Emperor – the sovereign or supreme male monarch of an empire. Tsar, Czar, Kaiser, Fuhrer. a.k.a: Unscientific delusion of divine authority.
Chief Covid skeptic, Ivor “Fat Czar” Cummins replied to me on twitter with: “go back to your drums, unscientific steve,” which is funny and helped me to better clarify my position and criticism.
I, Steve Fly, a.k.a Unscientific Steve, do not make claims of the real absolute truth, or to know about the only real reality. I do not…claim empirical truth in my work and I don’t claim supreme sovereign power, I’m no Bloated Kaiser and hope to distinguish myself–right here–from that gang, or those in support of his cult of personality. After playing some killer’ chops in ⅞ time and my usual warm up paradiddles, ruffs, diddles, doubles, singles, triples and konnakol rhythmic exercises I powered-up my senses, and I now sense well marketed faith-based ideology, cloaked in the language of critical thinking, ala’ some threads of Qanonsense: do your own research, followed by….”meanwhile, I have the only truth, Ive’ all the keys to reality, follow me, subscribe! Check my book if you wanna’ live.”
To my tobacco stained taste buds, Ivor Cummins and his devout devotees and followers are tripped up by the promotional and marketing campaigns that surf on trumpeting claims to practice science, yet communicate in a language of faith-based, superstition, leaning toward medieval dull platitudes. Cummins repeatedly claims the “Real Truth, Real Data and Real Reality.” Why is he shouting so much, his background in corporate marketing coming through? Scientists with integrity don’t have to shout like the Fat Emperor, or shouldn’t have too either. They progress through corroborated evidence, e.g: masks work, social distancing and lockdowns work and vaccines work. This reflects the status quo according to the science. Masks, lockdowns and vaccines are true in a practical sense because they work, demonstrably, it’s foundational physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. The big T Truth Cummins claims is weak, his Emperor status is untestable, alike the majority of dogmatic conclusions garnered from selected works, that in themselves hold merit. A popular corporate marketing technique used by populists in 2020.
I’m with Karl Popper on this, “Hypotheses cannot be proven to be true, they can only be falsified.” And here’s Ivor, claiming big T Truth and big R Reality, with worrying wafts of the great awakening and reset tumbling up my sensitive nostrils. Ivor(y) Tower Ivor, claims to know all about the thousands of experiments and papers and studies to conveniently fit his consistent general premise: masks don’t work, anti-lockdown doesn’t make a difference, and vaccines are not to be trusted. He’s cherry picking his guests like how an Emperor packs his court, to support his public puzzlement, putting the juicy pieces together on his podcast, spouting unfounded conclusions.
My advice is, if he wants his followers and critics and the scientific worldwide community to take him seriously, then he should drop the messiah complex and consistent dogmatic faith-based claims of supreme sovereignty. If Ivor were a satirist I’d give the Fat Emperor brand a thumbs up, pretty funny joke, but he’s not, he claims empirical absolute truth and sells his brand, based on a logical fallacy, to his devout followers. He’s right about fats and sugar though. Oh, I get it, Fat Emperor, to mean he’s the sovereign supreme white male monarch of Fatburgs?
Burp….Kisht-ti-coo / kisht-ti-coo / kisht-ti-con
–Unscientific Steve.
p.s In the tradition of Popper, in some sense I’m strengthening the opposing arguments above, if the devout believers could get down off their high horse and look the facts in the face. Please, take a peek at this paper on Science and Pseudo Science, get up in the game.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/pseudo-science/
DEEP SCRATCH (REMIX) 