The 90 seconds

       Science. The only thing elevating science to an unrivaled method for gathering reliable knowledge is its ingenious ability to break through established perspectives and inaugurate new ways of thinking that are more in sync with reality. It accomplishes this by obligating itself to use a supreme standard when evaluating the solidity of theory-candidates. This supreme standard is the theory-candidate’s ability to explain reality using its characteristic logic.

       The view of science outlined above is the ideal, and tells us what real science can and should be. But what’s actually practiced by science and taught at our universities is the opposite. The view being practiced today is that the scientific method has already been used to find the concepts about the world that are true, that the main true concept is that the world is material in the sense it’s built up from lifeless and meaningless “thing”, and to be scientific is to defend this concept. As a result, the only thing elevating science is gone. Instead of weighing a new theory-candidate on its ability to explain reality, it’s weighed on its ability to confirm established concepts.

An example. The quasi-science advocated from the pulpits of our universities will reject, for instance, the idea that a worldview like the one practiced by Asbjørnsen & Moe’s  fairytale figure, the Ash Lad, renders the real world astonishingly supportive and joyful – because it doesn’t fit the established material concept. Real  science accepts or rejects the idea that practicing Ash Lad’s worldview has this astonishing effect based on whether or not the logic of the hypothesis this practice springs from is able to explain reality.

       With the inculcated view of science, any new theory-candidate will be turned down regardless of whether it’s better or worse than the old established one, while the established is just as automatically granted everlasting life .

       How can universities, meant to be the cutting edge in the search for reliable knowledge, end up as disciples of unsubstantiated belief  and blind faith? The reason is simple.

       It’s how we people tick. The moment we create a master idea, that is, the moment we’ve put together our idea of what we can expect of the world and how we can attain our share of happiness in it, the only ideas we trust are the spin-off ideas that agree with our master idea. The material understanding of the world is one such master idea. Whether the material master idea is an illusion or close to the truth makes no difference. Trust is a spin-off idea. Trust is blind loyalty to one’s master idea. The ingenious thing about real science lies in the fact it has understood how we people tick and devised a tool that makes it possible to break through the wall of trust. The tool is the brutal obligation to ignore trust no matter how strong, and instead weigh a theory-candidate’s solidity based solely on its ability to explain reality using its own characteristic form of logic and no other.

       Happiness. Trust in established illusions afflicts more than science alone. It affects the very core of our lives; it affects what we think we should do to obtain happiness.

       The academic world and everything it constructs and teaches are ideas about how we can make life as enjoyable as possible. All the knowledge about systems, all the different diagnoses/solutions meant to improve our quality of life either directly or by improving society, make up a water-tight illusion about how much happiness is available and the methods for attaining it. The whole construct is held together by an internal truth-criterion; new ideas are weighed according to their ability to fit established constructs. All ideas about greater magnitudes of happiness and more enjoyable methods are automatically scrapped, the established ideas representing systemized boredom and destruction are just as automatically granted immortality.

       It’s the same with us; we lock ourselves in an established illusion consisting of minimal happiness and joy-killing methods. In laying our destiny in the hands of the almighty truth-criterion trust, we throw away the key.

       Real science might be painful, but it's simple: Trust is nothing - critical examination is everything.

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