Incentives matter, and when the incentives are perverse, you get perverse outcomes created by perverse people.
And the rot has spread far beyond the federal government. Look at the incentives in capital markets with ESG. They’re attempting to replicate the capture of the universities in the corporate world.
It isn't just the subversion of science and its conversion into a platform for politically driven propaganda. It's also the destruction of scientific research as a way of improving our understanding of reality. The collapse in disruptive or impactful research over recent decades has coincided with a flood of marginal (and mostly wrong) papers, noise drowning out signal and reinforcing tired paradigms at the expense of advancement. Meanwhile technological advance has stalled out. For all that we pat ourselves on the back for how rapidly technology moves, everything we use today is merely a refinement of technologies developed decades ago. Moore's Law has done much to conceal the absence of anything genuinely novel.
“Is Saint Bureaucratus a devil who takes possession of a man as soon as he is given governmental responsibility? Are administrators infected with a desire to create a sham order, to manipulate others from behind their green steel desks? Governmental techniques are no different from any other psychological strategy; the deadening hold of regimentation can take mental possession of those dedicated to it, if they are not alert. And this is the intrinsic danger of the various agencies that mediate between the common man and his government. It is a tragic aspect of life that man has to place another fallible man between himself and the attainment of his highest ideals.
“Which human failings will manifest themselves most readily in the administrative machine? Lust for power, automatism, and mental rigidity—all these breed suspicion and intrigue. Being a high civil servant subjects man to a dangerous temptation, simply because he is a part of the ruling apparatus. He finds himself caught in the strategy complex. The magic of becoming an executive and a strategist provokes long-repressed feelings of omnipotence. A strategist feels like a chess player. He wants to manipulate the world by remote control. Now he can keep others waiting, as he was forced to wait himself in his salad days, and thus he can feel himself superior. He can entrench himself behind his official regulations and responsibilities. At the same time he must continually convince others of his indispensability because he is loath to vacate his seat. As a defense against his relative unimportance, he has to expand his staff, increasing his bureaucratic apparatus.”
—Joost Meerloo, “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing”
And THIS is why Yale continued to require a booster for enrollment for current semester. Because the money from tuition is laughable compared to the money received for research. Yale knows who's buttering their bread.
Thanks for another awesome stack. A while ago, after it became clear that one tiny tyrant was controlling pretty much all of the research $ in our country for the last two generations, I wondered aloud to my husband, just how many diseases could have possibly been cured during that time if we had someone else in charge of the funding on research? Fauci is vaccine obsessed and always had been. I think he always wanted to be the next Jonas Saulk, instead he’s the modern Josef Mengele.
The US taxpayers gave Yale U $1.74 billion dollars to sell us Covid propaganda and we didn't even get a t-shirt or thank you? Can they please send us some sort of honorary degree to wipe our arses with? So inconsiderate!
I know there MUST be some, but I can think of no space in our lives now that is not overwhelmingly corrupt & greedy. It’s very depressing sometimes to even think about fighting on EVERY affront to our lives, all at the same time. And we all say we have to fight, resist, defy & I’m all for it - I defied the Vax mandate & masks - but for everything else potentially coming at us, how? Esp if CBDC & digital IDs are forced on us?
I teach the science of nursing...I do my part where I can. I try to make it abundantly clear when teaching about teratogenic effects of medications that NO Pregnant woman should ever take an experimental pharmaceutical product EVER...no matter what their government says! Now if only they remember that on the test of life!
I'd love the highlights of your work to be compiled into a book. Something structured that I can give to someone who does not yet understand how broken government institutions are.
All of this. Over and over.
Incentives matter, and when the incentives are perverse, you get perverse outcomes created by perverse people.
And the rot has spread far beyond the federal government. Look at the incentives in capital markets with ESG. They’re attempting to replicate the capture of the universities in the corporate world.
