Why Knowledge is Making Your Life Miserable

I saw some discussion today online about the optimal way for a woman to give birth. Why they don’t just squat instead of lying down. ‘It has been scientifically proven,’ one person pointed out, that squatting was the best. The only problem was that every side could produce so-called scientific defences for their opinions.

Science is a wonderful thing in many ways but they’re quite obvious. It’s worth looking at what effect science has when it becomes Science – a religion!

The general rise in polarisation across the world due to megamedia means science is more and more used to assert dominance over others. Even scientists themselves suffer with this arrogance. Science contradicts itself constantly and yet people use it to convince themselves their opinions are infallible – sound familiar? Like I said, religion.

A major issue for the so-called ‘general public’ (hate that term, but that’s for another day) is that they have been deeply misled about what science is. In school and daily life, such as in quiz shows and megamedia coverage, we are led to believe that science is a set of facts. Sometimes you learn about historical figures who questioned the beliefs of their peers but it’s done in a half-hearted ‘We’ve got it all figured out nowadays’ way.

The truth is scientists operate like travellers with knowledge of many languages. Some languages have similarities and some are totally different but all of them are used to navigate the exact same world and no one language can be called ‘correct’.

A scientist studying the bonding in water molecules uses a very different model of atoms and electrons than one studying the bonding in metals, and different again to explain why metals conduct and (pure) water does not. But in nature itself there is nothing intrinsically different between any one aspect. Nature just ‘is’ and science, rather than being a set of facts about the world, is a set of interpretations and limitations upon it, changing only when the scientist’s aims change.

Thus, the honest scientist is consistently unsure about the world. And that’s not a Dunning-Krueger effect. He or she knows their trade is a set of constructions and that its aim is not to tell the truth but to produce results with real consequences.

And thank God! We don’t want to go back to a time before knowledge of diseases and the medicines to treat them. But don’t mistake a successful result for absolute knowledge of the topic. Unfortunately, many professional scientists do in fact take their own words as law and their minds as superior.

Believing there is a ‘correct’ view of the world encourages people to categorise lifestyle choices into hierarchies and the pressure they put themselves under is immense. Diet, calorie intake, time sleeping, time working, time relaxing, time with friends versus with family versus alone, and million more things you can probably think of yourself. Promoting this kind of optimisation is an industry.

Personally when it comes to things like this, I like to invoke Charles Bukowski. Don’t try, just do. Trust your instinct. Sleep when you’re tired. Eat when you’re hungry. People too often view life as a treadmill. One flat path on which you must stay, completing milestones in the preconceived order. But really there are smokers who live to ninety and vegetarians who die young. I know that is anecdotal. But my point is that while you learn from so-called experts, just be aware of their failings. Professor XYZ might have paper and titles and prestige, but when it comes down to it he is a man with a job. He studies very specific things in very specific circumstances. The man doing your extension is as much an expert. How often do you hold him in such esteem?

So what is the best way for a woman to give birth? How many women are there? For each there’s probably a different answer.