Thomas Kuhn, The Spanish Flu & Covid-19

[@drake1636]

One thing maybe missing from your Kuhn videos; he at one time said that paradigms were incommensurable, which is not as strong of a point as his general narrative of scientific breakthroughs and is much more interesting to think about imo.

[@JacobBrownacro]

Nice video. You said mention what maybe you missed in the comments. I have seen people cite Kuhns work as the basis for scientific constructionism. This is the idea that science is socially constructed and does not really refer to anything real. The opposite of this idea, and what I believe is Scientific Realism: science accurately describes the real world.

[@OjoRojo40]

It's funny how you talk about "discovering" diseases and bacteria but "inventing" the tools of observation, when one of the main points in epistemological holism is the relationship between the tools used (observations) and the role they play in CONSTRUCTING a paradigm. Remember the example given in the book "the structure of scientific revolutions" about the telescope and the Copernican revolution. A case that actually takes half of the book "Against Method" by Paul Feyerabend. Thanks for the video!

[@Mewzyque]

I agree with this. But I also believe that for the aim of science communication, a strategic naive realist position is the easiest way to get the point across. For instance, saying "DISCOVERED penicillin" instead of saying "INVENTED discursive-material practices to characterize our intersubjective epistemic representations of penicillin"

[@projectmalus]

Cause and effect. The original state is that of an unhealthy population with poor sanitary conditions. The home was created and the bacteria/virus moved in. Along comes science and punitive measures against the enemy, and now the bacteria/virus react by mutating. So, where before it wasn't a case of the bacteria/virus attacking humans specifically, I think maybe this is the case now. Science and tech begetting more science and tech...and the paradigm is the mating of science and the marketplace, with a perspective from violence, fear and restriction, and a reward (money) that is detached from reality (cause and effect) and so contributes to the spectacle. Agriculture is making leaps and bounds in this microbiological understanding, with diversity, allowance of roles and mutualism being the way forward.

[@warrenweappa4899]

As always, from my experience, your episodes are always worth a listen. Follow rules of thumb until something better to do is found.

[@warrenweappa4899]

I'm echoing Kuhn, maybe

[@OjoRojo40]

@@warrenweappa4899 Not at all :)

[@Rednines]

KZbin hasn’t been recommending me your shit lately I turned on the bell icon though now

[@slambangwallop]

I'm not comfortable saying that something is "caused", more so that something is prompted by something else - eg. Genes allow for mutations but don't always mutate so the environment is really shown to have a bigger role, although thay doesn't seem to be applied in today's Capitalist Science. Perhaps if Einstein could have stayed with our equations we'd be better off! Also, the fact that Philosophy (of Science in particular, I guess) hasn't spoken up about functional structuralism in light of evolution theories is quite disconcerting. For example, and on a personal level, since understanding Cancer cells as being normal in the body (eg. Ted talk by Mina Bissell explains the view) I was able to apply that after an oral cancer scare- I applied recent protein synthesis science (not currently applied in healthcare!) to cultivate a healthier environment in my tissues to allow reversal of the signs of malignancy, which had concerned the ENT Doctor - by the time I was tested, 2 weeks later, after not smoking one cigarette every day and after giving up meat, etc, my gums had stopped receding and the buccal mucosa looked much healthier - the test came back as "lichens planus", a precancerous state, which I since learnt more about in relation to water fluoridation as affecting that tissue. As a result I've noticed how fluoridation policy affects health but goes undetected in Western countries, due to it being an halogen element it goes undetected (as far as I have read anyway). So, what I mean to say is that preventing mutations has been omitted from discourse in favour of treatment only, which to me is terrifying in terms of evolutionary theory because how are we to survive as a species if we ignore concepts like "symbiosis", "evolution", "prevention", "carrying", etc. And to end this rant, I'll just say I have seemingly carried h1n1 to others in the past but it was neglected under paradigms, I had to ask hospital managers etc, to ask for quarantine facilities and if I hadn't studied Philosophy of Science I wouldn't have realised that a citizen may have to participate in improving health paradigms where needed. But of course, seeing as I have been made unwell by mistakes under capitalist norms I am just a citizen who can't do very much but comment under youtube videos and hope that if there's any contribution needed that it can be done. This latest virus is a lipoprotein, I don't understand why we can't put labels down for a second and ask ourselves how we as lipoproteins can't be said to be governed by similar rules - it takes us down as we host it but only if we're weak, and the opposite is also true - we can tolerate it, to seem to have recovered, but I think the fact that something lipoprotein can be carried to other lipoproteins says all we need to know about hitting the breaks on meat processing mentalities that apparently also serve to create species extinction on this earth.