It isn't just the subversion of science and its conversion into a platform for politically driven propaganda. It's also the destruction of scientific research as a way of improving our understanding of reality. The collapse in disruptive or impactful research over recent decades has coincided with a flood of marginal (and mostly wrong) papers, noise drowning out signal and reinforcing tired paradigms at the expense of advancement. Meanwhile technological advance has stalled out. For all that we pat ourselves on the back for how rapidly technology moves, everything we use today is merely a refinement of technologies developed decades ago. Moore's Law has done much to conceal the absence of anything genuinely novel.
“Is Saint Bureaucratus a devil who takes possession of a man as soon as he is given governmental responsibility? Are administrators infected with a desire to create a sham order, to manipulate others from behind their green steel desks? Governmental techniques are no different from any other psychological strategy; the deadening hold of regimentation can take mental possession of those dedicated to it, if they are not alert. And this is the intrinsic danger of the various agencies that mediate between the common man and his government. It is a tragic aspect of life that man has to place another fallible man between himself and the attainment of his highest ideals.
“Which human failings will manifest themselves most readily in the administrative machine? Lust for power, automatism, and mental rigidity—all these breed suspicion and intrigue. Being a high civil servant subjects man to a dangerous temptation, simply because he is a part of the ruling apparatus. He finds himself caught in the strategy complex. The magic of becoming an executive and a strategist provokes long-repressed feelings of omnipotence. A strategist feels like a chess player. He wants to manipulate the world by remote control. Now he can keep others waiting, as he was forced to wait himself in his salad days, and thus he can feel himself superior. He can entrench himself behind his official regulations and responsibilities. At the same time he must continually convince others of his indispensability because he is loath to vacate his seat. As a defense against his relative unimportance, he has to expand his staff, increasing his bureaucratic apparatus.”
—Joost Meerloo, “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing”
And THIS is why Yale continued to require a booster for enrollment for current semester. Because the money from tuition is laughable compared to the money received for research. Yale knows who's buttering their bread.
Thanks for another awesome stack. A while ago, after it became clear that one tiny tyrant was controlling pretty much all of the research $ in our country for the last two generations, I wondered aloud to my husband, just how many diseases could have possibly been cured during that time if we had someone else in charge of the funding on research? Fauci is vaccine obsessed and always had been. I think he always wanted to be the next Jonas Saulk, instead he’s the modern Josef Mengele.
"virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity" (The $$$)
Amazing foresight.
No wonder my parents had those "I Like Ike" buttons.
I feel ill. However, as you have written, it's best, if you have no helmet, to know you have no helmet.
"every kind of science you can name from biology to ecology to climate to epidemiology has become a ward of the state and as ike predicted:"
Define science. Go ahead and give it a try.
The US taxpayers gave Yale U $1.74 billion dollars to sell us Covid propaganda and we didn't even get a t-shirt or thank you? Can they please send us some sort of honorary degree to wipe our arses with? So inconsiderate!
“you’re not funding open research, you’re funding its absence. you’re funding justification, non-diversity, inequity, and exclusion.”
This line drives this piece home.
I know there MUST be some, but I can think of no space in our lives now that is not overwhelmingly corrupt & greedy. It’s very depressing sometimes to even think about fighting on EVERY affront to our lives, all at the same time. And we all say we have to fight, resist, defy & I’m all for it - I defied the Vax mandate & masks - but for everything else potentially coming at us, how? Esp if CBDC & digital IDs are forced on us?
I think you are being too generous. Science + politics = politics.
I teach the science of nursing...I do my part where I can. I try to make it abundantly clear when teaching about teratogenic effects of medications that NO Pregnant woman should ever take an experimental pharmaceutical product EVER...no matter what their government says! Now if only they remember that on the test of life!
This is especially true in climate change and sustainability. But it’s also true in every branch of science.
Politicised science, not political science.
There's a difference.
Another fantastic piece.
I'd love the highlights of your work to be compiled into a book. Something structured that I can give to someone who does not yet understand how broken government institutions are.