other ‘Truth’ hunting scientists agree that their ‘truth’ sounds about right. Because in the end they know that what they are providing is honest-seeming lies until they are applied by someone in a position to link them to facts.

Lies are not the opposite of ‘Truths’, disproven ‘Truths’ are. Never trust a Scientist, because it’s in his best interest to pretend that his Truths are facts.

It’s kind of interesting to think about, because there are always two truths in opposition. If facts directly oppose one truth, it is a falsehood, but the vast majority of “Truths” That the so called ‘rationalists’ support are utterly devoid of ANY facts.

Example #1: Atheism. It is considered rational (for some reason) despite the reality that there is not a single FACT that supports that ‘truth’. there is literally no possible way that any fact COULD support the non-existence of a deity, and thus this ‘truth’ is unproveable… and a ‘truth’ that has no circumstances under which it could be proven to work is not a ‘Truth’, not experimentally and not from a practical benefit standpoint.

The opposition to Atheism is, of course, Deism. Unlike Atheism, there is literally a universe of ‘facts’ to support it. Everything from the strong and weak nuclear forces and the way they interact to create matter, to the utter unlikelihood of the existence of carbon-based life, to even the unknown components of life itself… all are facts that strongly support the existence of a creative intelligence. More importantly, there IS a way that such a ‘Truth’ could be proven, in practice…. if said deity chose to make his existence known, that would make his existence a ‘fact’.

That means that the ‘Truth’ of Deism is vastly more scientific, and fact-supported, than the ‘Truth’ of Atheism, which is utterly nonfactual and thus a lie, in exactly the same way that the ‘Truth’ of communism as utopia has an array of facts AGAINST it’s success… continued testing has shown that in every instance of a civilization greater than the size of a small tribe, communism has failed and led to enormous human misery and death before finally creating it’s own dissolution.

A betting man would bet on God, as would and insurance company. Actuarial tables exist via the same principles, and their ‘truths’ are replicable enough to make insurance companies insanely rich.

“Anthropogenic Global Climate change” is a BAD ‘truth’, because it does not have any facts backing it up. It is not replicable, and although it IS testable, such a test would have a very strong likelihood of destroying the observer, and thus render such a test meaningless. Engineers have tried repeatedly to create models for AGCC, but most such models fail in the past… there have been a few models that have managed to meet all the data points for past climate alterations, but every single one of those models IMMEDIATELY fail the moment they are tested against future events.

In other words, AGCC is every bit as spurious a ‘Truth’ as socialist Utopias, for exactly the same reason…. because every single test has failed. Civilizationally it also proves to be a bad ‘truth’ because, while scientists and tyrants are profiting from it, If it is a lie agreed to by everyone, it would actively destroy civilization. Every ‘solution’ involves thwarting human cultural, scientific, economic, and population growth.

And Again, Gamblers and insurance companies would bet on AGCC being a false ‘truth’. And scientists do not care… It’s getting them Tenure, it’s making them rich, and winning them recognition. The ONLY way that the facts could be tested truly would be to STOP rewarding scientists for supporting this currently unverified ‘truth’, and encourage them to create a NEW Truth which has more factual connections.

And, Ironically, there are models of truths that exactly match all the available facts. Cyclical and solar climate change. But these two ‘truths’ are considered ‘unscientific’ because they do not make the wealthy wealthier, and thus do not reward the scientists presenting them, or the engineers testing them.

And the term for those who follow the ‘truth’ of cyclical or solar climate change is ‘unscientific Climate Change deniers’.

A good “Truth”, therefore, is to assume that EVERY “Truth” a scientist claims is automatically false. The more scientists agree, the more ‘peer review’ encourages the notion, the less likely it is to be supported by any facts.

And this truth is supported by both testing and many, many facts. The Gamblers and Actuarials would get rich off it… and do.