Vaccine science is cargo cult science according to Feynman’s definition. There are a ton of peer reviewed papers demonstrating that vaccine aluminum is damaging, that vaccines are full of contaminants, that they can disrupt brain and immune system development, that the smallpox vaccine was ineffective, the polio vaccine is of questionable utility, other vaccines’ immunity wanes after only a few years. They never rebut as you can easily verify yourself by examining the citation list here for opposition and then searching the vaccine survey pdfs for the cites. They just ignore it.[3][4][5]

Climate science is cargo cult science. Climate “scientists” have been known to “hide” their own most interesting data, the data contradicting the prevailing theory which is what Feynman said a scientist should emphasize most prominently[6][7]. Alternative theories and methodological objections are ignored or white washed. (Search the IPCC reports for discussion of the opposition.) To say a science is cargo cult science is not to say that there are no papers published in it that are science, but it is to say one should repose zero or negative confidence in any pronouncement one has not personally verified from first principles.

http://TruthSift.com supports Feynman’s model of science applied to everything. Just as in mathematical practice, you can post proofs and refutations. But nothing is considered established unless every proposed refutation has an established counter-refutation. No proposed refutation can be ducked, and anybody who believes they have a rational objection may post it (and see the establishment statuses reflect the objection in real time). Try it out. Check out (and please contribute to) the ongoing diagrammings of the vaccine/climate science etc literatures. When they have passed through true logical review, confronting all the opposing arguments, what remains will be a genuine science.

[1] Richard P Feynman, What is Science? (1968) http://www-oc.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/diaz/img_diaz/feynman…nce_68.pdf
[2] Richard P Feynman, CARGO CULT SCIENCE (adapted from Caltech Commencement Address 1974) https://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
[3] Eric Baum The Top Ten Reasons I Believe Vaccine Safety Is an Epic Mass Delusion (2016) https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/06/the-top-ten-reasons-i-beli…s-delusion
[4] TruthSift Topic: Are Vaccines Safe? (2016) http://truthsift.com/search_view?statement=Vaccines-are-Safe…p;nid=4083
[5] TruthSift Topic: The Evidence is Weak Vaccines Have Saved More Lives than They Have Cost (2016), http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=The-Evidence-Is-Weak-…amp;id=520
[6] Climate data hidden both early (data showing very rapid rise before 1500) and in 20th century (showing decline): https://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/
[7] More data contradicting theory hidden. https://climateaudit.org/2011/12/01/hide-the-decline-plus/

I’ve gotten no substantive response to my last post on vaccine safety– neither in the comments, nor the TruthSift diagram, nor anywhere else, nor have the papers I submitted to two medical journals… but I have gotten emails telling me I’m delusional and suggesting I seek psychiatric attention. And this of course is integral to the explanation of how such delusions as vaccine safety persist so widely when it is so demonstrably a delusion: the majority who believe the majority must be right because its the majority are emotionally unwilling to confront the evidence. They assume the experts have done that, and they rely on the experts. But the experts assume other experts have been there. Ask your Pediatrician if he’s personally read Bishop et al and formulated an opinion on vaccine aluminum. Neither has the National Academy, except perhaps their members have and decided, perhaps tacitly, not to review the subject. Their decision not to review the animal literature was not tacit, they said they explicitly decided to omit it, although elsewhere they say they couldn’t find human evidence that addressed the issues. So everybody is trusting somebody else, and nobody has picked up the ball. And can you blame them? Because when I pick up the ball, what I receive in return is hate mail and people’s scorn. The emotional response cuts off any possible inspection of the logic.

On most questions where a majority with authority is facing a minority of dissenters or skeptics, the majority is delusional.
In other words, you are living in the matrix; much of what you and people believe is fundamentlaly wrong.

Reason 1, as above, is that the majority forms its view by circular reasoning, and rejects any attempt at logical discussion without considering it seriously, so it is prone to delusion.
Once the crowd concluded vaccines are safe and effective, for example, the question of whether the aluminum is damaging can apparently no longer be raised (even as more gets added to vaccines). And when I or others try to raise it, we are scorned and hated, and ineffectual in changing the opinion supported by circular reasoning. When new research papers appear that call it into question, they are ignored, neither cited in the safety surveys nor influencing medical practice in any way. This paragraph is all simple reporting of what has repeatedly happened.

Reason 2 is a minority wouldn’t be holding out without a good reason, because they are punished for their opposition with scorn and hatred at least. Except perhaps for explicitly religious issues, the usual reason they are so stubborn is they are defending rational truth.

Reason 3 is there’s often big money to be made or political power to be gained by influencing the majority opinion, and experts given good budgets appear to be pretty good at influencing majority opinion, especially with the aid of mass media, covertly staged stunts, and in many areas time enough to have long ago started from kids and education. On the other hand, rationality and reality don’t usually have press agents or forward looking media strategies, and there’s little or no money in swaying the minority position.

Show me a question with a majority with authority facing a minority where the majority isn’t delusional, and I’ll show you a minority that’s being paid under the table or planted to discredit rationalists in other controversial areas. At least I’ll suggest you strongly consider that as an alternative theory of what you see. The only one I can think of off hand are flat-earthers.

Mass Delusions were famously studied in 19th century first by Charles Mackay in
Popular Mass Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852) but more interestingly IMO in Gustave Le Bon, (1895) The Crowd. This latter was arguably the single book that had the most influence on the shape of the twentieth century. By their own accounts “The Crowd” was on Theodore Roosevelt’s bedside table, and dogeared by Mussolini. Lenin and Stalin took from it, and “Hitler’s indebtedness to Le Bon bordered on plagiarism” in the words of historian and Hitler-biographer Robert G. L. Waite. Sigmund Freud wrote a book discussing Le Bon, and Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, acknowledged his deep debt, as Goebbels did of Bernays’ reflected insights.

Bernays equally isn’t as widely known as he should be. He invented the field of public relations, the “panel of doctors”, the slogan “making the world safe for democracy”, the diamond engagement ring, broke the taboo on women’s smoking and practically doubled sales by recruiting protesters smoking “torches of freedom”, bacon and eggs, and flouridated water, among many other things. There weren’t any decent safety studies on fluoridated water, and some modern studies say its taking multiple IQ points off the population, and nations and regions that don’t fluoridate have just as good teeth today as nations and regions that do, and putting fluoride in mouthwash and toothpaste rather than the drinking water would plainly have made a lot more sense from the point of view of public safety and health, but one thing you can count on: once he put it in the water supply and convinced everybody it was a health measure, you couldn’t sue for damage from fluoride runoff any more, and potentially multi-asbestos scale class action suits against the Government and aluminum manufacturers disappeared. Since Bernays got done, just raising the issue of fluoride gets you branded fruitcake and shunned to this day.

They are also still “making the world safe for democracy”, which he coined for WW1. But is this what they are doing, or is that another widely held delusion?
Bernays also wrote the book Propaganda which begins: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

I’ve quoted from and summarized and discussed Le Bon extensively before so I will give only a brief flavor here.
“It is not necessary that a crowd should be numerous for the faculty of seeing what is taking place before its eyes to be destroyed and for the real facts to be replaced with hallucinations unrelated to them….

Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated… a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.”

The Red pill

So, now what’s in the red pill? Why, its a placebo. You can use any old red jelly bean. But if you swallow it and believe that the majority may be totally delusional about anything, and start looking into practically any subject with dissenters with an open mind, then I predict if you are skilled at critical thinking, you will shortways find the majority is in fact delusional, that is, you are indeed living in the matrix.

Much more widely than you are likely to imagine. For example, the news is basically propaganda, in lockstep among all the mainstream media, who accept whatever the government and political correctness tells them to believe uncritically. Was the passenger plane over Ukraine brought down by missile or strafing? Did the CDC conspire to hide a vaccine autism connection? Is the congress being run behind the scenes by a uniparty? You won’t find any of those subjects discussed unless to whitewash in the US mainstream media. What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity. –Joseph Goebbels The history books are no better, as Le Bon observed. The banking system is all based on smoke and mirrors and a healthy skim. Etc.

I don’t expect TruthSift.com to convince the masses they are delusional, because Le Bon assures me logic will never sway a crowd, but I offer it as a tool to shortcut a lot of work for those who swallow the red pill. Rather than having to study a field in detail for years as I have with vaccines and needing to be able to supply PhD level understanding of what you are reading and needing the confidence of your convictions against the many, you can much more rapidly peruse a diagram and find what the real situation is, assuming the diagram has been created and debated.
So I beg readers here to create such diagrams on TruthSift for any topic you are interested in.
Of course, they are fun and interesting too.

I also commend TruthSift to corporations and others wanting to escape the kind of crowd think delusions so well characterized by Le Bon, and achieve actual rationality in your decisions. Use it on Private Diagrams. Everybody in your organization will be able to contribute to the document, if you invite them, exactly where its pertinent. It will naturally divide and conquer your problems in ways where different people can address different problems, achieving true collaboration. Nobody will be able to get confused or pursue some other agenda without being transparently refereed. The answer will be far more rationally derived and argued for than what you are doing now. You can allow people to contribute under pseudonyms if you want. http://TruthSift.com

Find my first blog post describing TruthSift here.

