Throughout the 2020-2021 pandemic, many medical authorities and almost all politicians and news commentators frequently said, “Follow the science.” Science, the supposition goes, provides supportable, repeatable and objective truth, call it here “The Truth.” Science, we all learned in school, relies for truthfulness on “facts” that are supported by experiment and measurement, both performed under conscious observation. And yet, apparently, such truth is subject at times to interpretation, making it in essence not absolute, but rather relative, its value lying in its level of resolution, coarse or fine. In many instances, the Truth of science is a matter of the most likely probability. Scientific predictions fall in that category, their validity becoming by consensus indisputable fact only in retrospect.
It’s interesting how we perceive Truth. We argue that it is both absolute and relative, the former when we want it to be so and the latter, likewise. The duality in “Truth” or “truths” or the dichotomy between them is a handy psychological mechanism that assures us we are “on the right path” in life. You and I can rely on absolutism or relativism as we desire; in absolute truths we see the world as a stable reflection of our observations. And we act on what we believe we observe. Holding a truth to be absolute also gives those in authority justification for yielding freedoms or restricting them. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident” is the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The “self-evident” truths include “unalienable Rights” on which individual Americans depend for self-determination. But, of course, smaller truths make up any larger Truth, so perpetrators of heinous crimes lose the right to liberty or even to life, both included in those “rights endowed by their Creator,” as Jefferson writes. An unalienable right to liberty isn’t, as prisoners learn, an absolute truth.
First Problem: If we acknowledge that we can judge a “truth” on what has occurred, do we also acknowledge that we can judge a “truth” on what has yet to occur? In short, can we accept the probability of something as an observable truth. Take, as an example, the wearing of masks during a pandemic: Did you wear a mask because you accepted the probability of their protection against the disease? By wearing a mask, you revealed a reliance on a “future truth,” one based on a probability you accepted as a fact. Acting on a belief in the validity of present and future Truth can also lead to economic upturns and downturns to which bubbling inflation and deflationary depressions stand as historical consequences. The probability of an economic collapse in tomorrow’s stock market accepted as a “truth” can precipitate or exacerbate a collapse.
Think now. In what ways have you altered the course of your life on the basis of a “future truth,” a “fact” that you considered to be not just highly probable but absolutely so? Marriage? Job? Investment? Bet? You have relied on the facts of “future truths” because of your assumption that you can distinguish among probabilities, even though any “future truth” can only be absolutely true when it becomes a present or past truth. Is that right?
Or, am I headed in the wrong direction? If a scientific truth is indisputable, then regardless of its passing the test of time, it is, in effect, timeless. Maybe my focus should lie in the consciousness of the observer. Should I, therefore, say instead that an observed truth is true only for the observer and the minds of those whom the observer can convince? Defense lawyers operate on that principle, don’t they? “If the glove ‘don’t’ fit, you have to acquit” was Johnny Cochran’s famous defense line in the O. J. Simpson trial. He made that statement after Simpson wearing a rubber glove had difficulty putting on the supposed murderer’s glove in an experiment observed by the jurors. Could the jurors have been wrong in judging on what they saw in court? The experiment appears to have outweighed the DNA evidence presented by the prosecution, evidence they were told about but did not personally observe being collected.
Second Problem: If we act on the basis of observable truth that we and many others accept as absolute, can we make a mistake? On a social level, that is on the level of a mass psychology, the duality between Absolute and Relative Truth can be dangerous, as it has been during persecutions and wars. The Nazis imposed an “absolute” truth on Germans that made genocide a matter of indifference at the very least and complicity in practice. All genocides have their roots in Absolute Truths that outsiders know to be relative and insiders discover only from the perspective of history. Or, take the example of those who use some truths to extrapolate “A Truth.” Is it true, for example, that Capitalism has fostered inequalities as those who have succeeded financially have often done so on the labor of those who have struggled financially? Does such a truth warrant a rejection of free enterprise in favor of a state-mandated equality of outcome based on a probability of a future truth that has never been observed as a past or present truth? Sorry, that was a long way ‘round. Let’s rephrase it: Did those who initially supported the rise of Communism foresee the inequalities of the Soviet Union or present-day Cuba or Venezuela through which they had to live? Did they see the truth in retrospect as evidenced by the fall of the Berlin Wall and 162 million twentieth-century murders committed in the name of and perpetrated by the state?
Third Problem: Will “following the science” infringe on any of your unalienable Rights? Will those in control of the economy impose rules based on Absolute Truths they accept? Take the recent (May, 2021) comment of the Secretary of Energy as an example of truth’s dual nature. After the Colonial Pipeline’s flow was disrupted by hackers and gas stations ran empty and after drivers waited in long lines for fuel, Jennifer M. Granholm said to reporters that waiting in a line for fuel would not happen if one drove an electric car. True, right? An absolute Truth, correct?
