#scientism — Public Fediverse posts

Easy As Pie God's own apple pie recipe. rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/05/easy... #astronomy, #CarlSagan, #dependentcoarising, #gratitude, #hermitpractice, #koan, #meditation, #Scientism, #Zen

Easy As Pie

Easy As Pie

God's own apple recipe.

https://rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/05/easy-as-pie.html

#astronomy, #CarlSagan, #dependentcoarising, #gratitude, #hermitpractice, #koan, #meditation, #Scientism, #Zen

Almost a year old, this #GaryNolan interview with #RobinsonErhardt is more interesting and relevant than the Whitehouse Disclosure data dump. Why? because it looks at #UAP / #UFO phenomena through the lens of our most powerful tools, #science *

#Stanford <https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpJebYW_vb4>

*Yes Gary also bags out the #scientism of Neil deGrasse Tyson and it’s censored 🤣☺️

Almost a year old, this #GaryNolan interview with #RobinsonErhardt is more interesting and relevant than the Whitehouse Disclosure data dump. Why? because it looks at #UAP / #UFO phenomena through the lens of our most powerful tools, #science *

#Stanford <https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpJebYW_vb4>

*Yes Gary also bags out the #scientism of Neil deGrasse Tyson and it’s censored 🤣☺️

Almost a year old, this #GaryNolan interview with #RobinsonErhardt is more interesting and relevant than the Whitehouse Disclosure data dump. Why? because it looks at #UAP / #UFO phenomena through the lens of our most powerful tools, #science *

#Stanford <https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpJebYW_vb4>

*Yes Gary also bags out the #scientism of Neil deGrasse Tyson and it’s censored 🤣☺️

Almost a year old, this #GaryNolan interview with #RobinsonErhardt is more interesting and relevant than the Whitehouse Disclosure data dump. Why? because it looks at #UAP / #UFO phenomena through the lens of our most powerful tools, #science *

#Stanford <https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpJebYW_vb4>

*Yes Gary also bags out the #scientism of Neil deGrasse Tyson and it’s censored 🤣☺️

Almost a year old, this #GaryNolan interview with #RobinsonErhardt is more interesting and relevant than the Whitehouse Disclosure data dump. Why? because it looks at #UAP / #UFO phenomena through the lens of our most powerful tools, #science *

#Stanford <https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpJebYW_vb4>

*Yes Gary also bags out the #scientism of Neil deGrasse Tyson and it’s censored 🤣☺️

A discussion with @snapshotsmith about "Determinism" and scientific truth reminded me that the gap between science and #Scientism is wide.

Incidentally a close friend sent me the paper below on Rosennean Complecity by #Siekmann. Section 5 lists the 3 commandments of modelling in #science ... that's Lie, Cheat and Steal. That's at least honest.

Siekmann, Ivo. "An applied mathematician's perspective on Rosennean Complexity." Ecological Complexity 35 (2018): 28-38.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7270781/pdf/main.pdf

It's really curious... I post something about the connections between #math and #magic, between #Science and #Esotericism, between #BeliefSystems in #technology and #religion, and it's unlikely that people react to my post.

Let's face it, if thinking about the history of #CommonSense and science amounts to #heresy then it's #scientism.

It's really curious... I post something about the connections between #math and #magic, between #Science and #Esotericism, between #BeliefSystems in #technology and #religion, and it's unlikely that people react to my post.

Let's face it, if thinking about the history of #CommonSense and science amounts to #heresy then it's #scientism.

It's really curious... I post something about the connections between #math and #magic, between #Science and #Esotericism, between #BeliefSystems in #technology and #religion, and it's unlikely that people react to my post.

Let's face it, if thinking about the history of #CommonSense and science amounts to #heresy then it's #scientism.

Professor Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning

In this talk, Guy Claxton warns against the scientism and epistemic injustice of “The Science of Learning” and proposes instead something very much aligned with our notions of niche construction, toolbelt theory, collaboration, and iteration. These contribute to what Claxton calls “epistemic apprenticeship”.

https://youtu.be/qGFEswKBnMw?si=v62sC5IHR1GRRqC4

As Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang states, “We simply are not Frankenstein monsters.” We tend to focus on small mechanisms and parts and pieces of knowledge. Instead, focus on the whole person, not the Frankenstein monster with all the little pieces. Affective neuroscience teaches us new perspectives for understanding and appreciating the importance of the whole person in the educational context.

Similarly, David Perkins warns us against the atomized learning of “element-itis”.

David Perkins talks about the importance of not atomizing learning, not turning it into what he calls the twin diseases of about-ism, always just talking about things rather than learning to do them, and what he refers to as element-itis, that everything has to be built up like Lego from little bricks of knowledge before you can really get to work on them.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Instead of attempting to build Frankenstein children from reductionist parts, let children build their own niches and tool belts in whole, embodied ways compatible with cognitive and somatic liberty. Let them embark on an “epistemic apprenticeship”.

Table of Contents

• Selected Quotes from the Talk
• Reading List
• Further Reading

Selected Quotes from the Talk

[This example of expository teaching] is appropriate because you’re all adults who are free to come, or not, and you’ve come presumably because you think there’s something you think you might find interesting…in being here. That’s not the case of schools, of course…

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

It’s a big jump to go from the sometimes appropriateness of a group of people sitting quietly and politely being told things by someone else, to assuming that such forms of teaching are somehow the dominant or the mandatory forms of teaching in places of education.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Sciences of learning – plural

• Cognitive neuroscience
• Affective neuroscience
• Social neuroscience
• Al and robotics
• Philosophy
• Sociocultural psychology
• Cognitive anthropology
• Developmental psychology
• Embodied cognition
• Evolutionary psychology
• Information processing psychology
• Instructional psychology

There’s no such thing as THE science of learning.