(1) The National Academy’s Reviews Of Vaccine Safety
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has provided several multi-hundred page surveys studying the safety of vaccines, but rather than reassuring, these itemize some iatrogenic conditions being caused, and pronounce the scientific literature inadequate to say whether most others are. The 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Review[1] looked at 146 vaccine-condition pairs for causality, reporting:

• 14 for which the evidence is said to convincingly support causality, the vaccine is causing the condition.
• 4 where the evidence is said to favor acceptance.
• 5 where the evidence is said to favor rejection, including MMR causing autism.
• 123 where the evidence is said insufficient to evaluate.

The 2003 IOM Review on multiple vaccines said[2]:
“The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death (Fisher, 2001). There are no epidemiological studies that address this.”
and:
“the committee concludes that the epidemiological and clinical evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between multiple immunization and an increased risk of allergic disease, particularly asthma.”

• None of the IOM Safety Reviews[1][2][3][4] addressed the aluminum (for example whether the aluminum is causing autism), or mentioned contaminants, or discussed animal models although they had concluded as just quoted there is generally no epidemiological or clinical data worth preferring.

(2) The Aluminum.
Alum was added to vaccines back in the 1920’s, with no test of parenteral toxicity until recently[5], because it prods the immature immune system out of its normal operating range.[6] Maybe they figured aluminum is common in the environment, but injection bypasses half a dozen evolved sequential filters that normally keep it out of circulatory flow during development. Vaccines put hundreds of times as much aluminum into infants’ blood as they would otherwise get, and in an unnatural form that is hard for the body to remove.[7][8 (cfsec 4.2)][9]. The published empirical results indicate its highly toxic.

• Bishop et al in NEJM 97 reported a Randomized Placebo Controlled(RPC) test on preemies.[10][11] Scaling the toxicity they measured to the 4000 mcg in the first six months projects the vaccine series’ aluminum as costing each recipient maybe 15 IQ points and bone density.[12]
• Animal RPC experiments also show highly toxic[13][14][15][16]
• The applicable epidemiology suggests its highly toxic.[8][18][19][20][21][22] Discussed more in point 8 below, basically every study that compares more to less finds less much better.
• Numerous clinical publications, whole special issues, on ASIA (Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants)[23][24][25]
• Any “placebo” controlled test I’ve ever found of an adjuvanted vaccine, the “placebo” contained an adjuvant.
• Safety reviews ignore the issue. Search the pdfs. [1][2][3][4]
• The FDA[26] cites a theory paper[27] that compares a published MRL based on dietary experiments in weaned rodents (thus completely uninformed about toxicity in early development) to a theoretical model of blood aluminum levels from the vaccines, and disdains all the above cited empirical evidence.

(3) The Safety Studies Ignore Confounding Patient Behavior
Since there are no Randomized Placebo Controlled (RPC) trials supporting vaccines, virtually all studies report on the association (or lack thereof) between vaccines and some iatrogenic condition. But parents who believe vaccines made their kids sick, stop vaccinating them, which systematically moves sick or vaccine damaged kids in the studies into the “low vaccine”, “low thimerisol”, or etc. bin. This invalidates most studies supporting safety (and the few remaining ones suck for other reasons). Numerous studies report incredible preventative effects for vaccines, presumably because of this corruption, like having more thimerisol or more MMR’s is strongly preventative of autism and other mental development issues[28][29][30], or like having more vaccines was strongly preventative of atopy, apparently even years before patients got the vaccines[31]. The fact this confounding factor is overlooked demonstrates extreme confirmation bias and is the defining factor of Cargo Cult Science according to R.P. Feynman.[32]

(4) The Animal Models
Animal models reliably and repeatably show in RPC tests (a) that vaccines at the wrong time in development damage the adult brain or behavior [33][34] and (b) that multiple vaccines cause autoimmune disease even in animals bred to be non-autoimmune[35][36]. The effects are said to be robust, and as we’ve already seen there isn’t good human data rebutting them.

(5) The Contaminants
Studies have repeatedly found contaminants such as viruses, retroviruses, circoviruses, and human DNA in vaccines seemingly whenever tested,
and I’ve found no reason to believe off the shelf vaccines are free[37][38][39][40][41]. Reported contaminants have included SV-40 in polio vaccines which were administered even though scientists knew the vaccines were contaminated and already had hunches and experiments indicating SV-40 causes cancer[41][42]. Chimpanzee Coryza Virus became known in humans as RSV and has killed many millions of infants and hospitalizes 100,000/yr in America today[43]. Contaminated polio vaccine is plausibly also the origin of HIV[44][41]. There are discovered viral contaminants in vaccines today[38][39], with unknown long term effects, as well as I expect many undiscovered contaminants.

(6) Studies Ask Whether Some One Vaccine Damages, and Thus Miss That Many Do.
Virtually every study not reporting damage compares kids who got numerous vaccines to kids who got numerous vaccines. Such studies wouldn’t show statistically significant results no matter how much damage the vaccines are doing, unless one vaccine or vector by itself is doing comparable or more damage than the rest put together. The studies more or less test the hypothesis one vaccine is invisibly damaging, the rest are fine, and the studies are all obscured in the presence of multiple problems, much less the kind of timing and interaction effects observed in animal models. The one study[45] often touted as proving “The Risk of Autism is Not Increased by ‘Too Many Vaccines Too Soon’”[46] in fact compares patients based on antigens, and since DTP had more than 3000 antigens and no other vaccine common among the study patients had more than a handful, effectively compared patients who’d had DTP and dozens of vaccines to patients who did not have DTP (many had DTaP instead) and dozens of vaccines. The only counterexamples to this I’ve found are contrived in bizarre ways to avoid reality, such as the study that withheld the 2 month vaccines till 3 months from a group of kids, and asked the mothers, who were terrified enough a bunch insisted on changing back to the early vaccination group, to record symptoms with no doctor even consulted, identifying the placebo effect as vaccine prevention of diseases. The authors wrote it would have been unethical to give a placebo at 2 months to the kids getting the vaccine at 3 months, in order to do the experiment blind, but apparently consider it ethical to inject dozens of vaccines into your kids with zero placebo controlled testing.[47] [48]

(7) The Extensive Evidence Indicating Flu Vaccines Damage Immune Systems, Particularly in Children.

• RPC test reported child flu vaccine recipients getting 4 times the respiratory illnesses of placebo recipients[49]
• Children seen at the Mayo Clinic 1996–2006 were 3 times as likely to be hospitalized if they had had a flu vaccine[50]
• Prior receipt of 2008-09 TIV was associated with increased risk of medically attended pH1N1 illness during the spring–summer 2009 in Canada[51]
• Multiple papers report flu vaccines damage CD8+ T Cells in both children and animal models[52][53][54]
• Flu vaccine recipients’ blood produced less IFN-gamma in response to new flu than people not previously vaccinated[55].
• The equation they use for flu vaccine “effectiveness” counts making recipients sick as effectiveness. Mathematically, if vaccine recipients get twice as many respiratory illnesses that counts the same as if they get half as many flu illnesses.[56][57] The published evidence of “effectiveness” is published evidence of collateral damage.

(8) The Epidemiological Studies That Aren’t Blatantly Confounded
All the credible ecological or epidemiological studies comparing people who got more vaccines to less indicate damage. For example,

• a 1/1000 increase in Infant Mortality is associated with each 7 additional vaccines in a national series regressed over the developed nations [18].
• An extra 680 ASD or Language impaired are associated with every 1% increase in compliance regressed over the 50 US states [19].
• High correlation between and within nations of vaccine aluminum to autism.[8]
• Two studies in Guinea-Bisseau that showed recipients of DTP died far more frequently than non-recipients, even though the recipients were from far more fortunate backgrounds[20][21].
• Vaccine adverse event reports are far more likely to be fatal if they follow multiple vaccinations than two[58].
• 1 in 10 girls is reported to make an ED visit within 42 days of receiving HPV vaccine[59][60].

Every empirical study I’ve read with a methodology that’s not clearly confounded consistently indicates vaccine damage.

(9) The Consistent Anecdotal and Informal Reports
Anecdotal and informal reports actually compare vaccinated and unvaccinated, unlike the contrived and confounded studies offered to support safety.

