Tag: Philosophy

Science v. Greed

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

The Limits of Learning

by James Wallace Harris, 8/18/25

I began work on the project I described in my last post (“What Should I Major in at Old Age University“) by looking through the books in my bookcases for titles that fit the project. The first one I found was Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. After reading a few pages, I wanted to hear it. I bought the audiobook. After listening to fifteen pages, I knew this book was one I wanted to study thoroughly. I purchased the Kindle edition so I could highlight the passages I wanted to remember.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph:

We all have free access to consciousness, bubbling so easily and abundantly in our minds that without hesitation or apprehension we let it be turned off every night when we go to sleep and allow it to return every morning when the alarm clock rings, at least 365 times a year, not counting naps. And yet few things about our beings are as remarkable, foundational, and seemingly mysterious as consciousness. Without consciousness—that is, a mind endowed with subjectivity—you would have no way of knowing that you exist, let alone know who you are and what you think. Had subjectivity not begun, even if very modestly at first, in living creatures far simpler than we are, memory and reasoning are not likely to have expanded in the prodigious way they did, and the evolutionary road for language and the elaborate human version of consciousness we now possess would not have been paved. Creativity would not have flourished. There would have been no song, no painting, and no literature. Love would never have been love, just sex. Friendship would have been mere cooperative convenience. Pain would never have become suffering—not a bad thing, come to think of it—but an equivocal advantage given that pleasure would not have become bliss either. Had subjectivity not made its radical appearance, there would have been no knowing and no one to take notice, and consequently there would have been no history of what creatures did through the ages, no culture at all.

Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I want to know everything Damasio is telling us. I want to remember it. I was never a good student, never good at remembering information for tests, and at age 73, my memory is like a sieve. There are both comprehensive barriers that I can’t overcome, and limitations to the knowledge I can digest and maintain.

To maximize my reading concentration, I concurrently listen to an audiobook edition while following along with the printed page with my eyes. Although Damasio’s prose set my mind on fire, I can’t paraphrase what I just read. I can vaguely say that he describes what he thinks the mind is and makes a case that feelings are an important aspect of understanding the mind. I remember that because I wondered if AIs can ever become conscious without feelings. Feelings must be tied to biology.

If I’m ever going to learn and remember what I read, I need to go beyond the momentary exposure to ideas I get through simple reading. It seems comic, or should I say tragic, or maybe ironic, or even pointless, that I’m finally getting down to developing study habits at 73.

The only way to prove you know something is to teach it. Teaching a topic requires comprehension. I feel that when reading, I do comprehend, but that’s probably a delusion. One way to explain something is to give an analogy that makes the idea understandable. Another method is to create an infographic, chart, or diagram.

Yesterday, when I set my goal to understand how my personality developed and to explain why people are delusional, I didn’t say I wanted to teach what I learned. I did write that my final proof of accomplishment is writing a thesis on what I learned. That is a kind of teaching. It makes allowances for my quick-to-forget brain.

Reading gives the illusion of “Oh, I see,” and then you forget. I need to develop a note-taking system. And I think I need to mindmap what I read. I need to knuckle down and learn Obsidian. That’s a note-taking software program that allows for hyperlinks. And other tools will help me organize and temporarily remember information so I can summarize what I learn in prose.

But I really need to amend my goal. I don’t think I can say I learned anything unless I can teach it to someone else by conversing with them. I know mansplainers are looked down on, but I’m terrible at explaining things verbally.

I can write blogs because I have all the time I need to compose and revise. I can look things up. Explaining things in a lecture, or even a conversation, involves memory and comprehension at levels I cannot muster.

I need to go beyond reading. I need to go beyond writing. For my study project, I need to get into teaching. Since I don’t want to become a boring mansplainer, I need to learn the art of the Socratic dialogue.

JWH

The Reality of Reality

by James Wallace Harris, 5/2/25

I use reality to mean everything in existence. We used to use the term universe to mean everything, but scientists began speculating about multiverses and the word universe meant less than everything. Also, we tend to think of the universe in astronomical terms, and when I mean everything, I want it to encompass all the dimensions of existence everywhere, to whatever is beyond the quantum world to whatever existences lies beyond the multiverses.

The first reality of reality is that our local existence is an infinitely tiny portion of reality. We appear to exist in a three-dimensional domain defined by our sight, which gives us the illusion that we are small creatures in a large world. In reality, we are specks on a speck.

The second thing we need to remember about reality is that our lives have no meaning in relation to reality. Reality is completely indifferent to our existence. That every religion and philosophy we’ve ever created to explain reality are delusions by infinitesimally tiny beings. Think of our thoughts as a bacterium in our body speculating about its existence.

The third thing to remember about reality is that we spend our entire existence imposing order on chaos in our local bit of reality. Subatomic particles create atoms, and atoms create molecules, and molecules create inorganic chemistry, and inorganic chemistry creates biology, and biology creates humans, and humans create civilizations, and civilizations create technology, and technology is creating artificial intelligence. Reality is always evolving into something else.

Everything we do involves creating order out of chaos. We breathe and eat to stay alive. We learn to make sense of reality. We work to own things. We maintain the things we own. Doing the dishes imposes order on the kitchen. Washing clothes imposes order on our wardrobes. Gardening and landscaping impose order on our yard. Writing imposes order on our thoughts. Decluttering imposes order on our desks. Talking to people creates order in our relationships.

