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Science Capture!

No one in South Africa needs to have that term explained to them, as the country has, over the last decade or so, gone through a harrowing ordeal of State Capture, with billions of dollars being looted from state coffers. The aims of all such "capture" initiatives - whether in government, or in the sciences - are to use the resources and mechanisms of established functional institutions to nefarious ends, by re-purposing them to achieve such alternate goals, as prescribed by the "capturers." This is achieved by re-engineering their functionality(ies) to re-align with the goals of the capturers, as opposed to their original stewards and beneficiaries. Principally, this re-alignment is accomplished by re-staffing the institutions with people who are sympathetic to and guided by the aims of the capturers.

This section will be developed using a 1977 essay by Sir John Glubb entitled The Fate of Empires & Search for Survival as the backdrop, to this chapter's narrative. Onto this backdrop we will overlay the contributions of various other thinkers, whose similar observations align with different aspects of Sir Glubb's essay. In his masterful work, he lays out the six (6) stages that all empires go through, as borne out by extensive historical data. Our main point of interest is the landscape he lays out in minute detail and plentiful anecdotes in the last stage of Empires: The Age of Decadence. Onto this landscape we will then superimpose the tell-tale features of our age, as brought out by some thinkers in our time. This will help us to duly identity any similarities. We are looking for confirmation of commonalities - or congruence. Our reason for interest in this 45 year old essay is that it highlights the central role of Intellectuals in the last stage of empires. It details why they rise to power as a class and the effects of their exercising power. The importance of this in understanding the dynamics of our times, cannot be overstated, living as we are in a secular society defined by its faith and complete trust in Science & Intellectualism!

From the first two paragraphs in this section, you might be wondering what does the capture of institutions have to do with Science and the intellectual class in general? What is the nexus that brings both lines of enquiry - seemingly unrelated - together? These are just some of the pertinent questions we will answer in this section. You are aware that the now common English saying "May you live in interesting times" - apparently translated from an ancient Chinese proverb - is meant as a curse? Good. Then the least we can do, is to learn how to tell the good guys from the bad, so we can successfully navigate our "interesting times." We begin with a very brief summary of the first five stages of Empire, and then drill down to the nitty gritties of the final stage - the Age of Decadence.

The First Five Stages of Empires

According to Sir Glubb, there are six general, well defined stages to every Empire. They are:

• The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
• The Age of Conquests
• The Age of Commerce
• The Age of Affluence
• The Age of Intellect
• The Age of Decadence

Interestingly, the first four are defined by robust growth and improvement in the lives of the citizens of the empire. The fifth stage of Empire though, is different. The age of intellect, is the first that signals a downturn in the fortunes of the citizenry, though this new stage of development is presented in flowery terms, as society having reached the zenith of its achievements and sophistication. In reality, it represents nothing but empty sophistry - the exact opposite of sustained enlightenment!

The First Stage: The Age of Pioneers - The Outburst

On average Glubb states that empires last for 10 generations or 250 years. The first of these generations rises abruptly. It is comprised of warriors with an insatiable thirst for conquering, and with little to lose, as they are poor and held in low esteem by their neighbours. Heroic in their demeanour and defined by action, they take huge risks having the confidence that they can solve any problems along the way. Such men, and invariably, it is always a tribe of men, are bold in their actions and self-assured in their commitment to their unified goals.

But there is more to their success than the element of surprise. What enables such "insignificant" nations to be able to overrun much larger and powerful nations, overturning the prevailing world order in the process? It is their character. Those nations in the history of mankind that have managed to pull of such empire building feats were always marked by extreme bravery and an indefatigable fighting spirit. Without exception, their societies valued honour, courage, loyalty and bravery above all else, as Glubb writes:

What's more ...

With that, our summary of the first stage of Empires is almost complete. For we cannot conclude it, without highlighting a telling detail from the above quote: in it, we see that the "outburst" is defined not only by bravery, but by resourcefulness - a strong belief that one can solve any and all problems, as they arise: without need for too much preplanning (plan b, plan c, plan d ... etc.), which is an inhibitor to action,

Such decisive behaviour, such characteristic "unresting enterprise in every field" generates strong results, and it is important to stress yet again that always: "These early victories ... are won chiefly by reckless bravery and daring initiative." Which leads us to the next phase of empire building: Conquest.

The Second Stage: The Age of Conquest

In the second age of Empires, we see adaptation from the surging newcomers to the superior military equipment of the waning local or international superpower.

However, the adaptations are only for areas in which the conquerors were lacking. In this instance: the single domain of executing sophisticated military campaigns. Hence, in all other fields of activity the newcomers continue unchanged - with the same fervour and daring as in the Age of Pioneers. In this regard, when lived in real time the line between these first two ages of a new empire is very blurred. To the people living it, the increased scope of conquest, made possible by their adoption of new military capabilities just seems to be another win, in their growing list of successive victories. It doesn't feel like a new stage, it just feels like the fulfillment of the goal of their initial plans! While - and this is important ...

With all this success at hand, we move quickly onto the third stage.

The Third Stage: The Age of Commerce

You have noticed, perhaps through your keen interest or causal perusal of global trade news that commerce is driven by trading blocs. Not only must a country produce goods, it must have a market where those goods can be sold. This is what makes countries with large territories under one government attractive to merchants. Hence, China, India and Brazil are courted by other countries because they represent large trading blocs. Countries or regions that do not have this natural advantage, copy it by agreeing to act as one unified trading bloc, with one set of universal rules - effectively mimicking large countries. This is the idea behind the European Union, and the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA. It will not surprise you then, that our quickly growing empire, which is gaining lands and peoples in rapid succession as a result of its conquest, is quickly established as its own financial market, which has the critical mass to be a large center of trade and commerce:

This third phase in the rise of empires is so straightforward, we do not need to spend any more time on it. But, of course with commerce comes riches.

The Fourth Stage: The Age of Affluence

The Pareto Distribution is often short-handed into the 80/20 rule: 80% of what you spend your time doing generates 20% of the results and 20% of what you spend your time doing generates 80% of your productivity. That is used by many as a rule of thumb. However another law, is far more telling - especially when it comes to all things creative: Price's square root law. It can be stated in different ways, one of which is:

It's meaning is easy enough to discern: in all creative endeavours, half of the total output will be produced by the square root of the total number of participants. So, if you had 10 musicians on a record label, 3 of them would write 50% of the songs. If you had 25 such artists, 5 would produce 50% of the songs and so on. This applies to all human creative fields, such as literature, the arts, dancing etc. It also applies to entrepreneurship. Taken together it produces the effect we have all seen when playing monopoly. While everyone starts out with the same amount of money, with each round of playing, the money accumulates around fewer and fewer players, until in the end - one player is declared the winner. That is the story of "affluence." Hence the Age of Commerce, leads - most naturally - to the Age of Affluence. Some characteristics of this age - some positive; some negative - follow:

Did you catch the divergence? "... Gradually the desire to make money seems to gain hold of the public." This slowly changes the values of the citizens. It is obvious that when "glory and honour [are] the principle objects of ambition," all the young men want to be courageous warriors and the women in such societies value those qualities too! However, when money comes to take principle place in the minds of the public, what qualities, or, indeed vices, come to replace valour and courage? What does the merchant put before everything else? Profit. And what trait does profit inspire? Greed. And so it is, that it is in the Age of Affluence, we see our first cracks in the empire's armour. Just when everything should be going right, the seeds for it all going wrong are laid!

So, with the dawn of the Age of Affluence, we see people starting to have first world problems: how to use all the money. Their solutions are at first philanthropic, but gradually over time they become more and more ostentatious. In other words the ages of Commerce and Affluence have a twin-pronged character: the first gallant - in the age of Commerce; but the second destructive - in the age of Affluence. The narrative continues.

The beginning of the Age of Commerce, then represents the sweet spot! The best of all worlds. The wealthy are using their riches towards civil projects that benefit all citizens, and the public as a population are still strongly tied to values of courage, bravery, honour and most importantly truthfulness! This age is characterized by having the best of the early pioneer spirit and enjoying the benefits of hard won progress. Please note that this persists only while the society is still accumulating wealth. Once the empire reaches the threshold of being in the second half of the Age of Commerce, or full fledged affluence, things change.

Effectively, the esteem that previously could only be obtained through morality, bravery, courage, honour, integrity and a deep sense of duty now becomes attainable through money. And with this the Bible itself agrees. One money becomes the focal point of the general public, it becomes a universal substitute for actual qualities:

But the worst is yet to come! Realize that up until now, there has been no mention of Intellectuals. Why is that? Are there no smart people in society through all of these first four stages of Empire? Of course not. There are always smart people: so Intellectualism, must be a development that is not strictly related to intelligence, but something else: something else must be its essence, by definition - as we will next learn. What has history proven to be the next thing, after the initial corrupting of people's moral values? For, we recall that Sir Glubb stated that: "The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one." What is second to go? Education. The breakdown of empires next moves to the corruption of a society's educational system,

What is the impact? What domino effect is set into irreversible motion by this new negative developments in the character of the public? The population as a whole, now chasing riches and luxury and greed instead of honour and a sense of duty, pivots like a door on its hinge. It transforms from the spirit of its hardy confident brave aggressive forefathers into a defensive stance, where it thinks spending money can substitute for bravery in war. That is why at the end of the lifespans, when great but failed empires meet their end, and are overrun by comparatively weak nations, those invading nations are met with superior military equipment! Of course, it not equipment that wins wars.

Poor people dream about to become rich. The wealthy cannot even fall asleep, because the anxiety of losing their wealth terrifies them so:

Hence, the defensiveness, which in affluent empires is embraced by the whole populace. Still no presence or mention of Intellectuals. But, the stage now properly set: the society sufficiently weakened, and looking for assurance in a world, where the have-nots eventually come for the wealth of the haves - the inexorable march of Empires enters its most corrupting stage: the Age of Intellect. This stage is the penultimate (second to last) stage in the rise and fall of empires - and with good reason. The Age of Intellect proceeds in two distinct phases, so from here we will split our discussion into two sub-sections: Orthodoxy: How Conformity Kills Innovation; and Pathologies: How Bureaucratic Orthodoxy Leads to Anti-Science

The Fifth Stage: The Age of Intellect

We come to the last piece of the puzzle, for the actual last stage is not a puzzle, but the inevitable outcome of developments in the first five stages. Nothing but decadence, could follow the age of Intellect. With each of the previous stages, we notice a pattern: each age represented a new development. Before the pioneers took bold action and started to conquer, they were not pioneers. They needed to take action to become such. After their initial victory(ies), they needed to embark on committed campaigns of Conquest, otherwise, without conquest they would never reach the status of empires. In the third stage only once they conquered vast stretches of territory, are all the variables in place for Commerce to take off. Without those preconditions made possible only through conquest: empires do not reach the critical mass needed to foster and expand commerce. This is a new development: something that wasn't there before! Recall, what prompted the pioneers to set this whole machinery in operation, in the first place. Why were they brave, hardy, robust, enterprising? Why did they risk their lives to enter unfamiliar domains with aggressiveness and a daring unbendable will? It was because they had very limited resources and saw war and conquest as a way to establish themselves. They were the very opposite of affluent, so the Age of Affluence is indeed a new development in the fourth phase of empires. The same cannot be said of the arrival of the Age of Intellect. Not if Intellectualism is regarded as being intelligence: since there are always intelligent people in all populations - as world history so clearly attests to. Hence, we realize, as noted before that intelligence cannot be the essence or definition of Intellectualism! If not intelligence, then what?

On the face of it this development seems beneficial, even logical. But as we will see from the history of empires, nothing could be further from the truth. For, it is in this phase of empires, that the final seeds of self-destruction are sown. Contrary to having the uplifting effect the patrons of universities seek to establish, the proliferation of universities creates a signal that all in society quickly come to understand: if you want to get ahead the quickest, easiest, most secure way of doing so is through education. Sir Glubb defines developments:

But beneath the surface lurks another reality - impending doom. However, before we proceed, we must correct an error on the part of Sir Glubb. With the line: "... the vast expansion of the field of knowledge achieved by the Age of Intellect seemed to mark a new high-water mark of human progress," is incorrect! Why? How? Sir Glubb conflates the achievements of individual scientists, with the age in which they accomplish their work. Recall the saying that:

You will surely agree that at all stages of empire, you get individuals who are best fit for all the different stages of the development of empires. In other words. In the age of conquest, you get men that are neither brave nor loyal, but whose main pursuit in life is the accumulation of riches - it's just that they are not in the majority and they do not represent what is typical for their age. Similarly in the age of Commerce, you will have individuals who have a pioneer spirit, and while others are building their fortunes, all they want to do is roam the world in the search for adventure. Even today when the Western world, is definitely not in the Age of Pioneers, we regularly hear of hardy pioneering types, who sail across oceans single-handedly in search adventure. Often, we ourselves know someone whose character and mannerisms fit a bygone era, and we speak of it casually, as in: So and so would have been great if they lived in such-and-such a period of time, because their character would have been a perfect fit for the culture of that bygone era.

Now, Glubb has defined the characteristics which lead to the Age of Intellectualism. First, a recap of the developments of the preceding Age of Affluence: "There does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of this strong, brave and self-confident people. The decline in courage, enterprise and a sense of duty is, however, gradual. The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one. Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men." What happens to the motivations of the public under such influences? "Gradually, and almost imperceptibly, the Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash." To what end? "... Greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service. Indeed the change might be summarized as being from service to selfishness." This change from service to selfishness, along with defensiveness: the propensity to "no longer be interested in glory," but to focus rather on retaining accrued wealth and luxury, are traits that characterize the Age of Affluence.

By the time the Age of Intellect takes over, the average person is pursuing tertiary education, not to be able to make a difference in the world, "but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich." Now contrast that with the examples of the great scientists we have so far studied in this blog. What spirit did Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Lavoisier, and so many others display when they were fighting against the ignorance of their times to pursue radical paradigm shifts that were in stark contrast from the conventional wisdom of their eras? A conventional wisdom which was decreed by fiat from the Catholic Church, with severe penalties against anyone who went against Church dogma? Would they ever have published when the stakes were so high had they valued "selfishness" instead of service? If Galileo were in a defensive mode, would he have pushed for the acceptance of the heliocentric model, knowing the cost it might impose on him? Would Giordano Bruno have sacrificed his life had he valued wealth over truth? The answer to all of the above is: "No!"

Since all truth goes through the above stated stages as outlined by Schopenhauer, no matter what era a scientist publishes a discovery of unknown truths, it always requires of him or her, a spirit of daring selflessness, that is most easily defines the Age of Pioneers! The confusion comes when we think the root word of Intellectualism, is intellect. It is not. The root word for Intellectualism is actually just a suffix: ...ism. 'Isms' denote some philosophy that is shared among a group of people, such as socialism with socialists; and capitalism with capitalists. In the case of 'Intellectualism,' the essence of the ideology is "ideas over action," since they have discarded the traits that lead to heroic action and have adopted the of materialism over values; cash over substance, that is, over honour and service; attaining security through accreditation and conformity, as opposed to setting and achieving ones life's goals through integrity and "daring initiative;" they value orthodoxy over originality; and above all, they value consensus over the loneliness of being a paradigm-shifter. These are the traits that define the Age of Intellectualism. And because of that the effects of this age are always, but always negative and corruptive! Under the subheading, "The Effects of Intellectualism," Sir Glubb laments: "The spread of knowledge seems to be the most beneficial of human activities, and yet every period of decline is characterized by this expansion of intellectual activity." That's because, what is expanding is not intelligence, but the ideology that "you can abandon the values that are universally accredited with building strong societies - truth, honour, initiative, courage, justice and integrity among others - and still maintain the forward progress of your society." Phrased in that way, the implausibility and impossibility of the task become immediately apparent! But there is more.

We now move to consider the effects of the Age of Intellectualism more closely. For the effects come in two distinct phases: the first well intentioned; the second pathological. All 'Intellectualism' is predicated on continuous growth. Remember the impetus for the intellectual age is the sustained prosperity of the two previous ages: the 'Age of Commerce' and the 'Age of Affluence,' with the result that money takes top priority in the hearts and minds of the general public. Thus is born the 'Age of Intellectualism.' Once educational qualifications starts to be seen as the portal to financial security. But there is a catch, growth is itself predicated on continuous innovation. Here, for the first time in this section we start to superimpose the contemporary thoughts of current thinkers, from academics to podcasters, to successful entrepreneurs, over the narrative of Sir Glubb's masterful work of historical analysis. Their views are pertinent, because they offer an in-depth look into the dynamics that make Intellectualism thee catalyst to catastrophic collapse in societies. We start with Peter Thiel, and his ideas on growth and its importance to the stability of Western representative democracies.

The problem with Intellectualism is that it esteems ideas above action. And corrupt Intellectualism, is even worse because in corrupt institutions, ideas are no longer judged against critical thinking, but unanimous consensus. In other words, once the institutions have stopped producing critical thinkers, they pivot to embedding orthodoxies and demanding conformity from their members - faculty and students alike. At such a stage, what matters in keeping up appearances of success and forward progress is not truth, but consensus, and conforming to established orthodoxies.

Orthodoxy: How Conformity Kills Innovation

Peter Thiel on the Importance of Growth in Democracies

Peter Thiel, the capitalist co-founder of PayPal with Elon Musk, has commented extensively about the rot in academia, and more importantly, the reasons for it. He argues that Western representative democracies are founded on the assumption of continual growth, and that without it, they decline rapidly which will lead ultimately to collapse. He cites how universities work to illustrate the point:

In various videos of talks, where he argues for his position, Thiel gives different examples of how stability depends on expectations of growth being fulfilled. For instance, in one video he gives the example of how retirement annuities are calculated based on expected future growth.

In another instance, he speaks of the academic system at universities being built on the backbone of the expectation that there will always be positions for the next generation, for the best up and coming PhD students to become professors, but that is only possible when there is continuous growth. The hidden clause is that you need continuous innovation, to fuel continuous growth - which in turn secures a continually growing pie, allowing successive generations of educated intellectuals to all have financially secure livelihoods.

In yet another example he gives elsewhere, he speaks of the housing market, and how the American dream is based on the expectation that a growing (in size) and appreciating (in value) housing market ensures upward mobility for American homeowners - as houses are the largest and most expensive assets the majority of people will ever own. Thus, their continual appreciation in value allows for families to establish financial security. This, in turn fuels the American dream - but, critically, only if there is continuous economic growth. And again, such continuous economic growth requires continuous innovation. What happens then, when there is a downturn, and growth slows down, or worse yet comes to a halt? In an interview for Eric Weinstein's podcast The Portal, entitled: "An Era of Stagnation & Universal Institutional Failure," that was published in July of 2019, both gentlemen discuss the effects of low or zero growth on institutions. Here is a brief excerpt of their discussion (17:00 - 20:37).