• Virtually all the Amish who are autistic turn out to have been vaccinated, the large numbers of unvaccinated in certain communities having no ASD whatsoever.[61]
• The Homestead Medical Practice in Chicago’s Dr. Mayer Eisenstein reports: ““My partners and I have over 35,000 patients who have never been vaccinated. You know how many cases of autism we have seen? ZERO, ZERO.” Also he reports virtually zero asthma.[61]
• Southern religious homeschoolers were anecdotally reported to have very low vaccination rates, and similarly virtually no autism.[61]
• An online survey of 13000 fully unvaccinated shows them to have less than a third of the prevalence of numerous conditions from allergies to skoliosis.[62](Figure 1.)
• More than a thousand parents, some of them Doctors, have posted Youtube reports describing why they are confident they saw their child given autism by vaccines.[63]
  
  Figure 1: Online survey of 13,000 unvaccinated compared to peer-reviewed survey data of the German vaccinated population[62]. The peer-reviewed data shows the vaccinated population averaging better than one chronic ailment per person, the unvaccinated report less than a third of that. The unvaccinated survey is online, selection biased, and self-reported, but there is no trustworthy data rebutting it.

(10) The Authorities, Big Pharma, and Media Are Demonstrably Not Trustworthy.

• All the above 9 points and more are readily observable, but you wouldn’t learn that from the media or in med school.
• A Senior PhD CDC whistleblower has provided numerous documents and testified to congress about an explicit cover-up within CDC of a vaccine-autism connection,[64][65] and media whitewashed it.
• The vaccine manufacturers are exempt from any liability for vaccine damage.
• The same companies repeatedly plead guilty to marketing and safety violations and pay billions in fines.[66]
• They pay vast sums to media and fund the medical schools and research and give boondoggles and perks and contracts to doctors and revolving door government officials.[67][68]
• The authorities and big pharma never publicly commented while contaminated vaccines scientists expected to cause cancer and other dire problems were administered[41][42][43].
• The way the authorities have averted their eyes from contrary results is again the defining factor of Cargo Cult Science[32].

To summarize 10 points in two: (A) the safety literature, wherever it doesn’t outright show vaccine damage, demonstrably is bollixed to where it doesn’t show much of anything. (B) Lots of peer reviewed publications cogently report lots of consistent damage that no published evidence rationally opposes, but are ignored by authorities and media.

The vaccine safety literature is laid out in considerable detail on this TruthSift diagram https://tssciencecollaboration.com/graphtree/Are%20Vaccines%20Safe/406/4083 where readers are invited to add more pertinent citations or arguments. Anybody who thinks I am confused on any point is invited to challenge any claim above and explain why[69]. Please feel free to ask your Pediatrician or other authority, and let me know what they say. I’ve submitted to 2 medical journals so far, but been unable to obtain a substantive review, a review citing any papers or making a case I’m wrong. As I receive no substantive rebuttal, it reaffirms what I have already concluded from extensive research, none exists.

If you’ve read the above, and are thinking: “you were right, I was deluded,” the next step is to ask yourself what else you may be deluded about, and what you can do about it.  https://truthsift.com was designed to answer those questions.
If you think this post contains information that should be more widely known please share it.