Maybe not. What Granholm’s comments indicate is that in many instances other truths lie in superposition with any Absolute Truth, as Schrödinger’s Cat is both alive and dead or Eugene Wigner’s friend observes a photon’s wave function collapse in a sealed windowless room. Is Secretary Granholm an analog of Wigner’s Friend? Is she sealed inside observing a “truth” that we learn only because she reveals it to us? Are electric cars the “future truth” that we must accept as a solution to perceived energy problems associated with carbon fuels?
Apparently, for the Secretary of Energy, there’s no relation between hackers that hack fuel pipelines and those who would hack an electric grid. The Truth of energy’s vulnerability to hacking is the issue, not the supposed Truth that a country with the largest economy can supply its transportation needs through alternative energy sources.
Apparently, also—but this might be “my truth” and not “the Truth”—Granholm thinks that electricity emerges like Athena from the head of Zeus, from isolated systems not subject to hacking, say a farm field covered by solar panels along I-95 that Madam Secretary believes will supply endless power to thousands of electric cars and trucks with drained batteries.
Apparently, also, to a section of the population that includes the current President and his energy secretary, pipelines are in themselves bad for the environment. A “Truth” to which one might sarcastically respond, “Right, trains carrying oil never wreck and are not subject to sabotage.” But of course, there are other truths to consider if I am correct in saying that all Truths are composed of truths, that every Absolute has parts. The Colonial Pipeline has leaked oil on three separate occasions, and one of those spills was rather large with 1.2 million-gallons flowing into a nature reserve in North Carolina. So, yes, there’s a Truth to be told about pipelines that is true: There’s a probability they will leak that is evidenced by actual and demonstrably “true” leaks we see in retrospect.
But the overwhelming Truth on which the Biden Administration has focused is that fossil fuels, the energy sources that made the modern world possible, are in themselves bad because they are driving world temperatures upward. And embedded in that “Truth” lies the Administration’s Schrödinger’s Cat or Wigner’s hidden photon-observing Friend, the future “Truth” that alternative “green” sources can supply energy at a level equivalent to petroleum for 15 million trucks and 286 million cars in the United States.
Is there a difference between the “truth” of the past and the “truth” of the future? The current Administration believes it knows before it opens the box whether or not the Cat is alive or the photon’s wave function has collapsed. It believes it knows whether or not alternative energy will adequately replace fossil fuels and reduce world temperatures. It believes it has already observed the future and found the observation to be “true.” And it has declared its observation to be an Absolute Truth.
Add this into the mix: The Administration’s Friend, an analog of Wigner’s Friend, has tossed a coin called climate. That variable Earth phenomenon that has always changed with solar energy input, changing ocean currents, moving continents, rising mountains, volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric composition, yes, that phenomenon-coin has been tossed, and its outcome has been reported, conveyed to all by conscious observers who are privy to first-hand observation of the experiment. That coin has already fallen in the future on the side of temperatures rising unless green energy supplants fossil fuel energy. And unlike Schrödinger or Wigner who simply act as observers “after the fact,” the Administration believes it knows ahead of time whether the cat is alive or dead or the coin falls heads or tails. It believes it can both predict a future truth and play an active role in determining the outcome based on the Truth that it now accepts as absolute.
There’s a consequence to declaring a Future Truth that ignores the sundry and sometimes contradictory truths of which it is composed. What “future truth” is the most probable? Here’s one probability: The bubble of energy-independence achieved by the United States during the period between 2016 and 2020 will undergo deflation with a consequential dependence on whims of foreign energy suppliers, on a barely adequate supply of fuel that cannot be easily shifted to meet needs as shortages occur, and on an inflationary spiral that will have detrimental economic ramifications. And all the while of the present and an undetermined while of the future, the natural controls on climate will proceed as they always have, and other countries seeking to become as wealthy as the United States had become on fossil fuels will burn their fuels without regard to one country’s adherence to a perceived Truth.
There is no evidence that green energy sources can supplant the transportation sector’s current energy consumption from petroleum. In fact, evidence of green energy reliability is contradicted by the experiment Nature ran with California’s energy shortage and the freezing of windmills in Texas. Those green energy failures, coupled with numerous small truths about green energy’s environmental and economic costs, suggest that the “Future Truth” might not be what it seems to be in the minds of the Biden Administration as they “follow the science” they believe to be incontrovertible.