Peter Thiel: The direct scientific questions I think are very hard to get a handle on. And the reason for this is that in late modernity - which we're living in - there's simply too much knowledge for any individual human to understand all of it. And so in this world of extreme hyper-specialization where it's narrower, narrower subsets of experts policing themselves and talking about how great they are. The string theorists talking about how great string theory is. The cancer researchers talking about how they're just about to cure cancer. The quantum computer researchers are just about to build - you know - a quantum computer: there will be a massive breakthrough. And then if you were to say: [in] all these fields, not much is happening - people don't just have the authority for it. This is somehow a very different feel for science or knowledge, than you would have had in 1800, or even in 1900. You know 1800, Goethe could still just about understand everything. 1900 Hilbert could still understand just about all of mathematics. And so, this sort of specialization, I think has made it a much harder question to get a handle on. The political cut I have on specialization is always that if you analyze the politics of science, specialization should make you suspicious. Because, it's gotten harder to evaluate what's going on. Then, it's presumably gotten easier for people to lie and to exaggerate. And then one should be, you know, a little bit suspicious. And that's my starting bias.

Eric Weinstein: Well, mine as well. And I think perhaps, sort of the craziest idea to come out of all of this - and again: you met your version of this in a law firm which is predicated upon the idea that a partner would hire associates, and the associates would hope to become partners who could then hire associates - and so that has that pyramidal structure. And in the university system: every professor is trying to train graduate students to become research professors, to train graduate students. I think the universities were probably the most aggressive of these sort of things I've called Embedded Growth Obligations. But the implication of this idea: that we structured almost everything on an expectation of growth, and then this growth that was expected ran out. It wasn't as high or as stable and as technologically led, as before, has a pretty surprising implication - which is: I mean, let's not dance around it - it feels like, almost universally, all of our institutions are now pathological!

PT: Or, sociopathic, or whatever you want to call them. Yes. I suppose there's sort of two ways one can imagine going. You have these expectations of great growth. Great Expectations, is a Charles Dickens novel from the nineteenth century, when we had great expectations. And then, you can try to be honest and say the expectations are dialled down. Or you can continue to say everything is great, and it just happens not to be working out for you, but it's working out for people in general. Somehow, it's been very hard to have a sort of honest reset. And the incentives have been, for the institutions to derange and to lie.

EW: One thing that I'm very curious about: is how this discipline, seems to have arisen where, almost everyone representing the institutions, tells some version of this universal story, which I'll be honest, to my way of thinking, can be instantly invalidated by anyone who chooses to do so. It's just that the cost of invalidating it is quite high. Paul Krugman wrote this column called A Protectionist Moment, where he said: "Let's be honest. The financial elites case for ever freer trade, has always been something of a scam." And so, you had people who are participating in this who seemed to have known all along, that there's no way of justifying this on paper - and yet were willing and able to participate, with seemingly very few consequences to their careers. Like, it didn't give opportunities to people who were heterodox in saying: "hey, aside from a few bright spots, more or less, we've actually entered a period of relative stagnation." How did this happen?

PT: I think the individual incentives were very different from the collective incentives. The collective incentive is: we should have an honest conversation, and level set things and get back to a better place. I think the individual incentives were often: you pretend it's working great for you. It's like, the 20 000 people a year move to Los Angeles to become movie stars. About 20 of them make it. And so you could say, "Well it's really hard. Nobody wants to hire me. This is a terrible city." Or you could say, "It's been wonderful. All the doors are being opened to me. The second one is more fictional. But that's sort of the thing you're supposed to say, if you're succeeding.... Or [in] academia: if you're a professor in academia [you're supposed to say]: "the tenure system is working great" ... and if you don't say those things - well, we know you're not the person to get tenure. So, I think there is sort of this individual incentive, where if you pretend the system is working, you're simultaneously signalling that you're one of the few people who should succeed in it.

(Excerpt from 23:18 - 25:51)

Thus we see how conformity and an existential aversion to not "rock the boat" become established features of a rotting and dying academia. Orthodoxy becomes the mantra of survival and dissent or saying anything that upsets long-held views, that is, ideas which run counter to the established narrative are not only frowned upon but ruthlessly opposed and their proposers ostracized. Recall that the "Age of Intellect" is all about what people who have already abandoned their values are willing to do, to secure wealth and financial security. Intellectualism is not an end, but a means to an end. That end is wealth. Thus, it should be no surprise, that people without a moral compass, who have such a stated aim, and who - increasingly - have sacrificed much to attain it: including taking on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt to attend elite universities - will bend with any wind, to secure and retain such status. Thiel and Weinstein make the mistake of saying intellectuals "pathologize" themselves and their institutions, to keep up appearances once the rot sets in, and it becomes harder and harder to cover it up. But that assertion is patently false. The truth is that people who believe in Intellectualism are not abandoning their morals to effect a cover up: by definition, they esteem Intellectualism because, they don't have any morals! The reason tertiary education is a shining beacon on a hill for them - one to be acquired at any cost, is because they have replaced morals and the virtues of service, duty, honour and selflessness with the empty pursuit of money. "Academic honours" only hold value for them inasmuch as they are portals to achieving materialistic goals, whilst the virtues of truth, honesty and honour are often seen as impediments to reaching and sustaining those very same goals:

And ...

And again ...

Take the time to review the chronology of developments from the Age of Commerce to the Age of Intellect, for yourself, and you will clearly see the pattern of moral degradation. Hence, when Intellectuals lie to promote false science, in an effort to sustain their own careers, or to uphold the now defunct utility of their institutions, it is not a dereliction of duty, or a corrupting away from what they are; rather, it is a manifestation of the already present moral bankruptcy that is a prerequisite of Intellectualism! Further, the resultant fact that institutions of Intellectualism become orthodox and thus lacking in innovation and growth, which leads to their further decline and the lies necessary to cover it up, is also not a surprise. Recall what it is, that is always responsible for such advances:

Put another way, we explain the dichotomy between innovation and the sowing of the seeds of progress and Intellectualism, this way: the qualities that are necessary to foster innovation and its outcome - progress, such as initiative, incredible enterprise, courage and hardihood, are present in the first two ages of empire, and are gradually replaced in the subsequent ages of empire by first a lust for wealth (in the Age of Commerce), and secondly an obsession with education (in the Age of Affluence). It is critical to understand that the character traits of the people are what define an age, not the other way around. Only when people, are risk takers who value honour and service can there be an Age of Pioneers. Only when people, are courageous warriors and have a hunger for conquest can there be an "Age of Conquest," etc etc. The people define the Age. That is the important fact to note.

So the great progress that makes the Intellectuals proud to belong to a dominant nation was won and established in the first two "Ages." The "Age of Intellectualism," is two ages removed from those courageous ages of pioneering and conquest. And in the interval, a steady decline of the qualities that defined those initial two ages occurs until, at last: devoid of moral character, the citizens turn their ambitions to only one thing: the acquisition of money, for money's sake. This development in the people, is what is known as the Age of Intellect. Let us not allow shallow definitions to divert our attention away from the main point. The Age of Intellect is not a progressive development of the machinery of society, or of its institutions, or of anything non-human! It is not an abstract "Golden Age," that occurs of its own accord, which is what most people think of when they hear the term. Rather, it is the result of the steady decay in the moral character of the citizens - themselves! "Intellectualism," is a human tragedy. It has to do with the steady decline and complete moral corruption of humans, through the steady substitution of their values, with vices, during the life arc of any powerful empire. It is not - as many people think - the culmination of the steady improvement to society over time.

Can you separate those two things out - in your mind? Since they both happen at the same time, people often confuse their corelation with causation. "Correlation" is defined as: "A relationship or connection between two things based on co-occurrence or pattern of change," whilst causation is not due to "co-occurrence," meaning happening at the same time, but depends on the second thing being the result of, or happening after, the first. The famous example most often given is the fact that ice cream sales and murder rates in New York city have been noticed to both increase and decrease - together. This is an example of correlation, since the events both happen "at the same time." However, there is no causal relationship between ice cream sales and the murder rates in New York city. The answer behind the seemingly strong coincidence is that ice cream sales increase in summer and so does the murder rate. So whilst there is no causation between ice cream sales and homicides in New York, there is a causal relationship between summer and the rise in ice cream sales. Similarly, there is a causal relationship between the warmer summer weather, and the rise in number of homicides in New York city.

That nuance is what people overlook when they conflate Intellectualism with progress. Progress and "Intellectualism" co-occur, but they are not causally related! They are like ice cream and murder. The cause of progress and the greatness of a nation is "won chiefly by [the] reckless bravery and daring initiative" of who ...? Certainly not of the Intellectuals! Intellectualism's single-minded, morality-free focus on "cash" is that which replaces the "amazing initiative ... incredible enterprise, courage and hardihood," of the empire's founding fathers, which inturn results in a steep and enduring progress for the citizens of the rising superpower. Progress comes from the forefathers of a nation. Like a fan unplugged from its wall socket: the blades don't stop spinning immediately! The slowly ebbing state of the progress instituted by the founders reaches its inevitable end concurrently with the appearance of the Age of Intellect. When future generations don't have the needed qualities to keep the machinery of progress spinning through their own daring initiative, hardiness, courage, honour and sense of duty, progress grinds to a halt. This is the point Jordan Peterson was making in a 2018 debate he had with the atheist Susan Blackmore. In it, he states the following:

A little later in the conversation, he drives the point home,

What Peterson is highlighting with the phrase: "we're living on the corpse of our ancestors," that the current generation are not responsible for the benefits they are currently enjoying. Those were hard won, by their ancestors, and unless they innovate and "revivify," that is, breathe new life into those ancient accomplishments, by creating something new in their own generation, the only outcome is rotten decay and collapse. Ancient institutions must be renewed and replenished by each successive generation, by their committing to the same principles and values that made their ancestors great. Without such continuance of the value structure, there can be no continuance to the benefits borne from such value systems. It is when the successive generations refuse to re-commit to such values that stasis and decay set in. As Peterson puts it, "We're living on borrowed time, and in danger of running out of it." These ideas are not new or unique. Here they are stated in another way by Italian

Confusing the Age of Intellect, devoid of the qualities that are responsible for the progress of empires, with said progress is bad enough, but claiming that the Intelligentsia is the cause, of such progress is patently false - and demonstrably untrue! These qualities, the ones that win glory and progress for the new nation, belong to the founders. They, are what characterize the founding generations of empires in their initial two ages: the ages of Pioneering and Conquest. These qualities are then discarded by the "public" in the course of the two intervening periods: the Age of Commerce and the Age of Affluence. Once they are well and truly gone, a new mindset sets in and dominates. An attitude where the mentality that money should be pursued at all costs, takes firm hold on the imagination of the common people: making education, the overwhelming objective of the citizenry - as a means of obtaining wealth. In such a period of moral bankruptcy the end justifies the means. It doesn't matter what you have to do to get money. This mindset is what defines and ushers in the Age of Intellect. For this reason, "Intellectualism" is not about intelligence, but about the mindset that the road to prosperity and security is paved with degrees - and that the attaining of such degrees is the meaning of life. People who believe in this mental fantasy are willing to invest much in trying to realize it; and sadly suffer the penalty. Currently in the United States, according to the website studentloanhero.com, student loan debt is a crippling $1.61 trillion. Inflation is officially at 40 year highs, and the economy is in a recession. The two put together equal "stagflation." Many will not be able to service the student loans. At what price - money?

Progress is Neither Chronological nor Automatic

At this time, we have to clearly resolve this topic into its two constituent parts: the "ages" of empires are not like human aging. Humans age regardless of what they do. Humans move from infants, to young children, to adolescents, to young adults, to adults, to middle age, to mature, to old, and then death - whether we want to or not. When we are young, many want to speed up their growth to quickly become adults and independent. When they are old, many try to slow the same process down, in an effort to hold on to youth and avoid the troubles of old age. But no human has power over these factors: "time waits for no man." The perception that Intellectualism, is about a golden age, is built on the unfounded and now falsified view of many, that progress is chronological - happening on its own as a function of the unavoidable forward march of time; and without need of innovation from humans. Thus eternal innovation and growth are seen as inevitable corollaries of the future: "we waited for the future to arrive, and now that 2020 is here, the dawn of the Golden Age must be upon us - flying cars and all!" Nothing could be further from the truth. This phenomenon is what is responsible for people always imagining the future to be so much grander that it actually turns out to be. As Thiel pointed out earlier, "You can try to be honest and say the expectations are dialled down. Or you can continue to say everything is great, and it just happens not to be working out for you, but it's working out for people in general." The humble truth is you're not driving a George Jetson mobile, your daily transport is a mid-tier Audi: and that's for the ones who consider themselves to be "successful." Not only are you not driving a flying car, nobody is! When do we compare forecasted expectations against actual performance? At what point do we assess the future we imagined against the present that we actually experience? The answer, in the Age of Intellect - is never! The recalibration to reality that that would require is too painful for the Intellectual to contemplate. And thus the stage of empire that historically, has always come after the stage of Intellectualism, is the Age of Decadence, which of course spells steep decline - like the kind you experience when falling of a cliff - and collapse!

The March of Empires is a Measurement of the HUMAN Condition!

The Ages of Empires do not function like this! In fact, they work on the opposite dynamics. Human ageing is based on our biological clocks. The ages of empires, and how and when, one moves from one age to another is based on the mindset and ambitions of the public. It is these dominant attitudes in the people who make up that society that determines what stage in the development of empires, a society is at. For instance, if nations never lost their initial convictions about duty, honour, service, courage and the many other qualities we have learnt define the initial stages of empire, then such an empire would never enter the Age of Intellect: for equipped with such qualities, they would hold no esteem for the inferior world view of "Intellectuals." They would hold it in utter contempt. Honour and glory are always based on character, never on accreditation - making the two value systems incompatible! Hence, the ages of empires are not like human growth, that proceeds independently of human ambitions and character. Such "ages" are the measurement and outcome of the desires of the citizens of empires as they mature and meet and respond to different challenges, and opportunities over time. The problem is by the time of the end of the Age of Affluence, the general public have abandoned the ideals of the founding population of the empire and have become convinced that the only way to succeed in society is through education. And it is this development in the human condition that leads to disaster:

"Dissonance," is "lack of agreement" or an "instance of inconsistency or disagreement." The example sentence Merriam-Webster's online dictionary gives of the word is: "the dissonance between the truth and what people want to believe." Its synonyms are listed as:

conflict, disaccord, discord, discordance, discordancy, disharmony, dissension, dissent, dissidence, disunion, disunity, division, friction, infighting, inharmony, schism, strife, variance, war, warfare

Do we see why such traits characterize the Age of Intellect? Is is not incredible, that as society is sinking further and further into quick sand, as the cracks get deeper and deeper, people, instead of readjusting their expectations, behaviours and thinking in the face of reality; rather double down on them - to their immediate detriment. As Thiel puts it, they view Intellectualism as an "insurance policy." Truth and reality be damned. Some biblical examples are now appropriate to clarify our understanding. Having realized that what characterizes Intellectualism is notthe presence of intellect, but rather, the absence of morals and values, we are coming to appreciate the true malevolent, self-defeating nature of Intellectualism. The key to our clarity of thought on this issue is understanding that Intellectualism comes after the Age of Affluence, and is meant to be a means for individuals who have been convinced by a long familiarity with wealth, that nothing else matters: the only goal in life is to gain advantages that will allow them to participate in and benefit from the mechanisms of that wealth. Put another way: Intellectuals are only concerned with two factors, the social order of their time; and their place in that social order. The Biblical account of how the Pharisees reacted to the news of the miracle of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus is instructive:

The portions of the scripture that I have highlighted are what we are concerned with. The Pharisees did not argue against the truthfulness of the testimony of their "spies" as - occurring as it did during the well attended mourning of Lazarus - there were many witnesses to this phenomena. Which is why I earlier said, truth and reality be damned. No, their point of contention, was not with the truthfulness of the information, but with its effect on two things: their nation; and their place in it. Pecking orders always exists within a context. For the Pharisees, being leaders was only relevant within the Jewish system, that was their context, the social order that formed the context within which they were the ruling class. Exactly like an apex predator is only such, if there is a food chain. Without a food chain, he is neither a predator, nor apex. Taken out of that context, the Pharisees would have had to work for a living. They cared nothing for the welfare of the nation. Had they cared: they would have applauded and championed Christ's efforts in behalf of the Jews. As we know - they did not! Hence, their anxiety and alarm about their nation being taken away by the Romans, was only relevant inasmuch as that "nation" provided their "place," that is, their social position and status within that nation. That empty moral core, is the reality and essence of all Intellectuals. The Pharisees, were of course "Intellectuals," or the term alternate term by which they were known - Scribe:

The above scripture shows the equivalence between scribes and intellectuals. Below, two more scriptures show that the Pharisees, were scribes, i.e. "Intellectuals." The two scriptures are parallel accounts of the same event. The first refers to just the scribes being present; the second also mentions Pharisees, and thus we know that Pharisees were considered to be scribes. In fact, they were the highest echelon among the scribes.

And so, in the account of the Pharisees rejecting the resurrection of Lazarus, we have a dove-tailing of two independently arrived at truths: on the one hand Sir John Glubb made this observation:

It is obvious from his statement that he is puzzled by why Intellectualism has this startling, detrimental effect on society. The answer comes in two-parts. You already know the first part, because we have correctly defined what "Intellectualism" really is: it is not about intelligence, or the spreading of knowledge; but rather the morally bankrupt ideology that "the desire for the accumulation of wealth" is attainable, indeed guaranteed by "the acquisition of academic honours." That's the first part.

The second part is: bereft of any moral integrity, and devoid of any individuality and ability for critical thinking, Intellectuals, cannot innovate and thus, like a pyramid scheme that draws more and more recruits but cannot deliver on its promises, Intellectualism collapses through its own weight. The lack of growth, which is only spurred by innovation cannot sustain the burgeoning ranks of the Intelligentsia. At this point, instead of addressing the imbalance, the institutions - only concerned with greed and money - start to treat themselves as "luxury goods." Prestigious universities have been raising their tuition fees year on year, and getting away with it, for as Thiel pointed out, they are both advertized and perceived as "insurance policies" by the general public. Student debt, as we noted earlier is currently standing at $1.6 trillion in the United States alone. A vicious cycle is now established wherein, the wider the cracks in society get, the more desperate the populace becomes for the false insurance policy. The more desperate the public becomes the more tertiary institutions raise the premiums of the false insurance policy. As this decline gathers pace and the cracks start to show, Intellectuals forego critical analysis and the possibility of coming to grips with the truth of their predicament - making eventual and total collapse inevitable. But to fully understand how this second part of the answer as to why Intellectualism signals the imminent end of a civilization we need to consider actual examples of its dynamics at work, to see just why and how it leads to decay and collapse.