References
[1] Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality, Kathleen Stratton, Andrew Ford, Erin Rusch, and Ellen Wright Clayton, Editors; Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines; Institute of Medicine, The National Academies press 2011. 862pp.http://www.commed.vcu.edu/IntroPH/Communicable_Disease/2012/…ccines.pdf
[2] Immunization Safety Review: Multiple Immunizations and Immune Dysfunction Kathleen Stratton, Christopher B. Wilson and Marie C. McCormick, Editors, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10306.html ISBN: 0–309-50866–5, 152 pages, 6 × 9, (2002) Institute of Medicine.
[3] Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Institute of Medicine of the National Academies ISBN: 0–309-53275–2, 214 pages, 6 × 9, (2004) http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10997.html
[4] The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies, Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine ISBN 978–0-309–26702-1 230 pages (2013) http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/files/report%20…ety_rb.pdf
[5] Conference report Workshop summary Aluminum in vaccines Vaccine 20 (2002) S1–S4 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&a…v.62922401
[6] Neonatal and early life vaccinology. Siegrist CA. Vaccine. 2001 May 14;19(25–26):3331–46. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11348697
[7] Infants’ exposure to aluminum from vaccines and breast milk during the first 6 months, Dórea JG, Marques RC, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Volume 20, Issue 7, November 2010, Pages 598–601 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010978
[8] Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism? Tomljenovic L, Shaw CA. J Inorg Biochem. 2011 Nov;105(11):1489–99 http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf
[9] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&a…p;nid=4083 See statement views for discussion and further citations
[10] Aluminum Neurotoxicity in Preterm Infants Receiving Intravenous-Feeding Solutions, Nicholas J. Bishop, M.D., Ruth Morley, M.B., B.Chir., J. Philip Day, Ph.D., and Alan Lucas, M.D. N Engl J Med 1997; 336:1557-1562May 29, 1997DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199705293362203 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199705293362203#t=articleResults
[11] Aluminum exposure from parenteral nutrition in preterm infants: bone health at 15-year follow-up. Fewtrell MS, Bishop NJ, Edmonds CJ, Isaacs EB, Lucas A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19858156 Pediatrics. 2009 Nov;124(5):1372–9. doi: 10.1542/peds.2009–0783. Epub 2009 Oct 26. Erratum in Pediatrics. 2009 Dec;124(6):1709.
[12] http://truthsift.com/search_view?statement=Animal-Studies-re…p;nid=4133 See statement views for discussion and further citations
[13] Administration of aluminum to neonatal mice in vaccine-relevant amounts is associated with adverse long term neurological outcomes, C.A. Shaw, Y. Li , L. Tomljenovic, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, V 128, November 2013, Pages 237–244 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013413001773
[14] Slow CCL2-dependent translocation of biopersistent particles from muscle to brain, Zakir Khan, Christophe Combadière, François-Jérôme Authier, Valérie Itier, François Lux, Christopher Exley, Meriem Mahrouf-Yorgov, Xavier Decrouy, Philippe Moretto, Olivier Tillement, Romain K Gherardi BMC Medicine 201311:99 DOI: 10.1186/1741–7015-11–99 http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741&#…;11-99
[15] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&id=406 For discussion of other confirmatory citations
[16] Examination of the safety of pediatric vaccine schedules in a non-human primate model: assessments of neurodevelopment, learning, and social behavior. Curtis B, Liberato N, Rulien M, et al. 2015. Environ Health Perspect 123:579–589; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455585/
[18] Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Miller NZ, Goldman GS, Hum Exp Toxicol. 2011 Sep;30(9):1420–8. doi: 10.1177/0960327111407644. Pub 2011 May 4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
[19] A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population. Delong G. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2011;74(14):903–16. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535
[20] Routine vaccinations and child survival: follow up study in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa Commentary: an unexpected finding that needs confirmation or rejection, Ines Kristensen, Peter Aaby, Henrik Jensen, BMJ 2000; 321 dos: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7274.1435
[21] Oral polio vaccination and low case fatality at the paediatric ward in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Aaby P, Rodrigues A, Biai S, et al ‚Vaccine. 2004 Aug 13;22(23–24):3014–7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297050
[22] http://truthsift.com/search_view?id=406&nid=4144 See for further discussion and citations
[23] Special Issue ASIA – Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants, Lupus February 2012; 21 (2) http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2.toc
[24] Biopersistence and brain translocation of aluminum adjuvants of vaccines Front. Neurol., 05 February 2015 |http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004/full
[25] Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia following immunization with the hepatitis B vaccine: another angle of the ‘autoimmune (auto-inflammatory) syndrome induced by adjuvants’ (ASIA). Agmon-Levin N1, Zafrir Y, Kivity S, Balofsky A, Amital H, Shoenfeld Y. Immunol Res. 2014 Dec;60(2–3):376–83. doi: 10.1007/s12026-014‑8604-2.
[26] Study Reports Aluminum in Vaccines Poses Extremely Low Risk to Infants (2015–2016) http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/ScienceResearch/ucm284520.htm
[27] Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination, Mitkus RJ, King DB, Hess MA, Forshee RA, Walderhaug MO., Vaccine 29(51) 9538–43 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22001122
[28] Thimerosal Exposure in Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the United Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association, Nick Andrews; Elizabeth Miller; Andrew Grant et al, Pediatrics September 2004, VOLUME 114 / ISSUE 3 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/584.full-text.pdf
[29] Prenatal and Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of Autism, Cristofer S. Price, William W. Thompson, Barbara Goodson,et al, Pediatrics October 2010, VOLUME 126 / ISSUE 4 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/4/656
[30] Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism, Anjali Jain; Jaclyn Marshall; Ami Buikema; et al. JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534–1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444
[31] Transient suppression of atopy in early childhood is associated with high vaccination coverage, Gruber, C., S. Illi, S. Lau, R. Nickel, J. Forster, W. Kamin, C.P. Bauer, V. Wahn, U. Wahn, and the MAS-90 Study Group. 2003. . Pediatrics 111(3):e282-e288. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/e282
[32] CARGO CULT SCIENCE (adapted from Caltech Commencement Address 1974), Richard P Feynman https://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
[33] Peripheral immune challenge with viral mimic during early postnatal period robustly enhances anxiety-like behavior in young adult rats.
Konat GW, Lally BE, Toth AA, Salm AK.Metab Brain Dis. 2011 Sep;26(3):237–40. doi: 10.1007/s11011-011‑9244-z http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21643765
[34] Postnatal Inflammation Increases Seizure Susceptibility in Adult Rats, Michael A. Galic, Kiarash Riazi, James G. Heida, et al, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2 July 2008, 28(27): 6904–6913; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1901–08.2008 http://www.jneurosci.org/content/28/27/6904.full
[35] Vaccine model of antiphospholipid syndrome induced by tetanus vaccine, L Dimitrijevi, I ivkovi, M Stojanovi, V Petrui, S ivanevi-Simonovi dos: 10.1177/0961203311429816 Lupus February 2012 vol. 21 no. 2 195–202 http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2/195.abstract
[36] Self-Organized Criticality Theory of Autoimmunity, Ken Tsumiyama, Yumi Miyazaki, Shunichi Shiozawa 2009 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008382
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008382
[37] Some oral poliovirus vaccines were contaminated with infectious SV40 after 1961. Cutrone R, Lednicky J, Dunn G, et al. Cancer Res. 2005 Nov
15;65(22):10273–9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16288015
[38] Viral Nucleic Acids in Live-Attenuated Vaccines: Detection of Minority Variants and an Adventitious Virus, J. G. Victoria, C. Wang, M. S. Jones,et al. J. Virol. June 2010 vol. 84 no. 12 6033–6040 http://jvi.asm.org/content/84/12/6033
[39] Viruses and Virus Nucleic Acid Contaminate Many Vaccines: Risks of cancer and creation of new pathogens should not be underplayed by regulators Prof. Joe Cummins http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Viruses_and_Virus_Nucleic_Acid_Contaminate_Vaccines.php
[40] Impact of environmental factors on the prevalence of autistic disorder after 1979, Theresa A. Deisher, Ngoc V. Doan, Angelica Omaiye, et al. Journal of Public Health and Epidemiology Vol. 6(9), pp. 271–284, 2014 DOI: 10.5897/JPHE2014.0649 http://soundchoice.org/scpiJournalPubHealthEpidem092014.pdf
[41] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13QiSV_lrDQ Dr. Maurice Hillman, The Merck Chief Scientist, discusses how the polio vaccine was administered although they knew it was contaminated with SV-40, which they strongly believed caused cancer. According to the tape, the monkeys from which the vaccine was being grown, were being kept in epidemic conditions crowded into cages, so they were all sick with a variety of viruses which then contaminated the vaccine stock. As Hillman discusses, SIV could very well have entered the human population this way as well.
[42] Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Vilchez RA, Madden CR, Kozinetz CA, et al. Lancet. 2002 Mar 9;359(9309):817–23. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11897278
[43] Polio eradication: a complex end game, Viera Scheibner, BMJ 2012;344:e2398 http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2398/rapid-responses
[44] Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS: some key writings, http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/
[45] Increasing Exposure to Antibody-Stimulating Proteins and Polysaccharides in Vaccines Is Not Associated with Risk of Autism, Frank DeStefano, MD,MPH, Cristofer S. Price, ScM, Eric S. Weintraub, MPH DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.02.001
[46] The Risk of Autism is Not Increased by “Too Many Vaccines Too Soon”, Editorial of The Journal of Pediatrics http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
[47] General Non-specific Morbidity is Reduced After Vaccination Within the Third Month of Life – the Greifswald Study, S. Otto, B. Mahner, I. Kadow, J. F. Beck, S. K.W. Wiersbitzky and R. Bruns, Journal of Infection (2000) 41, 172–175 doi: 10.1053/jinf.2000.0718, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com
[48] http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=5340&superNode=No&amp…;rating=TE
[49] Increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infections associated with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine. Cowling BJ, Fang VJ, Nishiura H, Chan KH, Ng S, Ip DK, Chiu SS, Leung GM, Peiris JS. Clin Infect Dis. 2012 Jun;54(12):1778–83. doi: 10.1093/cid/cis307. Epub 2012 Mar 15. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423139
[50] Effectiveness of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine in influenza-related hospitalization in children: a case-control study. Joshi AY, Iyer VN, Hartz MF, Patel AM, Li JT. Allergy Asthma Proc. 2012 Mar-Apr;33(2):e23-7. doi: 10.2500/aap.2012.33.3513. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22525386
[51] Association between the 2008-09 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Pandemic H1N1 Illness during Spring–Summer 2009: Four Observational Studies from Canada, Danuta M. Skowronski , Gaston De Serres, Natasha S. Crowcroft, et al.PLOS(2010), http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258
[52] Vaccination with whole inactivated virus vaccine affects the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against influenza virus A/H5N1 and immunodominance of virus-specific CD8+ T-cell responses in mice. Bodewes R, Kreijtz JH, Hillaire ML, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF. , J Gen Virol. 2010 Jul;91(Pt 7):1743–53. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.020784–0. Epub 2010 Mar 24. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20335492
[53] Vaccination against human influenza A/H3N2 virus prevents the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against lethal infection with avian influenza A/H5N1 virus. Bodewes R, Kreijtz JH, Baas C, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, de Mutsert G, van Amerongen G, van den Brand JM, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF. PLoS One. 2009;4(5):e5538. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005538. Epub 2009 May14. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440239
[54] Annual vaccination against influenza virus hampers development of virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity in children. Bodewes R, Fraaij PL, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, van Baalen CA, Tiddens HA, van Rossum AM, van der Klis FR, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF., J Virol. 2011 Nov;85(22):11995–2000. doi: 10.1128/JVI.05213–11.Epub 2011 Aug 31. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21880755
[55] Difference in immune response in vaccinated and unvaccinated Swedish individuals after the 2009 influenza pandemic, Isabelle Magalhaes Mikael Eriksson, Charlotte Linde, Rashid Muhammad, Lalit Rane, Aditya Ambati, Rebecca Axelsson-Robertson, Bahareh Khalaj, Nancy Alvarez-Corrales, Giulia Lapini, Emanuele Montomoli, Annika Linde, Nancy L Pedersen,3 and Markus Maeurer BMC Infect Dis. 2014; 14: 319.Published online 2014 Jun 11. doi: 10.1186/1471–2334-14–319 PMCID: PMC4067073 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067073/
[56] “Vaccine effectiveness was estimated as 100% x (1 — odds ratio [ratio of odds of being vaccinated among outpatients with influenza-positive test results to the odds of being vaccinated among outpatients with influenza-negative test results])”, Center for Disease Control, Early Estimates of Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness — United States, January 2015 Weekly January 16, 2015 / 64(01);10–15 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6401a4.htm
[57] http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=2823&superNode=No&amp…;rating=TE for more discussion
[58] Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe, Neil Z. Miller, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 21 Number 2 Summer 2016 http://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/miller.pdf
[59] Adverse events following HPV vaccination, Alberta 2006–2014, Xianfang C. Liu, , Christopher A. Bell, , Kimberley A. Simmonds, , Lawrence W. Svensona, Margaret L. Russell, Vaccine Volume 34, Issue 15, 4 April 2016, Pages 1800–1805 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X16002036
[60] For further data analysis and discussion see http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=5196&superNode=No&amp…;rating=TE
[61] http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2009/05/22/a-pretty-big-secret/
[62] http://www.vaccineinjury.info/survey/results-unvaccinated/results-illnesses.html
[63] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23hearthiswell
[64] http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-releas…nd-autism/
[65] https://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-scientist-we-scheduled-meeti…documents/
[66] http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma
[67] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/editors-in-chief-of-w…-poss.html
[68] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-do…orruption/
[69] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&id=406

TruthSift.com is a platform designed to support and guide individuals or crowds to rationality, and make them smarter collectively than any unaided individual or group. (Free) Members use TruthSift to establish what can be established, refute what can’t be, and to transparently publish the demonstrations. Anyone can browse the demonstrations and learn what is actually known and how it was established. If they have a rational objection, they can post it and have it answered.

Whether in scientific fields such as climate change or medical practice, or within the corporate world or political or government debate, or on day to day factual questions, humanity hasn’t had a good method for establishing rational truth. You can see this from consequences we often fail to perceive:
Peer reviewed surveys agree: A landslide majority of medical practice is *not* supported by science [2,3,4]. Scientists are often confused about the established facts in their own field [5]. Within fields like climate science and vaccines, that badly desire consensus, no true consensus can be reached because skeptics raise issues that the majority brush aside without an established answer (exactly what Le Bon warned of more than 100 years ago[6]). Widely consulted sources like Wikipedia are reported to be largely paid propaganda on many important subjects [7], or the most popular answer rather than an established one [8]. Quora shows you the most popular individual answer, generated with little or no collaboration, and often there is little documentation of why you should believe it. Existing systems for crowd sourced wisdom largely compound group think, rather than addressing it. Existing websites for fact checking give you someone’s point of view.