We are a variety of scholars working on understanding learning.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Sciences of LearningS

• Skill development
• Perceptual learning
• Learning to learn
• Developing attitudes, values and interests
• Identity development
• Information retention and retrieval
• Deep understanding
• A part in a play
• Making and Performing: Dance, Design Technology, Sport
• School maths and science

The sciences of learnings are not exclusively or even principally about school.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Learning happens when someone wishes to learn, not when someone wishes to teach.

Ken Robinson

A properly designed school system needs to focus on cognitive abilities, not scholarly subjects…If we allow students to choose what areas of knowledge they would like to focus on while learning those skills, they would be attentive and interested.

Roger Schank

We humans have created… mechanisms of thought, embodied in our nervous systems, that enable our minds to go further, faster and in different directions than the minds of any other animals… They are passed on to subsequent generations through social learning.

In the future, the cultural inheritance of cognitive mechanisms could be enhanced by formal education. It may be possible to design training programs for use in schools…to improve cognitive skills.

Cecilia Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets

It’s fairly obvious that there is a fundamental mismatch between secondary education and the way kids learn. In school we want kids to start with the small building blocks, to learn the little pieces and start to put those together. But that is not how the human mind grows. It grows by engaging with deep powerful [ideas and questions] and then working backward to inform the meaning you are making…Supporting young people to engage with the complexities of their moral and social lives…is what is deeply, deeply motivating- and it is what grows their brains.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Intelligence is the sum total of our habits of mind.

As long as school focuses mainly on individual forms of competence, on tool-free performance, and on decontextualized skills, educating people to be good learners in school settings alone may not be sufficient to help them become strong out-of-school learners.

Lauren Resnick

Hardly anything we do is done solo. No matter whether you are an athlete, a business person, a scientist, a trash collector, or a clerk, you are almost always coordinating with other people in a complex way. Human endeavor is deeply and intrinsically collective—except in schools.

David Perkins

Much of the recent work on embodied cognition shows beyond a shadow of doubt that forms of higher cognition retain a deep and often quite automatic grounding in the sensorimotor, in the physical, in the actual, in the emotional, in the embodied stuff of our being.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

What’s coming out of the laboratory, many of the laboratories, is that there is a bit of a shift from that rather narrow concern only with the rational and the linguistic and the argumentative, to a concern to a revised, renewed concern. It was there in the early days, was there if you read William James, with a concern that the real, the real world of living, of loving, of raising children, what we might now call embodied or warm cognition, a form of cognition that is embroiled with and suffused with emotion, with bodily process, with illness and so on.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Curiosity is the engine, is the driver of learning.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

In a state of mindfulness, your own assumptions become visible to you.

And once they become visible, then they can become questionable. And once they become questionable, they become mutable.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Education as an Epistemic Apprenticeship

• School as a place where you go to get good at thinking, learning and knowing
• As in any apprenticeship, you need
  • Role models – teachers as ‘master-learners’
  • Mates – some a bit further on than you
  • Tasks that build competence and confidence
  • Feedback on progress
  • Appreciation of your (growing) contribution to life
  • Escalating responsibility
• Doesn’t it do that already? NO!

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Explicit teaching, as it’s become known, is good for relatively short term retentions of relatively exam type knowledge. If that’s your overriding goal, then that’s a reasonable way of teaching. It’s not ineffective, but if you also care about the development of collaboration, of intuition, of imagination, of self-rescuing, of resilience, of curiosity, if those are also on your list of valued outcomes, then it’s far less clear that explicit teaching is the optimal pedagogy.

And so it’s up to us, isn’t it? It’s up to us in terms of what we what we value, to be first very clear about that. And only then start making decisions about the optimal forms of pedagogy.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

So what do the learning sciences tell us about teaching?

• The “learning sciences” is a hybrid, multi-perspectival and unfolding discipline. There is no single agreed “science of learning”
• Even if there were, it would not tell us how to teach, without a clear specification of what we are teaching for.
• “Good teaching” involves a constantly changing balance of framing, explaining and exploring. A classroom is a complex adaptive system.
• The development of valued traits such as perseverance, independence and collaboration require escalating levels of challenge, autonomy and exploratory talk. To judge this escalation right you have to know your students well, as a group and individually.
• Learning, thinking and ‘behaving intelligently’ cannot be properly understood apart from matters of personality, emotion, conviviality, the nature of the challenge and the social context.
• Science and maths are not valid prototypes for all school learning.
• Mind is organic and ecological, not computational. Learning naturally grows out from what is already known. Mind is a tree, not a computer.
• The fundamental driver of learning is the urge to derive accurate predictions from experience that will guide future action, not to stockpile explicit knowledge. That is ancillary.
• Cognition is enhanced by culturally derived and socially transmitted ‘upgrades’ – and sometimes reduced by downgrades.
• Predictive processing, social and affective neuroscience and embodied cognition support wider purposes of education, and point towards possible pedagogies that involve emotion, autonomy, inquiry and ‘interthinking’
• School as an epistemic apprenticeship – cultivating positive epistemic upgrades and avoiding downgrades – is a wantable and practicable goal, but it challenges many educational shibboleths and will of course have its opponents.

