WARNING: i'd say it's an essay pt 1

Sometimes it seems like scientific literature of the past seems to exist in a non self-aware manner. Take the population crisis argument of the early 90s for example. Articles from that time period seem to highlight narrow-minded statements like: "second, and vastly more important than continued study of the problem, is strong and unmistakable advocacy of human population control by conservation scientists." Generally, I don't disagree with the population problem theory (more about that later). But would such a statement be acceptable in an article today? It unapologetically draws one conclusion and tells the public You Must Do This. I feel like in these days we now meta-analyze our thinking more, or at least offer more dialogue between opposing viewpoints. We certainly don't come to many straightforward points anymore--even in climate change articles, possible consequences come phrased with "most likely" and "potential" and "I can't publish anything that takes a stance because my funding gets cut." When Erlich published Population Bomb in whatever year that was, people freaked out because it was precisely so straightforward (and apocalyptic). An Inconvenient Truth is probably the only comparable book (in that it reached the general public, since a lot of more dire environmental books get read by the already converted), but that wasn't nearly as straight-talking, and the effects of that have already diffused.


Maybe that's actually a drawback of the more connected and informationally accessible world today--with the sheer amount of stuff out there, including intellectually stimulating stuff as well as the Texts From Bennett stuff, our reactions are dulled to everything. Sort of like the function of FBS in cell culture--the analogy my old lab PI made (my previous lab PI, not my elderly doddering PI) was of taking a drop of chocolate milk and sticking it to someone's face. If you then dunk them in white milk, the desirable chocolate drop milk becomes more difficult to find/take note of. If you make an analogy about science that would never make sense in real life, it becomes 288x easier to remember.


So perhaps a lot of exposure even to topics that can grow your mind across various fields has a negative impact. That's a depressing thought. STOP LEARNING. Also, I wandered away from my original point. Which was a) maybe certain periods of time in the academic/scientific timeline are more...narrow minded? definitive? than others and b) we are potentially more aware of counterarguments now or just more feeble about drawing definitive lines dammit. I think it's fair to say we've dumbed down and thinned crossover messages from the scientific community to the non in an effort to cater to the lumbering political/economic machine.


And what will we look back and say the philosophies of our era were? What ideas will characterize it? Will we see ourselves as blinded, obviously wrong? That speaks to how when we're in the present, we simply cannot step out of it.  But it feels like at this point in time, we're quite a self-aware intelligentsia.

Oh boy. 

I'll post part 2 later so I can save cybertrees.