Corporate or government planning is no better. Within large organizations, where there is inevitably systemic motivation to not pass bad news up, leadership needs active measures to avoid becoming clueless as to the real problems [9]. Corporate or government plans are subject to group think, or takeover by employee or other interests competing with the mission. Individuals who perceive mistakes have no recourse capable of rationally pursuading the majority, and may anyway be discouraged from speaking up by various consequences[6].

TruthSift is designed to solve all these problems. TruthSift realizes in your browser the Platonic ideal of the scientific literature, but TruthSift applies it to everything, and makes it tangible and lightweight, extended to a much lower hurdle for publishing. On a public TruthSift diagram, members (or on a Private diagram, members you have invited), who believe they can prove or refute a statement, can post their proof or refutation exactly where it is relevant. TruthSift logically propagates the consequences of each contribution, graphically displaying how it impacts the establishment status of all the others, drawing statements established by the combined efforts in thick borders, and statements refuted in thin. Statements are considered established only when they have an established demonstration, one with every posted challenge refuted.

Fig 1: An example topic. The topic statement n0 is currently refuted, because its only proof
is refuted. The statement menu is shown open in position to add a proof to this proof.
The topic statement is gold, pro statements are blue, con statements are red. Proof
connectors are black, challenges red, remarks purple, assumptions (not shown) blue.
Statements show the title. On the actual Topic the body can be seen by selecting
the statement and “View Statement” or hovering the mouse.

The Scientific literature works very similarly. Each paper adds some novel argument or evidence that previous work is true or is not true or extends it to establish new results. When people run out of valid, novel reasons why something is proved or is not proved, what remains is an established theory, or a refutation of it or of all its offered proofs.

Fig 2: The view focused on the topic statement of a Topic diagramming the discussion in:
Galileo’s: Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Views.
The black triangle indicates other incoming edges not shown. For complex diagrams,
it is often best to walk around in focused view centered on each statement in turn.

TruthSift is a platform for diagramming this process and applying it to any statements members care to propose to establish or refute. One may state a topic and add a proof tree for it, which is drawn as a diagram with every step and connection explicit. Members may state a demonstration of some conclusion they want to prove, building from some statements they assert are self-evident or that reference some authority they think trustworthy, and then building useful intermediate results that rationally follow from the assumptions, and building on until reaching the stated conclusion. If somebody thinks they find a hole in a proof at any step, or thinks one of the original assumptions need further proof, they can challenge it, explaining the problem they see. Then the writer of the proof (or others if its in collaboration mode) may edit the proof to fix the problem, or make clearer the explanation if they feel the challenger was simply mistaken, and may counter-challenge the challenge explaining that it had been resolved or mistaken. This can go on recursively, with someone pointing out a hole in the proof used by the counter-challenger that the challenge was invalid. On TruthSift the whole argument is laid out graphically and essentially block-chained, which should prevent the kind of edit-wars that happen for controversial topics on Wikipedia. Each challenge or post should state a novel reason, and when the rational arguments are exhausted, as in mathematics, what remains is either a proof of the conclusion or a refutation of it or all of its proofs.

As statements are added to a diagram, TruthSift keeps track of what is established and what refuted, drawing established statements’ borders and their outgoing connectors thick, and refuted statements’ borders and their outgoing connectors thin so viewers can instantly tell what is currently established and what refuted. TruthSift computes this by a simple algorithm that starts at statements with no incoming assumptions, challenges, or proofs, which are thus unchallenged as assertions that prove themselves, are self evident, or appeal to an authority everybody trusts. These are considered established. Then it walks up the diagram rating statements after all their parents have been rated. A statement will be established if all its assumptions are, none of its challenges are, and if it has proofs, at least one is established. (We support challenges requesting a proof be added to a statement which neither has one added nor adequately proves itself.) Otherwise, that is if a statement has an established challenge, or has refuted assumptions, or all of its proofs are refuted, it is refuted.

To understand why a statement is established or refuted, center focus on it, so that you see it and its parents in the diagram. If it is refuted, either there is an established challenge of it, or one of its assumptions is refuted, or all of its proofs are. If it is not refuted, it is established. Work your way backward up the diagram, centering on each statement in turn, and examine the reasons why it is established or refuted.

Fig 3: An example topic.

Effective contribution to TruthSift diagrams involves mental effort. This is both a hurdle and a feature. TruthSift teaches Critical Thinking. First you think about your Topic Statement. How actually should you specify Vaccine Safety or Climate Change, so it covers what you want to establish or refute, and so it is amenable to rational discussion? There is no place you could go to see that well specified now, and can you properly assure it without properly specifying it? Next you think about the arguments for your topic statement, and those against it, and those against the arguments for, and those for the arguments for, and the arguments against the arguments against, and so on until everybody runs out of arguments, when what is left is a concise rational analysis of what is established and why. The debate is settled point by point. The process naturally subdivides the field into sub-topics where different expertise’s come into play, promoting true collective wisdom and understanding.

For TruthSift to work properly, posters will have to respect the guidelines and post only proof or challenge statements that they believe rationally prove or refute their target and are novel to the diagram (or also novel additional evidence as assumptions or remarks or tests, which are alternative connector types). Posts violating the guidelines may be flagged and removed, and consistent violators as well. Posts don’t have to be correct, that’s what challenges are for, but they have to be honest attempts, not spam or ad hominem attacks. Don’t get hung up on whether a statement should be added as a proof or an assumption of another. Frequently you want to assemble arguments for a proposition stating something like “the preponderance of the evidence indicates X”, and these arguments are not individually necessary for X, nor are they individually proofs of X. It is safe to simply add them as proofs. They are not necessary assumptions, and if not enough of them are established, the target may be challenged on that basis. The goal is a diagram that transparently explains a proof and what is wrong with all the objections people have found plausible.

For cases where members disagree on underlying assumptions or basic principles, stipulation is available. If one or more statements are stipulated, statements are shown as conditionally true if established based on the stipulations and as conditionally false if refuted based on the stipulations. The challenges to the stipulation are also shown. TruthSift supports reasoning from different fundamental assumptions, but requires being explicit about it when challenged.
Probability mode supports the intuitive construction of probabilistic models, and evaluates the probability of each statement in the topic marginalizing over all the parameters in the topic. With a little practice these allow folding in various connections and evidence. These could be used for collaborative, verified, risk models; to support proofs with additional confidence tests; to reason about hidden causes; or many other novel applications

Fig 4: Detail from a topic showing an established conclusion some may find surprising. Please
Rebut it if you can. Dashed edges represent citation into the literature. Title is shown for each
statement, on actual topic select “View Statement” to see body.

Basic Membership is free. In addition to public diagrams, debating the big public issues, private diagrams are available for personal or organizational planning or to exclude noise from your debate. Private diagrams have editing and/or viewing by invitation only. Come try it. http://TruthSift.com

TruthSift’s mission is to enable publication of a transparent exposition of human knowledge, so that anyone may readily determine what is truth and what fiction, what can be established by valid Demonstration and what can’t, and so that anyone can read and understand that Demonstration.
We intend the process of creating this exposition to lead to vastly increased understanding and improved critical thinking skills amongst our members and beyond. We hope to support collaborative human intelligences greater than any intelligence previously achieved on the planet, both in the public domain and for members’ private use.

And please, I’d love feedback or questions. [email protected]

1. Richard P Feynman, What is Science? (1968) http://www-oc.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/diaz/img_diaz/feynman…nce_68.pdf
2. Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies, Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States (1978)
http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/7805.pdf
3. Jeannette Ezzo, Barker Bausell, Daniel E. Moerman, Brian Berman and Victoria Hadhazy (2001). REVIEWING THE REVIEWS . International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 17, pp 457–466. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag…aid=101041
4. John S Garrow BMJ. 2007 Nov 10; 335(7627): 951.doi:10.1136/bmj.39388.393970.1F PMCID: PMC2071976
What to do about CAM?: How much of orthodox medicine is evidence based?
http://www.dcscience.net/garrow-evidence-bmj.pdf
5. S. A. Greenberg, “How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network”, BMJ 2009;339:b2680
http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2680
6. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, (1895), (1995) Transaction Publishers New Edition Edition
7. S Attkisson, “Astroturf and manipulation of media messages”, TEDx University of Nevada, (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU
8. Adam M. Wilson , Gene E. Likens, Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134454 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134454
9. Kiira Siitari, Jim Martin & William W. Taylor (2014) Information Flow in Fisheries Management: Systemic Distortion within Agency Hierarchies, Fisheries, 39:6, 246–250, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03632415.2014.915814

The reason so many rational people put forward hypotheses that are more hype than high tech, Shermer says, is that being smart and educated doesn’t protect anyone from believing in “weird things.” In fact, sometimes smart and educated people are better at rationalizing beliefs that they hold for not-so-rational reasons. The smarter and more educated you are, the better able you are to find evidence to support what you want to be true, suggests Shermer.