Dean’s Lecture Series – Prof Guy Claxton on the Science of Learning – YouTube

Reading List

Here are the books mentioned during the talk:

• Future of Teaching: And the Myths That Hold It Back by Guy Claxton
• Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools by Roger C. Schank
• Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking by Cecilia Heyes
• Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again by Andy Clark
• Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
• Education and Learning to Think by Lauren B. Resnick
• Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education by David Perkins

Further Reading

https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/

https://stimpunks.org/2025/05/19/niche-construction-and-toolbelt-theory-developing-the-tools-and-terroir-of-coping-and-learning/

https://stimpunks.org/philosophy/were-raising-whole-children-not-frankenstein-children/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/niche-construction/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/toolbelt-theory/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/embodiment/

https://stimpunks.org/space/cavendish/

https://stimpunks.org/space/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intelligence/

#affectiveNeuroscience #cognitiveLiberty #collaboration #curiousity #epistemicApprenticeship #epistemicInjustice #iteration #nicheConstruction #scienceOfLearning #scientism #somaticLiberty #toolbeltTheory

"What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look."

Dana Scully, The #XFiles, s01e01

#TV #SciFi #conspiracy #scientism

"Civil society groups warn new Asilomar conference: Scientists must not be allowed to self-regulate"

https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20512

#Scientism #ScienceIsNotNeutral

"Civil society groups warn new Asilomar conference: Scientists must not be allowed to self-regulate"

https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20512

#Scientism #ScienceIsNotNeutral

"Civil society groups warn new Asilomar conference: Scientists must not be allowed to self-regulate"

https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20512

#Scientism #ScienceIsNotNeutral

"Civil society groups warn new Asilomar conference: Scientists must not be allowed to self-regulate"

https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20512

#Scientism #ScienceIsNotNeutral

Scientism:
#scientism #science #philosophy #understanding #life
🧐

https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/why-you-must-be-logical-and-scientific-to-be-a-good-person/

@GMWatch Excellent indeed! This misleading myth of science neutrality must be ditchet. As if scientists were free from social-economic, political or self-interest and science is a thing on its own and not a product of society that needs to be discussed by societal forces
#ScientificHistory #Scientism

DEI-AB and Their Adversaries

What are diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging? What are their narrative adversaries? We provide a glossary of terms below. Follow the links for deeply sourced reference materials.

DEI-AB

diversity = a range of differences; variety

equity = the process of redistributing access and opportunity to be fair and just; the state of being free of bias, discrimination, and identity-predictable outcomes and experiences

inclusion = the act of extending fellowship, membership, association, and connection—agnostic of rank, status, gender, race, appearance, intelligence, education, beliefs, values, politics, habits, traditions, language, customs, history, or any other defining characteristic

accessibility = accessibility means that people with disabilities can attend and fully participate in a given opportunity

belonging = the extent to which we feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others; the experience of being at home in ourselves as well as the social, environmental, organizational, and cultural contexts of our lives

Their Adversaries

meritocracy myth = a widely held but false assertion that individual merit is always rewarded; the myth of meritocracy is one of the longest lasting and most dangerous falsehoods in American life

lowering the bar = a racist, sexist, and ableist narrative with no basis in reality that represents diversifying hiring pipelines, attracting candidates from underrepresented groups, and supporting them in the workplace as “lowering the bar” by hiring less-qualified individuals

politics of resentment = manipulations of status anxiety; organization of interest groups based on perceived deprivation or the threat of deprivation

sameness-based fairness = notion of fairness where everyone gets the same thing rather than each getting what they need

fundamental attribution error = to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in controlling behaviour

conquering gaze from nowhere= the interpretation of objectivity as neutral and not allowing for participation or stances; an uninvolved, uninvested approach that claims objectivity to “represent while escaping representation”

scientism = the belief that science is the only route to useful knowledge

epistemic injustice = where our status as knowers, interpreters, and providers of information, is unduly diminished or stifled in a way that undermines the agent’s agency and dignity

behaviorism = a dehumanizing mechanism of learning that reduces human beings to simple inputs and outputs

ableism = a system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness

deficit ideology = a worldview that explains and justifies outcome inequalities by pointing to supposed deficiencies within disenfranchised individuals and communities

better get used to it = preparing people for oppression by oppressing them

Name the Systems of Power

• Neoliberalism
  • Respectability Politics
  • W.E.I.R.D.
  • Meritocracy Myth
  • Policing
  • Predatory Inclusion
  • Burnout
  • STEM
  • Ableism
  • Harm Reduction Theater
• Conservatism
  • Resentment
  • Southern Strategy
  • Lost Cause
  • Segregationist Discourse
  • Meritocracy Myth
  • Minority Stress
  • Policing
  • Toxic Masculinity
  • Bodily Autonomy
  • Biological Essentialism
  • Stigma
  • Shame
  • Ableism
• Precarity
  • Extractive Abandonment
  • Artificial Scarcity
  • Collective Risk Shift
  • Burnout
  • ”Better get used to it.”
• Oligarchy
• Sadopopulism
• Rot Economy
  • It’s not DEI’s Fault; It’s the Rot Economy
  • Enshittification
  • Metric Fixation
• Fantasy Economy
  • STEM
  • Metric Fixation
• Metric Fixation
  • Efficiency
  • McNamara Fallacy
  • Enshittification
• Objectivity
  • When you measure include the measurer.
  • Scientism
  • Epistemic Injustice
  • Scientific Essentialism
  • Fundamental Attribution Error
  • Conquering Gaze From Nowhere
  • Scientism and Epistemic Injustice: On the Problems with “Science of Reading”
• Tech Ethics
  • Techno-solutionism
  • Technoableism
  • Algorithm
  • Roaming Autodidact
  • Enshittification
  • Disability Dongle
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Luddite Sensibilities
  • Hear me out a bit before the future comes around.
• Ableism
  • Neuronormativity
  • Pathology Paradigm
  • Behaviorism
  • Deficit Ideology
  • Empire of Normality
  • Sameness-Based Fairness
  • ”Better get used to it.”
  • Inspiration Exploitation
  • School-Induced Anxiety
  • Toxic Positivity
  • Burnout
  • The Road to Neuronormative Domination.
  • Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
  • We’ve Turned Classrooms Into a Hell for Neurodivergence
  • 10 Obstacles to Neurodiversity Affirming Practice
  • Double Empathy Problem
  • Double Empathy Extreme Problem
  • Triple Empathy Problem
• Harm Reduction Theater
  • Bikeshedding
  • Wellness
  • Mindset Marketing

#ableism #behaviorism #belonging #betterGetUsedToIt #conqueringGaze #deficitIdeology #deib #diversity #epistemicInjustice #equity #fairness #inclusion #meritocracy #power #resentment #scientism

DEIB and Their Adversaries

What are diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging? What are their narrative adversaries? We provide a glossary of terms below. Follow the links for deeply sourced reference materials.