How much order we impose depends on how many habits, possessions, and people we want to control. The more we try to control, the more stress we feel. As we age, and our physical and mental abilities decline, we slowly lose control of everything we’ve worked to control. That is the reality of our lives.

We comprehend reality through science, but it’s extremely difficult because reality is hard to understand. At best, science notices repeatable statistical patterns that we can label with terms that we share. Like I said, religions and philosophies are mere delusions we embrace to think we understand reality. We don’t. We spend our lives acting on beliefs, believing we know more than we do.

We are creatures who live on delusions imposed on us by our biological urges and the delusions imposed on us by our culture and society. Except for Zen Buddhists, few people attempt to free themselves of their delusions. Instead, they passionately embrace their delusional beliefs by expending vast efforts to make them a reality.

I think about all of this as I encourage myself to go outside this morning to work at imposing order on the forty-thousand square feet of chaos that is my yard. The weeds are winning. They want to impose their order over my plot of land that I delusionally think I own and control. But it looks like rain, and as I glance around this room, I see three desks piled high with disorder that I need to wrestle into order. And I haven’t done my physical therapy exercises yet. If I don’t do them, my back falls into chaos, and I suffer great pain.

It would be so much easier to veg out in front of YouTube videos and let a little more disorder take over the house and yard.

JWH

Age vs. Ability

by James Wallace Harris

We’re told that scientific studies show that we peak mentally and physically early in life but is that true for all our abilities. Where does wisdom come in? If I found a magic lamp and a genie offered me three wishes I might wish for the physical agility of Simone Biles, or the stamina of Beth Potter, or I might ask for the language ability of Amor Towles, or the political and economic savvy of Robert Reich, or even wish for the historical wisdom of Yuval Noah Harari, or the scientific brilliance of Sabine Hossenfelder. Unfortunately, there are no magic lamps with wish granting genies. I must live with who I am.

If I peaked mentally and physically in my late teens or twenties, whatever my best abilities were, they weren’t memorable. What’s weird is I don’t want to be young again, not if I must give up everything I learned. And I suppose whatever I’m afraid of losing might be called wisdom. Is wisdom the defining ability of being old? I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m particularly wise, nor do I know any older folks who seem all that wise. Wisdom might be undefinable, undetectable, and only perceived by the individual, and even that perception is relative.

If we consider the current U.S. presidential election, and the five people taking part in the televised debates are 40, 59, 60, 78, and 81 years old. Disregarding their political philosophy, it was obvious they had a range of cognitive abilities. The younger ones spoke more precisely, responded better to questions, were quicker to compose thought out responses, and overall expressed themselves better.

But what about wisdom. The two oldest candidates did promote what they believed from a lifetime of experience, but would we call wisdom? All the candidates show abilities needed to be politicians, which involve long scheduled days with tremendous amount of social interaction. That is impressive. I’m 72, and I couldn’t do what either the 78- or 81-year-olds do. Just a few days of political campaigning would kill me. However, I’ve got to assume, that the younger candidates have an easier time with those long days on the campaign trail.

But back to me and you. I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day about how memory loss isn’t the only sign of onset dementia. It said having trouble doing your finances, sleeping poorly, going through personality changes, having trouble driving, and losing the ability to smell are other signs that your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders.

This made me to ask myself: Is there anything I can do better now than when I was younger? Well, maybe writing essays. Okay, I’m having trouble thinking of other things. I feel I’m a better reader. And since I started playing the games on the New York Times games app every day I’ve gotten better at Wordle, Connections, Mini Crossword and Sudoku. I should admit I might have reached a plateau with all of those games.

My guess is over weeks and months I figured out how to apply all my existing abilities with those games and reached a certain level of proficiency. That felt like I was improving, which is a good feeling when you’re 72. However, I noticed that although I can finish every Sudoku game in a matter of minutes on the easy level, I have never been able to finish any game at the medium level.

When I discovered that, I’ve switched from playing the easy mode every day to the medium mode. I eventually sensed that my innate abilities let me discover several methods of solving the easy level Sudoku puzzles, but I never had the abilities that involve the more complex methods of solving the medium level puzzles. The challenge I gave myself was to studying Sudoku tutorials and learn those methods. I’ve tried for the past week, but so far, I’ve failed. I sense there are methods I could apply, and I almost grasp a couple of them when studying the tutorials, but when I try to apply in a daily game, I forget what they were.

So far, I don’t think I’m having problems with the five non-memory issues the New York Times identified that were early signs of dementia. But would I recognize a decline in those areas if I did?

I avoid driving at night or on freeways. I can do it, but it causes anxiety. One thing I do now that I’m older is avoid anxiety. So, should I check that box? I do fine with my finances, but I just do what’s required, I don’t try to improve my situation. I have weird sleeping habits because of problems with frequent peeing, but I feel like I’ve adapted and don’t feel sleep deprived. I think I still smell things simply fine. I can smell the cat shit several rooms away when a cat poops in their box. Does that give me a passing score? And I think I’ve gone through some personality changes, but I assume they were due to adapting to being retired.

I feel I’m pushing myself harder and I’m more disciplined than when I was younger. However, I know I can’t do what I used to do and have little stamina.

Overall, I’d say I have far less abilities than when I was younger, but I feel better adapted to being old than I did at being young. I still feel like I’m honing the abilities I care about, even though I’ve giving up on everything else.

Is getting old just streamlining our abilities to do more with less?

JWH