In olden golden days of yore, scientists saw a thing happen and they asked “What caused this?” They set out to figure these causes, sometimes succeeding, usually failing, often only coming to settle on interesting correlations.
It was a lot of fun, those old days. Many interesting ideas proffered. Some of which are likely right, some probably wrong. The way the world works isn’t so easy.
What’s certain is that early scientists did too good a job, too quickly. Their rapid early successes gave rise to the false and terrible hope that the “scientific method” could, and should, be applied to all things. Theory, not God, not Nature, would rule. This was always an absurd hope, but, as the old saying goes, nothing succeeds like excess.
Because from those excesses came, at first, scientism, then later, scidolatry. And from those arose the Cult of the Expert. The effects of this cult are only too well known to regular readers.
So bad has it become that it is now almost impossible for the average man to separate science from scientism, and from his slavish acceptance of Experts.
Scientism is of various kinds, as we have often discussed. The most insidious is what I call scientism of the first kind. This is when science, and Experts, are used to announce to the unwashed, “The thing you always knew was true, and that you knew why it was true, is indeed true, for it has now been Researched.”
This seems harmless, because it appears to be nothing more than Experts agreeing with the world. Their endorsement of the Truth doesn’t cause anybody, not directly, to doubt the Truth. People go on believing it.
But, because it was Science that endorsed the Truth, an act which was not needed, trust in Science increases. Worst of all, scientists begin to trust themselves too much.
Eventually, Theory intrudes. Scientists have convinced themselves they cannot live without it. And, indeed, they can’t, because to expound a cause, or even a correlation, is to theorize. This, like Researching a Truth, at first does not appear such a bad thing. But if practiced long enough, and substituting the practice for Truth, Theory leads to the Deadly Sin of Reification, where Theory becomes realer than the world.
Once this happens, any strongly held Theory can intrude itself on the scientist’s mind. Because Theory trumps Reality, Reality is quietly pushed aside. This even happens with Theories that negate the ancient Truth that Research originally proved.
This is not as odd as it sounds, because this doesn’t happen until responsibility for Researching all Theory is outsourced to Experts and Science. That outsourcing occurs because of scientism of the first kind. Which itself flourished because early scientists did their jobs too well.
All right. Enter RAND corporation, an old timey Research company that in golden days looked for causes of observations. Now, following modern Science, they Research Theory.
One Theory the Army asked them to Research was the physical Equality of men and women. Read all about their Research with the Army here.
By Equality I mean the equalness of men’s and women’s athletic ability and stamina. In the old days, the absolutely irrefragable Truth of inequality between the sexes was known to all, as were its causes. This Truth, once endorsed by Research, has been negated by Theory: it is now forbidden to speak.
Theory demands Equality. So RAND set about finding it. Which is always possible, believe it or not. Especially when you get to define just what “Equality” means. A perfectly legitimate exercise, too, because Science is in the business of measurement. And to measure one first has to define.
Now there is no point in carping about this, and insisting that all such Research is useless, because none of it can possibly change the Truth. Well, that is just your opinion, and you are not an Expert, so your opinion is of no value. Only certified Experts can weigh in, because that is the Way of Science.
RAND tried various things, none of which worked. Finally they followed the Army’s lead and recommended sex-norming tests of ability.
This when math is applied to measurements, transforming those measurements so that differences disappear. If men can lift 200 pounds, and women 50, scientifically multiply the 50 by 4 where (I’ll do the math for you) it becomes the sex-normalized 200*, the asterisk indicating the norming. The asterisk is soon forgotten and Equality is declared.
The idiocy of this, while it might be noticed, is never acknowledged. To do so would break the spell of Theory. If you doubt, marvel at this blizzard of numbers and the avalanche of words, most of them large, technical and sciencey in RAND’s 92-page report.
Discover for yourself if the report throws up its hands and admits men and women are unequal, or if it embraces Theory. Start with the sly propaganda of the cover photo.
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I notice in the report that it is apparently now a vital; element of the US Army’s job to try and ensure all groups, in all conditions, perform as equally as possible in all ability tests.
This is a significantly different objective from being as effective as possible as an army.
Of course. people can’t think any more, or they would notice that – assuming an effective army is important, then there is no strong reason why the army should be At All concerned about trying to ensure that different groups have equal performance in tests.
The new aims will, of course, necessarily make the US Army less effective as an army – the only legitimate question is by how much.
That’s not our army being destroyed — that’s Globohomo’s army. Let it burn.
Even many who recognize that women are physically weaker than men don’t grasp the magnitude of the differences. In most athletic events, the best woman in the world is generally equivalent to a good teenage boy, and the drop off from the top is usually much steeper for women, also. These aren’t two bell curves that mostly overlap. I just pulled the Women’s Olympic champion times from the most recent Tokyo Olympics in the 100 M, 200 M, 400 M, and 800 M. Since I live in Ohio, I then pulled the most recent Boy’s Division 1 HS state championship results for those same events. The Women’s Olympic champions would have placed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th respectively. The best woman in the world couldn’t even win a boy’s state title in the top Ohio high school division.
