HF,
"3. Next, the nature of their arguments become anti-science: well, the more
you try to prove something, the more you can't; you can't trust
researchers because they make the data say anything they want it to say;
modern science has not yet caught up to FS; FS simply works, and we should
stop wasting our time and energy trying to convince you, because you are
an energy vampire enslaved to science and all you want to do is
antagonize, not learn."
When I was a little kid, I was watching a magician perform a trick at a party. I had a vantage point slightly different from the rest of the crowd, and from where I stood I could see the mechanics involved in the trick.
When I pointed to the magician and revealed the nature of the trick, I became a very unpopular person.
As Walter Kaufmann wrote in his translation of Martin Buber's I and Thou:
"Mundus vult decipi -- the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening; the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire.
Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi; but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.
Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.
On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.
Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community."
I believe that LSC as well as other companies in this business are vendors of palpable lies. Their customers are connoisseurs of the products of self-deception, and they take the criticism of their acquired tastes very seriously.
