I visited the “Scientists against Myths” forum for the second time, already 7th in a row. The previous one was in St. Petersburg, and now he has returned to Moscow. And since I was invited there completely free of charge, just for the previous review/report, it would be unfair not to share with you my impressions of the next event bringing the light of knowledge into the darkness of ignorance.
Who is this Forum for??
For those who prefer biology to theology. For those who understand that conspiracy theories and critical thinking are not the same thing. For those who go to a lecture as if they were going to a rock concert! For those wondering: Are they serious about flat earthers?? For those who are tired of explaining to mom/grandpa/friends that homeopathy doesn’t work, GMOs are safe, and Americans have been to the moon. For those who can be helped by the power of science… but also for those who are the power of science!
For the first time within the forum:
Demonstration of a hyper-realistic full-length sculpture of Homo naledi. Multi-stage experiment-reconstruction of ancient technology: smelting copper in Chelyabinsk, “gnawing granite” in the Moscow region. New exhibits of the exhibition of skulls of human ancestors. 3D printing of an ancient skull in front of the most respected public. Special guest who teaches 300 thousand years of Jedi science [name kept secret].
Scientists against myths 7 are located in the building of the National Research Technological University "MISiS" near the Oktyabrskaya metro station. The exhibition itself and the hall, as last time, are located on the second floor. And in general, everything was very reminiscent of the St. Petersburg hotel.
The forum itself opens at 11 a.m., and registration of participants began at 9:30 a.m. During this hour and a half you can see several thematic exhibitions. But if last time they only supplemented the reports of the speakers, now there was one autonomous one from the Ice Age museum, where tusks, vertebrae and other bones of mammoths were presented, and not only them.
Of course, the veteran of the forum has not gone away either – the exhibition “17 skulls and one tooth” with permanent lecturer Stanislav Drobyshevsky.
And lurking behind him was homo naledi, the new symbol of the event. We’ll meet him again.
Unfortunately, I arrived only half an hour before the start of the forum, so through the crowd that surrounded Drobyshevsky I only caught a couple of phrases that were an answer to someone’s question, perhaps about Homo Naledi, whose full-length figure was perched near the table:
— Some believe that they had no art. Well I don’t know. I think art is cool, but if they didn’t have it, they were poor.
Well, I realized that I had lost the thread of the story and headed to the next table – the table of reenactors; already closer to me. Two tables: the first from the Bronze Age, and the second from medieval Novgorod.
Here everything is run by Fyodor Makeev and Ivan Semyan, who know a lot about smelting bronze axes and helmets at home using simple furs.
Very close by is Pavel Sapozhnikov and https://richprizecasino.uk/mobile-app/ his colleague in an authentic costume, telling what they dressed in, how they got food and how the medieval Novgorodians arranged their life.
Well, the last one is a table with a 3D printer that prints busts of Darwin, skulls of ancient people and pyramids in real time.
Around the corner a buffet was already waiting for me with, as always, speculative prices – Coca-Cola cost 80 rubles 0.6 l. Well, at least you could always get water in the cooler. And nearby a penguinopithecus is conducting a photo shoot.
There were also book stalls with various scientific items. But since the assortment has not changed since last time, I ended up leaving the forum lightly.
If you read the previous report, you will see that no fundamental changes have occurred, but what has been updated is the list of speakers and the topics of their speeches, although there was also a continuation of the experiments of previous forums.
And then a voice announced: “Penguinopithecus asks the delegates to enter the hall,” and within a few minutes the forum officially began.
The first three speeches were devoted to medicine. The first and second complemented each other.
Alexey Vodovozov spoke about the dangers and uselessness of excessive consumption of vitamins from a jar, and also said that humans do not excrete vitamin C, but cats do, so you can eat either ascorbic acid or cats. On the basis of which the cartoon was drawn by a staff artist. In general, following the results of each performance, the following cartoon was drawn:.
Next came Elena Motova on stage with a lecture on healthy eating and diets. The essence of which comes down to a balanced diet and spending more calories than you consume. And you don’t need to believe all sorts of glossy magazines with magic recipes, but rather read a few scientific articles or a WHO report.
Well, the third speech was much more serious and dedicated to the problem of HIV/AIDS. In addition to an educational program on methods of infection and a long incubation period of several years, and treatments (which give another 30-40 years of life), including bone marrow transplantation from a person with a mutation that makes him not susceptible to the virus, sad statistics were announced. In Russia in 2016, 190 were recorded.000 infections (in the USA this is for example about 120.000), but throughout the world this number is falling and only in Russia the growth for the year was 60%. Primarily due to a lack of understanding of what HIV is and how it should be treated.
I will not describe all the reports in detail (although they will be discussed later), but I will note one innovation – the division of all reports into blocks: medical, biological, reconstruction and improvised Sanskrit-climatic 🙂
In the second block, we were already talking about exposing one creationist myth or, more accurately, sophism that evolution and, therefore, man is a product of chance, and this is possible with the same probability as if a hurricane swept through a landfill and assembled a modern Boeing. But this is an obvious substitution of concepts, since life and its developed forms did not arise suddenly, but were the product of long evolution.
The second report was not entirely scientific compared to the previous one, but Ivan Zatevakhin wanted to convey a simple idea – the behavior of animals depends on their upbringing and training, although predisposition plays a certain role, and various bulldogs and other bull dogs are more sofa than guard dogs.
