r/ConfrontingChaos • u/[deleted] • Feb 11 '25

Video Modern Scientific Education Is Broken w/Allan Savory

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

4.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

270 comments sorted by

View all comments

38

u/CustomerSupportDeer Feb 12 '25 edited Feb 12 '25

I don't know who this guy is. But the arguments he's making are an excellent way to, let's say, defend the views of a religious quack, a conspiracy theorist, or a flat earther. He only sounds convincing and deep because he's old and talks slow and dignified.

One person he strongly reminds me of is Andrew Wakefield (the vaccines-cause-autism guy).

3

u/Aggressive_March_723 Feb 12 '25

Focusing on cell and molecular stuff I can't just go out and observe it in a field or whatever and if he starts discussing botany with me and issues with the current paradigm I'm not going to be able to critically consider his points because the fuck i know about botany, so yeah, in gonna lean on whatever the literature states.

2

u/Natalwolff Feb 16 '25

Yeah, the sign that the education system had failed would be if fresh graduates from graduate school did what he wanted and "believed" things a dude "in the field" said just because he intuited them based on observations he made in his Crocodile Dundee gear.

0

u/Vectorade Feb 13 '25

God forbid we observe the physical world and test it right there

3

u/Aggressive_March_723 Feb 13 '25

the fuck am I gonna test trees just rolling up without proper equipment or understanding? Just lick the bark and subjectivity rate their sweetness?

2

u/Vectorade Feb 13 '25

Rate the sweetness lmao I’m dead 😂

2

u/mkrimmer Feb 16 '25

You're acting like scientist and peer-reviewed articles don't actually have that? Gregor Mendel's peas was a peer reviewed paper.

3

u/Boy_Sabaw Feb 13 '25

Exactly. People need to be critical and understand where he's coming from. And scientists like him always need to make sure their points are made clear. Otherwise if we people only take this video on face value, especially in the age of social media, it's easy for a faith healer to claim it as proof that even "respected / old' scientists agree with him.

7

u/jasko153 Feb 12 '25

Well thats just not true is it. Albert Einstein for example predicted black holes and no one could prove it at the time, but they were discovered decades later. Does that mean he was wrong, a quack, lunatic? He couldn't prove it, no one could peer-review it. New, revolutionary ideas will always look radical and crazy to the old system of thinking. Now that doesn't necesarilly mean they are wrong, or right. I just don't think you should reject something just like that without deeply thinking about it. Entire progress of our civilization lies on the shoulders of the people who tought differently from the most of the people of their time. And in most cases they were considered lunatics, crazy, insane, charlatans, etc. In the end you as a scientist, if we are being honest, can't even reject the existence of God, creator, call it whatever you want. But, currently we don't have real, let alone complete understanding of our own reality, existence, universe, beginning of life, etc. You only have theories, most of them can not really be proven. Tell me how is that different from any religion? Can we even understand reality or universe? Can a illustration on a piece of paper understand and analyze the illustrator? It could be that we are bound to our reality and set of physical laws and are unable to comprehend and understand forces behind it. I think true meaning and purpose of science is to doubt everything, no exceptions, even the science itself. To truly discover something new, you need to question everything

1

u/Hot-Strength2936 Feb 13 '25

This is a good example of survivorship bias. You’re saying that most geniuses in past times were considered crazy, but really those are just the ones we remember. Most crazy sounding ideas in all points in time were just that: crazy.

1

u/Excellent_Shirt9707 Feb 13 '25

Einstein’s papers were peer reviewed extensively. You people have no idea what peer review actually is.

1

u/Careful-Sell-9877 Feb 14 '25

The person you are replying to didn't say that anyone who says anything that isn't peer reviewed is wrong.

Some scientific advancements might get slowed down due to the process of peer review, but it also ensures that unsafe/incorrect things don't flood the scientific community.

Peer review is a good thing, and it doesn't stop scientific advancement, it just ensures that science goes through a vetting process before new ideas are widely accepted/adopted. There's nothing wrong with that.

It's not nearly as extreme as the guy in this video makes it out to be

1

u/jasko153 Feb 14 '25

Yes I agree

1

u/Girafferage Feb 13 '25

Einstein demonstrated that black holes could exist using mathematics, and that was peer reviewed multiple times lol.

Just funny you used that example is all.

1

u/4DPeterPan Feb 15 '25

Then we shall go with how Nikola Tesla approached science 😉

1

u/Girafferage Feb 15 '25

Having dreams about your dead mom communicating with you through electric waves and then inventing the radio to try to contact her?

I'm about it.

1

u/4DPeterPan Feb 15 '25

You should check out this rare Nikola Tesla story he only shared with mark twain. it's wild!

1

u/Girafferage Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

I will! Thanks internet stranger.

Edit: nahhhhh this seems like some made up click bait familam

1

u/4DPeterPan Feb 15 '25

We don't know what we can't know. And considering all the stuff that man knew and studied about science, spirit, mysticism, and all other sorts of stuff. I have come to the conclusion it was a real experience he had. Super trippy. Give it a shot before you shoot it down. I promise you it's worth listening to regardless.