DEIB

diversity = a range of differences; variety

equity = the process of redistributing access and opportunity to be fair and just; the state of being free of bias, discrimination, and identity-predictable outcomes and experiences

inclusion = the act of extending fellowship, membership, association, and connection—agnostic of rank, status, gender, race, appearance, intelligence, education, beliefs, values, politics, habits, traditions, language, customs, history, or any other defining characteristic

belonging = the extent to which we feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others; the experience of being at home in ourselves as well as the social, environmental, organizational, and cultural contexts of our lives

Their Adversaries

meritocracy myth = a widely held but false assertion that individual merit is always rewarded; the myth of meritocracy is one of the longest lasting and most dangerous falsehoods in American life

lowering the bar = a racist, sexist, and ableist narrative with no basis in reality that represents diversifying hiring pipelines, attracting candidates from underrepresented groups, and supporting them in the workplace as “lowering the bar” by hiring less-qualified individuals

politics of resentment = manipulations of status anxiety; organization of interest groups based on perceived deprivation or the threat of deprivation

sameness-based fairness = notion of fairness where everyone gets the same thing rather than each getting what they need

fundamental attribution error = to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in controlling behaviour

conquering gaze from nowhere= the interpretation of objectivity as neutral and not allowing for participation or stances; an uninvolved, uninvested approach that claims objectivity to “represent while escaping representation”

scientism = the belief that science is the only route to useful knowledge

epistemic injustice = where our status as knowers, interpreters, and providers of information, is unduly diminished or stifled in a way that undermines the agent’s agency and dignity

behaviorism = a dehumanizing mechanism of learning that reduces human beings to simple inputs and outputs

ableism = a system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness

deficit ideology = a worldview that explains and justifies outcome inequalities by pointing to supposed deficiencies within disenfranchised individuals and communities

better get used to it = preparing people for oppression by oppressing them

Name the Systems of Power

• Neoliberalism
  • Respectability Politics
  • W.E.I.R.D.
  • Meritocracy Myth
  • Policing
  • Predatory Inclusion
  • Burnout
  • STEM
  • Ableism
  • Harm Reduction Theater
• Conservatism
  • Resentment
  • Southern Strategy
  • Lost Cause
  • Segregationist Discourse
  • Meritocracy Myth
  • Minority Stress
  • Policing
  • Toxic Masculinity
  • Bodily Autonomy
  • Biological Essentialism
  • Stigma
  • Shame
  • Ableism
• Precarity
  • Extractive Abandonment
  • Artificial Scarcity
  • Collective Risk Shift
  • Burnout
  • ”Better get used to it.”
• Oligarchy
• Sadopopulism
• Rot Economy
  • It’s not DEI’s Fault; It’s the Rot Economy
  • Enshittification
  • Metric Fixation
• Fantasy Economy
  • STEM
  • Metric Fixation
• Metric Fixation
  • Efficiency
  • McNamara Fallacy
  • Enshittification
• Objectivity
  • When you measure include the measurer.
  • Scientism
  • Epistemic Injustice
  • Scientific Essentialism
  • Fundamental Attribution Error
  • Conquering Gaze From Nowhere
  • Scientism and Epistemic Injustice: On the Problems with “Science of Reading”
• Tech Ethics
  • Techno-solutionism
  • Technoableism
  • Algorithm
  • Roaming Autodidact
  • Enshittification
  • Disability Dongle
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Luddite Sensibilities
  • Hear me out a bit before the future comes around.
• Ableism
  • Neuronormativity
  • Pathology Paradigm
  • Behaviorism
  • Deficit Ideology
  • Empire of Normality
  • Sameness-Based Fairness
  • ”Better get used to it.”
  • Inspiration Exploitation
  • School-Induced Anxiety
  • Toxic Positivity
  • Burnout
  • The Road to Neuronormative Domination.
  • Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
  • We’ve Turned Classrooms Into a Hell for Neurodivergence
  • 10 Obstacles to Neurodiversity Affirming Practice
  • Double Empathy Problem
  • Double Empathy Extreme Problem
  • Triple Empathy Problem
• Harm Reduction Theater
  • Bikeshedding
  • Wellness
  • Mindset Marketing

#ableism #behaviorism #belonging #betterGetUsedToIt #conqueringGaze #deficitIdeology #deib #diversity #epistemicInjustice #equity #fairness #inclusion #meritocracy #power #resentment #scientism

...we live in a culture of relentless, round-the-clock boosterism for science and technology. With each new discovery and invention, the virtues are always oversold, the drawbacks understated. Who can forget the freely mobile society of the automobile, the friendly atom, the paperless office, the impending crisis of too much leisure time, or the era of universal education ushered in by television? We now hear the same utopian claims about the Internet. But everyone knows science and technology are inevitably a mixed blessing.
-- Michael Crichton (Science, March 1999)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #MichaelCrichton #Science #Scientism

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #MississippiRiver #PikesPeak #Iowa

In Which We Answer Some Questions

Here are some questions posed to us for inclusion in an allied organization’s newsletter. We cover community art, direct giving, research, ableism, and more.

