Everything is Special, Nothing is General (Knowledge)

I’m guessing that sounds sort of extreme … yet I am repeatedly led to this belief.

I don’t believe in such a crass statement as “everything is special, nothing is general“, but I do notice something about the way other people believe to know something about which they obviously have little or no knowledge whatsoever. In general it seems like many people make lots of errors by venturing out onto thin ice and not realizing how crazy they behave simply because they are too uninformed (or perhaps too uneducated) to pay attention to a specialist.

I guess the “renaissance man” (who was probably usually also a white man) is largely to blame. For example: Leonardo Da Vinci dabbled in nearly everything. Today, we refer to Galileo as the man who invented modern science. I expect that we do such proto-scientists a huge disservice if we believe they assumed to be knowledgeable about everything under the sun (and then some). I expect these aspiring students of nature knew when they don’t know quite a lot.

While for many centuries, scientists appeared fully unaware of their own biases, today scientists are taught to become aware of them — as if they could thereby become unbiased. And yet very few people — even in academia — are aware of the fact that on a daily basis they let themselves become manipulated by algorithms which only exist in order for the companies who create those algorithms to increase the own profits — and this is not just one “lost generation”, there are several lost generations who lack the required literacy skills to recognize that the answers they search for on a daily basis come from not only biased algorithms, but even immense manipulative businesses in the booming propaganda industry. And now, this crap is even brought to you by “artificial intelligence”.

I had to watch along as my father was fed endless streams of bullshit by YouTube. Many mostly illiterate members of my family thought this was a good use of his last years of life among “the living”. I saw him degenerate from being mildly amused by this new and improved technology of manipulation to becoming just as lost as the people surrounding him, advising him, recommending him to “take the jab” and so-called “caring” for him by “providing” for him with hospice care. Unfortunately, he ultimately died from trusting some close relatives too much. But even under the best circumstances, he could not have lived much longer. I am unconvinced that he was certainly happy, or certainly unhappy, or anything in between.

The mass of men (and maybe women, too) still lead lives of quiet desperation — how little the world changes!