[@wmgodfrey1770]

Buh-Sill-Us. Re: bacillus.

[@thisaccountisdead9060]

I've become interested in the conspiracy theory that we are all living in 'The Matrix' recently. I am sure you are well aware of the 'Red Pilled' meme that was pushed strongly on social media (and still is today I guess) - becoming a tool to classify any opposition as either 'naive' or as an inhuman 'NPC' (non-playing character - some computer drone in a simulation). Along side this there are been a lot of discussion in the scientific community about the idea we could be living in a 'Holographic Universe' - I'm not going to explain, I am assuming you have at least some understanding of this and it's relation to squared laws and area calculations in physics... But the Holographic Universe principle itself came from the physics of Black Hole entropy being related more closely to the surface area of a Black Hole rather than its volume. I've been interested in physics for a long time (I studied it at A-Level). I understand Einstein's relativity pretty well and have been aware of the conflict between Einstein's equations for Gravity and Quantum Mechanics - and this was due to the problem of 'accelerating reference frames'. But that was as far as I got, and I struggled to understand and internalise Quantum Mechanics to the same degree I had with Einstein's relativity. More recently I gotten into Philosophy - in an applied way, mainly to understand how philosophies on the Left can be oppressive. To cut a long story short. I do now understand Quantum Mechanics and how acceleration itself can 'collapse' the 'wave function'. And I understand what this has to do with 'Quantum Entanglement': Beyond 'spooky action at a distance' - (as far as I undertand) the more uncertainty there is then the more Entaglement there can be. Particles going through the slits in the 'Double Slit Experiment' become Entangled and produce an interference pattern, while particles accelerating towards a Black Hole do not become Entangled - there is less certainty with the former than the later, as particles have a 50/50 choice which slit they go through in the double slit experiement vs having no choice but to fall towards a Black Hole. Physicists such as Sean Carroll have put out a call to arms to shake up the foundations of physics. Physics has been unable to move forward and resolve problems in trying to combine Quantum Mechanics with Einstein's Relativity. But maybe the problem is that we really do live in a 'Matrix'? And in the field of science where theories are tested with taking measurements. Perhaps what is being ignored is that which doesn't go through the process of acceleration required to find an answer? And the scientific paradigm at the moment isn't that far removed from all the 'woo' surrounding something like the 'Golden Ratio' 0.618033989, which to me it seems might have something to do with squared laws used so heavily in physics and that form the inspiration of the 'Holographic Universe' - as 0.618033989^2 = 0.3819660116, and where both these numbers added together equal '1'. There are potentially an infinite number of dimensions associated with quantum mechanics, which then collapse to the ordinary 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time we are familiar with when a measurement of a particle is taken that 'collapses the wave function'. How do we reconcile this? And what approach needs to be taken? There are infinitely many other ratios than the Golden Ratio, given by the general expression x^n = x^(n-1) +1. Why does the Golden Ratio deserve such special status? In social network theory there is the expression (friends per person)^n = population size, where approximately (25.5 friends per person)^7 = 7 Billion people. The figure of '7' denotes the 'degrees of separation' from one individual to another in society. But more generally shapes can be viewed as networks: a 2D squared as 4 vertices with 2 connections from each vertex - so it has the expression (2 connections per vertex)^2 = 4 vertices. A 4D hypercube has the expression (4 connections per vertex)^1.5 = 8 vertices. Not to make a concrete connection, but we no longer have the 'squared law' we had for the flat 2D square but instead a 1.5 to the power law for the Hypercube. So we see a relationship that can either increase or decrease the power relationship depending on the relation of nodes to connections and how many dimensions a shape exists in. Perhaps the 'Red Pill' meme is the social manefestation of a way fowards? - but rather than nihilistically throwing the unkown into the abyss, the paradigm just needs to change? Maybe we need to calm down a bit and take our foot off the accelerator in a very broad way?

[@OjoRojo40]

"More recently I gotten into Philosophy - in an applied way, mainly to understand how philosophies on the Left can be oppressive". Hahahaha wtf.

[@gerhitchman]

Welp you were dead wrong

[@christopherdainton4224]

Not necessarily. We have great vaccines, but most of the world doesn't have access to them. And delta seems to be gradually evading the vaccines we do have. So I don't think he's wrong about taking a longer view.