Table of Contents

• The artwork on your website is amazing, where does it come from?
  • Featured Art
  • It’s gonna be an art party.
• What is your latest research on?
• What does direct support look like for your organization? The website mentions a lot about mutual aid?
• How can individuals reading get involved in mutual aid in their communities?
• What are some wins you want to share with the community at large?
• What are some barriers you want the community at large to know about regarding ableism?
• How can we best support Stimpunks.org?
• How can Non-Disabled People show up better? And love better?
• I love how activist research is also about transformative action. Can you speak more to this?
• The ideas of community, interdependence, and the political really spoke to me, can you speak more on this?
• “We recognize that there is no justice that neglects disability.” (Philosophy – Stimpunks Foundation)
• I really like these ideas: Community is resistance. Asking for help. Showing up to give help. Collaboration.

The artwork on your website is amazing, where does it come from?

Our art comes from our community. We practice constructionism and actively engage in constructing things in the world. Practicing our art makes our souls grow.

Featured Art

Description: A bursting kaleidoscopic geometrical form with 4 sides of symmetry pointing angularly to each of the four corners of a square shaped canvas against a dark grey textured wall. There is a small red shaped plus at the very center, surrounded by orangish-peach and periwinkle butterfly like shapes at 45 degree angles from each other aligned to the mid center going up and also to the sides. The butterfly shapes are encased in a deeper red flower like shape before a region of light blue geometric textures. Near the corners are feathered white, dark grey-purple, burgundy and orange feather like edges.

Our featured artist is Adriel Jeremiah Wool.

Adriel Jeremiah is an computer programmer with a deep background in origami and folding. This artwork is an extension of a world view involving folding; often involving higher dimensional spaces. Many of these designs contain the mathematical magic of the transcendental numbers of nature, and all of them are the extension of the provisions of space itself; to be both physically folded, and conceptually folded, circularily and across many levels of expression.Shop Art by Adriel

His spectacular new piece derives its color stream from a fluorite crystal that has a spheralite imperfection / inclusion (the red, purple, and orange).

AJ describes what these fractal pieces are in this accordion. Their construction will broaden your perspective on perspective.My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.

AJ is a regular contributor at Stimpunks. He kindly licenses his work as free cultural work. He helps us tell our stories with his art, music, photography, videos, audio engineering, poetry, prose, and lived experience.

AJ has a gallery in Ketchum, Idaho. Drop by if you’re around. He tries to make it a welcoming third place.

Stimpunks is gently debugging society.

The charity protects, helps and comforts individuals, while pointing out library-level flaws in some of the concepts that end up harming those individuals.

This help is profoundly wonderful, morally and functionally coherent to great need, and as true as a pure circle in its cause-and-effect form.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool

The artist hopes to convey this: that the universe is given forth folded and unfolded. Although explicit understanding helps, it is too cumbersome, and should only provide refinement to something already greater that exists.

That greater thing is what was given to the artist first by the practice of origami. An enlivening of the intuitive mind, experience with a universe of many dimensions, and the promise of creation revealed when one folds a flat square into the likeness of a higher dimensional thing. That inspiration reaches a young mind in a powerful way.
The artist wants the viewer to see proof of what their intuitive mind already knows is true, the universe is a multidimensional phenomenon and the ability to understand its nature already exists within us each.

The artist hopes the viewer will be inspired to seek the understanding of freedoms available to the individual inspired by the exposure to artistic expressions, and of a nature of dimensionality unimaginably greater than the object presented here.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool

A time has come to again look at changes in the way technology allows us to see the world and experience it. First was the human eye, with a lens made of flesh. Later humans developed a replacement for the eye but in the form and fashion of the lens of the eye; this time it was made of glass doped with metals to enhance its control of light. To see, the human eye has a retina filled with responsive cells which look for contrast and color.

Technology has allowed us to create a replacement for the retina called a CCD with metals which respond to color and report those values to a microchip which converts them to bits and bytes for storage. I will present to you the same extension of sight by explaining how the images you will see come into existence.

In my artwork the landscape is created via the execution of a seed of a formula, allowed to grow and flourish in a mathematical set of steps. In a similar way, crystals grow underground in a cave over many millennia but they follow a seed of a universal pattern related to their atomic structure and facilitated by the chemical nature of their environments. In our regular world, we have 3 directions we can move, forward-back, up-down and left-right, but these crystals can move in another set of directions allowed by the universe and mathematics. They are, and must be considered elements of nature, and it follows that the methods used to convey them must be considered legitimate tools of expression. 

A crystal starts at a virtual geometric position, a virtual center, then it mathematically and procedurally grows outward and inward according to a seed formula. However it exists in a dark world devoid of light and color; it is only a cloud of form. As an artist, I create an eye with a lens which follows the same mathematical processes as the lens of a camera and the eye itself. I situate the virtual eye to be gazing upon the crystal as I create sources of light which will illuminate the crystal and reflect light back to the lens.

As an artist I imbue color to the crystal, I imbue reflectivity, I imbue refractability, and I imbue density or transparency exactly towards the same purpose as a painter would do, in combining pigmented oils on canvas with a brush in his or her hand.

My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool

It’s gonna be an art party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZRFkJsGNjI

We’re gonna make, make something great for
All of us to see and appreciate
It’s gonna be an art party
It’s gonna be an art party

Come on over it’s time to start
It’s a great big party where we make and share art

Art Party (feat. Portugal. The Man & Paul Williams) – YouTube

What is your latest research on?

Monotropism, neuroqueer learning spaces, and Cavendish Space.

What does direct support look like for your organization? The website mentions a lot about mutual aid?

