Assumptions
"Okay, I'll use tech startups as an analogy because I'm very familiar with how innovation works in the startup space. When someone starts a new business, they are essentially trying to discover the truth as quickly as possible before running out of money. They see a gap in the market, create a product they think consumers will want, and then gather feedback as to whether they were right about their assumptions. If it turns out their assumptions were wrong, they get punched in the face by the market. Nobody buys their product. They then have to go back to the drawing board and modify their product until it fits the market need. This is the process of achieving product-market fit.
Product-market fit is essential, whether you're Steve Jobs creating an entirely new market, or just someone trying to fill a gap in an existing market. If your assumptions are wrong, you entropy and die. It's that simple. An efficient market is unforgiving of delusional bullshit. You might be able to keep the game going for a while if you're a charismatic fundraiser who can convince institutional investors to hand over more money to fund your project, but one day the ball will drop. This is the same process as evolution: the company with the most accurate mathematical model of its environment will resist entropy and survive. All the other companies will die.
Here's where science has gone so wrong. Centuries ago, scientists decided that they wanted to build a product called 'Facebook for Cats.' To them, the market obviously wanted Facebook for Cats, so they never bothered to question that core, underlying assumption. They just called it a self-evident axiom. These scientists then spent hundreds of years building Facebook for Cats. They learned many useful things along the way. But about a century ago, they brushed up against evidence that they were wrong because quantum mechanics was utterly incompatible with relativity.
In this case, an entrepreneur would look at the feedback from the market (i.e. the incompatible theories) and question whether their core assumption was even correct. Maybe — just maybe — nobody wants Facebook for Cats. Maybe — just maybe — materialism is wrong.
But these academics aren't entrepreneurs or artists. They're scientists. They go from one to n. So how do they solve this problem? By split-testing the button color on the Facebook for Cats app. They try to incrementally improve their piece-of-shit product, thinking that if they just tweak it here and there, then they'll finally achieve product-market fit. After nearly half a century of no progress, you'd think that scientists would say 'hmm… maybe nobody wants Facebook for Cats?' But their research programs still manage to get funded because the institutions are complicit in their delusion — in the same way that institutional investors were complicit in the delusional dot com bubble. Eventually, the bubble will burst. The truth always comes out in the end. It's a pattern we see time and time again: either an institution disrupts itself, or a random, curious, little nobody will come in left-field and do it for them. Just ask the taxi industry, with Uber. Or the hotel industry, with Airbnb.
And this is why you never send a scientist to do an artist's job. You need the artist to hit on the truth, then you need the scientist to sort out the details. If we threw these academics out into the 'real world' where they were unprotected by their institution, they wouldn't survive. The truth would repeatedly pummel them in the face until they learned that split-testing a new button color wasn't going to save them because no one wants Facebook for Cats. In the real world, you either evolve or you die. In the institutionalized academic world, you stagnate and float around in a La La Land while protecting the interests and reputations of the people in power. If your ideas threaten the people controlling your funding, well, you can only imagine the kind of dysfunction those misaligned incentives produce.
And I'm not saying we should throw academics out into the real world and watch them drown. They need to be funded and given time and space to solve difficult problems for society. In fact, the poor scientists get a woefully raw deal from the rest of us. They have historically produced so much of the innovative technology that our society relies on, yet they rarely make any real money from their work. That might be okay if scientists were given full academic freedom to study whatever made them curious and excited, but they don't even have that these days. You either study what the higher-ups deem worthy or no funding for you!
I guess I'm just saying that there is something seriously sick about an institution that claims to pursue scientific truth, and yet has held a delusional, religious, faith-based belief in materialism for so long while ignoring the logic and evidence that clearly falsifies it. This situation is akin to the dot com bubble or the housing bubble that caused the GFC. When the bubble bursts, the world will fall into chaos for a while, and then the system should correct itself. If it doesn't correct itself, history will repeat. Chaos will rain down again and again and again until we finally evolve. It's not a difficult pattern to understand. It's just a natural mathematical law asserting itself. God talks about this, too…"
Your world would not be in its present condition were you to have simply listened to your experience. The result of your not listening to your experience is that you keep re-living it, over and over again. For My purpose will not be thwarted, nor My will be ignored. You will get the message. Sooner or later.
[...]
Yet know this: there is no such thing as an incorrect path — for on this journey you cannot “not get” where you are going.
It is simply a matter of speed — merely a question of when you will get there — yet even that is an illusion, for there is no “when,” neither is there a “before” or “after.” There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself.
Neale Donald Walsch
"Anyway, we got sidetracked with this. I'm normally not a confrontational person, but I can only tolerate so much bullshit in this world before I lose all sense of restraint. I'm just here, trying to live my life the way God recommends: 'Say your truth — kindly, but fully and completely. Live your truth, gently, but totally and consistently. Change your truth easily and quickly when your experience brings you new clarity.'"
"You're still working on the 'gentle' part, aren't you?" Zac smirked.
"Yeah," I grinned. "I'm a gentle wind, up until the moment you fuck with what I value. Then I'm a hurricane. I will snap your neck."
"Noted."
"Aw," I giggled. "I meant that metaphorically, of course. I don't like violence."