Tit-Bits

Tit-Bits was the name of an immensely popular English magazine invented and published by an upstart Canadian business genius named Max Aitken, who later went on to become, as Lord Beaverbrook, one of the richest men in England, and possibly the most powerful man of his time outside of government. He led a long and interesting life in the public eye, was friends at arms length with Winston Churchill, indeed with everybody who was anybody during the two world wars.

Lord Beaverbrook, a Baron actually, and his pal Winston Churchill, former First Lord of the Admiralty and, at the time of this photo, Prime Minister. Churchill recruited Beaverbrook to be Aircraft Production Minister in the early War Cabinet. His organization of the aircraft industry to maximize production was crucial in winning the Battle of Britain. Aitken was a genius at cutting red tape.

 I have a couple of Tit-Bits for you.

The first is a definition of the term Scientific Theory

A comprehensive scientific explanation of a phenomenon that takes into account all observed data and allows accurate predictions to be made based on its principles.

The word theory has another meaning, The other meaning of the word is:

A speculative explanation of an unknown event or phenomenon.

The two words are not interchangeable, although there are those in public life who would like us to think so, and who also refuse to acknowledge the difference.

They get away with it because of a growing plague in modern American culture, although it did not originate here, merely finding in American public life a veritable hot Petri dish of favorable nourishment. 

The term for it is this: Cognitive relativism.

The philosophic school of thought that says one idea is of no more value than another regardless of their correspondence with facts.That there is no objective truth and that a lie, that is to say, an untrue statement that does not correspond to the facts, is equal to a statement of those facts.

This mess is based on another weird thing, knowledge as a function of belief. That I "feel" a certain thing to be true, regardless of any objective demonstration of fact, and that "feeling of truth" comes from a set of beliefs that are not themselves subject to any proof. Such beliefs, a form of magical thinking come from, all too predictably often, religion in its stupidest most destructive form.

The stupid part is that you can't talk to these idiots, that your English language is not their English language, just like the Red Queen, and that the rules of logical thought that produce, for example, an accurate assessment of the distance from my clenched fist to your ignorant nose, based on visual perspective and knowledge of the basic principles of physics, is equal to the notion that if you fold your hands a certain way and say certain words in a certain peculiar tone of voice to an imaginary being that your ignorant nose will not, in fact, be broken immediately with accompanying blood loss and the sound of breaking bones by the rapidly moving mass of that clenched fist. Or the 9 grams of hollow point copper jacketed lead projectile from this Colt 44Magnum.

So the question becomes, in the words of Dirty Harry Callahan, "Are you feeling lucky?"

This is the ultimate confrontation between scientific theory and cognitive relativism. Truly delusional is the relativist willing to stake life and limb on the validity of a feeling derived from unproven belief in confrontation with the physical truth of a very large and extremely destructive projectile based on the scientific observation of that 44 Magnum's enormous black deadly cannon mouth coupled with a basic working knowledge of the laws of the conservation of energy. Science tends to come out on top. Statistically, that is.
There are two sad ironies that come from this. Among the relativists it is considered particularly chic to provoke this kind of confrontation. OK, fine by me. Less ass-hats to deal with.
The other, more offensive and to me particularly disturbing irony is that a certain type of relativist is working like a nasty pus-infected little beaver to make it the law of the land that their twisted and self-serving beliefs in the supernatural are legally superior to knowledge of demonstrable truth.
Hell no.