Hard Problem of the Scientific Method

The recursive issue that the scientific method, which tests hypotheses through experimentation, cannot be experimentally tested as the best way to find truth. You can't run a controlled trial comparing societies that use it to those that don't. Its validation is historical and pragmatic ("it works!"), which is a different kind of argument than the method itself produces. The hard problem is that our supreme tool for verification cannot verify itself.

Example: "He demanded 'scientific proof' for everything. When asked for scientific proof that the scientific method is the best way to get proof, he got angry. That's the hard problem of the scientific method: it's the ultimate authority that can't issue its own birth certificate."

by Abzugal January 30, 2026

Hard Problem of Scientific Consensus

The paradox that while consensus is science's method for settling disputes, the process of reaching it is deeply social, psychological, and vulnerable to groupthink, institutional inertia, and external pressure. How do we know a consensus (e.g., on climate change) reflects true scientific convergence rather than a manufactured or coerced agreement? The hard problem is trusting the collective voice while knowing it can be shaped by factors other than pure evidence.

Example: "He agreed climate change was real but had a hard problem with the scientific consensus. 'Was it reached by pure evidence,' he wondered, 'or by grant agencies defunding skeptics, journals rejecting contrary papers, and a social zeitgeist that punished dissent? I believe the conclusion, but I don't trust the groupthink factory.'" Hard Problem of Scientific Consensus

by Abzugal January 30, 2026

Scientific Dogmatism

The treatment of current scientific consensus or a favored theory not as the best available model, but as unquestionable dogma. It confuses the scientific method (a process of skeptical inquiry) with the current scientific conclusions (its fallible products). This creates a priesthood where challenging the dominant paradigm is treated as heresy, not as science's essential engine of progress. It's science as a castle to be defended, not a path to be walked.

Example: "He exhibited scientific dogmatism when he declared 'the debate on nicotine addiction is over' and refused to read new research on genetic moderators. He was protecting a settled fact like a religious edict, forgetting that science 'settles' things only until better evidence comes along."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Scientific Purity

The obsessive focus on methodological rigor and ideological alignment within science to the point of expelling or silencing legitimate questions that come from "impure" sources or use unconventional approaches. It values the aesthetic of correctness—peer review, specific jargon, institutional affiliation—over the messy, sometimes heretical, process of discovery. It's the bureaucratization of wonder.

Example: "The journal's scientific purity board rejected the groundbreaking paper because the researcher was an amateur without a PhD, and he'd used a homemade apparatus. The data was solid, but the provenance wasn't pure. They prioritized credentialism over the cultivation of knowledge."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Scientific Extremism

The belief that the scientific worldview not only describes empirical reality but should also forcibly replace all other metaphysical, ethical, or spiritual frameworks in society. It advocates for a technocratic dictatorship where "experts" rule by decree, religion is banned, and human values are reduced to neurochemical outputs. It's scientism weaponized into a totalitarian political program, seeking not to understand the world but to engineer a "rational" humanity by any means necessary.

Example: "The manifesto called for scientific extremism: a mandatory genetic registry, state-assigned careers based on cognitive profiles, and the demolition of all 'irrational' architecture like historic churches. It wasn't a love of science; it was a desire to use the authority of science to build a dystopia run by his own ideological clique."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026