Buy your electric car now. Buy extra masks just in case the “truth” announced in May by the CDC (that masks aren’t necessary) is overturned by new “scientific” findings. Then, volunteer to chase eagles and other birds away from windmill blades and solar mirrors with scalding temperatures. Volunteer to reclaim heavy metals from outdated electric car batteries and fiberglass from damaged and replaced windmill blades. Oh! And volunteer to pick from the streets, forests, and waters all those carelessly discarded masks and nitrile gloves. You can do those favors for both Man and Nature if you are allowed outside under the Truth of the moment.
It’s interesting how we perceive Truth. We argue that it is both absolute and relative, the former when we want it to be so and the latter, likewise. The duality in “Truth” or “truths” or the dichotomy between them is a handy psychological mechanism that assures us we are “on the right path” in life. You and I can rely on absolutism or relativism as we desire; in absolute truths we see the world as a stable reflection of our observations. And we act on what we believe we observe. Holding a truth to be absolute also gives those in authority justification for yielding freedoms or restricting them. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident” is the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The “self-evident” truths include “unalienable Rights” on which individual Americans depend for self-determination. But, of course, smaller truths make up any larger Truth, so perpetrators of heinous crimes lose the right to liberty or even to life, both included in those “rights endowed by their Creator,” as Jefferson writes. An unalienable right to liberty isn’t, as prisoners learn, an absolute truth.
First Problem: If we acknowledge that we can judge a “truth” on what has occurred, do we also acknowledge that we can judge a “truth” on what has yet to occur? In short, can we accept the probability of something as an observable truth. Take, as an example, the wearing of masks during a pandemic: Did you wear a mask because you accepted the probability of their protection against the disease? By wearing a mask, you revealed a reliance on a “future truth,” one based on a probability you accepted as a fact. Acting on a belief in the validity of present and future Truth can also lead to economic upturns and downturns to which bubbling inflation and deflationary depressions stand as historical consequences. The probability of an economic collapse in tomorrow’s stock market accepted as a “truth” can precipitate or exacerbate a collapse.
Think now. In what ways have you altered the course of your life on the basis of a “future truth,” a “fact” that you considered to be not just highly probable but absolutely so? Marriage? Job? Investment? Bet? You have relied on the facts of “future truths” because of your assumption that you can distinguish among probabilities, even though any “future truth” can only be absolutely true when it becomes a present or past truth. Is that right?
Or, am I headed in the wrong direction? If a scientific truth is indisputable, then regardless of its passing the test of time, it is, in effect, timeless. Maybe my focus should lie in the consciousness of the observer. Should I, therefore, say instead that an observed truth is true only for the observer and the minds of those whom the observer can convince? Defense lawyers operate on that principle, don’t they? “If the glove ‘don’t’ fit, you have to acquit” was Johnny Cochran’s famous defense line in the O. J. Simpson trial. He made that statement after Simpson wearing a rubber glove had difficulty putting on the supposed murderer’s glove in an experiment observed by the jurors. Could the jurors have been wrong in judging on what they saw in court? The experiment appears to have outweighed the DNA evidence presented by the prosecution, evidence they were told about but did not personally observe being collected.
Second Problem: If we act on the basis of observable truth that we and many others accept as absolute, can we make a mistake? On a social level, that is on the level of a mass psychology, the duality between Absolute and Relative Truth can be dangerous, as it has been during persecutions and wars. The Nazis imposed an “absolute” truth on Germans that made genocide a matter of indifference at the very least and complicity in practice. All genocides have their roots in Absolute Truths that outsiders know to be relative and insiders discover only from the perspective of history. Or, take the example of those who use some truths to extrapolate “A Truth.” Is it true, for example, that Capitalism has fostered inequalities as those who have succeeded financially have often done so on the labor of those who have struggled financially? Does such a truth warrant a rejection of free enterprise in favor of a state-mandated equality of outcome based on a probability of a future truth that has never been observed as a past or present truth? Sorry, that was a long way ‘round. Let’s rephrase it: Did those who initially supported the rise of Communism foresee the inequalities of the Soviet Union or present-day Cuba or Venezuela through which they had to live? Did they see the truth in retrospect as evidenced by the fall of the Berlin Wall and 162 million twentieth-century murders committed in the name of and perpetrated by the state?
Third Problem: Will “following the science” infringe on any of your unalienable Rights? Will those in control of the economy impose rules based on Absolute Truths they accept? Take the recent (May, 2021) comment of the Secretary of Energy as an example of truth’s dual nature. After the Colonial Pipeline’s flow was disrupted by hackers and gas stations ran empty and after drivers waited in long lines for fuel, Jennifer M. Granholm said to reporters that waiting in a line for fuel would not happen if one drove an electric car. True, right? An absolute Truth, correct?
