The Power of Knowledge and the Big Bang Theory

PSI Blog 20180516 The Power of Knowledge and the Big Bang Theory

Thanks to Marilyn for the link to this wonderful essay on what I first thought was a pretty odd topic:

 This Is What I Learned from Attending an Actual Flat-Earth Convention

On the other hand, I am always intrigued by much of the crazy stuff people of the 21^st century still believe.

Author Harry Dyer left us with a few good quotes:

“The level of discussion however often did not revolve around the models on offer, but on broader issues of attitudes towards existing structures of knowledge, and the institutions that supported and presented these models.

Flat earthers are not the first group to be sceptical of existing power structures and their tight grasps on knowledge. This viewpoint is somewhat typified by the work of Michel Foucault, a famous and heavily influential 20th century philosopher who made a career of studying those on the fringes of society to understand what they could tell us about everyday life.

He is well known, amongst many other things, for looking at the close relationship between power and knowledge. He suggested that knowledge is created and used in a way that reinforces the claims to legitimacy of those in power. At the same time, those in power control what is considered to be correct and incorrect knowledge. According to Foucault, there is therefore an intimate and interlinked relationship between power and knowledge.

At the time Foucault was writing on the topic, the control of power and knowledge had moved away from religious institutions, who previously held a very singular hold over knowledge and morality, and was instead beginning to move towards a network of scientific institutions, media monopolies, legal courts, and bureaucratised governments. Foucault argued that these institutions work to maintain their claims to legitimacy by controlling knowledge.

In the 21st century, we are witnessing another important shift in both power and knowledge due to factors that include the increased public platforms afforded by social media. Knowledge is no longer centrally controlled…”

Mine eyes are opened! This helps a lot to explain why otherwise bright folks still believe Einstein’s 8 ad hocs we discussed last week. It helps to explain many of the other wild imaginings of today’s regressive physics in which Einstein’s “Untired Light Theory” leads directly to the imagined expansion of the universe and its explosion out of nothing. The laws of physics have been laid down: Believe this “scientific” fake news—or else.