“This explains why Nobel Prize winners speak about areas they know nothing about with great confidence and are sure that they’re right. Just because they have this great confidence of being able to do that (is) a reminder that they’re more like lawyers than scientists in trying to marshal a case for their client,” Shermer said. “(Lawyers) just put together the evidence, as much as you can, in support of your client and get rid of the negative evidence. In science you’re not allowed to do that, you’re supposed to look at all the evidence, including the counter evidence to your theory.”

The root of many of these false hypotheses, Shermer believes, is based in religion. Using immortality as an example, Shermer said the desire to live forever has strong parallels to religious beliefs; however, while there are many making prophecies that technology will insure we’ll live forever, too many people in groups throughout history have made similar yet unfulfilled promises.

“What we’d like to be true is not necessarily what is true, so the burden of proof is on them to go ahead and make the case. Like the cryonics people…they make certain claims that this or that technology is going to revive people that are frozen later…I hope they do it, but you’ve got to prove otherwise. You have to show that you can actually do that.”

Even if we do find a way to live forever, Shermer notes the negatives may outweigh the positives. It’s not just living longer that we want to achieve, but living longer at a high quality of life. There’s not much benefit in living to age 150, he adds, if one is bedridden for 20 or 30 years.

Instead, Shermer compares the process to the evolution of the automobile. While the flying cars promised by 1950’s-era futurists haven’t come to pass, today’s automobile is exponentially smarter and safer than those made 50 or 60 years ago. While forward thinkers have had moments of lucid foresight, humans also have a history of making technology predictions that often don’t turn out to be realized. Often, as is the case with the automobile, we don’t notice differences in technological changes because the changes happen incrementally each year.

“That’s what’s really happening with health and longevity. We’re just creeping up the ladder slowly but surely. We’ve seen hip replacements, organ transplants, better nutrition, exercise, and getting a better feel for what it takes to be healthy,” Shermer says. “The idea that we’re gonna’ have one big giant discovery made that’s going to change everything? I think that’s less likely than just small incremental things. A Utopian (society) where everybody gets to live forever and they’re infinitely happy and prosperous and so on? I think it’s unrealistic to think along those lines.”

Looking at the future of technology, Shermer is equally reticent to buy in to the predictions of artificial intelligence taking over the world. “I think the concern about AI turning evil (and) this dystopian, science fiction perspective is again, not really grounded in reality. I’m an AI optimist, but I don’t think the AI pessimists have any good arguments,” Shermer said

While we know, for the most part, which types of governments work well, we don’t have any similar precedent for complex AI systems. Humans will remain in control and, before we start passing laws and restrictions to curb AI out of fear, Shermer believes we should keep improving our computers and artificial intelligence to make life better, evaluating and taking action as these systems continue to evolve.

Why the LHC must be shut down

After nearly six months of relative quiet, our parent star, the sun, awoke.  Recent predictions from leading solar scientists ranged from “cycle 24 will be our weakest yet” to “cycle 24 is quiet now, because it will be double peaked.”  It appears that the latter is emerging as the clearer truth.

Over the course of a week, between October 24^th and 31^st, more than 28 substantial flares fired off from the sun. Several of the more recent flares sent massive clouds of ionized particulate matter, called coronal mass ejections, toward Earth.

Four of the recent flares were X-class solar flares, the strongest on the scale, erupting from the photosphere of the sun, causing minor radio blackouts, and sending coronal mass ejections in many different directions, including toward Earth.

Unfortunately, due to the recent US government shutdown, the suite of tools generally available to the public for space weather prediction were offline. As of November 2^nd, there remains a backlog of missing data for several sets of publically available apps and internet resources for space weather prediction and observation.

This period of excited solar activity comes of the heals of recently published science that revealed no discernable connection between the planetary rotation period of Jupiter (11.87 years) and the length of solar cycles (variable between 9 and 12 years). This may sound intuitively obvious, but holdouts from several corners of the scientific world have sought to ascribe significance to the similarities between both cycles. Some claimed that the much less massive Jupiter somehow caused solar dynamic activity.

Published analyses of radioactive isotopes of beryllium and carbon in 10,000 year-old ice core samples recently dismissed the similarities between both periods as being consistent with chance and statistically insignificant.  This leaves open the possibility that the solar dynamo is indeed self-excited, in a process whose predictive models are still being tested and perfected, called the meridional flow.

Meridional flow moves solar material just beneath the apparent subsurface of the sun (called the photosphere).  Models for the meridional flow have proven difficult to hammer down with predictive certainty, but NASA’s Dr. David Hathaway and a number of other leading solar scientists are moving closer to understanding the dynamic forces that drive the activity of our parent star.

Radar imagery from SDO, taken every 45 seconds over the past two years, was recently analyzed as well. The results of that analysis revealed that the current models, which predict the rate of meridional flow are off by at least half. In short, the conveyor belt-like process of plasma that returns material to the photosphere of the sun moves more quickly than originally theorized. This misunderstanding might have contributed to the lower than normal forecast for solar cycle 24. Time will tell if the sun is truly tapering off its maximum output for this cycle, or if more activity is coming Earth’s way.

The NASA/ESA heliophysics fleet currently observing the sun is comprised of nearly twenty spacecraft in various orbits measuring not only our star, but the interstellar space between it and Earth as well as the intricate space weather system that interacts constantly with our planet.

One of the most exciting moments in solar sciences comes when an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection collides with the Earth’s magnetic field to the degree of causing a geomagnetic storm.  The Earth’s magnetic field is fully capable of protecting our planet from the occasional glancing blow from the sun; however, strong clouds of magnetized plasma can often find their way into Earth’s atmosphere, causing minor interference with electrical grids as well as the constellation of GPS satellites.

The Carrington Event of 1859 and the Manitoba Blackout of 1989, revealed that the Earth is indeed vulnerable to space weather events.  There have been calls, falling largely upon the deaf ears of US legislators, that want the electrical grid of the United States to be fully retrofitted with radiation hardened components that could handle the surges associated with geomagnetic storms.  The problem will not go away and unlike global warming and other self-destructive, human propagated phenomena, there is little we can due to curtail such activity, other than being aware and prepared.

As the number of active regions on the apparent surface of the sun increase, we are likely to experience more geo-effective activity in the coming weeks and months.  The phase of the solar cycle remains high and will gently curtail overall activity as solar maximum wanes into the lull of solar minimum.

For solar science enthusiasts, including this writer, this period of solar activity is an ideal time to better understand the dynamic interactions that the sun has with Earth.  It is only in the last 10 to 15 years that we’ve understood our parent star to be a dynamic system, not as predictable as we’d assumed it to be in the nearly 400 years of solar science observations.

Deepening the scientific understanding about our parent star is as much about protecting Earth, as it is about examining the interconnected nature of the Earth-Sun space weather system. It behooves all of humanity to keep apprised of this connection as we establish new laws and more accurately understand our extended natural environment.

“…and on the third day he rose again…”

If we approach the subject from a non theist point of view, what we have is a re-boot. A restore of a previously working “system image”. Can we restore a person to  the last known working state prior to system failure?

As our Biological (analog) life get’s more entwined with the Digital world we have created, chances are, there might be options worth exploring. It all comes down to “Sampling” — taking snapshots of our analog lives and storing them digitally. Today, with reasonable precision we can sample, store and re-create most of our primary senses, digitally. Sight via cameras, sound via microphones, touch via haptics and even scents can be sampled and/or synthesized with remarkable accuracy.

Life as Routines, Sub-routines and Libraries:

In the story “Memories with Maya”, Krish the AI researcher put forward in simple language, some of his theories to the main character, Dan:

“Humans are creatures of habit,” he said. “We live our lives following the same routine day after day. We do the things we do with one primary motivation–comfort.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “What about random acts. Haven’t you done something crazy or on impulse?”
“Even randomness is within a set of parameters; thresholds,” he said.

If we look at it, the average person’s week can be broken down to typical activities per day and a branch out for the weekend. The day can be further broken down into time-of-day routines. Essentially, what we have are sub-routines, routines and libraries that are run in an infinite loop, until wear and tear on mechanical parts leads to sector failures. Viruses also thrown into the mix for good measure.

Remember: we are looking at the typical lives of a good section of society — those who have resigned their minds to accepting life as it comes, satisfied in being able to afford creature comforts every once in a while. We aren’t looking at the outliers — the Einsteins, the Jobs the Mozarts. This is ironic, in that, it would be easier to back-up, restore, and resurrect the average person than it would be to do the same for outliers.

Digital Breadcrumbs — The clues we leave behind.

What exactly does social media sites mean by “What’s on your mind?” — Is it an invitation to digitize our Emotions, our thoughts, our experiences via words, pictures, sounds and videos? Every minute, Gigabytes (a conservative estimate) of analog life is being digitized and uploaded to the metaphoric “Cloud” — a rich mineral resource, ripe for data mining by “deeplearning” systems. At some point in the near future, would AI combined with technologies such as Quantum Archeology, Augmented Reality and Nano-tech, allow us to run our brains (minds?) on a substrate independent platform?

