by James Wallace Harris, 9/9/25
“What if the greatest threat to truth isn’t ignorance—but desire? In a world overflowing with information, we rely on cognitive tools like religion, politics, philosophy, and science to make sense of reality. But as greed hijacks our narratives and undermines our trust in evidence, science—the one tool built to transcend bias—is under siege.” – Microsoft CoPilot
This essay describes how I evaluate my daily news feeds. We all rationalize what we want with cognitive tools humans have evolved to explain reality. Two tools dominate many news reports covering current events: science and greed.
If an electron had consciousness, imagine it attempting to explain its existence and describe its position in reality. We are no more significant than an electron, yet we explain our existence with an array of cognitive tools that justify our lives. Cognitive tools are linguistic systems that explain reality to ourselves and others.
Of all the changes our society is undergoing in 2025, the one I fear the most is the attack on science. Science is the only cognitive tool we’ve developed that consistently explains reality across minds and cultures. Unfortunately, reality is complex and science is statistical. Most individuals can’t comprehend complexity. This is especially true when math is required.
Most individuals choose a cognitive tool on faith. They will never understand what they believe or how they believe it. Even believers in science accept it mostly through faith. That’s a shame, faith is a terrible cognitive tool. It is the root of all delusion.
I know early Christian theologians made a virtue out of faith, but consider the logic behind it. They were asking their followers to believe something they couldn’t prove. Because I’m not a scientist, I can only accept scientific claims about reality on faith in science. I don’t like that, but I have to be honest with myself.
However, science’s peer-reviewed research can be studied. Scientific results evolve with constant retesting, which can also be studied. Scientific knowledge is applied in technology, which is further validation.
Faith is a cognitive tool, but a dangerous one. It promotes belief over evidence.
Throughout our evolution, we’ve developed several cognitive tools to explain reality. Religion is the people’s favorite. Unfortunately, religion doesn’t describe reality; it only claims to. To support its views on reality, religions spawned morality to impose order on individuals. Religions are fantasies we create to rationalize our fears and wants. Religion is a cognitive tool we use to impose an explanation on reality, one imagined by one person, and spread to others.
Politics is another cognitive tool we use to impose order onto reality. Politics began with the strength of one individual, which spread to groups. Eventually, weaker individuals gained power by using religion. Finally, collectives gained power through consensus. Politics often combines tools such as science, religion, art, philosophy, ethics, and others to create an ordered system within reality.
The next significant cognitive tool to emerge was philosophy. Philosophy gave us mathematics, ethics, logic, and rhetoric. We learned a great deal from philosophy, but ultimately, it can lead to endless speculation. Philosophy often became another tool for rationalization for what we wanted to believe.
Science is a collective effort that works to eliminate bias. Science studies patterns and consistency that can be measured by all observers. The results of science are not absolutes, only our current best working hypothesis. Science has proved to be the supreme cognitive tool because it works so consistently. Technology is applied science. We only have to consider the success of technology as the best proof that science is an effective cognitive tool.
Many humans can’t handle science. They are willing to accept science if it agrees with their wants. But they reject science when it gets in the way of their desires. Greed is steamrolling science today because some individuals have wants that are more powerful than scientific explanations.
I wanted to link to an article in Bloomberg, “Why Iowa Chooses Not to Clean Up Its Polluted Water,” but it’s behind a paywall. Bloomberg subscribers can read it, but that costs $39.99 a month. Apple News+ subscribers can read it for $12.99 a month. It was the perfect article to illustrate my essay. It described how all the cognitive tools I covered are used to rationalize polluting water in Iowa.
[I’ve since found a free video version of this article on YouTube.]
I’ll use a general example in case you don’t want to watch the video. Take climate change. Science has been consistent in predicting what will happen if we increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
There are trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels waiting to be extracted. The people who own the rights to those fossil fuels don’t want to lose that wealth. Science suggests we should switch to energy sources that don’t produce CO2. This would destroy the wealth connected to fossil fuels.
That’s why the fossil fuel industry attacked science. And they’ve made it political, philosophical, and even religious. They use every cognitive tool before science to attack science. They even attack science with pseudoscience.
Ever since the fossil fuel industry has succeeded with its attacks on science, every group that wants something that science denies has borrowed those tactics.
Climate change is a complex subject to understand. That complexity allows individuals to confuse people with doubt. I can simplify it in my mind. CO2 can be considered a thermostat. Raising the concentration will increase the average temperature of the planet; lowering the concentration will lower the temperature. But leaving trillions of dollars in the ground is something many people can’t accept.
The primary foe of science is greed, but other sources of human desire have embraced the same thinking. Especially, religion. Faith has always been the tool of religion to counter rationality.