And none of this addresses lower durability from generally less dense bones, higher rates of injury, etc. Given that a huge share of males wouldn’t even qualify for combat physical standards, my guess is that a true non-biased approach based on requirements would result in <1% of women capable qualifying physically, before considering other sociological issues of whether having the sexes mixed in that environment makes sense or not.
You’ve got it all wrong Briggs the solution is already being implemented.
They’re cutting the balls off the boys and the breasts off of the girls sounds like
hyperbole I know but trust me it’s true. What ever is left of normal biological
function is then bombarded with chemicals. It’s all the rage and spreading
under the guise of ‘human rights’. The age of consent will be the next injustice
to be addressed. Orwell only got it half right Huxley got the rest.
In high school I played on one of the worst soccer teams ever. We lost a majority of our games every year. My coach was friends with the women’s soccer coach at the Major State University in our town. They came up with the idea of having the women come and scrimmage with our team. Suffice it to say, we beat them. It wasnt pretty. I felt like the women had good ball skills and were crafty, but repeatedly they would get by one of us only to be run down in seconds. By the end of the game you could tell theywere slowing down and were clearly frustrated at losing to us.
They already changed it, Matt:
Why did the Army Combat Fitness Test Scoring Tables Change?
The RAND Corporation conducted an independent study to determine the impact of ACFT implementation across all Army demographics, compositions, and geographic regions. After review of the RAND study results, plus the information gathered by the Army from nearly 630,000 test scores in DTMS, Army leaders determined that the ACFT would be implemented as a general physical fitness test with age and gender performance-normed scoring scales.
https://www.armycombatfitnesstest.com/post/acft3-0
This is all just more evidence that allowing men to compete in women’s sports is absurd and unfair and must stop.
There’s a couple down the road from me (late 30’s, early 40’s??????). He was a ROTC army guy, did couple tours in sandbox (somewhere). he looks like you’d expect. 200lbs, 6′ or so, couple years away from being peak performance, but he could clearly hump the load and do the job.
She was (is?) a West Pointer. She weighs maybe 120 pounds and is about 5’4″. I could probably whip her ass today (and i’ve got 15 years her and ummmmmmmm a pound or two extra).
It’s a joke.
For “scientism of the first type” I always remember a presentation I saw from our stats group. They were commissioned by a cell phone carrier to analyze a huge amount of data on customers including basically everything the company knew about them. They worked on this project for over a year and had a presentation where they bragged about the ingenuity of their results.
The big conclusion: it was far more likely for people with cell phone contracts to cancel their subscriptions than those without contracts. Therefore they recommended the cell phone company to continue using contracts and to consider extending the length of their contracts.
It was kind of surreal to see this conclusion being delivered as something ground breaking, which could have only been discovered with sophisticated statistical methods. But no one in the room but me seemed to think that this was absurd, not even the cell phone company representatives whose money paid for this research.
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My son is currently serving in the GloboPedo Army, unfortunately. He hates it with a passion. In his experience, only about 10% of women were passing the new PT test, compared to 90% of men. So RAND and the Army were probably lying about that part, as well.
As far as women attending and “passing” Ranger school for the last ten years, well… It’s not the same course, they eliminated peer reviews, some events are gender normed, and the women’s records are shredded immediately after graduation. Oh, and women get infinity retries, whereas men get but a single chance.
Speaking of the destruction of science, and yes I know this is somewhat off topic and repetitive of me…
I despair of the idiocies taught to physics students by physics professors. Especially the insanity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. This has sidetracked generations of otherwise bright minds. The universe operates by a few simple rules which interact in complex ways, not by innumerable highly complex and contradictory rules. Reality is real. The map is not the territory. Math is a description, not a cause.
The true basis of physics:
1) The total energy at every point is a constant.
2) There is no such thing as negative energy.
3) Space is spherical (flat) (a^2 + b^2 = c^2). Time is hyperbolic (a^2 – b^2 = c^2).
4) Spacetime is smooth.
5) Spacetime is a field of potential energy that governs motion. (gradient = d/t)
All else follows.
There are no infinities. There are no singularities (inverse infinity). There are no contradictions.
Black holes are hollow shells of maximum energy density with absolute nothingness inside.
You guys might complain, but I eagerly look forward to how they’ll tackle the women, diversity and inclusion quota when it finally comes time to send someone to Mars! Maybe that’s also why that mission will never get off the ground! But think of the advertising campaigns!
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Men have more immediately available strength; women have more long term strength — we live longer. Men are not equal to women.