I will especially highlight the performance that received the loudest applause. This is a speech by Pavel Sapozhnikov – a man who lived for 7 months in a log hut 40 km away. from the Moscow Ring Road, and lived in accordance with nature and the behests of his ancestors: he heated black (without a chimney) without windows, ground grain, altered shoes, sculpted dishes to replace broken ones, caulked cracks in the hut. As Pavel said, “the more I get to know log huts, the more I like foam blocks”.
In short, the report was dedicated to how people imagine the Middle Ages, and what it really was – people were as practical as possible and preferred reliability and simplicity, both in clothing and in everyday life. And the constant threat of cold and hunger did not allow them to experiment, and the conservatism of the people of that time is connected with this. And yet, they always strived for beauty and art, albeit the most primitive in our modern understanding.
Other reports in this block were devoted to exposing the latest research of the “non-Mogliks”: “the ancients could not make an aluminum pipe”, “the ancients could not saw granite”, “the ancients could not carve an internal right angle”, etc.d. As it turned out, they could and did.
The last block included lectures on the origin of the Russian language from Sanskrit and global warming. The first is an invention of linguistic freaks, but the second is quite real. The first photo tells us that a set of words that actually coincide in spelling and pronunciation does not mean that one language came from another. We, as always, are looking for familiar things and trying to explain them. Well, the second report was intended to prove that:
1) global warming exists;
2) there is no need to confuse weather and climate, so snow in mid-May does not prove anything.
3) the climate has changed before, but now faster than before.
This division is even convenient, although, in any case, most delegates listen to everything, and this, for a second, is from 11 to 20 hours. And comparing them with the reports of the previous forum, I came to an idea that became my main and, in fact, only complaint about the forum.
All this, of course, is correct; the fight against myths is stated in the title of the event. But, as they say: “One fool can ask so many questions that 100 wise men cannot answer.”. And Alexander Sokolov himself has repeatedly spoken about the complexity of disputes with t.n. "Nemogliks" and witnesses of alien intelligence. Before their eyes, you can drill granite with a copper tube, to which they will demand that you cut a ball out of the granite; if you do this, they will offer to build a pyramid, and so on ad infinitum, and in the end they will say, “Not convinced.”!" and proudly walk away. And this total indifference to any arguments or a bag of stereotyped arguments can sow doubt in the head of a person who is not confident enough in his knowledge. Everything is strictly according to Kant – experience is the only source of knowledge. This approach cannot be exhaustive. For every stupid remark they make, you can make a report, and more than one.
Just the last forum and the speech of Alexander Sergeev “100% proven! Myths about Science" showed that even the speaker had very dubious ideas about the scientific worldview, and in fact, under the guise of an educator, he defended the views of those with whom the forum aimed to fight.
You can skip straight to minute 36 if you don’t have the time or desire to watch the whole thing.
Let me remind you that he then began with the opposition of truth to opinion, and reduced everything to the opposition of the opinion of a specialist to the opinion of an amateur and the competition of theories. It turns out that instead of studying the essence of phenomena, knowledge of the objective laws of development of the material world, Sergeev suggests concentrating on one’s sensations, they say, these sensations are the real state of affairs, and by changing sensations, one can change this real state of affairs. If there is no truth, then there is no world around us, which is reflected in scientific theories, and our opinions/feelings exist outside of it. It’s like saying that thought exists without a brain.
It is precisely such incidents that prove that no matter how deep knowledge within one’s specialty does not replace general philosophical training, which allows one to distinguish opinion from knowledge and gives an understanding of such an important and even the most important category as "True". But this is just “there is a correspondence of thinking to the subject”. And let me paraphrase Ludwig Feuerbach: "The so-called speculative philosophers scientists are the ones philosophers scientists who do not correlate their concepts with things, but, on the contrary, things with their concepts.”.
I don’t argue that everything needs to be questioned, but without tools that allow us to objectively comprehend reality and through many relative truths to move towards the absolute truth, this is not possible. I do not deny that the criterion of truth is practice, experiment. The forum is still intended for people who will not conduct their own research, but will simply share new knowledge with friends and acquaintances and read several books on topics that interest them. But, in this case, we quickly run into the limitations of the experience of the average viewer, and, consequently, the limitations of the approach. In a good way, the strength of an argument does not depend on the personality presenting it. Of course, if a character expresses his position for quite a long time, and there is nothing but nonsense, then he himself can be neglected in the future.
But not everything turns out to be as simple and harmless as in the case of pyramidiots. Even if a person is disappointed in the arguments of the pyramidiots, then behind them there is already a queue of more sophisticated charlatans or convincing, but sincerely mistaken citizens. Much more often we encounter not such exotic characters, but everyday things, like lies and manipulation on advertising posters. You cannot endlessly be guided by personal experience when choosing political preferences and much more. Dubious ideological constructs are constantly spinning around us, and no one has the strength, health or time to test all this on their own skin and discard it, although it would not be bad. You don’t need to invest in MMM and go broke to understand that it’s a scam.
This is precisely why we need a holistic scientific worldview, which cannot be formed without knowledge of the laws of nature and society. And this approach should be purely materialistic. I’m not saying that a naked theory is needed, but facts divorced from a holistic worldview have an extremely limited effect.
But getting back to what was good. The organization, as always, pleased me: the rules of both speeches and the time allotted for questions were strictly observed and, accordingly, a break for coffee and everything else was always announced on time. But this did not deter the delegates, who ran to the buffet as soon as the report ended, as the presenter himself pointed out every time. This was not the case in St. Petersburg. The quality of filming has also increased, so much so that a camera on a crane was constantly flying overhead and even landed on my head a couple of times (I doubt that this is good). You can judge the scale of the event for yourself.
FeedBack (0)