Pathologies: How Bureaucratic Orthodoxy Leads to Anti-Science

Orthodoxy: The Curse of a Lack of Courage

How does orthodoxy set in, to the truth seeking disciplines of the sciences? The answer to this question is a crucial one to understand, because the sciences above all other professions are supposed to be dedicated to the endless search of truth. And orthodoxy means you have stopped searching for truth and are now towing the established line of your field of study. So, once again, how does such a drastic change in the definition and aims of what the sciences are supposed to be trying to achieve happen? Recall that we pointed out earlier, that scientific discoveries are always against the grain of conventional wisdom - thus, scientific discoveries are always made by innovative thinkers who are not afraid to explore and publish discoveries that go against the conventional wisdom of their times. Thus, no matter what "age of empires" a scientist happens to live in, all great discoveries have always been made by people who evince the character traits of the intrepid, brave pioneers and conquerors of the first two ages of empire: the Ages of Pioneers and Conquest. This means to understand the reasons behind this 180 degree seachange in the vision and mission of scientists, we have to look to the development of successive generations of the scientists themselves. This is for the simple reason that science, is a human endeavour. Hence, to understand its arc over time, we have only to study and understand the motivations of its practitioners over the same time period. The arc of science will always, but always trace out the motivations of its practitioners. For science is not an independent entity: good science, is the product of humans carrying out the scientific method and having the courage to publish and stand by their experimental results; and bad science is the opposite: it is the result of humans not following the scientific method and producing results that are anti-scientific, or put another way: producing works of Scientism. This lack of courage is what sets the foundation for all manner of corruption and deviating from the stated goals and values of the scientific enterprise, including abandoning the scientific method as a means of attaining the truths behind reality! One such corruption is the ideology of Credentialism.

Since institutions are a reflection of the society's they are borne out of, as these societies degrade, science itself degrades: and what was once a repository of knowledge, a hub of innovation and the impetus for the forward movement of human knowledge about the universe, slowly but surely turns into a corrupted instrument of commerce and the wealthy over time. Just as society, is undergoing decay as it moves from one "age of empire" to another, so to do the institutions that belong to the society, for both structures: society and its institutions, are reflections of the same entity - the citizens of the empire. As such, whatever the citizens are becoming, will in time, be reflected in the tone and direction of the institutions. So just as the transitions from the Age of Commerce, to the Age of Affluence, to the Age of Intellect is a reflection of the deterioration of the moral character of the average member of society, so to this change in quality of the moral character of the members of the society must become entrenched in all its institutions - including the sciences. In institutions, this corruption manifests itself as a marked change in the goals and methods of scientists: from wanting to discover truth at all costs via the scientific method, to counting the costs of discovering the truth and eventually - as the Age of Intellect entrenches itself - to discarding the scientific method and being content to being a bureaucrat within the scientific establishment, happy just to have employment. No longer are such scientists concerned with moving the parameters of scientific knowledge forward. This is the curse of the ideology of Credentialism.

Credentialism: The Curse of Having No Skin in the Game

Besides Sir John Glubb, we have an abundance of keen observers, who have also noticed the same patterns - and documented them! Additionally, their observations are current and thus extremely useful to us. Below, Heather Heying, one half of the married duo that hosts the DarkHorse podcast shines light on how science has been corrupted and the consequences thereof:

Heying's statements are alarming, but many people have indeed come to realise that tertiary education - you'll note that I'm averse to calling it higher education, since there is nothing elevated about it - is producing graduates who can offer nothing to the world. Many after incurring large debts to get their coveted "academic qualifications," which they have been assured will lead them to wealth and status, instead find themselves unable to find work and forced to live at home with their parents. A situation that has proved to be the curse of many millennials. This is Heying's first point in the above quote: universities are producing destroyed individuals that are ill equipped for the real world, since they have been rendered "fragile" and incompetent by their tertiary education! Heying approaches the subject as a professor who has seen the effects first hand in universities. Allen Savoury, is another who points out the very same dilemma, but this time from the perspective of a scientist who works experimentally in the field. See how closely aligned his thoughts are with Heying's:

Savoury, shows how university graduates, made "fragile" by the perverse way in which science has been corrupted are no longer able to think for themselves. They need the security of groupthink and conformity, before they can agree to take a position on a subject. Why do they have this orthodox view to the search of truth - which is what science is supposed to be about? Because they are not interested in the search for truth. Recall the desire of Intellectuals is not the search of truth, but the "accumulation of wealth ... " through "the acquisition of academic honours." All they want is that guarantee of a better life, or the guarantee that they can maintain their current standard of living. That morality-free, conform at all costs mentality is the Evidence Profile of all Intellectuals!

Another current thinker on this glaring problem is Steve Patterson. He has written an essay titled The Our Present Dark Age, Part 1 in which he details 6 reasons why the academic institution has failed and fallen into decay, having been overrun by corruption. The six reasons are:

1. Intellectuals have greatly underestimated the complexity of the world.
2. Specialization has made people stupid.
3. The lack of conceptual clarity in mathematics and physics has caused a lack of conceptual clarity everywhere else. These disciplines underwent foundational crises in the early 20th century that were not resolved correctly.
4. The methods of scientific inquiry have been conflated with the processes of academia.
5. Academia has been corrupted by government and corporate funding.
6. Human biology, psychology, and social dynamics make critical thinking difficult.

For now, we are only concerned with bullet number 5: how "Academia has been corrupted by government and corporate funding." Under that point he echoes the thoughts of Heying and Weinstein who noted how science students are perversely incentivized by universities to chase grant money and job security, instead of skills, critical thinking, and a proper foundation in and thorough understanding of, the scientific method, he writes:

Bret Weinstein had made the same point in the following way:

Patterson, further elaborates on the how corporate-sponsored research corrupts educational institutions:

So these "perverse incentives" are the hoops science students must jump through when earning their degrees. In that light, you now understand that when poor Prof Augustin Landier, asked for a consultancy fee of €100,000 to compile a report about the beneficial economic effects of the Uber business model - a report that was based on selective data provided by Uber, itself - he wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. He was merely following the instincts that were so honed by his education and training. He wasn't being corrupt. He was merely being an Intellectual! As the Guardian article said: he declared the facts, which is all he is legally required to do, to not fall foul of the law.

There is an episode of The Mentalist, in which, the character Patrick Jane and his partner Teresa Lisbon are trying to catch a bank robber who had help from someone inside the bank - an "inside man." Lisbon asks Jane, how the bank robber identified which bank employee would be corrupt enough to agree to be an 'inside man.' His answer ...

The unmistakable Evidence Profile of the Intellectual. Need I tell you, that the inside man - turned out to be the tertiary educated bank manager? But, perhaps, you think I'm mischaracterizing Intellectuals: they can't really be that morally bankrupt - can they? We need not guess: examples abound, everywhere one looks in public life - if only we are willing to see reality as it is. You may be asking: "Can we not have both?" Can societies not foster wealth and high moral values simultaneously? Why must the effect of wealth be injurious? This is a question that Glubb himself posed in the conclusion to his essay:

The interesting part of that quote is the visual imagery painted by the words: "prevent the activist Age of Conquests and Commerce deteriorating into the Age of Intellect." That word picture alone, should make the answer to the question: "can societies not foster wealth and high moral values?" clear to all. No! They cannot! The problem with the Ages of Commerce and Affluence is that - in them - gradually money is used to replace honour," not to augment, or supplement it. The reason why should also be clear to all who are not morally corrupt: "you cannot augment or supplement honour." It exists complete in and of itself. And more than that, where it exists, it insists on priority. An honourable person, who believes in loyalty and integrity will never put anything above those qualities - they are his guiding light. Hence the conflict that arises once money and wealth start to make an appearance: how will money co-exist with honour, for money is also a strong guiding and motivating force. This is the difficulty, and as Glubb sadly notes, historically, money has always won out!

Men pursuing the attractions of great wealth is a manifestation of human weakness, and once manifested, it never diminishes,

And again ...

Now, we see why it takes multiple generations for the moral degradation to take firm hold. In the first generation where obscene wealth makes a showing, it attracts those who were not honourable anyway. At this point, those whose identity is based on honour and military duty are not swayed by riches. However, over subsequent generations, such pillars die off, and money insidiously persuades the young men and women who are only then, forming their personal identities and value systems. Over time, this process of moral deterioration, at first almost imperceptible, gathers steam with each subsequent generation - until, eventually, "Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men." "Perhaps" asks Glubb, "some means could be devised to prevent the activist Age of Conquests and Commerce deteriorating into the Age of Intellect." This tells us two things: the moral deterioration happens before "Intellectualism" appears on the scene; and, Intellectualism does not represent progress from earlier times but irreversible decline! Mournfully, Glubb laments:

That, question we have already answered - above. Honour cannot co-exist with the love of money. It can co-exist sustainably with money and wealth, but not with the love of money. Hence, over time "the desire to make money seems to gain hold of the public." That, in turn leads to money replacing honour as society's guiding principle. In turn, that development represents the bankrupting of a society's moral character: that process of dominoes falling is the moral decay we have been speaking of. And all this happens before the advent of the Intellectualism. Lastly, with the the degeneration complete, the members of such a society are now ripe to enter the Age of Intellect! And, more importantly, to relish participating fully in its moral compromises! A recent case in point follows.

The Uber files

It is July 12, 2022 and the Guardian newspaper has been - very prominently - publishing details of what it calls, The Uber files. This is a trove of secret documents from the ride-hailing app that have been released to journalists by a whistleblower. His stated aim is to expose the corrupt nature of Uber's expansion to being the company it is today. Uber accomplished this by influence through its lobbying campaigns. One of the tactics it employed was using Intellectuals as a public relations (PR) arm of their organization. In an article entitled Uber Paid Academics Six-figure Sums for Research to Feed to the Media. How did this work? Academics, i.e. Intellectuals were handsomely paid to conduct scientific studies, that were in essence, what one scientist who participated in compiling them called "a paid report." Many intellectuals participated in these "paid reports," where unlike in real science, the data was not sourced by the scientist but provided by Uber itself. When one of the academics wanted to produce a separate unpaid study, using Uber data: "The leak shows Uber executives were concerned that would mean 'we lose editorial control'” The implications are clear, what made the studies favourable to Uber, up and above the fact that they used data provided by Uber, was the fact that they were paid for. The paper details one such interaction, which was based on money.

€100,000 - for a report! Uber murmured about the price, but: "In discussions in February 2015, Uber executives noted that although the price was high, it was worth it." Mr. Landier, is just one of several notable Intellectuals that had similar arrangements with Uber, as mentioned in the article. I trust his and their accounts give solid examples of what the Age of Intellect is really about: it is not about intelligence, but the ideology that "the accumulation of wealth" is best achieved "through the acquisition of academic honours." The root word of Intellectualism is not "Intellect," but "ism": it is a philosophy, not an IQ score.

Having resolved and understood what Intellectualism actually is, we now appreciate that when Intellectuals behave corruptly, it is not because they have been corrupted, rather the "Age of Intellect," is itself, the product of slow and irreversible corruption. For, "During the military period, glory and honour were the principal objects of ambition. To the merchant, such ideas are but empty words, which add nothing to the bank balance." Intellectualism is what comes after "bank balance[s]" have become the standard by which people measure self-worth. Surely, you have heard someone asking about someone else with the line: "What is he/she worth?" They are talking not of moral composition, or the person's value system, but of bank balances. That's because we live in the last two ages of empire: the overlapping Ages of Intellect, and Decadence. Thus, when Intellectuals act with a lack of integrity to reach monetary goals, that is not a bug in the system, that is a feature of their system - it's raison d'etre.

Recall, Sir Glubb's words: "The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one. Money replaces honour...." Since, in the ages that precede Intellectualism, money has already replaced honour, we surely realize why by the advent of the Age of Intellect those in society who buy into the ideology are - by definition - devoid of morals and lacking in courage, honour, sense of duty etc .... If you replace one thing with something else, they cannot both thereafter occupy the same space. Therefore, the Age of Intellect, is the name for the stage in the development of empires when the social fabric of society has been stripped bare of its moral values, and the resultant void filled with materialistic goals.

That is what Intellectuals are: people who are devoid of moral principles and unselfish values, and instead are imbued with the persuasive power of money. This results in their foremost objective being the striving after materialistic pursuits, through what they have been led to believe is the surest and most secure route - education. Do you believe that? Are you conditioning your children to follow that path? We return to Heather Heying, and continue with her thoughts on the capture of science.

Peter Robinson: I'm just trying to get at this contrast between the growing role of Intellectuals in American life ... you can see it expanding over the last quarter century or so. Why should that be taking place now? Why should Intellectuals have a growing role? And why should the nature of Intellectuals have changed? If you look at the founders, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams ... these were both extremely well read [people]. John Adams was a Harvard man....

Thomas Sowell: Well, first of all these people did not make their living as Intellectuals! They did not even make their living as politicians - most of them. They had day jobs.... They were not Intellectuals, in the sense in which I define it: people who earn their living, by producing a final product which is simply ideas. ( - 18:45) [I have unfortunately forgotten which video this interview is from, but will upload the title and link in the near future.]

And there, right there, is the crux of the whole matter! Recall that we have stated earlier, that all generations of mankind have had brilliant intelligent people. In this case, Robinson, the host and interviewer uses the founding fathers of the United States as examples of intelligent people in the Age of Conquest. Why were they not called Intellectuals, both in their time and today? Because intelligence is a feature found among many people in every society throughout history! If a critical mass of intelligent people was all it took to define the Age of Intellect, then all ages would be ages of intellect. But they are not! So something subtler and less obvious must be happening. And that something, is what Sowell identifies: "Well, first of all these people did not make their living as Intellectuals! " Two things are necessary before the development of people making their livings as Intellectuals is possible, that is before people can make a living simply by coming up with ideas. Firstly, an Empire must go through the phases of Commerce and Affluence, which establishes the many centers of education, and imbues the society with a defensive disposition, as people no longer want to sacrifice for others, but instead focus on selfish pursuits; secondly, this defensive stance within society must filter to the common people, until the public as a whole start seeing education and the acquisition of degrees as a foolproof way to riches and success. This last process requires the moral degradation of society as a whole. No one in the Age of Pioneers is willing to pay someone to do nothing else but to come up with useless ideas. And the same is true in the age of Conquest. Only with the advent of the ages of Commerce and Affluence, does the clerical side start to make a showing in society.

At first, these professions are useful. An accountant doesn't produce any tangible goods, but accounting is an important function within a business, and thus accountants are not Intellectuals. Slowly though, professions arise which have no demonstrable benefit for society, such as lobbyists, and many forms of bureaucracy. In fact, such professions exist not to benefit society, but only to benefit their practitioners! Sowell gives two examples in this interview. I will only mention the first, which is the example of community workers, whom he says will never solve the problems they are employed to resolve in troubled communities - because that would bring their employment to an end! Hence, anyone who is employed by solely to generate ideas, will never generate an idea that solves the reason for their employment - as it is not in their self-interest to do so. And as we have already established, self-interest is the only motivation for an Intellectual - and such motivation is necessarily free of morality.

Only after a society degrades to the point where its population is entranced by, and filled with the desire for the accumulation of riches through education, does the acquisition of tertiary qualifications become elevated to the status of an all encompassing ideology. However, as is clearly obvious, this ideology has nothing to do with intelligence itself, for there are many people who live and function in all the other Ages of empires, who, while highly intelligent, are not called Intellectuals. Similarly, there are many intelligent people within the Age of Intellect, who are not swayed by such notions, who do not make their living simply by producing ideas, and therefore, they too, cannot be called Intellectuals - though they are intelligent. Even someone who has obtained multiple university degrees is not an Intellectual, so long as they don't earn their living simply from the production of ideas! The problem is not in acquiring tertiary education; the problem is acquiring such an education solely for the purpose of, thereafter, being able to earn a living based only on the generation of ideas - and never, on actually taking action! This is the erstwhile observation of Sir John Lubb and the source of his frustration with the Age of Intellect, for in contrasting the output of the Pioneers against the non-productivity of Intellectuals he gives the following three quotes respectively:

And as respects Intellectuals,

And again ...

The distinction is obvious; and the results are as glaring, as they are stark! There are many professions which could not be carried out safely and with the proper due diligence without the required university degree(s): the engineering disciplines are a case in point. However, engineers don't earn their living simply by producing ideas. They take action and help to build actual real world structures. Hence, they are not Intellectuals, no matter how many degrees their field of expertise requires. Elon Musk is the chief rocket scientist (engineer) for SpaceX. Is he an intellectual? Of course not! And the reason is clear: he does not earn his living simply by the production of ideas. He uses his mind not only to come up with ideas, but - and this is the essential part - after coming up with an idea, he uses his mind to implement his ideas! He builds actual products with his mind - not castles in the sky. Steve Jobs was not an Intellectual, though he was highly intelligent. Jony Ive is not an Intellectual, though his designs are brilliant; Jeff Bezos is not an Intellectual, though his plan for scaling Amazon from an online bookseller, to an all-in-one-shop was ingenious; Peter Thiel and Richard Branson are not an Intellectuals for slightly different, yet eerily similar reasons. However, Niel DeGrasse Tyson is an Intellectual; Sean Carroll is an Intellectual; Brian Cox is one; and so is Leonard Susskind! Why? Because these gentlemen produce nothing knew in the universe, their livelihoods are not funded by their contributions to society: their livelihoods are based on coming up with ideas that lead to nowhere. At the end of their careers, and at any point during them, their daily activities contribute nothing to the GDP of their respective countries of residence. And that is the key difference! That is why John Adams, as highlighted by Robinson, was a Harvard man, and yet he was not an Intellectual! After having written this section, Musk happened to post a tweet proving the point:

Do we see why the brilliant Musk is not an Intellectual? For this reason - as we have stated before - the root word for Intellectualism is not "Intellect," but the more appropriate "...ism," which denotes some type of ideology. What type of ideology? Intellectualism is the philosophy based on the belief that earning degrees at a university gives you the right to be non-productive in society, as long as your employment allows you to generate an endless array of fantastical, untestable, futile, and therefore irrelevant ideas! This foolish ideology is responsible not only for the accelerated destruction of institutions, but for society at large, in two ways: we have covered the first way - the lack of innovation and productivity of its adherents; the second, like it, is through a lack of "skin in the game!" Skin in the game, is our next area of inquiry.

