We kicked off our discussion with Bret's talk from the previous night, titled "Dark Age or Enlightenment: The Hyper-novelty Crisis." Bret posed a provocative question: Are we entering a new Dark Age, or leaving one behind for a new Age of Enlightenment? This question split the room and set the stage for our conversation.

Bret reflected on his evolving perspective, influenced by his encounter with Steve Patterson, who believes our current Dark Age began in the 1920s. Bret suggests that a Dark Age doesn't blanket civilization all at once but creeps in field by field. He identified 1976 as a pivotal year for his own field's decline.

We discussed the systemic issues holding back progress, including the shift from Enlightenment-era discovery to career-driven science, which Bret argues has become highly corruptible. He critiqued the modern university system's reliance on grant funding and student labor, distorting academic priorities.

One highlight was Bret's analogy comparing science to nuclear fusion: powerful but hard to sustain under current conditions. We also tackled the influence of moral imperatives on scientific fields, particularly climate science, and the dangers of blending moral objectives with empirical inquiry.

Towards the end, we explored the concept of a hyper-novelty crisis, where rapid technological change outpaces our cultural and psychological adaptation. Despite the dark outlook, Bret remained cautiously optimistic, stressing the importance of recognizing our current disorientation to find a way forward.

This conversation was a blend of critical insights and hopeful solutions. If you're curious about where our world is headed and how we might navigate these challenges, this podcast episode is a must-watch. Join us for an engaging and thought-provoking discussion.

Comments open, and shares very much appreciated. The audience I get is the audience you create. As ever, if you liked the show please support with a paid subscription.

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In this conversation, Phil and Steve discuss the idea that we may be living in a dark age and the challenges of navigating the complex world of information and knowledge. They explore examples of paradigm shifts in scientific theories and the social and political dynamics that influence the acceptance and rejection of ideas. They also discuss the difficulty of challenging established beliefs and the fear of questioning the foundations upon which our knowledge is built. The conversation highlights the importance of critical thinking and the need to constantly reassess our beliefs. The conversation explores the concept of truth and the value of knowing the truth. It delves into the idea that truth can be destabilizing and that not everyone is equipped to handle it. The discussion also touches on the role of experts and the challenges of navigating complex subjects. The emergence of new intellectual voices and the potential for competing schools of thought is highlighted. In this conversation, Steve Patterson and Phil discuss the idea that we may be living in a dark age, where the orthodox paradigms in various fields are likely to be incorrect. They explore the concept of competing schools of thought and the importance of dissenting opinions. They also discuss the politicization of truth and the challenges of discerning truth from falsehood in a tightly connected intelligentsia and state. They touch on the censorship of free speech and the need for alternative platforms for information. Steve shares his plans for the Natural Philosophy Institute, a research project aimed at exploring alternative ideas and challenging orthodox paradigms.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Living in a Dark Age

08:45 Questioning Established Beliefs

26:30 Challenges of Navigating Information and Knowledge

38:28 Overcoming Fear and Reassessing Beliefs

48:29 The Importance of Accepting Truth

57:05 The Emergence of New Intellectual Voices

01:09:36 Restructuring of Social Hierarchies

01:20:19 The Confusion of the Dark Age

01:33:07 The Growing Concern of Censorship

Keywords dark age, information, knowledge, paradigm shift, scientific theories, social epistemology, trust, intellectual investigation, intellectual lockpicker, information cults, challenging beliefs, foundations of knowledge, North Korea, indoctrination, ontological shock, fear of questioning, truth, value, destabilizing, experts, complex subjects, intellectual voices, competing schools of thought, dark age, orthodox paradigms, competing schools of thought, dissenting opinions, politicization of truth, censorship of free speech, alternative platforms, Natural Philosophy Institute

Takeaways

We may be living in a dark age characterized by misinformation and flawed paradigms.

Scientific theories are not always linear progressions, but are influenced by social and political dynamics.

Challenging established beliefs can be difficult due to trust in authority and fear of questioning the foundations of knowledge.

Critical thinking and independent research are essential for navigating the complex world of information and knowledge.

The fear of self-aggrandizement should not prevent us from questioning and reassessing our beliefs. Truth can be destabilizing and not everyone is equipped to handle it.

The role of experts is important, but their competence and reliability can vary.

Navigating complex subjects requires careful consideration and critical thinking.

The emergence of new intellectual voices can challenge established beliefs and lead to competing schools of thought. We may be living in a dark age where the orthodox paradigms in various fields are likely to be incorrect.

Competing schools of thought and dissenting opinions are important for the advancement of knowledge.

The tight association between the intelligentsia and the state has led to the politicization of truth.

Censorship of free speech is a growing concern, and alternative platforms for information are needed.

The Natural Philosophy Institute aims to challenge orthodox paradigms and explore alternative ideas.

Titles

Questioning Established Beliefs: Fear and Trust

Living in a Dark Age: Paradigm Shifts and Misinformation Navigating Complex Subjects with Care

The Role of Experts in a Complex World Are We Living in a Dark Age?