If that proposition turns your geek on, here’s some ways that you can live out a modern day version of Hansel and Gretel, insuring you find your way home,  by leaving as many digital bread crumbs as you can via:

Mind Files — Terasem and Lifenaut:

What is the LifeNaut Project?

The long-term goal is to test whether given a comprehensive database, saturated with the most relevant aspects of an individual’s personality, future intelligent software will be able to replicate an individual’s consciousness. So, perhaps in the next 20 or 30 years technology will be developed to upload these files, together with futuristic software into a body of some sort – perhaps cellular, perhaps holographic, perhaps robotic. LifeNaut.com is funded by the Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc.

 The LifeNaut Project is organized as a research experiment designed to test these hypotheses: 

(1) a conscious analog of a person may be created by combining sufficiently detailed data about the person (“mindfile & biofile”) using future consciousness software (“mindware”), and

(2) such a conscious analog may be downloaded into a biological or nanotechnological body to provide life experiences comparable to those of a typically birthed human.

Sign-up and start creating your MindFile today.

Voice Banking:

Read about Voice Banking, Speech Reconstruction and how natural human voice can be preserved and re-constructed. Voice banking might help even in cases when there is no BSOD scenario involved.

Roger Ebert, noted film critic got his “natural” voice back, using such technology.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/prosthetics/rogerebertvoicetech

Hear Obama’s voice re-constructed: http://www.cereproc.com/en/products/voices

Full Body Performance Capture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feNxdWPSuWI

Without us even knowing it, we are Transhumans at heart. Owners of the gaming console Xbox and the Kinect, have at their disposal, hardware that until just a couple of years ago, was only within reach of large corporations and Hollywood studios. Motion Capture, Laser scanning, full body 3D models and performance capture was not accessible to lay-people.

Today, this technology can contribute toward backup and Digital resurrection. A performance capture session can encode digitally, the essence of a persons gait, the way they walk, pout, and express themselves — A person’s unique Digital Signature. The next video shows this.

“It was easy to create a frame for him, Dan,” he said. “In the time that the cancer was eating away at him, the day’s routine became more predictable.

At first he would still go to work, then come home and spend time with us. Then he couldn’t go anymore and he was at home all day.

I knew his routine so well it took me 15 minutes to feed it in. There was no need for any random branches.”

A performance capture file, could also be stored as part of a MindFile. LifeNaut and other cryonic service providers could benefit from such invaluable data when re-booting a person.

“And sometimes when we touch”:

Perhaps one of the most difficult of our senses to recreate, is that of touch. Science is already making giant strides in this area, and looking at it from a more human perspective, touch is one of the more direct and cherished sensations that defines humanity. Touch can convey emotion.

…That’s the point of this kind of technology – giving people their humanity back. You could argue that a person is no less of a human after losing a limb, but those who suffer through it would likely tell you that there is a feeling of loss. Getting that back may be physically gratifying, but it’s probably even more psychologically gratifying… — Nigel Ackland- on his bebionic arm.

If a person’s unique “touch” signature can be digitized, every nuance can be forever preserved…both for the benefit of the owner of the file, and to their loved ones, experiencing and remembering shared intimate moments.

They don’t call it fatal for nothing. Infatuation with the fat of fate, duty to destiny, and belief in any sort of preordainity whatsoever – omnipotent deities notwithstanding – constitutes an increase in Existential Risk, albeit indirectly. If we think that events have been predetermined, it follows that we would think that our actions make no difference in the long run and that we have no control over the shape of those futures still fetal. This scales to the perceived ineffectiveness of combating or seeking to mitigate existential risk for those who have believe so fatalistically. Thus to combat belief in fate, and resultant disillusionment in our ability to wreak roiling revisement upon the whorl of the world, is to combat existential risk as well.

It also works to undermine the perceived effectiveness of humanity’s ability to mitigate existential risk along another avenue. Belief in fate usually correlates with the notion that the nature of events is ordered with a reason on purpose in mind, as opposed to being haphazard and lacking a specific projected end. Thus believers-in-fate are not only more likely to doubt the credibility of claims that existential risk could even occur (reasoning that if events have purpose, utility and conform to a mindfully-created order then they would be good things more often than bad things) but also to feel that if they were to occur it would be for a greater underlying reason or purpose.

Thus, belief in fate indirectly increases existential risk both a. by undermining the perceived effectiveness of attempts to mitigate existential risk, deriving from the perceived ineffectiveness of humanity’s ability to shape the course and nature of events and effect change in the world in general, and b. by undermining the perceived likelihood of any existential risks culminating in humanity’s extinction, stemming from connotations of order and purpose associated with fate.

Belief in fate is not only self-curtailing, but also dehumanizing insofar as it stops us from changing, affecting and actualizing the world and causes us think that we can have no impact on the course of events or control over circumstantial circumstances. This anecdotal point is rather ironic considering that Anti-Transhumanists often launch the charge that trying to take fate into our own hands is itself dehumanizing. They’re heading in an ass-forward direction.

While belief in predetermination-of-events is often associated with religion, most often with those who hold their deity to be omnipotent (as in the Abrahamic religious tradition), it can also be easily engendered by the association of scientific materialism (or metaphysical naturalism) with determinism and its connotations of alienation and seeming dehumanization. Memetic connotations of preordainity or predetermination, whether stemming from either religion or scientific-materialism, serve to undermine our perceived autonomy and our perceived ability to enact changes in the world. We must let neither curtail our perceived potential to change the world, both because the thrust towards self-determination and changing the world for the better is the heart of humanity and because perceived ineffectiveness at facilitating change in the world correlates with an indirect increase in existential risk by promoting the perceived ineffectiveness of humanity to shape events so as to mitigate such risks.

Having presented the reasoning behind the claim that belief in fate constitutes an indirect increase in existential risk, the rest of this essay will be concerned with a.) the extent with which ideas can be considered as real as physical entities, processes or “states-of-affairs”, namely for their ability to affect change and determine the nature and circumstance of such physical entities and processes, b.) a few broader charges against fate in general, and c.) possible ideohistorical sources of contemporary belief in fate.

The Ousting of Ousia:

Giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel,
That goddess blind, That stands upon
the rolling restless stone.
Henry V, 3.3.27), Pistol to Fluellen — Shakespeare

Ethereal beliefs can have material consequences. We intuitively feel that ideas can have less of an impact on the world for their seeming incorporeality. This may be a but specter of Aristotle’s decision to ground essence in Ousia, or Substance, and the resultant emphasis throughout the following philo-socio-historical development of the Western World on staticity and unchanging materiality as the platform for Truth and Being (i.e. essence) that it arguably promoted. Indeed, the Scholastic Tradition in medieval Europe tried to reconcile their theological system with Aristotle’s philosophic tradition more than any other. But while Aristotle’s emphasis on grounding being in ousia is predominant, Aristotle also has his Telos, working though the distance of time to impart shape and meaning upon the action of the present. Indeed, we do things for a purpose; the concerted actions contributing to my writing these words are not determined in stepwise fashion and inherent in the parts, but with the end goal of communicating and idea to people shaping and to a large extent determining the parts and present actions that proceed along the way to that projected ideal. Aristotle was presumably no stranger to the limitations of parts, as his metaphysical system can be seen in large part as a reaction against Plato’s.

One will do well to recall as well that Plato grounded the eternality of being not in sod but in sky. Plato’s Ideal Forms were eternal because they were to be found nowhere in physicality, in contrast to Aristotle’s Ousia, which were eternal and lasting for being material rather than ethereal. Plato’s lofty realm of Ideas were realer than reality for being locatable nowhere therein, save as mere approximation. And while Plato’s conceptual gestalt did indeed gestate throughout certain periods of history, including Neo-Platonism, Idealism, Transcendentalism and Process Philosophy, one can argue that the notion of the reality of ideas failed to impact popular attitudes of fate, destiny and predeterminism to the extent with which Aristotle’s notion of Ousia did.

The Ideal Real or the Real Ideal?

My stars shine darkly over me:
the malignancy of my fate might
perhaps distemper yours.
(Twelfth Night, 2.1.3), Sebastian to Antonio) — Shakespeare

I’ve thus far argued that Artistotle’s notion of Ousia as the grounds for Truth and Essence has promoted the infatuation with fate that seems pretty predominant throughout history, and that Plato’s Ideal Forms have deterred such physics-fat infatuation by emphasizing the reality of ideas, and thereby vicariously promoting the notion that ideas can have as large an impact on reality as substance and real action does.

If we act as though God is watching, are not all the emergent effects (on us) of his existence, which would have been caused were he actually there watching in some sense, instantiated nonetheless or with any less vehemence than if he were not watching? If a tribe refrains from entering a local area for fear of legends about a monster situated there, are they not as controlled and affected by that belief as they would be if such a monster actually existed? The idea of the monster is as real as otherwise because the tribesmen avoid it, just as though it were real. These examples serve to illustrate the point that ideas can be as real as real states-of-affairs because by believing in their reality we can consequently instantiate all the emergent effects that would have been present were such an idea a real “state-of-affairs”.