Skin in the Game

Skin in the game, has become a popular phrase denoting the risks one takes in pursuit of some goal. If one's approach is free of risk, we are said to have no "skin in the game." That is, we are not effected by the outcome of our decisions. In his 2018 book of the same name, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes of the difference between individuals who have something at stake and those who do not. He does so in an effort to explain one of the central themes of his book: to give fact based reasons for why we should "never listen to people who explain rather than do." We will summarize the essence of his work into three topics that form his central thesis: Antifragility and the Lindy Effect; How to tell Science from Scientism; and the idea of The Intellectual Yet Idiot.

Antifragility & the Lindy Effect

The Lindy Effect, Taleb explains is taken from a deli in New York that was frequented by actors. In their discussions they came by the observation that Broadway shows that lasted for hundred days, tended to have runs that lasted for at least a hundred more days. Ones that lasted for two hundred days, could be expected to have a run of at least another two hundred days. Since this observation was made at the Lindy deli, it became known among physicists and mathematicians as the Lindy Effect. In giving the observation mathematical rigour, Taleb and his collaborators discovered that the essence of the Lindy Effect was based on the theory of how fragile things are over time:

So, the Lindy effect is essentially a measurement of how robust an entity is. Entities that can survive over long periods of time are "Lindy compatible," or "Lindy proof." This idea in turn gave rise to using the Lindy effect as the ultimate arbiter of what has true value,

But why would we need the Lindy effect to be a litmus test for value, when we have so many so-called experts on any topic you would care to name? The proliferation of experts is actually part of the problem. As many of the experts are making choices based on political biases and leanings, and not on merit: they are in effect pundits who are paid to espouse certain viewpoints and are in no way expert in their respective fields. While one of the defined meanings of pundit is "a learned person," another is: "a source of opinion." Hence, pundits differ from true experts in that they promote opinions and not facts. This can be seen in any political campaign season, when the pundits make a host of claims and predictions and without fail are usually proven wrong by the end of voting. This dearth of unbiased information necessitated another mechanism for trying to make sense of the current information overloaded world, hence the utility of heuristics such as the Lindy effect. A heuristic is defined by Merriam-Webster online dictionary as: "involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods." So that is the Lindy effect: things which are Lindy compatible are not fragile to time and its effects; they are robust, and this robustness is a testament to their value over time. Effectively, they conform to the proverb, "Proven by the test of time."

However, we cannot leave the Lindy effect without addressing the elephant in the room, for while heuristics are fine, they are obviously not the whole story, as Aristotle's wrong ideas endured, nay thrived, for many hundreds of years - far longer than any individual human lifespan; and by the Lindy standard: they were thus, by definition Lindy compatible - Lindy proof! Yet, of course, we now know they were incorrect. So, something more is needed in addition to the Lindy effect - something that allows us to falsify wrong ideas within our individual lifespans! Taleb hints at the solution in a subheading titled Who is the "Real" Expert? That allows us to concentrate on the idea of telling pseudo experts apart from the real ones.

How to Tell Science from Scientism

It's all about cosmetics over substance! The central theme of the Age of Intellect, is ideas over content, talk over action. This creates very interesting dynamics. Since talking and ideas are mostly about presentation, in this age presentation takes center stage, and becomes the dominant factor in the quiver of academics. What becomes most important is looking the part, rather than having the skillset to perform in the role the part demands. But how and why does image come to have such an outsized role? Two factors answer the how and why respectively: one, failing institutions always introduce evaluation mechanisms, and these always have a corrupting influence as they promote orthodoxy at the cost of innovation and new discoveries and; secondly, as to the why of it all, as universitites and scientific disciplines start to hit the proverbial wall due to lack of innovation and organic growth, they start put mechanisms in place that are aimed at protecting the status quo. This anointing of "gatekeepers" to protect their hierarchies and places within those hierarchies, the pecking order, are the most corrosive factor, for once entrenched, they never willingly let go of the riens of power. Let's now take each factor in turn.

The Corrupting Influence of Evaluation Metrics

The real world judges the end results, but evaluation metrics, by definition, judge the area between the start and finish lines. How does that corrupt? Because it relates to COMPENSATION, which - we have come to appreciate - is the only guiding principle for Intellectuals! Instead of using your own initiative and training your abilities for critical thinking, evaluation metrics are mechanisms that instead promote conformity and thereby sameness. Everyone who participates in such evaluations knows what the evaluators are looking for, and duly provide it so as to get a positive review, in order to be able to keep playing the game. Keep gainfully employed, for the power, the engine behind intermediary evaluations is the nature of "scientific funding." Take note of the following quote on the subject, and its corrupting influence from university professor Heather Heying:

The problem is clear. The big nature of current science means everything depends on access to funding. Accessing funding depends on conformity, not expertise. As such, not only are the leaders of big scientific projects perversely incentivized to tow the line, but the students who count themselves fortunate to be chosen to participate in such large scale projects are even more heavily incentivized to conform to expectations, which are always made clear to all.

These last two quotes taken together give us insight into both sides of this problem. On the one hand, we have Heying who shows us the inner workings of how scientific funding skews the independence of the students and scientists working on these projects; and on the other, we have an insider's perspective showing exactly why, Intellectuals are so eager to tow the line in order to secure their employment. Whilst Susskind communicates the reality from a negative perspective, reading between the lines show us the true picture: "Current experiments in particle physics ... from inception to completion [are] 25 to 30 years." What a boon, for Intellectuals whose only criterion for attaining degrees is to able to secure a path to wealth. For them, being chosen for a spot in such an experiment could secure their future for up to three decades! The caveat is that in such large scientific teams each person only deals with, and sees a small part of the whole. What does that mean? Once again Heying explains:

Since the goal is not the search of truth, and Intellectuals are by definition morality-free agents, it should not surprise you that money hungry student Intellectuals, happily go along with this set-up as long as there is hope that it will yield the promised wealth benefits. That, if you recall was the point Allen Savoury made in our earlier quote of him. In it, he explained why new discoveries don't usually come from within scientific institutions, because once the scientists become a bureaucracy, their aims are no longer "scientific," but self-interest, and securing their livelihoods. This subtle change in the ethos of institutions results in dramatic changes to their character and output: such institutions change from practicing science, through the scientific method, to going through the daily routines of academia! As Savoury put it:

The Corrupting Influence of Peer Reviews

That brings us to our second reason for why the right veneer is all one needs in a dying scientific institution, why appearance matters more than substance! The second way in which science differs from scientism is found in how peer reviews destroy scientific integrity. We start by asking: what does it mean to practice academia? What is the difference between academia and science? Science is based on the scientific method, and calls for skepticism, academia is based on pleasing the status quo, the bureaucracy, the gatekeepers who sit at the top of your particular field. Those who follow the scientific method, are in search for truth. Those who follow academia's rules of conduct are in search to secure their livelihoods. This brings us back to Steve Patterson's article, and it's detailing the six reasons why science has been captured and the resultant incompetency, pathology and corruption that now pervades all scientific disciplines. Point number 4 in his essay was: The methods of scientific inquiry have been conflated with the processes of academia. What did he mean? He went on to explain that academic bureaucracies have steps that they follow for something, anything to be processed from point A to point B. Forget the content for a moment, say what was being processed was a request for a petrol allowance for a trip to a 1-day conference for one of the professors. If, such an allowance was not part of his contractual package, and he had to submit a formal request to get the amount needed approved, how would that work? What would the approval process look like. Like in many bureaucracies, the professor would have to fill in a requisition, a special request form, with the details of the item to be approved. Then he would have to submit it either to his senior, or to a central decision making body for final approval. Depending on the amounts involved, there might be several approvers before a final decision is reached. This is how bureaucracies work. In Academia, a bureacracy focused on education and its related disciplines - in our case, the sciences - the "item" to be approved, is not a gas allowance, but the right to publish a paper on a certain topic. The approvers are senior scientists and administrators, and approval is based on consensus. So the problem with such a regime should be now, obvious. If approval is based on consensus, then whatever was submitted must conform to expectations if it is to be approved, for you cannot reach consensus unless there is conformity in opinion. As Patterson puts it:

Think back to all the discoveries that we have covered in the history of the science and the scientific method, would Galileo have been able to publish if he needed the approval of his fellow philosophers? Would Copernicus' ideas about the nature of the universe have ever seen the light of day if his thesis required conformity to be published. The same is true for all the other great scientists we have studied. Their groundbreaking work was published in the face of stiff opposition, many times requiring them to leave their countries of residence and find publishers while in exile. And yet, all the pioneers did publish, because they knew the facts where on their side! That is the value of the scientific method: diligently followed, it yields great results, for those who practice it with a curios mind and a hint of genius. That is what Patterson means by, "real empirical inquiry." The exact opposite of that process is the "conformity to bureaucratic procedures." New thinking by definition cannot "[check] off all the boxes of academic formalism," because new knowledge is counter-intuitive, hence, there are no preconcieved boxes to check. Secondly, new knowledge represents a paradigm shift, thus it fits into "academic formalism" the way a square peg fits into a round hole - not at all. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's conclusion is fitting,

Playing Along to Get Along

An additional problem with the peer reviews is that the reviewers are always from the same field as the the person who has been a paper in for review. This skews the process in the following way: since they are reviewing your work for approval to be published, and you, in turn, will get a chance to do the same for them, a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back dynamic" quickly entrenches itself into the process. Heying offers the following solution to mitigate against this corrupting influence: "I would think that ... if in general, papers have three peers that review a paper, having two of those peers, for any given paper be outside of the immediate domain of the person writing the paper; and the subject of the paper, would keep such cabals from forming. So that you wouldn't have these, like: "I pat your back, you pat mine [dynamics]. I'm going to publish ... and then I'm going to sign off when they send me your next piece ... to sign off on." The corrupting incentive is clear for all to see, because a large part of the incluence and income of successful academics comes from publishing papers. But, not only do peer reviews offer a carrot for those who play along, they also threaten with a big stick for those who do not! And, it is this threat, more than anything else, that promotes conformity!

Don't Rock the Boat: How Scientism Generates Conformity

A natural consequence of forming such cabals of reciprocity is the need to conform. Heying continues with her assessment of peer review, noting that,

The message is clear. Getting approval for submitted papers through peer review is much more likely to yield positive results if the new paper is making claims that fall within the current understanding of your particular discipline, or as Heying puts it, your idea must amount to "[putting] one more brick" in the walls that your particular scientific discipline has already built. Thus such contributions are "predicated on the foundations of the field." They must be "according to plan," and though new, the scientist proposing any new idea must make sure that it "fits with the overall thing." We call that conforming! She then cautions that, were a scientist to exercise critical thinking and propose something that perhaps the highly esteemed "foundation" on which his fellow scientists are building on top of, might not "in fact [be] sound," then they would have a far less likelihood of success in being able to publish their paper. How science has changed. The fact that what you aim to publish is something "new" is a given, for if it was not new, there would be no reason to publish. However, when we look back into our previous profiles of the great men and women of science, we realize that in the heyday of science, in the golden era of knowledge, there was no approval process for scientists to be able to publish. They simply published and their ideas were thereafter debated, by any who held different beliefs about the nature of the universe. Clausius published a total of 9 papers on his theories of the laws of thermodynamics. In none of those instances did he seek approval. We know what Lord Kelvin, Hermann von Helmholtz thought of his theories when they first appeared. They all thought his papers were unclear and his theories incorrect. So ahead of their time were his ideas, that it took many years for even bright minds like Lord Kelvin, to start to understand the true brilliance of Clausius' papers. Now, imagine if he couldn't publish his ideas until everyone came on board. How, in such a case, would he have added to the body of mankind's knowledge? Yet, that is the sad state of today's scientific enterprise - in all its disciplines!

Iterating for Incompetence

Bret Weinstein, then adds a key observation to the conversation. Malcom Gladwell talks about the amount of time it takes for someone who is working hard to perfect a skill to become, on average, expert at it - 10 000 hours. Naval Ravikant fine-tunes that rule of thumb by saying, "it's not 10 000 hours, but 10 000 iterations" that make one expert. What's the difference? 10 000 hours, just means you've spent that amount of time at the task, but it says nothing about how well you spent those 10 000 hours. Were they all high quality hours, where you concentrated at the task at hand, or might you perhaps have often been distracted and thus not have used your 10 000 hours productively? "Iterations" on the other hand, are different. An iteration is defined as "the process of repeating" something. So, 10 000 iterations means you have practiced your skill by practicing it over and over again - 10 000 times! So, what do we mean when we say Intellectuals are iterating for incompetence? This is where Weinstein's observation comes to the fore. He says,

Simply put, the outcome of enforcing corrupted cliques of conformity, or "networks of reciprocity" as Weinstein puts it, is that the students it is meant to educate about reality are instead programmed to conform to the history of their subject, rather than learning how to think critically, so they can add new knowledge and impact its future. Sadly, throught the repeated emphasis on, and dominant role of peer reviews within the sciences, students are trained to practice what makes them incompetent, instead of iterating for competence. This takes us back to Allen Savoury's comments about the effects of university training on the bright young students who applied to those institutions: "Gone into universities as bright young people, they come out [of] them brain dead: not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No. That's academia. And if a paper is peer-reviewed: it means everybody thought the same, therefore they approved it. An unintended consequence, is, that when new knowledge emerges, new scientific insights, they can never ever be peer-reviewed!" So, universities produce Intellectuals, who are academics, not scientists! People who know how to look the part, but know nothing about how to perform the role. Which brings us to our next sub-heading ...

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

This is the very definition of an Intellectual. To weak to work, to ashamed to beg: thus the only way for him to make a living is in coming up with unworkable ideas. His theories are unworkable in the real world, because he has never held down a productive job - and thus has no practical experience about how things really work.

Ideas & the Mechanisms of their Implementation

We now come to a crux of the matter, regarding possibilities and the mechanisms responsible for bringing them to light. For it not enough, merely to dream something up, thereafter, for it to become reality, we need a way to take it from the realm of ideas into the realm of actual existence. Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Leonard Susskind talk about this critical development. Of course, being Intellectuals, they do so in a typically overly complicated way using fancy words and high sounding concepts. I will first quote their discussion, then break down its meaning into normal, people-speak.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Leonard ... you have this very compact and very dense phrase that you use ... it goes something like, "We need a landscape of possibilities that is populated by a mega-verse of actualities." I really want you to explain that to me.

Leonard Susskind: Okay, so what it means. First of all, what does the landscape mean? The landscape doesn't mean the real world. It doesn't mean the universe that is out there. It means the collection of possibilities. It means the collection of all possible blueprints for a universe.... But possibilities, by themselves are not enough. We need to create those objects! It's like having a whole bunch of blueprints for houses, but you have to have somthing to build the houses .... We also need whatever it takes to bring these possibilities into reality. Just in the same way that blueprints, that [the] builders have to come, and build the houses that the blueprints describe. That we believe, or at least some fraction of physicists believe, was what this inflationary cosmology did. The very, very rapid expansion in the beginning of the universe created pockets. Pockets of this type, pockets of that type, pockets of another type.... So the expectation is that the universe is extremely big. Much bigger than we can see and full of all different kinds of environments.

All the above conversation is describing is that, it is not enough to have ideas. Up and above the ideas, one needs some entity or mechanism that can be used to actualize the ideas - to bring them to life. For cosmologists who believe and promote the Big Bang theory, that mechanism is the Inflaton field, of which we have already spoken at length about. The Inflaton field is what is responsible for "inflation," or so their theory goes. For us, our focus is only on the definition of ideas and the mechanisms that are necessary to bring them to fruition - and how that dynamic impacts on Intellectuals! Recall, that Sir Glubb lamented how Intellectuals are always talking and never take action. Put another way, they have a plethora of endless ideas, but not the ability to bring them to fruition. They have no mechanism for turning their ideas into reality.

Jordan Peterson tells an amusing, real life story to illustrate the conundrum of Intellectuals - why they conform at all costs; and try never to stray from the herd:

Taleb, adds to the point, by showing why practical wisdom is a prerequisite for accomplishing anything:

And ...

The questions are valid ones. In the current age, they take the form who is fact checking the fact checkers? As much of what was once termed to be fake news, has later proven to be factual, a case in point: the lab leak theory for the origin of Covid-19! It has gone from absolutely out of the question; to being the most probable explanation. Both the FBI and the U.S. Department of Energy have come out with that assesment. Only now, is becoming clear why the was scientific consensus around the wet market natural emergence of Covid. Doctors Fauci and Francis Collins kept dissenting voices such as the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr Robert Redfield.

In answer to a question about whether the Dr Fauci's NIH funded gain-of-function research, he answers: "I think there is no doubt that NIH was funding gain-of-function research." His answer to the follow-up question: "Is it likely that American tax dollars funded the gain-of-function research that created this virus?" he answers: "I think it did. And not only from NIH, but from the State Department, USAID and from the DoD!" Here, is a video link to Dr. Fauci admitting as much. I provide the transcript, for your convenience.

And there are all the pieces of the puzzle from his own mouth. It is "incumbent" upon us. So, naturally he was funding the research. In doing the research, you don't want to do it in the United States: so you "go to China!" And to China they went. This is the definition of impractical ideas being implemented. Any practical person could have told him that in the current age, we live in a global village, and it doesn't matter where you do the research because air travel will communicate any outbreak to the rest of the world within weeks - as history now shows was the case.

Later in the Laura Ingraham video, Dr Refdfield, shows how the narrative was born from Intellectual conformity, not scientific research - for it was formed in the absence of any supporting data. Early in the official response to the pandemic Dr Redfield, still Director of the CDC was excluded from the calls discussing how to respond to the pandemic. Asked why he thought this was so, he answers:

It's not four years from the outbreak of the pandemic, and the official narrative has already fallen apart. Not only is the mounting evidence for a lab leak theory; but there is no conclusive evidence for a natural emergence scenario for Covid-19. Here's Taleb:

Did you catch it? What is needed up and above the Lindy effect for us to know that things are Lindy proof? They have to exposed to harm. And that is why Aristotle's ideas survived for so many centuries without being falsified, they were kept - artificially - from harm by the Catholic Church, who made dissension and questioning the geocentric model of the world punishable by death! That will keep most men docile and compliant. But it raises another dynamic. We realize that the choices are not between skin in the game or no skin in the game, for no one lives a truly skin free existence. There is always a stake. The real choices is which game am I willing to stake my skin on? Galileo implored his fellow scientists to come and have a look for themselves at the evidence for a heliocentric world, but had no takers. He complained to Kepler,

Intellectuals in their Glass Towers

The debacle of the pandemic response well illustrates the effect Intellectuals have on society. In a revealing interview of Thomas Sowell, Peter Robinson asks piercing questions - and Sowell gives exacting answers. The video of the discussion is entitled, Thomas Sowell on the Second Edition of Intellectuals and Society. Here is a transcript of the relevant parts of their discussion. (I have included the time stamps of both the question and answer.)