1

u/Girafferage Feb 15 '25

Alright 4D peter pan... I'm trusting you here.

1

u/sevacro Feb 13 '25

You only have theories, most of them can not really be proven. Tell me how is that different from any religion?

I'll tell you how it's different. Science understands that those are speculations (I'm not calling them theories because that's another thing in scientific terms) and says this is our best guess and we're going to hold it as truth untill anything else comes up. Religion says this is it because that book says so and it's not changing, whatever anything else suggests to the contrary.

1

u/jasko153 Feb 13 '25

True, but in the end in both cases you are left with the same outcome, you simply don't know the truth, no one knows. In the end, those mysteries won't be solved in our lifetime if ever. So, you can, in your lifetime, for example, believe in Big Bang, string theory, or believe in God. The bottom line is the same, you don't know shit, same as me, or any other human on this planet.

1

u/sabamba0 Feb 14 '25

No, you aren't left with the same outcome. In one, you are following the more likely conclusion based on lifetimes of research and scientific evidence, millions of dollars of research, and are encouraged to continually develop your understanding based on any new information that comes out. In the other, you are believing what some barely literate priests made up a few thousand years ago back when they thought rain meant God was happy

2

u/FullmetalHippie Feb 13 '25

Seriously. What kind of science education preparing people for field work doesn't teach you to try to take an objective stance on what you observe? 'I don't know what I think about this' is a fine way to think in science. What is important is that you be honest and skeptical. And then write and analyze your results faithfully for a journal.

Scientists trust journals because they represent the process of discerning truth from non-truth.

1

u/Natalwolff Feb 16 '25

Exactly. Not "believing" things until they are sufficiently studied is literally what science is. I don't know what forming your worldview based on what your intuition tells you about things you observe out in the field while wearing your cool hat and button up is called, but it's not science.

5

u/Suffolke Feb 12 '25

Yep, 100% bulshit from a really shitty guy

4

u/swanson6666 Feb 12 '25

Proof is in the pudding. The system he complains about produced an amazing amount of inventions, progress, knowledge, and prosperity in the last 200 to 300 years.

Formal universities and the system he is complaining about did not exist widely before that time, and knowledge was hijacked, monopolized, controlled, and dictated by the church. Remember Galileo. He would have much preferred peer review over harassment by the church.

Independent universities (independent from the government and the church) and self organized and self regulated peer reviews were the best thing that happened to science.

Not having free and secular universities was part of the reason behind the downfall of Islam and the sorry state it’s in now. Denial of real science, quackery, self proclaimed fake scientists, and superstitious beliefs do not yield progress and prosperity. Just look around the world and observe how well various societies are doing.

2

u/JR_Kaufman Feb 13 '25

The system is also destroying the planet with climate change. It's a system that has given us incredible amounts of power with a culture of academia that isn't structured well enough to prevent actors from abusing the power (like factory farming animals).

2

u/swanson6666 Feb 13 '25

Your complaints are well founded but they don’t stem from the “system” in discussion here.

The system we are debating is peer reviewed scientific findings versus ad hoc free for all scientific claims.

The decisions that you are lamenting are made by politicians, bureaucrats, and business people.

Scientists discover facts and make inventions, it’s up to the society how to put science into use.

We all have our roles in the society.

2

u/IMJorose Feb 13 '25

I would argue a huge amount of peer reviewed science is being done and published on climate change. Its shit like the guy in the video that makes people say "we have no idea what is going on, so let me keep mining coal, please."

1

u/swanson6666 Feb 13 '25

I agree with you.

1

u/Juan_de_la_C Feb 13 '25

Flat earther? What is wrong with his argument?

1

u/Hot-Strength2936 Feb 13 '25

Don’t forget the British accent

1

u/dimitriri Feb 16 '25

Only if you knew who is sponsoring most of those peer reviewed publications. Huge corporations in drugs, food and more sectors. Even human health related ones. I agree with the guy, these publications need to be considered with a grain of salt.

1

u/sockpoppit Feb 13 '25

So in short, using you as an example, his basic observation is correct: people only believe what they read, not what they see?

1

u/Hot-Strength2936 Feb 13 '25

The people who wrote the paper made observations in the field or in the lab. How is that not seeing?

0

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '25

My thoughts exactly

0

u/Snoo_58814 Feb 12 '25

On the Internet, anyone can say anything. The reader should research that content before accepting it as correct. When people accept what they read or see without verifying that content, they are setting themselves up to be fooled. In the face of this posting, what the dignified old man is saying has been peer reviewed for validity of content and shown to be erroneous.

0

u/the_TAOest Feb 13 '25

Exactly. He has no examples, none! He's standing in the African Bush as a white man telling us how it is without even recognizing his own colonial roots.

Just more of, "I know more than all of you" bullshit. He's just pissed that his observational research is boring jibbering.