This notion has the potential to combat the sedentizing effects that belief in fate and destiny can engender because it allows us to see not only our ideas, with which we can affect circumstances and effect changes in the world, can have material impact on the world, and to see that objectives projected into the future can have a decided impact on circumstances in the present insofar as we shape the circumstances of the present in response to that anticipated, projected objective. We do things for projected purposes which shall not exist until the actions carried out under the egis of satisfying that purpose are, indeed, carried out. It doesn’t exist until we make it exist, and we must believe that it shall exist in order to facilitate the process of its creation. This reifies the various possible futures still waiting to be actualized, and legitimizes the reality of such possible futures. Thus Plato’s ideo-embryo of Ideal Forms constitutes a liberating potential not only for making ideas (through which we shape the world) real, but also by reifying Telos and the anticipated ends and fetal futures through which we can enact the translation of such ideas into physical embodiment.

Yet Plato is not completely free of the blame for solidifying lame fate in the eyes of the world. The very eternality of his Forms at once serves to reify fate and promote public acceptance of it as well! Plato’s forms are timeless, changeless. What is time but a loosening of the strings on fortune’s sling? What is eternality but destiny determined and the fine print writ large? While Plato’s firm forms vilify fate they also valorize it by sharing with it memetic connotations of timelessness and changelessness.

So damn you Plato for spaciating time rather than temporalizing space, for making the ideal a form rather than a from and eternal rather than eturnatal, for urning where you should have turned and for grounding the ideal rather that aerating it as you should have. And damn you Aristotle — phlegmy future-forward blowback and simmerred reaction against Ur philosophic father — but a batch of Play-Doh bygone hardy and fissury — for totalizing in ontic aplomb the base base and bawdy body and for siding with ousia rather than insiding within nousia. Your petty chasm has infected the vector of our memetic trajectory with such damnbivalent gravity as to arrest our escapee velocity and hold us fast against the slow down and still to wall the wellness of our will. Your preplundurance with stuff has made your ideational kin seek suchness and understanding in what overlies the series of surfaces all the way down, without any gno of flow or recourse to the coursing middle that shifts its center and lifts its tangentail besides. Aristotle the Ptolemaic totalizer of cosmography by curation rather than creation, each moment a museum to be ripped asunder its supple matrix maternal and molested with scientific rigor-mortis in quiet dustless rooms. Being is but the jail-louse diminutive bastard-kid-brother of Becoming, which Heraclitus in his dark light saw and which Parmenides despite getting more limelight did not. But again, even Aristotle had his retro-causal final causes — the Telos televisualized…

Was Aristotle aristotally wrong, or did he just miss a right turn down the li(n)e?

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. (Hamlet, 3.2.208), Player King — Shakespeare

Then again (…again?), Aristotle may not be as culpable as he was capable. While I argue that his notion of Ousia had predominantly reifying effects on people’s notions of the existence of fate and the irreality of ideas, thereby undermining our perceived ability to determine the conditions of our selves and the world in particular, this may have been a consequence of promiscuous misinterpretation rather than underlying motivation. Aristotle is often allied with Parmenides for deifying Being over the Becoming of Heraclitus, but Aristotle’s notion of Ousia, when considered in contrast to the Plato’s Forms (which it can be seen as a reaction against) may actually bear more similarities with Becoming-as-Being al a Heraclitus than with Being-as-Sole-Being al a Parmenides.

Plato’s Forms may have for Aristotle epitomized resolute eternality and unyielding predetermination. Indeed, essence connotes immateriality, idealism, and possibility; an airyness very easy to conflate with becoming or idealism by various semiotic channels, but for Plato essence – which he locates in his Ideal Forms — was almost antithetical to such attributes: a type of being, eternal and changeless. Aristiotle’s Being or Ousia, however, grounds Truth and Essence in the parted parts, the particulate particular and the singular segment. His Ousia may have been an attempt, in reaction against the unmoving Forms of Plato, to ground truth in the diverse, the particular and the idiosyncratic rather than the airy eternal and skybound ground unflinching. Aristotle’s Ousia then may be more correlative to Becoming-as-Being in the sense in which Heraclitus meant it, and in accordance with the notion’s potential to reify the existence, value/dignity and effectiveness of our autonomy, individuality, and difference. Indeed, the reification of these ideals, threatened by any notions framing essence as changeless, may have been Aristotle’s main gain and underlying motivation.

This brief foray into the semiotic jungles of transhistorical memetics and the ways in which notions formulated in Ancient Greece may have fermented throughout history to help form and shape our attitudes toward fate, destiny, predeterminism, and thereby our ability to affect changes in the world — and to cast away the slings and clutched crutches of fate — serves to illustrate, in a self-reflective fit of meta, how notions wholly immaterial can still matter insofar as they shape our contemporary beliefs, desires, attitudes and ideals. The two notions briefly considered here, of Plato’s Ideal Forms and Aristotle’s Ousia, have been considered in regard to the extent with which they shape contemporary belief in fate and predestination.

Conclusion: Inconclusivity is Key

My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve. (Hamlet, 1.4.91), Hamlet — Shakespeare

Indeed, infatuation with fate constitutes an increase in Existential risk by undermining the extent with which we perceive our usefulness and effectiveness in combatting Existential Risks in general, as well as by undermining the perceived likelihood of such existential risks causing serious harm and death or culminating in the extinction of humanity.

Belief in destiny is also dehumanizing and alienating. The only determinism fit for Man is self-determination, the self not in-and-of itself but within-and-for itself. The deterministic connotations inextricably associated with fate, destiny and preordainity are dehumanizing and epitomize the very antithesis of what constitutes humanity as such.

Combatting the dehumanizing and disenfranchising connotations of determinism is also imperative to increasing the public appeal of Transhumanism. It is easy to associate such connotations with technology, through an association of technology with determinism (in regards to both function and aesthetic), and since technology is very much emphasized in Transhumanism, one could even say is central to Transhumanism, this should impel us to re-legitimatize and to explicate the enchanting, mysterious, and wonder-full aspects of technology inherent in Transhumanist thinking and discourse. Technology is our platform for increased self-determination, self-realization and self-liberation. We can do the yet-to-be-possible with technology, and so technology should rightly be associated with the yet-to-be-determined, with the determinedly indeterminatal, the mysterious, the enchanting, and the awe-some. While its use as a tool of disenfranchisement and control is not impossible or nonexistent, its liberating, empowering and enchantment-instilling potentialities shouldn’t be overly undermined, or worse wholly ignored, as a result.

Whether in the form of determinism grounded in scientific materialism, or in the lofty letharge of an omnipotent god with a dogged determination to fix destiny in unflinching resolve, belief in fate increases existential risk by decreasing our perceived ability to effect affects in the world and make changes to the shape of our circumstance, as well as decreasing the perceived likelihood of a source of existential risk culminating in humanity’s extinction.

If all is fixedly viced then where lie room to revise?

I see the problem as one of self similarity; trying to go cheap being the downfall of all these schemes to work around human physiology.

When I first became interested in space travel several years ago I would comment on a couple blogs and find myself constantly arguing with private space proponents- and saying over and over again, “there is no cheap.” I was finally excommunicated from that bunch and banned from posting. They would start calling me an idiot and other insults and when I tried to return the favor the moderator would block my replies. The person who runs those two sites works for a firm promoting space tourism- go figure.

The problem is that while the aerospace industry made some money off the space program as an outgrowth of the military industrial complex, it soon became clear that spaceships are hard money- they have to work. The example of this is the outrage over the Apollo 1 fire and subsequent oversight of contractors- a practice which disappeared after Apollo and resulted in the Space Shuttle being such a poor design. A portion of the shuttle development money reportedly went under the table into the B-1 bomber program; how much we will never know. Swing wings are not easy to build which is why you do not see it anymore; cuts into profits.

The easy money of cold war toys has since defeated any move by industry to take up the cause of space exploration. No easy money in spaceships. People who want something for nothing rarely end up with anything worth anything. Trying to find cheap ways around furnishing explorers with the physcial conditions human beings evolved in is going to fail. On the other hand if we start with a baseline of one gravity and Earth level radiation we are bound to succeed.

The engineering solutions to this baseline requirement are as I have already detailed; a tether for gravity and a massive moonwater shield with bomb propulsion. That is EXACTLY how to do it and I do not see any one else offering anything else that will work- just waffling and spewing about R&D.
We have been doing R&D for over half a century. It is a reason to go that is supposedly lacking.

When that crater in Mexico was discovered in 1980 the cold war was reaching it’s crescendo and the massive extinction it caused was overshadowed by the threat of nuclear weapons. Impact defense is still the only path to all that DOD money for a Moon base.