April 6, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
07:05
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| The subject is follow the science, which ultimately means nothing. | |
| And at least that's my opinion. | |
| Perhaps more relevant is the opinion of my guest, the man who gave that terrific video at PragerU.com this week, titled Follow the Science. | |
| So you mentioned there that modeling may not be the... | |
| The best example of following science, because who knows the future? | |
| So I gave you two examples. | |
| I gave you and my listeners two examples of where modeling has changed the world. | |
| One is about the number of deaths predicted over COVID, causing the worldwide lockdowns. | |
| And the other is with regard to global warming. | |
| Any comments on either? | |
| Yeah, obviously I have very strong feelings. | |
| This has been really a true concern of mine, not just since COVID, but COVID certainly exacerbated it. | |
| I am at the whims as a state employee of our governor. | |
| The grand Gavin Newsom, who had many proclamations that impacted the freedom, the happiness, even the performance of my daily life as a professor in the university that he is nominally responsible for, impacted severely. | |
| And this is all done in the name of, quote-unquote, following the science. | |
| And what I read in that, Dennis, was a secret message. | |
| Not follow the science, not listen to the science, but obey science. | |
| And that's very dangerous. | |
| But of course, when you abandon other levels of authority, when you cede authority to higher powers, you cease thinking for yourself and you become more compliant in perhaps listening to people who are undeserving and have not earned the right to make proclamations that you are forced to obey. | |
| So my biggest problem is when we conflate science, which I think I've invested my life in, as I say. | |
| And when you conflate that with wisdom, which I think is the sine qua non, the prerequisite for having somebody worthy of listening to, but never to obey unelected scientists. | |
| That's not the purview of science. | |
| I wrote at the end of my column today on the issue of masks that people who say follow the science really mean follow the scientist. | |
| That the media tells you to follow. | |
| Is that a fair critique? | |
| Yes, and as I say from Richard Feynman in the video, science should be the belief in the ignorance of scientific experts. | |
| Yeah, that was a great quote. | |
| And he said something else, Dennis, that I'd love to say, and people criticize me on the left. | |
| In the university system, why would you go on this conservative kind of outlet? | |
| And I say, just take the politics out of it. | |
| If you had a chance to reach millions of brilliant people around the world of different religious backgrounds, etc., and teach them for the first time in Prager University, what is the scientific method? | |
| You're saying, as a scientist, I should not take that opportunity? | |
| I think that's shameful. | |
| But as Feynman said, he said that when a good scientist is practicing science, he should never, she should never do something that is basically out of the purview of the layperson to understand. | |
| And I found this a lot throughout the last year of people making prescriptions that seem to contradict common sense, but we were asked to accept it because we're not scientists. | |
| And what is a scientist? | |
| Someone with a very specialized toolkit, a very specialized job, doing specialized things. | |
| And Dennis, just as you would no more go down to the MRI machine at your local hospital, which is very specialized, and poke your head around there and ask to kick the tires, so too does the general public. | |
| I feel a lack of a right and entitlement to understand the science I do. | |
| But if you can't explain it, if I can't explain it to the layperson who pays my salary quite literally, as you know, I'm a failure. | |
| And I think it's a moral obligation for scientists, especially those that are supported by the public, to explain things in ways that a layperson can understand. | |
| And I felt scientists did a very poor job of that this past year. | |
| Some did amazing, some did a very poor job. | |
| I want to tell you a little story. | |
| It's happening literally now in my life. | |
| I made an appointment for an eye checkup. | |
| Nothing wrong with my eyes, thank God, but I do get them checked about every other year with a wonderful, truly great doctor who, because of an accident, I think, saved my retina, which was a very big deal a couple of years ago. | |
| Anyway, it's a major hospital. | |
| I won't say the name because... | |
| I have great gratitude to this hospital. | |
| But in any event, they asked just a couple of days ago, did I travel anywhere in the last two weeks? | |
| And yes, I was in Florida this past weekend. | |
| So the visit is cancelled. | |
| And I'm thinking, that's science? | |
| So if I traveled to Eureka... | |
| In the very top of California, I could have the appointment, but I went out of state in an airplane with this totally advanced system of purifying the air. | |
| We don't even know of any sickness contracted there. | |
| How do you explain such idiocy on the part of scientists? | |
| I think there's a worship of the body. | |
| I think there's a worship of science. | |
| I made a companion video on my website, BrianKeating.com, Dennis, that goes into more detail about the history of science, the very checkered past of science. | |
| And maybe you'll indulge me and we can discuss some of those topics that I didn't include in my PragerU video because I think it shows the limits of what science should and should not be looked up to. | |
| And this is one of the dichotomies I'm craving talking to you about today, Dennis. | |
| How do we, on one hand, trust the profession that could maybe, God forbid, identify some problem in your eye or maybe something as mundane as optics and get you some new contacts or prescription lenses? | |
| We have to trust that science, but then how do you balance that with the other side of the coin, which is whether or not you should obey, as you did by your own admission. | |
| You didn't just barge your way into the hospital. | |
| So how do you balance that dichotomy, the power of science to transform our world into an unimaginable world that the kings of England 100 years ago would have gladly traded their life for, for a peasant today? | |
| How do we balance that dichotomy of the good that science can do with the limitations of what science can do? | |
| Okay, that's excellent. | |
| We'll continue. |
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