Unexpected conclusion
Previous item led me surprisingly to an unexpected conclusion that I hadn't written or read before.

Science is simply a form of entertainment, and we should treat it as entertainment.

We should fund it the same way we fund sports or museums or orchestras or 'serious' theater, via season ticket holders.

Big media is NOT entertainment and doesn't fall into this category. Big Media is toxic Deepstate propaganda, organized and funded by government just like Big Science.

If science is just entertainment, it loses its court-enforced (and usually fake) connection to truth, and thus loses its power to create genocide. Nobody would use a Vaudeville routine or a cartoon or a song as the foundation for government policies. Science should fit in the same category.

Some science is still funded by ticket holders who expect to be educated as part of the entertainment. Farm associations sponsoring research on wheat are similar to museum or orchestra ticket holders.

But real science, like real music, is only secondarily educational. My focus on tardigrades this week helped me to grasp this point. Even if we were still capable of learning, we probably wouldn't learn much by watching tardigrades. They're just fascinating in a dozen ways. The more you learn, the more you get fascinated. You're not watching for the sake of learning, you're learning for the sake of watching.

Partial reprint from a couple years ago:

Entertainment applies for sure to all the 'intelligent' critters from octopuses to mammals. When we're not in immediate survival mode, we love to watch stuff happening. Entertainment merges smoothly into education. Watching somebody else catch a caterpillar or hammer a nail isn't especially interesting; but when the catch misses or the hammer hits a thumb, it becomes entertainment AND education. Smart design, connecting pleasure to learning.

Failure and frustration are EXACTLY the moments when learning can happen. Experiential education, when done properly, creates intentional moments of frustration as doors for learning. Watching entertainment is waiting for failure. When we see a racecar crashing or an outfielder missing the catch or an actor jumbling up a word, we laugh cruelly and start thinking about how the process SHOULD have been done. Learning starts with the rhythm of harsh laughter.

Science as conventionally performed ELIMINATES these moments of failure. Experiments that fail to support the grantor's delusional theory are discarded. Methods and data are dishonestly shaped and manipulated to reinforce orthodoxy and agreement, thus completely evading every opportunity for harsh laughter/learning.

= = = = =

When we're not in immediate survival mode leads to another conclusion. Psychopaths in general, and Deepstate in particular, THRIVE on forcing victims into immediate survival mode. Rules change every minute. Urgent emergency piles on urgent emergency piles on urgent emergency. Learning is impossible when psychopaths are in charge. Learning requires enough stability to distinguish constants from variables. If you never get a chance to create a baseline of normalcy and success, you can't tell the difference between success and failure.

Learning also requires enough leisure to stand back and watch entertainment. Since 1975, and even more since 1990, USA has been totally paralyzed by Deepstate. We work desperately and UNSTEADILY to pay our debts, and we constantly wait for the next jackboot STOMP. Unsurprisingly we haven't been learning anything. If this seems like a dubious correlation, think about the Middle Ages in Europe when psychopathic aristocrats ruled exactly like modern Deepstate.

Labels: 2000=1000, Entertainment, Experiential education, Metrology

  ¶ 6:33 AM