Direct support includes, first and foremost, giving people money with no strings attached. Folks know what they need and how best to spend the money. We also help people navigate our systems by filling forms and making calls for them. We provide warm lines and peer respite. We practice library economies, competency networks, sharing spoons, and support swapping.

“Mutuality is a feeling, an action, and a relationship based on shared benefit between individuals and groups in a society. It materialises in many, many ways and is arguably a universal constant of our human nature. We rely on mutuality to survive and progress through our day to day life.” (Andrewism)

“When systems of power fail, it is mutuality—neighbours helping neighbours—that holds communities together.” (Andrewism)

How can individuals reading get involved in mutual aid in their communities?

Start with pod mapping.

1. Find a few people.
2. Identify your zone.
3. Invite neighbors.
4. Get a name.
5. Have conversations.
6. Support each other.

Source: Mutual Aid 101 – Google Slides

What are some wins you want to share with the community at large?

Our Map of Monotropic Experiences has been widely shared and incorporated into care settings and training.

What are some barriers you want the community at large to know about regarding ableism?

We live in an age of mass behaviorism. Behaviorism such as ABA and PBS are rife in education and healthcare settings. “Behaviorism is a dehumanizing mechanism of learning that reduces human beings to simple inputs and outputs. There is an ever-growing body of research suggesting that behaviorism is not only harmful to how we learn, but is also oppressive, ableist, and racist.” (Human Restoration Project)

Behaviorist education is ableist education. Behaviorist healthcare is ableist healthcare.

How can we best support Stimpunks.org?

• Read our website.
• Share our website.
• Amplify us on social media.
• Give whatever you can, be it time or money or attention.

• stimpunks.org
• RSS Feed
• WordPress
• Bluesky
• Gravatar
• Threads
• Mastodon
• Tumblr
• GitHub
• Twitter/X
• Facebook
• Patreon
• YouTube
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Counter Social
• Raindrop.io
• Mail

How can Non-Disabled People show up better? And love better?

We exist as friction. Load-share the burden of existing as friction.

• Promote and practice access intimacy instead of forced intimacy.
• Question the narratives of wellness, and engage in critical wellness instead.
• Reframe yourself and others. Help people reframe from the pathology paradigm and medical model to the neurodiversity paradigm and biopsychosocial model. This is hard and important work necessary to all other work. Change the narrative. Start reframing.
• Advocate for accessibility at school, work, and in your community.
• Be a threat to inequity in your spheres of influence.
• Combat the myths.
• Use and promote Identity First Language.
• Elevate care as infrastructure. Stimpunks exists because our systems effectively don’t.
• Celebrate our interdependence!

I love how activist research is also about transformative action. Can you speak more to this?

“three characteristics that delineate activist research from other types of research:”

(1) combination of knowledge production and transformative action;

(2) systematic multi-level collaboration; and

(3) challenges to power.

(Denisha Jones)

A hallmark of good research is that it embraces epistemic justice and rejects scientism.

Another hallmark of good research is naming the systems of power. If you’re not naming the systems of power in your research, you’re missing a vital component.

The ideas of community, interdependence, and the political really spoke to me, can you speak more on this?

In the past, the disability rights movement focused on independence, including it as one of the pillars of the ADA. Disability Justice moves away from independence framing, because independence is a myth.

“I am fighting for an interdependence that embraces need and tells the truth: no one does it on their own and the myth of independence is just that, a myth.” (Mia Mingus)

“Access intimacy is interdependence in action.” (Mia Mingus)

“It is time to celebrate our interdependence!” (Jorn Bettin)

“We recognize that there is no justice that neglects disability.” (Philosophy – Stimpunks Foundation)

Working at my org I really believe this and feel that everyone who works here also believes this. We cannot neglect disability in our policy and conversations and our care. If you have anything to add to this.

There is no path to justice that does not involve direct confrontation with ableism and inaccessibility. To neglect disability is to neglect two of the major forces of injustice.

Ableism is at the root of all -isms.

“Ableism is what makes all other “isms” effective.

White supremacy is the goal, ableism is the toolkit.” (Imani Barbarin)

“…so much of what disability actually is, is just humanity; and so much of what ableism is, is a humanity heist.” “Ableism enables all forms of inequity and hampers all liberation efforts.” (Talila A. Lewis)

Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases.

We choose the margin, because design is tested at the edges.

“Living as we did on the edge we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the centre as well as on the margin. We understood both.” (bell hooks)

“No one knows best the motion of the ocean than the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream.” “By focusing on the parts of the system that are most complex and where the people living it are the most vulnerable we understand the system best.” (Tressie McMillan Cottom)

I really like these ideas: Community is resistance. Asking for help. Showing up to give help. Collaboration.

I think if we’re going to have a future we need to embrace and act in these ideas. How would someone start if they are new to these ideas and new to community engagement?

Find people with which you share a concern or passion. You can do this via the pod mapping described above.

“Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. 2015)

• Find your people.
• Communicate.
• Iterate.

“Through free association, people will find those of mutual interests in every sphere of life to form groups on the basis of their affinity.” (Andrewism)

#ableism #accessIntimacy #accessibility #activistResearch #affinityGroups #art #behaviorism #biopsychosocial #care #cavendishSpace #community #competencyNetwork #constructionism #criticalWellness #directSupport #disabilityJustice #edgeCases #edges #education #epistemicInjustice #equity #forcedIntimacy #framing #identityFirst #interdependence #libraryEconomy #monotropism #mutualAid #mutuality #neuroqueerLearningSpaces #pathologyParadigm #peerRespite #podMapping #power #scientism #sharingSpoons #supportSwapping #warmLines #wellness

Instead of metric fixation, joy fixation. Learning goes where intrinsic motivation leads.

Measurement kills curiosity, joy, and intrinsic motivation.

Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

Step 1 of motivating learning: Restore curiosity and joy. Stop measuring everything.

What if all the reductionist scientism of “the science of” frameworks were replaced with “the joy of”? That change of framing would serve us far better, including when teaching STEM.

Further Reading

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/metric-fixation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intrinsic-motivation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/mcnamara-fallacy/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/scientism/

https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/framing/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/stem/

https://stimpunks.org/2024/11/01/instead-of-metrics-fixate-on-joy-to-motivate-learning/

#education #intrinsicMotivation #learning #measurement #metricFixation #reductionism #scientism #STEM

Instead of metric fixation, joy fixation. Learning goes where intrinsic motivation leads.

Measurement kills curiosity, joy, and intrinsic motivation.

Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

Step 1 of motivating learning: Restore curiosity and joy. Stop measuring everything.

What if all the reductionist scientism of “the science of” frameworks were replaced with “the joy of”? That change of framing would serve us far better, including when teaching STEM.

Further Reading

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/metric-fixation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intrinsic-motivation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/mcnamara-fallacy/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/scientism/

https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/framing/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/stem/

https://stimpunks.org/2024/11/01/instead-of-metrics-fixate-on-joy-to-motivate-learning/

#education #intrinsicMotivation #learning #measurement #metricFixation #reductionism #scientism #STEM

Instead of metric fixation, joy fixation. Learning goes where intrinsic motivation leads.

Measurement kills curiosity, joy, and intrinsic motivation.

Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

Step 1 of motivating learning: Restore curiosity and joy. Stop measuring everything.

What if all the reductionist scientism of “the science of” frameworks were replaced with “the joy of”? That change of framing would serve us far better, including when teaching STEM.

Further Reading

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/metric-fixation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intrinsic-motivation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/mcnamara-fallacy/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/scientism/

https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/framing/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/stem/

https://stimpunks.org/2024/11/01/instead-of-metrics-fixate-on-joy-to-motivate-learning/

#education #intrinsicMotivation #learning #measurement #metricFixation #reductionism #scientism #STEM

Instead of metric fixation, joy fixation. Learning goes where intrinsic motivation leads.

Measurement kills curiosity, joy, and intrinsic motivation.

Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

Step 1 of motivating learning: Restore curiosity and joy. Stop measuring everything.

What if all the reductionist scientism of “the science of” frameworks were replaced with “the joy of”? That change of framing would serve us far better, including when teaching STEM.

Further Reading

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/metric-fixation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intrinsic-motivation/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/mcnamara-fallacy/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/scientism/

https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/framing/

https://stimpunks.org/glossary/stem/

https://stimpunks.org/2024/11/01/instead-of-metrics-fixate-on-joy-to-motivate-learning/

#education #intrinsicMotivation #learning #measurement #metricFixation #reductionism #scientism #STEM

@markrubin.bsky.social how is that surprising? When psychologists mix up a bunch of things from neurological, perceptual and social terminology there might as well be more effects that are indicative of people not being well. #scientism

@EeveeEuphoria That's fascinating indeed - especially the universal handwriting of that one guy from the Netherlands Antilles... The "Believe in the Law of Small Numbers" is strong in them...
#scientism

This meme has crossed my feed in a number of places lately. I’m sharing it for debate, not for approval or agreement. If you share from my post, please leave my commentary intact. This has been a public service announcement.

#Scientism is very nearly a straw man. I’m willing to concede that there are some people who treat #science like a religion, but their numbers are tiny and they have zero influence on the conduct of research AFAICT. Anti-science #zealots who come up with memes like this, OTOH, are numerous and disturbingly influential.

It’s also amusing how the meme assumes #epistemology is a gold standard against which other intellectual pursuits must be measured. The author assigns to #philosophy the same unquestionable authority he accuses others of assigning to science.

So I’ll stake my claim: scientific #methodology—in the literal sense of the study of methods—has done more to illuminate “how we know what we know” in the last couple of centuries than formal epistemology has done in millennia. If this be scientism, make the most of it.

Why not scientism?
Science is not the only form of knowledge but it is the best, being the most successful epistemic enterprise in history

https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-not-the-only-form-of-knowledge-but-it-is-the-best

#Philosophy #Science #scientism #epistemic

I see a lot of people talking about #science as a #religion, or the closely related idea of “#scientism,” the purported ideology that says science is the only way to know things. Oh, I’m not talking about you, they’ll solemnly assure anyone who objects. Naturally you know better. Just … you know … them. Those people, out there. The great unwashed. On the #internet, nobody knows how long it’s been since you took a shower.

You know what I hardly ever see? The phenomenon in question.

There are people who think that way. Yes. Ideologues of science—hardly if ever #scientists themselves—who invoke The #Scientific Method™ (that’s a whole ‘nother rant) as the be-all and end-all justification for whatever nonsense they spew. Such posts and comments have crossed my feed a time or two. But they are vastly outnumbered by those who complain about them, at least where I can see both groups. I have no reason to believe my experience is atypical in this regard.

As a scientist myself, I think science is a very good way to understand certain things. In my field, it’s the best way to know what makes you sick, and hopefully what will make you better. There are other ways to learn these things, sure, and many of them can be useful places to start. If you don’t end up with a #clinical #trial sooner or later, you’re as likely to kill as cure.

To know what we’re seeing when we look up at the lights in the sky. How the natural world around us, of which we’re a part whether we like it or not, changes and how we both affect and are affected by that change. What came before us, and what might come after. The fundamental building blocks of reality. All these require science for real understanding. If you try to puzzle them out any other way, you may learn something, but you’ll also fill your head with a lot of nonsense. Sorting the wheat from the chaff later is a lot harder than doing it right the first time.

