Scientific Militant pt. 1

Explicit content warning

11/29/20 • 62 min

Here, we try out a somewhat dreamlike new format. We will describe a problem in terms of the present day, but we will also describe the resolution of that problem from the perspective of this same podcast 30 years in the future. For the present day portion, Arnold tells his friend Evan about the failure of science communication as a strategy for saving the world, and the rich psychometric landscape that relates to ecological perspectives. In the future portion, we begin the story of Ghada Sabbagh, an Egyptian high school student who foments scientific revolution.

Previous Episode

Group Mind pt. 1: Dancing Epidemics

We begin a series on evolved psychological mechanisms for group participation, evaluating the wild variation in behavior and belief that groups exhibit. We'll start with dancing epidemics, divine madness, possession states, culture bound syndromes, and a host of other particularly idiosyncratic forms of social contagion. We'll discuss the (unnecessary) tension between 'cultural' and 'psychological' explanations in academia, and how a more useful frame is simply the ability of groups to cohere around beliefs and behaviors utterly unfamiliar to other groups.

Next Episode

Scientific Militant pt. 2

How scientific is science? In this episode, we further the argument that "science communication" about the ecological crisis is based on an unscientific understanding of what motivates people. Having described some of the innate components of an ecological worldview in the last episode, in this one we look at the raw empirical reality of public perceptions of climate change, the incessant liberal freakout about declining rationality, and more. On the fictional front, we imagine a scientific upheaval resulting from research into the foundations of scientists' own tribal epistemologies.