4 thoughts on “55. Me and Danny McCarthy talking about the Enlightenment”

  1. I really liked your discussion about engineering vs science, and decoupling the scientific method and the enlightenment from technological advancement. To expand on that thought a bit, technological advancement has been occurring on a continual basis for eons, well before the enlightenment. Primitive stone tools to sophisticated stone tools, bronze implements, iron implements, domestication of animals and agriculture, writing, structural engineering and the building of all the famous ancient monuments, and many other things all happened without anything resembling enlightenment thought to guide them.

  2. Great discussion Scott! A couple of connections were sparked in my mind:

    I saw a thread on Twitter a few months ago, which I will try and dig up, where the anon makes a case for Polio being a symptom of widespread DDT use. Similar to you argument against Germ Theory, that the germs are always out there but only become pathogenic due to some outside influence, he claimed that DDT punched some sort of hole in the gut that allowed this bacteria into parts of the body it should not normally be. (I don’t think it was necessarily an ulcer, maybe a hole in an enzymatic barrier or something… like the “blood-brain” barrier…) Have you heard of Terrain Theory? I think what you were describing matches closely to this alternate theory of disease.

    Regarding democracy, consent, oligarchy, smoke and mirrors, etc. here is a link to a substack I enjoy reading which makes similar arguments: That what we have is just laundered oligarchy, and that the people are tricked into voting for what benefits the oligarchy. Manufacturing Consent ideas.
    https://apexsnotes.substack.com/p/democracy-the-false-god

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