PR: "Sweeping claims for the benefits of ... diversity in innumerable institutions ... have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given."

TS: (26:13 - 26:51)No. It's just definitional. Intellectuals have many skills, which enable them to evade the testing of what they believe.

PR: *(@27:00 - 27:34)Thomas Sowell, once again, quote: "[At] the same time you're getting all this mouthing of diversity, there's an extremely narrow ideological conformity that's being enforced." So, we have diversity in the way people look, the ethnic groups from which they come, the parts of the country from which they come, but once you arrive, you'd better start thinking the way we do.

TS: Yes. I still get emails from students who say that when they raise any issues that go against the professors ideology, they just get ridiculed.

PR: *(@30:19 - )And you enjoyed yourself at Harvard, and have revered that August institution ever since, is that the correct?

TS: Not quite. I have never gone to a class reunion at Harvard: even when I was teaching at Brandeis, which is about a 20 minute drive from Harvard. What I saw there that bothered me, is what has bothered me ever since. There was the sense that we don't really need to test for evidence! If all we bright good fellows, all believe this - it must be true!

Intellectuals in the Wild

Allen Savoury gave field-related anecdotes of how Intellectuals behave once they have graduated. Heying's further commentary shows us why: in a word - "credentialism!" What is credentialism? The belief that a piece of paper qualifies you as an expert. She then explains in detail, all the different skills that define a scientist, one who is implementing the scientific method. Skills we have become familiar with, having seen them practiced time and time again by the excellent scientists we have thus far covered. Alarmingly, she exposes that, because of the way scientific research is set up in our times, such learners never get to learn these techniques, which come naturally to the best scientists. Imagine if Faraday didn't know how to design his fantastic experiments. Or, if Galileo would like his contemporaries refuse to make observations through the telescope. If Newton relied on his qualifications as a source of innovation, instead of honing and refining his deep thinking abilities? Where would we be if Tycho Brahe had not meticulously collected and catalogued into tables, years of cosmic observations? Where would the field of Thermodynamics be if Clausius had not taken the time to properly analyze the data, and thereafter "figure out what it means?" These giants of science, possessed all of the requisite skill-sets to fully carry out the scientific method - on their own. What is surprising, is that the current crop of so-called scientists, possess none of these skills, their scientific method talent-stack is null and void; yet they claim to be practicing science, and in some cases, claim to be Science itself! How?

The source of this Intellectual error is the firm belief in credentialism, which is itself the natural product of the Age of Intellect. Recall, that Intellectualism is the "desire for the accumulation of wealth" through the "acquisition of academic honours," in place of glory, duty and honour. With that piece of the puzzle at the front of our minds, we can more easily appreciate how "credentialism" fits in with science capture and the decay of institutions of learning: credentialism, is defined as, the "undue emphasis on credentials (such as college degrees) as prerequisites to employment." Hence, Intellectualism is the belief of attaining wealth through degrees, and credentialism is the belief of attaining employment through degrees. It is a natural outcrop of Intellectualism. Two of the examples Merriam-Webster gives of the word "credentialism" being used in a sentence, are from a Wall Street Journal article of 26 October, 2021. They are:

You do not have to have read the article to understand the two-fold point: credentialism is independent to having skills, and in many circumstances, such as those outlined by Heying, inversely related to them; secondly, credentialism is a form of insurance. The article was entitled Has America Been Overtaken by Creepping Credentialism? and had the by-line: "Library-science degrees, hotel management degrees, journalism degrees: Is a college degree necessary for nearly every white-collar job these days?" The creeping credentialism of course, means that even regular jobs that didn't previously require degrees, now have that false standard of competence as a requirement. In such a world, people depend more and more on credentialism so as to not get left behind, hence the second example of the word, about people leaning "into credentialism." You cannot fail to notice the striking similarity between this sentiment and the earlier words of Peter Thiel,

That paying more and more for insurance, is the leaning into credentialism that the WSJ was speaking of. The insurance comes from obtaining the piece of paper, not from knowing how to think, or having learned the skills that are required to get things done. Now you know why the students Allen Savoury was speaking of are so scared of anything that is not "peer-reviewed," or put another way, anything that does not conform to what they have been taught. Put it all together. Thiel speaks of education as an insurance policy as the cracks in society get bigger; Savoury speaks of credentialists going to universities as "bright young people" and coming out "brain dead." Heying, for her part, describes how the university system of credentialing "destroys students" and makes them fragile. Fragile is what you are when you have a piece of paper that's supposed to ensure you employment, and maybe a path to riches, but you don't have any practical skills to back it up. This is the current fate of credentialed intellectuals. Learning, for the sake of being competent and a contributor to society is an admirable goal. But that is not the aim of Intellectualism. What has gone wrong? In the ages of Commerce and Affluence, education means something because it takes actual skills to participate and be highly functional and at the upper ends of such societies. Architecture or engineering are actual skills for which education is necessary. However, as the stages of empire progress, a bureaucracy emerges which has no real function other than to feed itself. As the stated goal of credentialism is employment, not usefulness, or the ability to contribute, those who undergo such hollow training and thereafter find jobs never question the value of said education. Indeed, they don't know that they don't know.

Let us now focus on Heather Heying's statement that: "The number of people who actually have these degrees, and were never expected, in fact - to get those degrees - to do a complete piece of research from beginning to end.... Many people don't experience that in order to get their PhD," for it is the kernel that gives insight into how institutions of learning become captured - through a perverse "economic model" of science is funded. At a later stage of the clip, her co-host and husband, Bret Weinstein explains that:

That quote is self explanatory, and gives us the last ingredient to the perfect storm. So far, we have understood that the Age of Intellect or Intellectualism, is a morally bankrupt development in the rise and fall of empires, that sits firmly in the "falling" part of the story of empires. By morally bankrupt, we mean its followers are people who value cash over honour and glory, and thus have an overriding desire to use education to accumulate wealth. We've learned that there is an even lower rung to Intellectualism, which is credentialism. Credentialism is even worse, and more desperate, because its aim is not to become educated in order to accumulate wealth; its aim is just to get a degree, so one can obtain employment. There is a deterioration in both variables. Education is valuable, as learning increases our capacity and good education even helps to form our character, but credentials are meaningless, since there is no relationship between credentials and what a person actually knows! Secondly, Intellectualism when it starts, focuses on wealth and its accumulation, but by the time the Age of Intellect has declined to where credentialism takes hold, people are no longer looking to accumulate wealth, but are using education as an "insurance policy," so that they don't fall through the cracks of society. All they want is an insurance policy that they will be gainfully employed. Education becomes a commodity, a luxury good, and so the universities start charging more and more for a deteriorating educational standard. More on that shortly. Credentialism, is a far cry, I'm sure you'll agree, even from the already corrupted and degraded ideology of Intellectualism. Credentialism, is - literally - scrapping the bottom of the barrel. What's more, we have learned of a major contributing factor to the deteriorating standards of educational institutions, and that credentialism is inversely related to competence, for it only starts to rise as the quality of education starts to rapidly decline! We revisit an earlier quote, about science-capture:

We reiterate: once scientists start becoming incapable of doing basic science, credentialism rises. This creates feedback loops, where students please their educators, in order to get the degrees that will give them a chance of getting jobs once they graduate. Credentialism further entrenches the rot of Intellectualism into the populace: first it was a belief about what was necessary to become rich; now it becomes a prerequisite to graduate and have the chance of landing any employment. The push is two-fold, internally: from the educational institutions, as we have just seen, but secondly; externally, by "credential creep" where more and more "regular" jobs, like being a librarian start to require degrees as a minimum requirement. This leads everyone to feed from the same trough, and drink from the same well. Effectively, this creates generations of scientists, who have papers to prove it one or other empty credential, but neither the skills to back them up, nor the integrity to think critically, to be able to say: "Actually, that doesn't make sense," when the situation calls for it. They have no capacity for independent critical thinking! Put another way, if you follow our lead, you will get your degree and be able to earn a living in a society beset by the twin plagues of social uncertainty and credential creep. The glaring problem this creates, of course, is that there are no people within such institutions or scientific disciplines who can course correct, if and when the discipline is heads in a wrong way. Hence, the failing sciences fall deeper and deeper into decline. This problem is not trivial! In a group discussion hosted by the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the panelists: Sabine Hossenfelder, Bjorn Ekerberg and Sam Henry tackled the topic, "Where is Physics Going?" The discussion was moderated by Philip Ball, and centered around the reasons for why physics and cosmology have stalled in their progress. Is there something fatally flawed in the approach of the scientists pursuing research in these fields? Ekeberg answered with the following words,

The Bob Rubin Trade

Nasime explains what he calls the Bob Rubin, by using the example of bankers who make risky decisions, but are then bailed out when those decisions go bad and effect the wider market:

He then goes on to explain that,

Bret Weinstein and Heying explain in detail on their podcast what has happened to science to cause this seachange in the very foundations of how "science" is conducted and defined. Heying draws on her experience as a biologist, and professor to give us insight into how the model of scientific research was corrupted, by a new and corrupted funding scheme that prioritized corporate interests, instead of scientific integrity.

The Death of Science: From 1970 Onward

By all account the early 1970s is when everything started to change within academia. Mny different voices lament that this decade saw the beginning of the steep decline in the effectiveness of educational instistutions

What Happened in the 1970s to so Drastically Change the Landscape?

Here are just some of those voices, explaining what they believe has caused such a lowering of standards - and effectiveness.

Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, a married couple who run the DarkHorse podcast offer two more voices, but from a different perspective. They had both been professors at Evergreen State College, for 16 and 15 years respectively until 2017, when they felt they were forced from the university due to taking a stand that was not popular with the rest of the staff, and faculty. Their viewpoints on our overall topic is from the perspective of first-hand participants, as professors involved in the everyday politics of such institutions. I record their contribution in the form of their individual monologues.

Heather then adds her thoughts on the topic:

This murky confusion of science and academia that produces Scientism, is what Allen Savoury was referring to when he said,

But WHAT does all of this have to do with the world we live in? What does all this have to do with our magnificent era of unparalleled scientific progress? Is not the latest iPhone proof of mankind's inexorable forward march of scientific progress in the information age? Certainly, the current scientific enterprise is in good shape and the fate of mankind is in good hands, stewarded as it is, by wise intellectuals who are guided by the facts and an incorruptible allegiance to truth - right? If that is your understanding after having read the above, you have not been paying attention. However, we never want to be dogmatic, to come to conclusions without due process and proper regard for the facts! So, let's do that now. Let us look at the facts as borne out in the physical laws that guide all physical reality and see if Science in the current age is a true reflection of the disciplines pioneered by such luminous stalwarts as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, du Chatelet, Boyle, Fraunhofer, Faraday, von Mayer, Clausius, Stefan, Leavitt, Jump-Cannon, Gaposchkin-Payne, Rubin and others. Our question: is the body of knowledge that they so meticulously built for us the same as the what is now currently referred to as Science; or - has Science been captured and replaced with the empty husk of Scientism? Has the "scientific method" been replaced by vacuous metaphysical speculations? And if so, to what end?

It's the day after July 4th, as I write this. A day when America turned 246 years old and signs of its irreversible decay played out in unfortunate ways: a gunman shot and killed 7 people, with more than 20 being hospitalized for their injuries.

An Evidence Profile: "The Inadequacy of Intellect"

Reading the above quote, it should immediately become clear to one and all why Intellectualism is ill-fitted to solve any of the pressing problems of the world it is born into: the Age of Intellect, is one fashioned in the general absence of the qualities of "self-sacrifice" and "service on the part of the members." Hence, this necessary component of all true human solutions, is not only missing but presents a giant blind spot for Intellectuals, because they are unaware, that it is missing! This is another point in Patterson's piece about why we find ourselves in a "dark age." In fact, so pressing is this oversight, that it is the first of his six points on the subject: Intellectuals have Greatly Underestimated the Complexity of the World. He writes:

You will recall, our recent contributions from Heather Heying, who spoke at length about just this point. The way science is currently structured and practiced, the people working on problems are focused on too minute a part, to be competent at the whole. They have no big picture abilities, because they only ever study pixels. Jordan Peterson goes futher, lamenting the arrogance of people who live fractured lives, but think they can make the planet whole. Complex systems have a lot of moving parts, and you don't know how changing one part will effect all the other variables it is connected to, and then, the system as a whole. His objection is not that one has to be perfect before tackling big problems, but that if you haven't taken the time to solve the relatively smaller problems of your personal life, which has much less variables, how are you going to be able to successfully resolve issues that have a global footprint, and millions of moving parts? Early laboratory success has lulled scientists into believing that the application of their minds can solve any problems, with dire consequences, as Patterson points out:

Patterson points to the specific field of medicine for his example, but ends the quote with the alarm that, greatly understimating complexity, thus causing more harm than good in now "the standard pattern across all disciplines." Not only has such incompetence crept into every scientific discipline, Intellectualism is also responsible for debilitating effects on society in non-scientific ways: hence, the sub-heading of this section is, in part, a direct quote from the section of Sir Glubbs's essay that outlines the different ways Intellectualism fails - The Inadequacy of Intellect. I have grouped them into two sub-headings: Diversity and Equity for easy reference, and extra clarity.

Diversity ...

Immigration

Sir Glubb points out that declining empires always show a propensity for increased immigration. Not only that, but more importantly, they foster an expanded role that such immigrants play in society as the empire descends into total collapse!

He then gives 3 ways in which this development undermines the integrity and strength of the waning empire:

Non-Assimilation

Lack of assimilation is a phenomena that can currenty be observed in many Western lands, with large immigrant populations. Sir Glubb point to two ways in which it paralyzes the host empire, one under normal conditions, and a second that manifests itself when the host nation falls on troublesome times. First, the immigrant populations are of a different character and not fully assimilate into the host population,

Secondly, and much more worryingly: the immigrant population provides a weakness to the host nation in that they are not as loyal and fully committed to the interests of the host nation as its indeginous citizens are:

Immigrats Prioritize their Own Societies Welfare Over that of the Host Nation

The dangers continue, as the immigrants - searching for a sense of belonging - often form their own insular communities, thus elevating their own interests above the loyalties of the nation state of which they have become citizens.

Lingering Hostilities to Historical Atrocities

This leads to a fourth and insidious danger that lies just beneath the calm waters, only to rear it ugly head once the strom begins: many of the immigrants who have first right to emigrate to an empire are descendants of peoples who were conquered by the very same empire. This presents an impolite but nevertheless very real problem,

Or, shall we add - reparations. This is a key weakness hidden within the social fabric of conquering empires! Sir Glubb then makes a startling prediction - and we will recall that his essay was written in 1977 - boldly stating: "Some day this phenomenon will doubtless appear in the now apparently monolithic and authoritarian Soviet empire. It is amazing for how long such provincial sentiments can survive." We are living through the fulfillment of that prescient insight.

Before we leave the sub-section of immigration, it is important to note that Sir Glubb made sure to highlight that these developments were not a sign of the empire's weakness because the immigrants are in any way inferior to the race of people who are native to the empire, but that such weaknesses exist merely because the immigrants are different to them, in their nature. And, it is these differences that bear divided loyalties borne of failed attempts at full assimilation and long memories of the atrocities and injustices of war, which are a catalyst for friction and outright conflict, as soon as the waning empire enters its last inevitable, and desperate stages of final collapse!

The Rise of Women to Positions of Power

The problems presented by a an influx of immigrants are not fully apparent at the time the immigration occurs, as the empire is not then yet in full "collapse mode." They become apparent with time, as the cracks in society get wider and wider. Initially, they are lauded as magnamimous acts of diversity, which represent the liberal, cosmopolitan, open-handed social politicies of a benevolent state and advanced civilization. Another area where such plaudits are bandied about, but that in the final analysis is a tell-tale sign of societal decline, relates to the adcancement of women and women's rights. At first glance that sounds oxy-moronic. How can the advancement of women be viewed as a negative. Once again, the problem is not that women are inferior to men, but that they are different! And when these differences are nullified by the attitudes of a people within a society, it represents a dead state, in the same way that a battery with no volatage, or potential difference is dead!

This is point is easier to understand when it comes to immigration, as that is a less charged issue, but no so much when it applies to women. Many people who were able to understand the essence of the arguments in the last sub-heading, will have an emotional block to understanding them in this sub-heading - even though both sub-headings are making identical arguments, but under different contexts! Why is that? Because the opression of women by men is a dynamic that's almost as old as the human race itself. But the subjugation and liberation of women is not what diversity is about. The key to understanding that is to appreciate that the advancements women make under the diversity initiatives which are typical of dying empires are not about the addressing the genuine interests of women, but are a function of the dynamics of a civilization in decline! How could that be? Though very nuanced, it is not impossible to understand the intracies of this subject. The key to decoding what is going on is understanding that diversity initiatives are not about immigrants, but are a manifestation of the bankruptancy of the native race of the declining empire.

Society's in this late stage of collapse always frame such developements as examples of cultural progress and signs of civilizations reaching new peaks. In reality the maxim, "A woman of charm is the one that takes hold of glory; but the tyrants, for their part, take hold of riches" found at Proverbs 11:16 is what applies. What happens when the women and small children can start taking "hold of riches?" It means there are no longer any tyrants. That is the principle behind the late stage developments of dying empires. Though in this scripture, the principle is applied to ruthless men who value wealth above everything else, it applies to most leading roles within a society. The opposite of this principle is what happens in the absence of strong manly figures to dominate the upper echelons of society: other members that make up the society, rush in to fill the gaps. Taken together, we may illustrate the conlfuence of these issues as brought out by the Tory leadership race currently taking place in Britain. After Boris Johnson stepped down, the majority of the candidates were made up of women, immigrant stock, or a combination of both. This development may be viewed as a progressive step for humanity, but the reality - as borne out by thousands of years of human history - is that it is bellwether of the imminent and precipitous collapse of the British empire! It is the unmistakable outcome of the dearth of quality males to assume the reigns of leadership.

