Rejectionism, though not new as a concept it exists as 'the policy or attitude of rejection of something' with varying notions pertaining to specific fields of study from Psychology, Medicine, Zoology right to Statistics.
What aroused my curiosity in rejectionism lately is rejection in the ideological sense, as a widely seen phenomenon the rejectionist spirit has been sweeping across the minds of many people causing an increase in the number of people who subscribe to those views.
What are rejectionist ideologies? These are of course ideologies seen amongst conspiracy, seudoscientific and seudointellectual circles. The increase and dissemination of such misinformation can have significant negative consequences both at small and large scales.
We'll first go through the ramifications then explore where these ideologies fall short and why they'll never see the light of day.
At smaller scales, holding such comes with an increased distrust in the state and a lessened drive to become an active economic participant. If knowledge is power and the right knowledge truly is empowering then one can essentially be enabled to do more and thus achieve more in life. With a vast pool of information you're more likely to innovate and have increased problem solving skills and are able to produce more ideas from that concrete body of knowledge. Sound knowledge produces wisdom, which is the 'discretionary use of knowledge for the greatest good.
On a larger scale, firstly a point out to the findings that countries with an increased atheist population tend to experience an increased economic growth and prosperity compared to more faith dominant countries, from this it can be deducted that with an increased STEM literacy rates, a nation can construct a better national strategy from sound, reliable and objective data. It is a good measure to implement a system of checks and balances on our biases and logical fallacies when it comes to governance policy making.
Where does rejectionist ideologies fall short? During the course of human history, science has produced a great number of thiories, with more dropped due to being disproven and some simply being inconsistent with nature. It is through these practices that science exist as a self verifying and maintaining system, always on the driving seat to come up with the next great discovery to address the human condition.
Rejectionist ideologies exist and breeds on where science hasn't found its ground, sticking to where it falls short and using those apparent short comings as enough evidence to discredit the reliability of science and scientific research. It is fueled by statutory distrust and political frustration and rather than developing their concepts and points of views they remain within that circle of mockery and fallacious objections.
The true marker of a seudoscientific and naturally inconsistent theory is its failure to adapt, advance, produce any technology or solution and disrupt any market, it just exists and revolves around a central point; tell me, what's the latest on the flat earth theory? Any subsequent cosmological models? What about homeopathy, astrology? Any new study on chakras?
We can observe that there hasn't been groundbreaking discoveries in any of those fields or anything built upon the principles, if there are any. Another aspect that these fail in is the actual attempt to disprove and discredit sound science which has been developed over centuries; yes one should never reject a piece of information without prior thorough investigation so in the ideologies that still remain surfaced, a burden rests on them to formulate mathematical concepts, laws, principles and postulates which will not only disprove currently established mathematical laws but be so revolutionary that they are self consistent and complementary on their own. In essence they must challenge the mathematics mathematically.
Taken from the data science field, an insight is only as good as the data from which is was produced. Does this mean scientific and/or philosophical illiteracy makes people more susceptible to biased, unverifiable and inconsistent pieces of information? The answer is a resounding yes, let's explore the why:
If a mind submerged in mediocrity can only produce mediocrity, we can argue that a mind indulged and submerged in rejectionist ideologies will not contribute to society in any positive way and the effects of that are visible when viewed at the scale of nations because the quality of life and a country's Gini coefficient correlates to the level and quality of education of its citizens. These also corresponds to an increased GDP per capita and citizen happiness levels.
This has spiraled into the education system, which leads to the question, is this the result of an interior and outdated educational system? This we shall explore in another blog, what are your thoughts on the subject?
#incognizack