Maybe not. What Granholm’s comments indicate is that in many instances other truths lie in superposition with any Absolute Truth, as Schrödinger’s Cat is both alive and dead or Eugene Wigner’s friend observes a photon’s wave function collapse in a sealed windowless room. Is Secretary Granholm an analog of Wigner’s Friend? Is she sealed inside observing a “truth” that we learn only because she reveals it to us? Are electric cars the “future truth” that we must accept as a solution to perceived energy problems associated with carbon fuels?
Apparently, for the Secretary of Energy, there’s no relation between hackers that hack fuel pipelines and those who would hack an electric grid. The Truth of energy’s vulnerability to hacking is the issue, not the supposed Truth that a country with the largest economy can supply its transportation needs through alternative energy sources.
Apparently, also—but this might be “my truth” and not “the Truth”—Granholm thinks that electricity emerges like Athena from the head of Zeus, from isolated systems not subject to hacking, say a farm field covered by solar panels along I-95 that Madam Secretary believes will supply endless power to thousands of electric cars and trucks with drained batteries.
Apparently, also, to a section of the population that includes the current President and his energy secretary, pipelines are in themselves bad for the environment. A “Truth” to which one might sarcastically respond, “Right, trains carrying oil never wreck and are not subject to sabotage.” But of course, there are other truths to consider if I am correct in saying that all Truths are composed of truths, that every Absolute has parts. The Colonial Pipeline has leaked oil on three separate occasions, and one of those spills was rather large with 1.2 million-gallons flowing into a nature reserve in North Carolina. So, yes, there’s a Truth to be told about pipelines that is true: There’s a probability they will leak that is evidenced by actual and demonstrably “true” leaks we see in retrospect.
But the overwhelming Truth on which the Biden Administration has focused is that fossil fuels, the energy sources that made the modern world possible, are in themselves bad because they are driving world temperatures upward. And embedded in that “Truth” lies the Administration’s Schrödinger’s Cat or Wigner’s hidden photon-observing Friend, the future “Truth” that alternative “green” sources can supply energy at a level equivalent to petroleum for 15 million trucks and 286 million cars in the United States.
Is there a difference between the “truth” of the past and the “truth” of the future? The current Administration believes it knows before it opens the box whether or not the Cat is alive or the photon’s wave function has collapsed. It believes it knows whether or not alternative energy will adequately replace fossil fuels and reduce world temperatures. It believes it has already observed the future and found the observation to be “true.” And it has declared its observation to be an Absolute Truth.
Add this into the mix: The Administration’s Friend, an analog of Wigner’s Friend, has tossed a coin called climate. That variable Earth phenomenon that has always changed with solar energy input, changing ocean currents, moving continents, rising mountains, volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric composition, yes, that phenomenon-coin has been tossed, and its outcome has been reported, conveyed to all by conscious observers who are privy to first-hand observation of the experiment. That coin has already fallen in the future on the side of temperatures rising unless green energy supplants fossil fuel energy. And unlike Schrödinger or Wigner who simply act as observers “after the fact,” the Administration believes it knows ahead of time whether the cat is alive or dead or the coin falls heads or tails. It believes it can both predict a future truth and play an active role in determining the outcome based on the Truth that it now accepts as absolute.
There’s a consequence to declaring a Future Truth that ignores the sundry and sometimes contradictory truths of which it is composed. What “future truth” is the most probable? Here’s one probability: The bubble of energy-independence achieved by the United States during the period between 2016 and 2020 will undergo deflation with a consequential dependence on whims of foreign energy suppliers, on a barely adequate supply of fuel that cannot be easily shifted to meet needs as shortages occur, and on an inflationary spiral that will have detrimental economic ramifications. And all the while of the present and an undetermined while of the future, the natural controls on climate will proceed as they always have, and other countries seeking to become as wealthy as the United States had become on fossil fuels will burn their fuels without regard to one country’s adherence to a perceived Truth.
There is no evidence that green energy sources can supplant the transportation sector’s current energy consumption from petroleum. In fact, evidence of green energy reliability is contradicted by the experiment Nature ran with California’s energy shortage and the freezing of windmills in Texas. Those green energy failures, coupled with numerous small truths about green energy’s environmental and economic costs, suggest that the “Future Truth” might not be what it seems to be in the minds of the Biden Administration as they “follow the science” they believe to be incontrovertible.
Buy your electric car now. Buy extra masks just in case the “truth” announced in May by the CDC (that masks aren’t necessary) is overturned by new “scientific” findings. Then, volunteer to chase eagles and other birds away from windmill blades and solar mirrors with scalding temperatures. Volunteer to reclaim heavy metals from outdated electric car batteries and fiberglass from damaged and replaced windmill blades. Oh! And volunteer to pick from the streets, forests, and waters all those carelessly discarded masks and nitrile gloves. You can do those favors for both Man and Nature if you are allowed outside under the Truth of the moment.
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