A key reason for males to be in leadership roles in government is that historically, they have fulfilled multiple roles in such governments - especially in the early first two stages of empire: the outburst; and the age of conquest. Not only do they provide moral direction and the bravery that fuels conquest, but they are simultaneously leaders of the army, and fight - and die - in the battles! In civilization after civilization that has reached the final stage of its existence, the progressive movements which are wrongly viewed as efforts to achieve women's liberation, end abruptly when the dying empire is overrun by new conquering invaders. We continue with Sir Glubb, as he gives the account of what happened in the Arab empire in the tenth century,

It is when women and immigrants are ascendant in such large numbers, right at this moment, before this final collapse, that the young men living in such societies are most looked down upon. For subconciously, no one knows what role they serve. A quote from Naval Ravikant will bring back some focused clarity:

& Equity

The Welfare State

Another tell-tale sign of national decline is the the establishment and expansion of a welfare state, where government bestows the rights of citizenship, once highly coveted, to all newcomers. The society moves from being a homogeneous whole to being cosmopolitan. This largesse allows the immigrant populations to not only attain citizenship, but as previously noted, to move into the ranks of government and even to attain high stations within such governments:

A recent contemporary example of this dynamic comes from an August 1st, 2022 article on Fox Business about the The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voting unanimously with no discussion to allow the county to no longer require U.S. citizenship for government jobs. Though there will be discontent about such a decision from some quaters, undoubtedly, the people making the decision and their supporters will regard it as progressive, liberal-minded and altruistic. A decision that will put them on the right side of history. Unfortunately, "history" itself, paints a different picture as to what is really going on. For such actions portend, not the ever forward marching rise of such societies, but their imminent downfall. The historical record is clear. Data is a curious thing!

This generosity extends past immigration policies, applying equally, if not more so, to social services and grants for the whole population. Again, such developments are always hailed as signs of progressive improvements to society, yet historical data proves that, essentially, they are markers of its decline. Writing of the Arab Empire of Baghdad, Glubb notes:

Endless Dissension

The end of empire is a precarious time in the life cycle of great nations. The irony is that at this stage, everyone is skating on such thin ice that they should realize that the foundations of their existence are cracking right underneath them, instead, they widen the cracks through the pressure of unrelenting insistence on their rights. The reaction to the inability to obtain such rights satisfactorily, is what defines what comes next - dissension. An intolerant focus on getting what one wants, that is so myopic, that it bites the nose to spite the face.

Glubb goes on to point out that the unwillingness to yield is seen in all parts of society, not least of which is politics. At such times political opponents who used to treat each other courteously, now instead, treat each other with the outmost contempt. He lists as proof of this development how the dynamics that had emerged in the political sphere of his home country, England, by 1977, stating: "In former years ... the rival parties observed many unwritten laws. Neither party wished to eliminate the other. All the members referred to one another as honourable gentlemen. But such courtesies have now lapsed. Booing, shouting and loud noises have undermined the dignity of the House...." You might have noticed politicians from the UK's greatest ally also starting to note something similar about their acrimonious political environment, lately. This climate of extreme disdain and even hatred for people across the isle, who just a few ago were mostly cooperative and capable of bipartisan decision-making, seems to have blossomed under the reign of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America. Yet, that cannot be the full story. It may be that he was the straw that broke the camel's back, due to his aggressive, no holds barred communication style; but it is obvious that more is at play, since he hasn't been in office for over 18 months, and yet the insults and insinuations carry on unabated. His absence from the scene has not reverted the situation back to the status quo of yesteryear! Donald Trump's ascencion to the presidency was itself a symptom of this deterioration of structural integrity in American institutions. Hence, his presence is correlated, but not causative - something we have already learned the significance of. No, the real reason for this new environment of irrervisble tension is more simple to identify and clearer to understand,

Declining Religiosity

The popularity of religion in general seems to have an inverse relationship with affluenc and progressive social policies. That is, the wealthier people feel and the more rights they enjoy socially, the less favourably the general population views religion. This is a view promoted by many as reflected in the words of Susan Blackmore, an avowed atheist who advocates for religion-free societies. She views religion as a sort of "virus of the mind," something that does more harm than good. Whilst, she admits that on a personal level, religion has some redeeming features, for instance, it brings meaning into people's live; she feels strongly that over-all the impact of religion on society is negative:

And again ...

This trend is not one that only occurs in our times, but has occurred throughout history and was a feature of all the empires that Sir Glubb studied. He gives an example of one such empire and its waning religiosity and thereof:

This example outlines a pattern that is clearly repeated thrugh all empires in decline. That is the decrease in religious sentiment, is accompanied by an increase in materialistic pursuits and sexual "freedoms." I put the word 'freedoms' in quatation marks as such freedoms, generally result in the enslavement of their pursuers in ever more harrowing addictions. Sir Glubb's point, and one we readily emphasize is that the waning of religious mores - whether right or misguided - is accompanied by a rise in materialism and liberal sexual views, which are diverent from the conservative views that would've been previously held by most of the population. It is this religious bent that informs most of the sentiments that people are willing to embrace, for the greater good of their society. Thus, as an empire moves through its different stages from the Outburst, to its eventual collapse in the Age of Decadence, we find that,

Frivolity

What is frivolity? We know it means: unworthy of attention, unimportant, or lacking seriousness, but what does that mean when applied to human life? Many people might think of someone laughing when they think of a "frivolous person." But that is not what it means in social contexts - during any point in the timeline of an empire - but especially so during the last gasping, dying days, of a collapsing empire! Frivolity is not a mood, but a society-wide attitude. As such, it is not something that changes from day-to-day, but rather, a pall that remains over society like a dark cloud on a stormy day. A question arises: how does it start to influence society in the first place?

It's one of those "what came first: the chicken or the egg?" type of questions. They are easy enough to solve, but we must apply a little logic to uncover the sequence of events, to come to understand the what is the cause, and what is the effect. In this case we are talking about two variables or factors: not taking things seriously - giving in to despair; and two, giving into sensual pleasures and chasing indulgence at all costs. Both these elements are reflected in the quote from the epicureans: the appetite to indulge in as some sensory gratification as possible with the time left; and the despair and hopelessness of knowing death is imminent. The quote is exactly analogous to the wardern who asked the death row inmate what he would like to eat for his last meal!

Meals are a good way to understand what frivolity is not! A young, hyper-active child who's just returned from playing outside, might choose to eat ice his favourite treat - ice cream, if he were not supervised by his parents. What would happen if that child didn't have parental supervision for a whole week? After seven days of bad eating habits he would be drained of the energy he needs to play, and turn lethargic. We can easily imagine, that if he didn't change his eating habits, he would soon need to be taken to hospital. In this case, there is a clear cause and effect relationship between the lethargy that results from eating too much sugar and not getting enough nutrients. The child first indulged his appetite for sugar, and his lethargy was the result of that sugar intake. Cause and effect. That is not how frivolity works. It is not a case of "live fast and die young." Quite the opposite. Take a carefule look at the Epicurean quote again, their commitment to eating and drinking is not the cause of their realization that they are going to die; it is the other way around: their realization that they are going to die, instils them with a hopelessness that surrenders them to their basest instincts. The warden only asks the death row inmate what he wants to eat, when it is his last meal; not before! Prior to his execution date, the inmate would've been fed prison food, like all other inmates. After all - it's a prison!

How Postive & Negative Emotions are Generated

Understanding why and how not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel creates anxiety and a feeling of hopelessness is not difficult, many people - even very young ones - may have already experienced such feelings, and the thought is not difficult for humans to grasp; even if they have never undergone such a situation themselves. What is perplexing for most, is why and how negative and/or positive emotions take hold on us. The answer is simple. And understanding the process will give us great clarity. For the explanation we turn to Jordan Peterson, who does the best job of summarizing the causes and their effects. Simply put, our emotions are responses to

The above explains why people are more susceptible to bad news than good news. Below, Peterson explains how those two different are created,

Peterson explains comprehensively that our emotions are the result of our goals. If we have goals, and are taking successful steps to reach them, we experience positive emotions. On the other hand, if we are failing at reaching our goals, or more importantly, if we have no goals we experience negative emotions. This last point is key, so I'll repeat it: the only way to experience positive emotions is to have goals that we are successfully taking strides to reach. However, there are two ways in which we can develop negative emotions: either by failing at trying to reach our goals, or even more importantly, by not having any goals at all!

This is the sad state of events for the citizens of a collapsing empire. As living conditions deteriorate, a feeling of nihilism and despair starts to spread throughout the population. People become pessimistic and start to feel that the future is not as bright as they once thought or hoped it would be, or that their country is not headed in the right direction. There are many ways in which such feelings manifest themselves, but we can summarize them as either feelings of deep sadness, or of extreme anxiety. It is at this point, once people feel they hit a brick wall, that they turn to pleasure seeking as the best way to live out what's left of their lives. Nihilism is the cause. Pleasure seeking is the effect.

We give the last word, to the first word - the Bible:

Putting it All Together

The Sophists VS the Peasants

Douglas Murray, to whom the Bret Weinstein relegated authority on the matter of homosexuality, since he himself is one, makes an interesting point in a long form interview he gave to Peter Robinson, of the Hoover Institute. Asked by Robinson, about the death of European culture and the forces that cause it, Murray responded that identity politics is killing Western society as a whole. He lamented the plague of individuals who esteem their rights above their responsibilities, arguing that many behaviours people claim to be rights are not rights at all, but indulgencies. The interview came about because Murray had written an entire book about the subject, so passionate was he about the topic.

The Great Reset!

Enough is enough! Peasants are oblivious to the sliding scale of power, since they have never wielded power in their own lives. Not so, for the powerful and rich: they know full well the signs of their slipping grip on authority. Every interaction in this era of deteriorating authority reminds them of the fact. Think of Prince Charles, the next in line to be the King of England and the many embarrasing scandals he is currently facing regarding accepting monies in bags and suitcases. The mere fact that he has to answer for his behaviour is a sign of how much the British Monarchy has weakened in power. In ancient times, not only did kings not have to hide the fact that they accepted money from foreigners seeking to gain favour with them, they publicized the fact and it added to, not subtracted from their authority. It was called tribute, and it was like a tax that was due the king from all other kings who were surbodinate to him in stature, power, or authority. Today Prince Charles' every move is scrutinized by a public who ever-ready to hold a referundum on the relevancy of the monarchy to contemporary life. The fact that the monarchy is supported from taxes, has become a negative, not a form of tribute or honour. The contrast is stark and its significance clear: Prince Charles, even if he were to become king would hold authority that was an empty husk of the power that that position used to hold.

What is the answer? How can the elite hold onto their power and position in society. They are all too familiar with these scenarios, having seen this movie before. As paranoid students of history, they know how quickly the tide can turn and how quickly the status quo can lose their entitlements and indeed their heads - quite literally. I am thinking of Marie Antoinette, but the missive hits closer to home, for our very own Antoine de Lavoisier met a similar fate, and his illustrious career meant nothing to those who executed him!

Finding the answer is then an existential problem for the ruling class, that is, it is a matter of life and death. Their answer is as childish as it is naive: "Just wind the clock back! " A plan that has come to be known as The Great Reset.

The True Foundations of LASTING Power

A man walking down a dark street late at night lost, took his house keys out and handling them carelessly, heard them drop to the ground. Not having a torch with him, after sometime trying to find them in the darkness, he realized there was a streetlight 20 meters down the road, so he went to stand underneath the light in the hopes it would enable him to find his keys. Will he find his keys under the streetlight? The answer is obvious, and it relates to why the efforts of world leaders and titans of industry who have realized that their grip on power is slipping, will ultimately fail - and miserably at that! The answer is also the reason for why empires go throught the arc we have thus far detailed: and it has nothing to do with trying to maintain the status quo!

You might imagine that the rise and fall of empires has to do with them losing something over the lifespan of the empire, an effect which then ultimately spells doom for their society. But you would be wrong. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The loss of empire, is related not to the decrease of some moral quality(ies), but to the increase of vices! Let me repeat that for emphasis: The rise and fall of empires is due not to the loss of posititve moral imperatives, but to the spread of negative vices. We will find out why in the next sub-heading. For to understand why my conclusion is correct, you have to come to grips with why I have the authority to make it in the first place. Then, and only then, will you appreciate what the true foundations of power and longevity of rulership are!

The March of Empires

You might think me arrogant for my assumed authority in declaring some parts of Sir John Glubb's essay to be right while correcting others, not only stating that they were flawed, but going to the point of determining why and how. You might think my corrections are just a matter of my opinion, in which case: what gives me the right to have final say? You would be wrong on all counts. The source of my authority is not personal expertise on these matters, but the fact that like a teacher correcting a student's paper on final exams - I have the board of education departments approved answer sheet!

What Sir Glubb went into great effort to catalogue and analyse in his great essay was in the Bible all along! And unlike Sir Glubb, who needed an historical perspective, and millennia worth of data in order to come to his conclusions - which remained unfinished, as we all saw - Jehovah God compiled the 'answer sheet' prophetically, that is, ahead of the appearance and fall of empires. It was in the second year of king Neb·u·chad·nez'zar's reign, in the capital city of ancient Babylon, when God foretold the details of Glubb's essay through a dream and its explanation - both from the person of Jehovah - in what can rightly be described as The March of Empires. This dream, which was given to Nebuchadnezzar, - then the leader of the world's superpower - was a comprehensive outline accounting for the arc of all the world's superpowers starting with Nebuschanezzar himself, and going all the way to the last great superpower that would be standing when God's own empire - called the "Kingdom of God" in the Bible - would conquer all human governments, and start ruling over the earth. This dream then, outlined not just the accurate rise and fall of one empire - but all future world empires, to the minutest detail! This particular episode only gave an outline of the march of empires, detailed accounts of all the players, down to their personal intra-family battles are provided in other prophecies about the same topic. Familiarizing yourself with the details and whereabouts of those prophecies are for your own personal account, and will not be covered in this exposition. That is partly what Bible studies are for. The same Bible study offers, that you have, perhaps, declined time and time again, over the years. Interesting.

What I can tell you is that the effect of waning empires is squared in The Dream of the March of Empires. By that, I mean to communicate that, just as an individual empire loses all its strength and vitality in its final three stages, so too the subsequent empires are weaker than the ones that precedded them. And both effects are compounded on the world's last empire! This is borne out by the fact that in Nebuchadnezzar's dream his empire is represented by a head of gold; the subsequent empire, by a chest and arms of silver; the following one, by an adbomen and thighs of copper; and lastly, the last empire is represented by legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay - which would render it: "partly strong, and partly fragile." - Da 2:42 Thus, this last kingdom will have the double negative of not only struggling with the regular features of declining empires, but also of struggling with the added burden of the fact that, of all the kingdoms or empires featured in the dream, it was the most "inferior" to begin with! - Da 2:39

That is the "Answer Sheet." And by following its hyperlinked guidance (hyperlinked to other prophecies containing more supplementary explanatory details), it can be accrurately determined where Glubb - and any other investigator or commentator - are right, and where they - or any other thesis on the subject - falls short. Having said that, let us now turn our attention to answering the point raised by the last sub-headings title. We want to uncover the secret to, "the true foundations of lasting power." Many scriptures give insight into the true source of power and the only foundation for sustaining it over time. To make the point perfectly clear, I have marked the phrases of interest in bold below:

Why? Because ...

The following two sets of scripture show even more clearly, exactly why it is in the interests of kings to remove all wickedness from their realm, for it undermines their own ablity to sustain their rulership over time! If they do not pay attention to this one aspect of their duties, nothing else they do will have the same effect of warding off a steady decline in their empire! That's the significance of righteousness being the only ingredient that guarantees lasting rulership: it means righteousness and only righteousness can produce that guarantee. Thus empires who have rulers with insight take this feature of their rulership very seriously indeed:

Not only must the kind ensure that his court and advisors is free of wicked influences, but he himself, must be a beacon of righteousness amoung his people, for his own actions have the greatest effect on the temperant of the empire as a whole

Having reviewed these scriptural quotes, we can ask the question: why then do all human empires fall eventually? Simply put, because they cannot maintain this high standard of justice over time! Recall that the honour, valour, integrity, and sense of duty that are prevalent throughout the first two stages of empire, are slowy but irreversibly corrupted and eroded "by the action of money," in the third stage of empires - the Age of Commerce - for:

Hence, from the Age of Commerce onward, each of the successive stages usher in further deteriorations of the human qualities and virtues that sustain kingdoms, as money gets an ever tighter grip on the imaginations, impulses and motivations of the citizens, through all levels of society from the ruling classes to the humblest servants. The dichotomy between what it takes to sustain a kingdom and the corrupting influence of money which leads to the fall of empires is encapsulated in the following scripture:

It shows both that money corrupts, and how and why, this corruption is so insidious in affluent societies. Since the onset of the Age of Commerce, which is a natural and unstoppable outgrowth of the Age of Conquest, ensures that a portion of the populace will become very wealthy, it introduces an influence in society that serves as a kernel through which corruption germinates, spreading to all within such empires - the morally corrupting and ubiquitous influence of riches. Thus far in human history, the negative influence of riches has had a 100 hit rate. No empire, no matter how great has managed to contain the corrosive power of wealth and affluence: they have all fallen!

Preventable Consequences that are Nonetheless, More Inevitable than Thanos

Which brings us to the question of the hour: "What chance is there, that the current ruling class will voluntary change their ways and disregard the pursuit of money for moral excellence?" Incredibly, everyone knows the answer, without needing to guess! In fact the question is so ridiculous, as to be laughable, precisely because one and all, each and every one of us, knows with complete certainty that there is zero chance of such an occurrence. Indeed, not only will they not change their ways, they will double down and take any and all necessary measures to try and sustain their "status" through the levers of wealth and the power it imbues. Is that no so? Glubb notes this fact, paying particular attention to its dynamics,

Why have I have emphasized the words, "framework of their national life," above? Because they are the answer to why not only the ruling class but all members of society in the Age of Intellect have tremendous difficulty in rehabilitating their lives, even in the face of impeding doom. Those words are equivalent to ... "both our place and our nation" of the Pharisees as quoted earlier, that is, a context for social status, and our relevant place(s) in that pecking order: in other words the status quo - and our place within it! Recall that, that goal, using tertiary qualifications to create wealth and either climb or maintain one's place in society's social hierachy, is the holy grail and engine behind all Intellectualism. That, is the "ism," that is, the philosophy behind Intellectualism. That, is why the root word of Intellectualism is not intellect, but ism. That: the "framework of their national life," the undying allegiance to the "status quo," the pursuit of credentials at all costs, so as to attain to and thereafter maintain a coveted place within a national context, is the whole definition of the Age of Intellect. Thus, the very feature of Intellectualism that makes it desirable to those who aspire to it, is the very feature that assures the demise of everything Intellectuals hold sacred: both the national framework, and their place within it, or to put it more bluntly, their lives and livelihoods! Why? Because it encourages selfishness and idleness, a decline so steep, that it leads irreversibly to national collapse and the fall of empires:

But how? How does the Age of Intellect lead to inescapable collapse? It is not difficult to see how selfish and idle people lead to the collapse of societies. What is harder to understand is why, why when facing such dire circumstances do the people not reform their ways and change course so as to avert disaster? Because these traits are the result of members of such societies being corrupted by "the enjoyment of too much money and too much power for too long a period!" The malaise this encourages cannot be overcome from within the national framework. Instead as we have learnt above, under such circumstances, as the cracks in society get wider and wider, people rather look for insurance policies, in the hope of not falling through the cracks. This, they do by doubling down on Intellectualism, pursuing it in its latest and even more degraded form - Credentialism. At this point in the decline of empires, salvation for the empire can only come from its citizenry changing course, but the citizens cannot do that from within. The only solution would be for them to remove themselves from their national framework, but that is one-half of the formula for Intellectualism, and since the prime motivating factor for Intellectuals is status, they cannot adandon the context that hosts their social hierarchy. They are caught in a catch-22! "In their own surroundings, they are unable to redirect their thoughts and their energies into new channels," but without such redirecting their surroundings will soon collapse. A further quote from Sir Glubb will make the horrifying situation clearer,

The excerpts of the essay I am quoting are from a sub-heading entitled, Decadence of a System. In it, Sir Glubb shows repeatedly, that all the evidence points to the fact that "decadence" is system-related, not individual-related. Put another way it is the fact that the citizens persist in the "framework of their national life" that is the problem. Once removed from this "framework," "they do not remain conspicuously decadent, pessimistic or immoral among the inhabitants of their new homeland." Obviously, decadence is only indulged in by empires. Nations that are not so prosperous never enter the Age of Affluence, and thus never fall into the ages of Intellect and Decadence. In other words they are poorer, financially than the empire and its citizens, and are thus not attractive to Intellectuals. Hence Intellectuals do not emigrate to such countries - catch-22. Glubb summarizes the point:

The difficulty of emigrating "into entirely new surroundings," of "breaking away from their old channels of thought," of being "transported elsewhere" is both the only way citizens can avoid the total collapse of their empire, and the one thing Intellectuals - whose main concern is to preserve the status quo: their "place and ... nation" - would never consider, promote, or initiate! And thus assured destruction. This is the eternal, unavoidable legacy of the ideology of Intellectualism. Startling.