Belief rules in this new age. Decades ago, I thought science would help us create a more rational political system. Maybe even inspire the creation of a science-based religion. But that hasn’t happened. We’re rejecting science. We’re returning to cognitive tools that don’t jive with an objective reality. We want to live by subjective experience.
That’s scary. Especially to me, since I want to live in a society where reality makes sense. Reality created through subjectivity is madness, a chaos.
We don’t have to see into the future to know what will happen. We only have to look at history, another cognitive tool for explaining reality. History has always been susceptible to corruption. But if you study enough histories, you’ll see consistencies.
With every news article you read or watch on television, consider how the individuals involved are interpreting reality and which cognitive tools they are using. Notice how often the story involves science versus greed.
Greed usually wins.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
Well said,…science is indeed being held hostage in the name of greed or more specifically grievance and retribution. We are constantly reminded in the news of how others around the world live in political regimes that are less than democratic….how the world view of one defines what objective reality is.
Now we don’t have to look as far given the ‘new’ reality closer to home
Science is the one pursuit free from the faith based perceptions that we as subjective observers hold. Part of living together as social animals is trust or the ability to stand down from the competition (in some cases greed) and pursue our daily lives with a modicum of certainty and predictability.
Thank goodness for term limits and the future prospect of ‘normalcy’ or at least a greater sense of trust.
There is nothing someone can’t believe based on faith, which makes one susceptible to all kinds of nonsense. When a person believes things without evidence, their belief becomes solely based on emotion.
I agree.
That’s why the feedlot owner in that news story refused to stop polluting the town’s drinking water. His personal interests, which are driven by emotions, are stronger than ethical considerations for others, which is an abstraction.
It’s why I don’t give all my money to the poor because I’m emotionally tied to my money.
As a species we’re smart but our emotions are more powerful than our intellect.
Most of us out here don’t really have a problem with Science. We have a problem with some so-called scientists who cherry-pick data to twist it to support their agenda. “The science is settled!” is the most anti-science statement I’ve seen. When I was a teenager, plate tectonics was a disputed idea, and scientific authorities were denying it. Today it’s about as settled as science can get.We don’t know all the mechanisms involved, but do understand the big picture fairly well.
Climate change is real, but some of those authorities claim humans are causing it. Despite the indisputable evidence that climate was changing long before we evolved or were created. Also, back when I was a teen, scientists were seriously worried that global cooling was going to have glaciers intruding into the southern states of the USA by the beginning of the 21st Century. A single volcanic eruption can cause more of the gasses they consider pollution to be emitted than we’ve generated since we were all hunter-gatherers. I’m in Oklahoma, and not seeing any glaciers today. And this past week has been surprisingly cool for Summer. Science is by no means settled. It is a continuing process of learning how things work. And we’ve only been doing it for a few hundred years. There is a great deal left to learn. And any one who claims to know all the science is either an idiot or a charlatan.
Rather than blaming humans for everything, I’d be studying the effects of insolation.
Not saying we’re not having any effect either. But extinctions have been happening throughout the existence of this world, and in most cases, without any help from humans.
You say:
“The science is settled!” is the most anti-science statement I’ve seen.
You say:
When I was a teenager, plate tectonics was a disputed idea, and scientific authorities were denying it. Today it’s about as settled as science can get. We don’t know all the mechanisms involved, but do understand the big picture fairly well.
I ask: Aren’t you contradicting yourself? Science is never settled. Just look whats happening in cosmology after the James Webb space telescope. But I knew what you meant in your second statement. Science currently feels confident about plate tectonics. I tend to believe most climate scientists feel the same about human caused climate change.
I don’t have facts at hand to defend or attack the idea that humans are causing climate change. However, I asked CoPilot how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, and how much does nature add.
<CoPilot reply>
🌍 Annual CO₂ Emissions from Fossil Fuels
🌿 Natural CO₂ Emissions and Absorption
🧠 Why This Matters
Even though human emissions are small compared to the total natural flux, they tip the balance. Nature’s carbon cycle is like a finely tuned scale—and we’re piling on billions of tons that it can’t fully absorb. That’s why atmospheric CO₂ levels are now higher than they’ve been in 15 to 20 million years.
</CoPilot reply>
As a individual I’ve seen plenty of pollution of all kinds. I’m not a scientist, but it’s easy for me to worry that humans pollute too much. If you’ve ever maintained an aquarium, especially a salt water aquarium, you know any slight imbalance can wreck havoc.
Here’s my logic for people who claim climate change isn’t caused by humanity. If you’re right, the efforts to control CO2 will only be an expensive transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy system. If you’re wrong, civilization will go down the drain. As a bystander, how do you think I’m going to place my bet?
I couldn’t agree with you more and I feel like we’re entering the dark ages again and time is against us to ever come out of it in the long run.