Other questions are at least amenable to scientific inquiry, although that process itself may not be enough. What my fiancee does as a #historian looks, to me, a lot like what I do as a #biomedical #researcher. Make observations, construct #hypotheses, gather evidence, test and revise. (And revise, and revise, and …) But #history vanishes every minute. What’s left is always fragmentary, and shaped by the interactions of modern minds with those long since gone to dust. There will never be an objective truth, only the truest story that can be told.

And then there are things beyond any kind of quantitative analysis, or even rigorous qualitative description. We may be able to agree on what makes a true story, more or less, but what makes a good one? That’s inherently personal. A happy marriage, a tasty meal, a satisfying job—only we can define what these goals mean for ourselves. Science may at best, occasionally, provide vague guidelines. Even then, my advice will not determine your experience.

My perspective is unusual in one key way, sure: not too many people do science for a living, at least not compared to other jobs. With regards to the way people talk about science, I think it’s not unusual at all, except maybe that I pay particular attention.

The division above—things that clearly belong in science’s domain, things that clearly don’t, and a whole bunch in the middle—is a whole lot more common than the idea of science as the One True. It’s at least somewhat more common than blanket rejection of science too, but not as much as it should be. That’s also a rant for another time.

Which all makes me wonder what people who never miss a chance to bring up “scientism” and science-as-religion get out of it.

@alex Like..... Exactly 200?

Not, 186, or 217, or 2000?

Well, at least a kewl round number means it's obviously Scientism, lolz.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qItugh-fFgg

#tallship #scientism #nice_round_numbers_mean_it_is_for_realz #ROFLMAOPMP #AYBABTU

⛵

.

Can recommend this article on #Mises/#Hayek in the LRB https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n03/jonathan-ree/opium-of-the-elite Interesting that Hayek opposed #scientism but that there's no mention of his cousin, #Wittgenstein, who also opposed it, for different (better) reasons

"The (mistaken) idea seems to be that any hypothesis—no matter how bigoted—can be safely postulated and tested because the ‘scientific method’ weeds out untruths and leave the truths stand. This, however, overlooks two important false assumptions: that hypotheses themselves are value neutral, and that we have unlimited resources to debunk misconceived ideas."

from @Iris: https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2024/03/03/the-myth-of-value-free-science/

#distraction #science #tech #methodology #AI #scientism #bias #techBros #AIRisks #proof #quotes

This is “#scientism” and gate-keeping in the wild

https://beige.party/@RickiTarr/111981798426495101

@nina

Heresy? Huh?

Not to hijack your helmet thread, but women ARE female. There's no question there. Duh!

Only an idiot would think otherwise.

Now for the matter of Copernicus and Galileo espousing the notion that we actually revolve around the sun... I think they still use those old "Breaking Wheels" to fix parishioners with wrong think, lolz.

Oh and another immutable truth for today: The Earth is no longer flat - I added some carbonation (and rum). You can thank me later. 🤘💀🤘

#tallship #scientism #bullshitism

⛵

Debate: Why not scientism?

Science is not the only form of knowledge but it is the best, being the most successful epistemic enterprise in history.

Philosophy is dead,’ Stephen Hawking once declared, because it ‘has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.’
The response from some philosophers was to accuse Hawking of ‘scientism'

🔗 https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-not-the-only-form-of-knowledge-but-it-is-the-best

#science #epistemology @sociology @philosophy #Philosophy #scientism #scientists #philosopher

"Better Things, for Better Living… Through Pharmacy."

We've been here before.

Rachel Carson wrote a whole polemic against such #scientism.

We ain't gonna lab work our way out of this, no matter how much gov't largesse we throw at it.

#CovidIsNotOver #CovidIsAirborne

Watching a video essay discussing how eager Reagan-era Usians were to swallow the lie of SDI, lest they have to face up to their own vulnerability—such that scientists who pointed out the impossibility of realizing the snake oil promises of such a strategic defense were deemed "unpatriotic", for challenging the prevalent magical #scientism that was even then, if anything, only serving to heat up the Cold War—and am struck by how little we've learned in the two generations since.

#RentierSociety

@sarahc "under the guise of scientific rigor..."

That's not the first time that "scientific rigor" appeared in a context of Scientism. Makes sense - rigor is the hallmark of any ideology. Science has struggled with finding the right use of "rigor" for centuries. This use of rigor is utterly unscientific. #science #ai #scientism

I consider The Cider House Rules to be one of the greatest #pragmatist novels.

What are other novels, short stories, or novellas that you find to be very pragmatist?

Perhaps it touches on:

-#Democracy as a way of life
-Social nature of truth
-Naturalism
-#Communitarian ethos
-Experience over abstract reason
-Solidarity with others
-Skeptical of #fundamentalism, #scientism, literalism
-Practical consequences of ideas
-Humans as active agents
-Language as a tool
-#Egalitarianism
-#Pluralism

1923 – Earth Drying Up

"The characteristic feature of #Science is warranted uncertainty, which leads to intellectual #Humility.

The characteristic feature of #Scientism is unwarranted certainty, which leads to intellectual #hubris."

#AaronKheriaty #Technocracy #Totalitarianism #PublicHealth #Medicine #PublicPolicy #COVID

https://open.substack.com/pub/aaronkheriaty/p/technocracy-and-totalitarianism?r=sh19&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

#Introduction I am an academic at Deakin Law School (Melbourne). I research #regulation and #publichealthlaw incl re #medicalproducts (#medicaldevices #pharmaceuticals) by #regulators like the #TGA #FDA and #EMA.
My research covers #medicalabortion #medicalcannabis #transvaginalmesh #genomics . I draw on theories of #politicallegitimacy #STS #historyofmedicine #scientism #technocracy and #expertise . Previously a snr public servant advising on #publicpolicy & #publiclaw . Also occasional cat.