The message in this paragraph is so imporatant that I will repeat it in the following two paragraphs - using different words. By the end of the Age of Affluence, money has taken a firm hold on the imaginations and aspirations of the public within an empire. The attitude of "money is king," having filtered down from the elites, to those who are ruled by them. In the last stages of the Age of Affluence, the corrosive influence of money has seeped into enough of the general citizenry, that as a nation, the empire is now devoid of character traits, such as: dignity, honour, integrity, courage, boldness and a sense of duty, that characterized earlier epochs in the rise of their empire. As such, free of moral considerations, and firmly focused on the accumulation of riches through tertiary education, the society as a whole ushers in a new stage of the rise and fall of empires - the penultimate stage of its existence, the Age of Intellect. This "age" only appears once people have been suffiently corrupted, that the pursuit of money is the highest aim to which most citizens will aim. Thus, in this "age," the only concern for people is the accumulation of riches, in order to secure a high standing within society. However, such riches are not acquired in a vacuum, they need a context, a "framework of ... national life." Those two factors, taken together: a national framework for upward mobility; and the social standing one has within it, form the goal of the citizenry. The use of tertiary qualifications to pursue such goals, is called Intellectualism. And a society that has reached the phase of its arc of existence where all three factors are in play, is said to be in the Age of Intellect! Sir Glubb well encapsulates the pursuit of status within a national context, with the words: "... framework of their national life." The "life" is individual, while the national "framework" refers to wider society. As such, that phrase is equivalent to one we learnt of earlier, that was uttered almost 2,000 years ago by the Pharisees, when they were trying to mitigate against the threat that Jesus posed to them, and their hard-earned elitist positions within the Jewish system of things of those days:

The product of the morally bankrupt ideology of Intellectualism, is the short-sighted focus on materialism and the "here-and-now," that defines the interests and guiding principles of all Intellectuals! This single minded focus on preserving their cherished status within the "framework of ... national life," that is, their "place and ... nation," the much vaunted status quo, blinds them to a glaring and disturbing fact: this same "framework of .... national life," that forms their strongest bond of allegiance and is the source of their greatest pride and precarious sense of security; is simultaneously, also the source of the demise of both their nation and their livelihoods. Thus, the ideology that defines Intellectualism, is the very variable that ensures its absolute demise, as the empire within which Intellectualism operates is overrun and conquered by a new nation that is only then starting its rise and run of conquest, commerce, affluence, Intellectualism and then, unavoidably decay and collapse! Intellectualsim is a ponzi scheme. It is not, as has been extensively advertized, the height of all human achievement, but rather a death grip from which no mighty civilization has ever recovered! This is the sad testimony of all of human history. And the record, is a 100% hit rate. There has never been an empire, that has proven to be the exception.

A Case Study: The Eternal Quest for Nuclear Power

For our case study, we are going to look into the murky world of nuclear energy research. Nuclear energy is how scientists believe the sun creates its energy and they are trying to replicate the effects on the earth. the particular chemical reaction they are looking to replicate is a fusion reaction. Such reactions work by smashing two nuclei together. This forms two byproducts: a new type of nucleus and energy. The way to test the feasibility of such a technology is to simply measure the amount of energy it took to smash the nuclei together, what we'll refer to as energy in, and divide it by the amount of energy that was produced by the reaction, which we'll call energy out. The answer to this simple division equation is a number, a ratio of the energy output divided by the energy input. That ratio is represented by the letter "Q." The holy grail of fusion research is to produce a figure for Q that is greater than 1. That would mean more energy was released by the fusion reaction than was needed to run the experiment! No team has gotten close to achieving this mile-stone. In fact, no team has even approaced break-even, a situation where Q is 1, wchich occurs when the numerator is equal to the denominator. Put another way, it's a situation where the amount of energy produced is exactly the amount used to run the reaction.

The question we ask is, how close to break-even have scientists come, that is a Q value of 1? The figure most, currently point to, as the highest achieved Q value is 0.7 achieved by the JET. Again, that means 70% of the energy input to run the reaction was realized back as energy output. Testing whether that is false or true is easy enough, we just have to find the output and input figures, and divide the one by the other. Notice I said "find" the figures, not just use. That's because, to their eternal shame, scientists have for many years reported the wrong figures, painting an entirely false picture. That is the crux of Steven Krivits' documentary, and the inspiration for Hossenfelder's video on the subject. The figures scientists largely quote are of output and input. When we divide the output by the input, we do indeed get a number close to 70% - we get 66%. However, there is a 'technical' sleight of hand at play. This "input" leaves out the vast electrical resources needed to generate the chemical reactions, which in turn create - what is in comparison a modest output! As Krivits explains: "The most significant component of the misleading communications used by fusion representatives, was their use of the phrase fusion power. "That is because the term has two very different meanings, but scientists use them interchangeably, making it difficult for the average outsider to understand the very simple dynamics that define the search for fusion power. Do scientists know and understand the difference? Yes. Because the concpets themselves are very easy to grasp:

Fusion power is just like electrical vehicles, a technology many more people are familiar with, at least, in principle. In much the same way electrical vehicles have a net and gross efficiency, so does fusion power. If an environmentalist were to highlight only the range that electrical vehicles could cover free of petrol, without adding in the recharging costs, and the more important fact, that recharching is done off the electricity grid, it would be false advertising. In other words, in describing how effective green energy is we must consider, not only the green energy itself, but the source and financial costs of recharging the electrical batteries. If someone where to just state the battery figures without, stating how much electrical energy is needed to make the battery work - that would be a false narrative. A fraudulant bait and switch trick.

ITER

Now, let's talk about the uncomfortable subject of how Intellectuals in the scientific community are using Science to run Bob Rubin trades on an unsuspecitng and gullible public. When I say "uncomfortable," I mean the truths you will now learn will be uncomfortable for you, to the extent that you have put any trust in Intellectualism. For me, and indeed, anyone whose trust is in Jehovah - and not man - such truths are not only comfortable, when discovered, but expected. Iter is a multinational project to build a nuclear reactor power plant. It is multinational because the funding for such a mega project cannot be sourced from any one nation, thus requiring multinational cooperation - due to the tremendous costs involved.

It is Sabine Hossenfelder, who once again, bravely comes to the fore to lay bare the misinformation being promoted as science, by her peers. It is important to note that as a scientist herself, she is not eager to expose such schemes. Quite the opposite, she often dreads doing so. She is a scientist herself, and has dedicated much time and effort to pursuits that she earnestly believes will create a better future for mankind. As such, I think it is her natural expectation that others in similar positions throughout the scientific landscape would feel similarly, and thus approach their respective disciplines with integrity and commitment. Whenever this is not the case, her disappointment is palpable. Fortunately, her constitution is such that her pursuit of truth seems to always win out, even when going against the grain causes friction with other in her professional community. These are her opening words from the expose she published in a video entitled, How Close is Nuclear Fusion Power?:

It is not difficult to sense the discomfort she has with confronting this issue. Yet, to her credit, she chose the right course of exposing, what essentially, amounts to a ponzi scheme, since - after all the government funding - there will be nothing to show, no product! Below, is the basic outline of this Bob Rubin trade.

The Promise

Fusion has been touted by scientists for decades as the most promising answer to a limitless source of energy. After all, fusion reactions is how scientists believe the Sun, the engine of the solar system, generates all its energy! Because of that link, any new developments in the world of nuclear fusion always causes a stir, both in the scientific community and with the general public. The widely disseminated trope about fusion technology is that, while humans will need to input some level of energy to kickstart fusion reactions, once they have the technology right, we will be able to generate an energy output that is 10 times greater than the input! Truly something great. We all know what problems the lack of reliable sources of abundant energy are currently causing, in economies throughout the world. Thus such a promise from top tier scientists in the field brings hopes of a great breakthrough in the imminent future:

The Reality

Wrong? How could that be? The claims are as straightforward as could be: put in 'X' amount of energy, and the nuclear fusion reactor will produce a '10X' power output. We have to learn a little about the process to understand why, the reality doesn't match the promise. It's very basic and simple to understand:

Simple enough. Putting numbers to the scenarios, often makes it easier to understand concepts. In the case of nuclear fusion we understand that if we put 50 units of energy in and generate 30 units of energy as an output then we have a Q of 0.6 or 60%:

Q = output/input = 30/50 = 0.6 = 60%

So far, everything is clear. According to Hossenfelder's quote the record for energy created through nuclear fusion is a ratio of 0.7 or 70%, obtained by the National Ignition Facility. That means as far as scientists are concerned they are only 30% away from achieving "Break Even," and if they were to improve further and pass the "Break Even" threshhold by say one percent, that is produce an energy yield that is 31% up and above the current 70%, then they would have produced net energy! Put another way, they would have produced more energy, than was needed to run the nuclear fusion reaction! Once that milestone was reached, it would just be a matter of refining our methods to create larger and larger energy yields from the same amount of energy input. This is the promise behind ITER's claims. They claim, once their nuclear fusion reaction is complete, it will produce 10 times the energy that's needed to run it! Truly phenomenal. But there's magic in the numbers!

Let's stop here and parse out the significance of her words. A nuclear fusion raection consists of two parts: 1) There is the energy that you need for heating fuel in strong magnets until it becomes a plasma, which we will remember, is a gas that is so hot, it becomes ionized. This step is before and separate to the step two; 2) The ionized gas, the plasma, having been heated to about 150 million Kelvin, then starts its own fusion reactions and produces energy. Since, there are two different processes that both require energy inputs, scientists use technical terms to differentiate them from each other: one deals with inputs and outputs of the plasma only and is called Qplasma; the second technical term adds those plasma figures to the energy that was needed to heat the fuel in strong magnets to temperatures of around 150 000 000 Kelvin, in the first place! Thus we have:

Qplasma = Energy out of plasma/Energy into plasma

Qtotal = Total Energy out/Total Energy in

Slight of Mind

Kids, has your mom every told you to watch how much hot water you use? That's because, it takes a lot of energy to heat water up - and that's to 1000 Celsius, which is 373 Kelvin. Imagine how much energy it would take to heat something up to 150 000 000 Kelvin or 149 999 7920 C. Which brings us to crux of the matter, when scientists lie, in order to execute a Bob Rubin trade:

Qtotal < Qplasma

To understand why, Qtotal is less than Qplasma, we have to remember that Q is a ratio! That means it the answer to dividing one number by another, called a quotient. 10 / 2 = 5, meaning 5 is the quotient. Likewise, our Q ratios are the 5, not the 10, or the 2. So, to understand why the ratio for total energy is less than the ratio or Q, of the plasma energy, we must note the form of the factors that determine our ratio. The equations, whether for total energy or plasma have the general form: out/in. Consider the following examples:

15 / 1 000 000 = ? ... and 15 / 10 = ?

Which ratio is smaller?

The answer to the first division problem is 0.000015. The answer to the second problem is 1.5. Mathematically, we use the less than sign '<' to indicate when one quantity is smaller than another, hence:

0.000015 < 1.5

The large figure of 1 million represents the energy it takes to heat the fuel to 150 million Kelvin. 10 represerents the amount of energy it takes, in this example, for the plasma to react and produce energy. In turn, 15 represents the energy output of the plasma nuclear fusion reaction. Only the nuclear fusion reaction in the plasma creates an output of energy, the heating of the fuel does not produce a nuclear fusion energy output, hence in both cases, the energy output stays the same - 15! Lastly, we substitute the labels Qtotal and Qplasma in order to express the general truths of our experimental findings, namely that:

Qtotal < Qplasma

Having derived how the ratios are worked out, we now clearly understand why the ratio for the "total energy" is less than the ratio for "plasma energy." And we can also now understand the deceptive slight of mind, that scientists are employing whenever they quote Qplasma when they should be quoting figures for Qtotal!

It's like someone who lives in Anaheim, California - where Disneyland is located - asking you to give them your credit card so they visit Disneyland. But after you agree and give them your credit card, for what you thought would be a day out at the local theme park, you discover they meant Disneyland Paris, and that they chartered a private jet, at your expense, to get there! When you ask them about it, they say I didn't lie to you, I asked if you'd pay for me to go to Disneyland, and that's where I went. When scientists speak of Q, and do not distinguish between Qplasma and Qtotal, they are pulling very much the same trick. Here's Sabine,

And again ...

Holtkamp's quote was taken from a 2006 interview and in 2020, another leading nuclear fusion "expert," Nick Walkden, from the JET nuclear fusion reactor, was making the same claims at a TED talk: "ITER will produce ten times the power out from fusion energy than we put into the machine!" Watch the video, and see with what bravado he pronounces this false claim.

But, you might justifiably be thinking, perhaps Walkden is massively incompetent, and somehow, does not know the technical difference between the Qs. In Hossenfelder's expose, she leans heavily on the work done by Steven Krivit to expose the lies told by a rogue scientific community. Below, I include some quotes from Mr Krivit:

In the above quote Krivit, outlines how the vast multitude of scientists that are working on ITER, taken from 35 countries, are all silent on the false claim that humans are on the verge of a breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology. Why is that? Why would qualified specialists not speak up and blow the whistle on this false narrative?

But not all is dark. There are some courageous scientists, who put truth above personal financial security. In Krivit's documentary on the subject, he interviews a plasma physicist, who used to work at ITER, Ernesto Mazzucato. This is what he had to say:

The "power values" applying to the plasma "particles" and not to the "overall reactor," as we shall see, is not a bug, but a feature! It is by design, so that rogue scientists, in the sense that they are not practicing Science, but Scientism, have designed - against direct advice from the authorities - the technology so that it is assessed by the false metric of advances in plasma output as opposed to what is actually needed: advances in the total energy output of the reactor as a whole!

Consider Hossenfelder's input on this part of Scientism's elaborate deception, that prompts nuclear "confusion."

VERDICT: Scientism is "Not Scientifically Feasible"

Rogue scientists and science journalists alike, have done an excellent job of convincing an unsuspecting public, that nuclear fusion is a highly promising technology, just at the cusp of huge breakthroughs that will lead to an endless supply of power to an energy starved planet. Listen to the glowing assessment from a law maker in the United States,

But, just like standing in a garage doesn' make you a car, Intellectuals pretending to be serious scientists by spending enourmous resources on impractical experiments that have no chance of success, is not science, but Scientism. For such people success is derived, not from substance, but from the persuasiveness of their presentation. They are actors, playing out the role of scientists - at the expense of gullible officials and taxpayers unaware. Some scientific endeavours start out with genuine intentions and become corrupted somewhere along the line, but others are set up as frauds, so as to mislead for as long as possible. Where does ITER and the whole nuclear fusion research community fit in, in that continuum? Consider the evidence!

Turnkey Deception: A Ponzi Scheme from Inception to White Elephant

Hossenfelder, said: "Of course, the people who work on this ... know the distinction perfectly well." A sentiment, I am sure you will readily agree with, for as HOltkamp, said: "Scientists measure this in terms of a simple factor - they call it Q." Simple. The concept itself is indeed simple. Thus, the confusion surrounding the field is intentional. To what end? Again understanding the nature of ratios will help us reach the correct conclusion. If we have two ratios: one with a very large denominator (the number at the botthom) and the other with a much smaller denominator, which of the two answers, will be more affected by increasing the numerator (the number on the bottom) by one continuously? To figure it out, look at the examples below, and in your mind increase the denominator for both in increments of one, until the denominator reaches 10!

1) 1 / 10 000 = ... & 2) 1 / 10 =

The answers in decimals for the first example are:

0.0001; 0.0002; 0.0003; 0.0004; 0.0005; 0.0006; 0.0007; 0.0008; 0.0009 and lastly 0.001

The difference is hardly noticeable. Now consider how rapidly the scenario changes when we consider the answers to example two!

0.1; 0.2; 0.3; 0.4; 0.5; 0.6; 0.7; 0.8; 0.9; and finally 1 ... but what does it all mean?

