This is part two of highly personal explanation of the way I think about things. The scientific method …
Of which this is just an amateur version. The scientific method would require a whole different blog. But I don’t pretend to have scientific discipline here. My goal is only to get closer to the truth. Science has similar, but different goals.
… will help anybody get closer to the truth if they have the mental discipline to stick with it and not get distracted by emotional interference. It’s difficult, but I believe it’s possible. The word “personal” means that it’s my method and whether you decide it makes sense for you is completely up to you. As an example of what I mean, here’s another story.
The Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, visited Utah several decades ago. After a fairly long speech – that I thought was interesting and even inspiring – he finished up with something I have remembered for decades now:
If I have said anything that helps you in your life, then I am glad. But if not, then please just disregard it.
That perfectly encapsulates the way I feel about these blogs.
This is part two because I have already published part one here: On the Love of Nature. The title is misleading because the real subject is about “values” – how people make the fundamental decisions in their own life. You have to know what you value and why you have those values before you can even decide what to go after.
My first rule for finding truth: I Don’t Know!
I don’t have a book of rules like, “Eat fish on Friday!” or “Women have to cover their face in public.” One of my favorite rules to ignore:
3 Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
4 thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me;
That first rule in the “Ten Commandments” is responsible for untold war and blood in the millenniums since it was first formulated. There are still places in the world where it can get you killed. But in their infinite wisdom, the Utah Legislature is now (February 2024) considering a law to insert this rule into Utah schools. I’m not saying that it should be excluded from schools. As Utah legislators argue, it’s a real part of history. But they want to put it front and center in schools – like a rule!
Most people think they do “know”. Being unalterably and absolutely convinced that you’re right and everybody else is wrong is the first step down a slippery slope to being wrong yourself. You must be willing to question everything and especially your own most deeply held convictions. They’re not truth. They’re just values. There is nothing wrong with having values and I don’t think it would be possible to live life without them. But one of my favorite quotes is from British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell[1], “The ultimate conceit is to believe that your own petty prejudices constitute the ultimate laws of the universe.”
Here’s a true story from science.
For centuries before the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887), scientists assumed that the universe was filled with something called “luminiferous aether” that was necessary for the transmission of light. They simply could not imagine a different way that light could travel throughout the universe.[2] It wasn’t until the next century that Albert Einstein provided a better explanation.
Today, I have always thought that the reigning scientific theories of “dark matter” and “dark energy” are incorrect and/or incomplete theories to make up for a similar lack of a better explanation for otherwise unexplainable measurements of the expansion of the universe. There is absolutely no physical evidence for dark matter or dark energy. I’ve suggested that these theories be called, “I don’t know problem 1” and “I don’t know problem 2” to avoid confusing people with a convenient explanation that will have to be discarded later. I’ve debated this idea (from the audience – a difficult way to get your point across) with distinguished scientists in public lectures. Scientists can be just as unreasonable about their own values as anybody else. This is why “the scientific method[3]” is the traditional way they avoid being wrong. “Traditional”, but difficult and tedious.
I explain in On the Love of Nature, the very concepts of “good” and “evil” are simply names for values. I’m on the side of “good”. I think that both Hitler and Trump are the very faces of “evil”, but I always reserve the possibility that I could be wrong.
One person’s “good” is another person’s “evil”. Just ask the Utah State legislature.
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[1] I read this too many decades ago and I don’t remember where. But I have always believed that it was part of Russell’s extensive writing.
[2] Christiaan Huygens’s Treatise on Light (1690). See also Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Book of Opticks (1730). An interesting factoid from the history of science is that the Ethernet technology that has become today’s Internet was named after the original but incorrect theory of luminiferous aether.
Kinesava the Trickster 
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