Qplasma Gives the Appearance of Progress

Let us return to our topic, to find out. We want to understand why Intellectuals are using the wrong Q value in communicating on the status and progress of nuclear fusion research. In the scenarios above, the first example represents Qtotal, and the second scenario, in which the denominator was much smaller, represents Qplasma. That being the case, we now appreciate that any incremental change in Qplasma seems like progress, when considered in the context of Qplasma, but that it would have no impact on Qtotal! It's like going from 0.0001 to 0.0002 in our examples - completely neglible. The question then, is which of the two technical Q values would represent the technological breakthrough that U.S Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson spoke of? Which Qvalue, would "[Produce] reliable electrical power from fusion...?" Which one would justify the confidence of scientists from "our top universities" that "it is now possible to actually build a full scale test reactor that produces far more energy than it uses?" The final goal is to produce an endless supply of electricity from a nuclear fusion powerplant. Recall Hossenfelder's words,

So, if we want to build a power plant we focus on Qtotal because that's the only relevant metric. What value would we focus on, if we cared nothing about actually producing a working solution to the energy problem, but only wanted to present the facade of progress, so we could remain gainfully employed by convincing the funding institutions to continue to give us taxpayer resources? In that case, we would never highlight the Qtotal, that would be the fastest way of getting all funding to be cancelled. Instead we would speak only of Qplasma. In a chapter of her video that Hossenfelder entitled Scientists who Spread the Confusion, she plays a clip of Nick Walkden of JET, giving a TED talk on February 29, 2020 about ITER:

A complete leap from reality! But the slight of mind can only be appreciated when we examine the actual figures related to the Qtotal versus Qplasma figures. Hossenfelder's presentation continues,

In fact to catalogue how disastrous these results would be for the ITER scientists, that Qtotal is actually almost 20 times smaller, 17.5 to be exact! But there's an even bigger problem: no nuclear reactor has reached Break-Even in generating fusion power even in the context of Qplasma! That means ITER's claims of being able to produce a Qplasma of 10 - ten times greater than Break-Even - are wholly unfounded. They have no precedent in experiment. But, that's not a stumbling block when presentation is all that matters! Look again at Walkden's words, "ITER will produce ten times the power out, from fusion energy than we put into the machine." ITER is an experiment. How can he be so sure of what currently remains unproven? As someone said regarding ITER: "Conclusions should come after experiments not before."

As I said before, these rogue scientist's laser focus on Qplasma is not a bug, but a feature of Intellectual scientism. From the beginning, it has been known that chasing Qplasma is the wrong goal, and will bring no tangible benefits to society. Why have the scientists forced that path? Because they are Intellectuals, whose goals have to do with using their tertiary qualifications to gain wealth, and have nothing to do with providing a solution to the society's energy crisis.

Misaligned Intentions - Conflicted Interests!

The above quote is Hossenfelder's conclusion on the matter of nuclear fusion research. But the facts of her conlsusion where known at the outset of trying to get funding for fusion research. The confusion caused by not making clear which Qvalue is being quoted when scientists speak about the status and progress of nuclear fusion research, was highlighted by the European body which was responsible for setting the criteria for fusion research, the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) of the European Parliament

More than 3 decades later, we see that the exact opposite happened - all nuclear fusion projects have been dominated by the wrong scientific criterion! For in this way they could feign progress, whilst all the while knowing that they were building white elephants and selling a ponzi-scheme! Steven Krivit concludes his hour long documentary by saying that:

The Forensic Trail of a "Bait & Switch" Operation

What does that mean? A bait and switch operation is normally one where a product of high value is advertised at a low price, that's the bait. However, when the customer shows up at the store, they are told those advertised items are out of stock and are either sold an inferior product, or something similar to the advertised product, but at a much higher price. That's the switch.

In the case of Koshiba applying the "bait and switch" metaphor to ITER, it has nothing to do with the price of the project, but something more sinister. The fusion research community promised viable net energy production at commercial scales, i.e. powerplants. The only metric that is relevant to production of energy on that scale is the gross ratio of energy out over energy in for the machine as a whole. Qtotal! However they never worked, or intended to work on increasing Qtotal for reasons we have already expanded on. Instead, they focused the design, construction and implentation of the ITER experiment on increasing Qplasma, and by incremental amounts, at that - something which is completely irrelevant to the goal of eventually creating nuclear fusion power plants to power society and provide electricity for national grids worldwide. From the beginning STOA warned them that:

You'll recall what Hosssenfelder said about the same topic: that is, which metric or measurement - between Qtotal and Qplasma is useful for reaching tha actual goal of building functional, commercially viable fusion powerplants ...

Running a fusion powerplant of net fusion power generation based on Qtotal would enable fusion powerplants to push that energy into national electricity grids, a win. Whereas the exact same scenario with fusion power generated by means of Qplamsa is counter-productive because to produce such reactions draws more energy from the machines that the experiment is powered by, than they give back in output: currently, by about 99%, since no maching has yet performed above 1% efficiency! Put another way: no fusion reaction tokamak has been able to produce a return of power that is greater than 1% of the power it was fed to run the fusion reaction.

Between the two ways of measuring the effects of fusion reactor experiments Qtotal and Qplasma, only one is valid as a means of measuring progress towards the eventual goal of building fusion powerplants that can power cities - Qtotal. The other, Qplasma, is completely useless as a yardstick of progress. Yet, it was the one the rogue scientists of ITER and the wider fusion power community chose to use in order to paint a picture of incredible leaps in performance - when nothing could have been further from the truth. And this, was done on purpose! As late as 2020, Nick Walkden triumphantly declared in a TED talk that

In starck contrast, in a recent but undated video from Steven Krivit's YouTube channel Luce says,

You will agree, that the two gentlemen are talking about two different things. That much is plain to see. Nick Walkden was selling Qtotal - the "bait," but Tim Luce is hoping to deliver Qplasma - the "switch." However just as plain is the irrefutable fact that this bait and switch was planned and executed to perfection by the fusion power science community. Recall how Stuart Prager of Princeton skillfully weaved a false narrative when he was testifying before congress: how,

Lastly, what use is there in pursuing a useless goal? Chasing gains in Qplasma is a non-starter, but the scientists within the fusion community chose to pursue it anyway, not because they thought it would benefit mankind, but for other reasons altogether. While today ITER's Luce claims:

However, that claim is at odds with was has been known about chasing gains in Qplasma, since at least 1988 when the Science and Technological Options Assessment body in the European Parliament, that is responsible for setting the criteria for fusion research, pointedly stated that spending time researching gains in Qplasma was a dishonest waste of time! In their own words they stated:

ITER's current tag line for 2022 is: "35 countries. 35 years." They say it proudly, as if it represents progress. But the truth is that they were told 34 years ago by a STOA of the European Parliament, at the very beginning of their ITER quest, that the path they on would culminate in nothing but failure. When asked about how much money has been spent researching the totally useless metric of Qplasma, the heads of the different institutions associated with the fusion research community are shy to give absolute figures, but Nick Walkden said 25 billion euros had been spent on building ITER, but another figure often quoted is 65 billion dollars. Either way, the expenditure is currently in the tens of billions of dollars, and yet - there is nothing to show for it. That sad outcome leads us to the conclusion that STOA reached more than 3 decades ago, before this charade got wheels. Luce claims that ITER's mission is to "demonstrate the scientific ... feasibility of fusion power," but it was known and widely acknowledged all those years ago that:

There are two themes that run all through Sir John Glubb's analysis of the historical rise and fall of empires. The first, is the regularity of the pattern over eons of time. The second, we will summarize in his own words:

The important thing about his statement is that the changes are human changes not technological. It is the changing character of the people that ushers in one stage whilst discarding another. That is why the same pattern repeats itself, no matter how technologically developed the empire itself is. Many people today might feel themselves inherently superior to those who lived in earlier empires. But the evidence paints a different picture. It is the people that are responsible for the rise of empires. And it is the people that are responsible for their downfall! Let us summarize how the four ingredients of the Age of Intellect prove this to be the case.

Intellectualism

The end of the Age of Affluence, is determined by a change in the mood of the people, a change in "popular fashion" from the accumulation of wealth by a handful of well connected individuals within society, to the pursuit of wealth, by all members of society. But how can people not born into privilege, people who don't have access to the levers of power, attempt to pursue wealth? Only through the acquisition of academic honours. As Glubb nots,

Attending universities to get academic fame, which can then be levered to gain riches - CHECK!

Pathology

Since it requires virtue and not mere academic honours to critically interrogate nature, employ the scientific method including rigorous experimentation and critical analysis of the data; the chutzpah and integrity to publish, in the face - initially - of the scorn and ridicule of your peers. The scientific method needs courage to be carried out, because as Niels Bohr said: "There is no hope for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance." So any scientist with a genuine discovery will initially face ridicule, and to be able to withstand ridicule, you need principles and a strong independent spirit. The universe is not the product of a human mind, which is why nature is counter-intuitive! How could it be otherwise. For that reason new discvoeries cannot conform to expectations. They must, by definition be completey counter-intuitive. Again Bohr put it best, "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true." Or as the poets say, "the truth is stranger than fiction."

Thus without the audacity of mind to do genuine science, over time innovation ceases, as scientific disciplines become filled with graduates who are there, not as truth seekers who view the sciences as windows of opportunity to discover the secrets of nature, but as vehicles for get rich quick schemes. With perverse funding structures hastening the demise of scientific institutions, such graduates never learn to do actual science, and are trained instead in the art of presentation - the ins and outs of how to put on a showy display of being 'sciency.' In such environments, science becomes pathologized: where whole departments in universities and fields, actual fields of scientific study start to lie about the progress they are making.

Scientism

The result of the pathology of science is, of course, Scientism! This is science as a visual art. Something to be performed in TED conferences and in front of congressional bodies, when you are seeking approval for one or other insane proposal which has no link to reality. The reasons why such magic thinking can enedure in the sciences for so long are varied, but chief among them is what follows next ...

Credentialsism

Credentialism is where people do not assess critically the claims of scientists. This applies to both scientists who do not think critically about the foundations of their own fields; or about the scientific claims of other scientists, due to the belief that So-and-so has a PhD, therefore they must know what they are doing; and in the case of the public who outsource all critical thinking to the "experts" because they are good at maths, and I'm not - or any such illogical reason.

For its part Credentialism, is a double-edged sword. One the one hand, it promotes the lack of critical thinking on the part of scientists and the public, and on the other its an insidious force that starts to permeate society throught "Credential Creep," where degrees start to become prerequisites for more and more jobs, ensuring that only the kind of people who have jumped through the hoops will get employed. This heightens the anxiety of those who think of education as "an insurance policy," making it certain that they will do whatever it takes to secure a spot, and avoid the widening "cracks of society."

All four elements were seen in the scandal that is ITER. However, every deception eventually runs out of road. ITER has a due date for completion. ITER has a due date for proof of principle - a date to produce a minimum viable product. Usually, it would be appropriate to say, time will tell. But, in the case of ITER, we don't need time to tell becasue the goal of ITER has never been to produce electricity. As Steven Krivit says:

This means one of the greatest "bait and switch" operations in the history of science will finally be uncovered. I re-quote Krivit's point about the disappointment that the unsuspecting and gullible will be in for:

Listen, for yourself to the switch of ITER Chief Scientist and Head of Science and Operations, Tim Luce, who only now - after the funding has been secured - in an effort to temper expectations is correctly stating that, the true objective of the multi-billion dollar experiment was never the production of net energy, or to generate electricity for the grid - but:

And contrast that with the bait previously spun by ITER, when they were promising heaven and earth:

And ...

And again ...

Krivit explains the deception:

Below, is a transcript of a government hearing on nucelar fusion in the United States.

Dana Rohrabacher: Dr Van Dam, how much money has been spent

James Van Dam: Oh my goodness. I would have to take that on as a home work assignment.

DR: Have we spent billions of dollars on fusion energy over the years...?

JVD: Yes.

DR: Billions and billion [of dollars]! Have we had any actual realization at all, of something other than the computer models that suggest that we're going to get there...?

JVD: Well there are two examples, one in the U.S., one in Europe. The U.S. example was the TFTR Tokamak at Princeton, which was [in] the late 90s, and they got very close to Break-Even. The Joint European Torus, likewise, around the same time

DR: "Very close" is not it, right?

JVD: Yes.

DR: Yeah, but "We're very close" doesn't work. ... We've got a lot of computer models here, and let me just note that I have been here for a while: I have seen a lot of computer models - that didn't work! And, is it possible that we will get to the end of this project, and it won't work?

JVD: I sincerely hope not. And the best

DR: That's not - no, no no. Is it possible that it won't work?

JVD: The best projections from the experiments tha we have done over the past decades, in our experience, the database, the computer modeling, and the new technology that we have, we think it will definitely work.

DR: We think, we think, we think, okay? Let me just note this: that I would love to believe in the dream of fusion energy, I'd love to believe that! And, it's possible - from whatever the people are saying - its possible we will get there. ... I think the American people deserve [for] us to go for a "for sure" outcome of electricity, that we could spend the same amount of money on. Rather than something that could work, because the computer models tell us so.

March 6, 2018 (38:57 - 42:22)

Steve Cowley: What ITER is designed to do, and it was international consensus ... is to get to the point that ... the plasma burns, and produces fusion power; sustains itself at a temperature of about 230 million degrees. Those are conditions we've got in JET but not self-sustaining conditions, so JET is not enough. ITER is that step.

Baron Maurice Harry Peston: As background, I must say I'm totally confused by the evidence that you've been giving us. ... Professor, you said in your opening remarks - exact words: "I am confident that a commercially sustainable outcome will occur." How could you possibly say that? What's your evidence? You're talking about things that have never been built; are not within a million miles of being built. How can you express any degree of confidence, that this is not a total waste of money? And those were your words, "will occur," not might occur, "will occur!"

SC: We have done some fusion at Cullum [], 16 MegaWatts of fusion power on JET, we can make the conditions for fusion. We have to make a step to scientific demonstration of fusion, but that's still not commercial demonstration of fusion. And whether we can do that in the 2040s or whether it'll wait till 2080, I think is the question.

BMHP: And you think you can forecast over that time scale? I don't know anyone else in the forecasting game who would remotely make a remark like that, and I speak as someone who used to earn a good living from forecasting. I mean you're talking about cloud cuckoo land, are you not? ... It seems to me what you've done is to invent a marvelous system where all scientists working in this area managed to waste an enormous amount of public money worldwide, on a self-sustaining with no likely outcome worth anything.

July 21, 2015 (45:07 - 47:43)

This concept of the difference between gross and net figures is perfectly common to everyone who uses money. You have a gross salary and a net salary. In stores, all items have gross and net pricing. In both cases the difference is the amount charged as tax. In the context of nuclear fusion reactors, the tax, is the electricity used to run the fusion reactors in the first place. Without the resource of this electrical component to the process of nuclear fusion, there is no experiment!

The Evidence Profiles: Intellectualism VS Idolatry

Think of the Ephesians and their false god Artemis. In its heyday the Ephisians were thoroughly devoted to the worship of Artemis, and they would not be readily convinced otherwise. What we now view as a cult was to them pure worship. Artemis represented the all powerful God who created the universe in their minds. Until their empire was overrun and they discovered to late, that Artemis was a false God. In ancient times, and indeed even today, that is one litmus test, for whether or not a claimed god is really God - the creator of heaven and earth! Listen to how a high ranking military commander of the then rampaging army of Assyria connected the veracity of supposed gods against their ability to defend their worshippers:

Now that we all know Artemis was a false God, it clear to one and all, that her statue did not fall from heaven. No, the truth is much simpler than that - and more sinister. Someone sculptured that image and created the false narrative that it fell from heaven. Over time the Ephesians accepted this falsehood and gave veneration to what was not a God. In this sense, Idolaters form a well crafted lie, one that is built to last as long as possible, and thus have the greatest chance of accruing the highest returns on the initial investment. And all they need to sell the false artifact of their minds is good story to wrap it up in. As far removed from each other as Intellectual may look outwardly, they share the exact same Evidence Profile.

As we have seen with Intellectualism, Intellectuals also use their man made authority - obtained through academic qualifications - to persuade men to believe and thus fund their own versions of imaginery artificat, what Baron Maurice Harry Pestion, called "cloud cuckoo land." We have traced out how the scientists who are behind nuclear fusion research chose to follow a path that they knew from the beginning would not produce results! In the early day of this field, when they were seeking approval for nuclear research funding, they went against the direction of the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment committee of the European Parliament, in how they sould classify their research and guage its progress. Again ...

In other words by choosing the course they did, those scientists chose incorrect "scientific criterion," which put them on a road from which they cannot now depart: a result that represents the very worst scenario ... the enormous waste of resources on a program that is simply not scientifically feasible." It would be one thing if the scientific non-feasibility of nuclear fusion was something that was discovered after nuclear fusion experiments were run, but in this case: it was known at the starting point! It was precisely because, they knew that their project was not "scientifically feasible" that ITER scientists chose not to use the "correct scientific criterion" for defining the program "from the earliest stages!" The late, highly innovative fashion designer Issey Miyake, once said,

But as the ITER Chief Scientist, Tim Luce recently said: "Two of the physics objectives are these, that we're gonna reach 500 megawatts of fusion power ... with an energy gain of 10. ... We're also supposed to demonstrate - in principle - steady-state operation: about 300 megawatts for up to an hour. These two metrics, the fusion power and the duration, place ITER in the powerplant class. ITER will not be a powerplant!" Thus ITER was designed not to work "in real life." But you might object, and say there's nothing wrong with running experiments to find out what works and what doesn't, that's how progress in made. However, the problem with that argument as it relates to ITER is that, that is not how ITER was sold, and the funds for its design and implementation approved! When scientists were looking for funding, they didn't sell ITER as an experiment to get 10 times more energy from the plasma than was put into it - a 'NET' effectt! No. They sold ITER as an experiment that would get 10 times more energy out than was put into the machines as a whole - a 'GROSS' effect! And in the interim, they cleverly used the scientific Qtotal, meaning of the term interchangeably with its technical - Qplasma meaning to create the false impression that, what was in reality woefully inadequate, and painfully incremental advances were great strides that would place mankind on the precipice of one the greatest paradigm shifts in the history of civilizations. These are the people you have outsourced your life to!

I do not know how long the cult of Artemis lasted, and I don't care. You might say, Artemis' adherents might have enjoyed worshipping her image in the meantime, but that's not the point. The point is that is not what they were sold. They were sold that Artermis was God Almighty. The sad truth about humanity is that the Ephesians were complicit in their worship of Artemis ... as you are - in your worship of Intellectuals. The truth is, we can always tell, if we care to look closely enough, when we are being sold a bill of goods. There was something in the original image of Artemis that was equivalent to a "Made in China" label on the bottom: something that screamed "product of humans!" It could have been poor workmanship, which would have showed it was not made by the God who so skillfully created the universe, including tiny ceatures like ants and insects, with such exquisite detail. It could have been the materials it was formed from, which would not have withstood a fall from heaven. Whatever it was, there was something that would have alerted potential adherents that the claim surrounding the statue was false. But the Ephesians shrugged it off, because the truth about false religion and idolatry is stated plainly in the Bible:

Thus, such ideas flourish when the populace is ready to embrace them, for their own selfish reasons. It is the people who popularize such falsehoods when, in their hearts they want to exchange "the truth of God for the lie" and to venerate and render "sacred service to the creation rather than the Creator." (Ro 1:25) In the same way, Intellectuals use the Bob Rubin trade to run amock, because secular societies have - through Credentialism - outsourced critical thinking to the experts. Just as there were consequences for the Ephesians, there will consequences for all believers in Intellectualism - both the Intellectuals and those who highly esteem them!