The Importance of Competing Schools of Thought

Sound Bites

"Are we living in a dark age?"

"Maybe Houston, we have a problem"

"We've cast aside the dogma of religion because Darwinism arrived"

"Truth is always good. It's just self-evidently obvious that the truth is good and it's on your side."

"Most people don't care about truth."

"How valuable is the truth?"

"We're going to see competing schools of thought. And they're going to be in radical disagreement with one another about very important and fundamental things."

"What would be better is a plurality where you have all these different hierarchies and they have their people who are really knowledgeable and they're competing."

"We're in the 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. slot of a party. And suddenly the conversations people are having with each other are like, wait, what? What did you just say?"

What better guest to start with than Dr Claire Craig, a consultant pathologist and co-chair of the HART group. We were discussing the potential link between COVID-19 vaccines and the rise in heart disease. To support that claim, Claire has put together a case with 117 sources which you can explore here:

https://case.science/case/16

Dr Clare Craig has been actively researching COVID for many years now. In fact, she has a successful book published on the matter available on amazon. Case.science works well when a stated case is pointed, and the case here is that Covid-19 vaccines caused an increase in heart disease.

There are now so many self styled ‘misinformation experts’, that our own sense of reality can feel somewhat warped. We endlessly hear about the dangers of ‘medical misinformation’, and it creates this odd illusion that the entire conversation surrounding vaccine safety is entirely spurious, as though there’s no data at all that might back up the position that ‘hey, there is a problem here’. Repetition is enough to make is leave the doubt sown in our mind.

Well, case.science should be useful at relieving some of that pressure because it creates a neat and shareable receptacle that can ‘fight back’ against claims that this data doesn’t exist. It does exist, and in this first episode, Clare and I discuss a tiny fraction of it. What we aimed to do was to create a first time bridge for people who might never have considered this topic before.

The first port of call, of course, is myocarditis. The issue for which the evidence became so overwhelming that regulators had to acknowledge it because so much data appeared in the literature pointing to the problem. So if you’re forced to acknowledge a problem, why not downplay it as though its not really a problem at all. Enter Anthony Fauci…

So is it really true that myocarditis is self limiting? It’s something Clare and I discussed in this podcast, and it’s something you can ask the case yourself at this link. Try asking about the studies that support the idea that myocarditis post mRNA vaccination is a problem.

https://case.science/case/16

So what about the rates of myocarditis? Is it really a ‘very very rare’ case as Tony Fauci claimed? Can there really be something like a ‘mild’ myocarditis? Direct your questions to the case itself or watch the podcast.

"If you're damaging your heart muscle, it's a bit like damaging your brain muscle. You don't have mild brain damage. Brain damage is brain damage and heart damage is heart damage."

For a quick how to on what case does and how it works, watch this short video:

Here’s a version of the podcast with no music bed. Let me know which you prefer in the comments.

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* Brook raised the alarm at 153 sites, only 9 were inspected by the FDA

* Untrained staff giving out vaccines

* Doctors were unblinded during the trial

* Data on patient forms was forged, things like signatures

* Investigators requested to change the diagnosis of patients

* Patients were not given proper informed consent

* Patients were incentivised not to ‘tattle’ to the media regarding chaotic practice

I spoke with Brook Jackson last week. Brook is a named whistleblower who wanted to draw attention to poor practices on the Pfizer vaccine trial. Ordinarily, her story would be absolutely huge but in these times of algorithmically driven censorship, no one has really heard her story. Amongst many of the things she told me, the standout was that one of the vaccinators - a person literally injecting a trial participant - had no medical training at all. She was tasked with preparing the vaccine and injecting it into people, and her prior experience was in a Taco restaurant.

Brook’s story (minus the Taco part…) was reported in the British Medical Journal and was subsequently ‘fact-checked’ by the ‘independent’ fact-checkers at Facebook. It’s anyone’s guess as to how the BMJ can be fact-checked on their own reporting about a medical whistleblower. The important thing is, the fact-check throttled the shares on her story. As such, the information she risked her career to release did not find its audience.

Here is the BMJ’s article on the matter - you can rest assured that the reporter there, Paul Thacker, did a great job. He ‘did the work’, so we can be sure that Brook is who she says she is. What she has tried to draw attention to seems important, and yet she has not been mentioned at all by The BBC, The Guardian or the New York Times. Brook has documentation to prove many of the things she says.

Brook raises serious questions that demand answers: questions over the integrity of the pivotal data we relied on to roll out the vaccines, and valid questions of the regulators’ ability to have proper oversight of critical medical trials.

Brook told me she fears for her safety as a result of blowing the whistle on these issues. For a whistleblower concerned with data integrity in medical trials to be left out in the cold like this is certainly concerning. I believe Brook deserves better.

There’s also a video of our conversation at Rumble . It’s not on YouTube because there’s a mass censorship campaign. In case you weren’t aware, anyone talking positively about early treatment options, or issues surrounding the vaccine rollout, are removed at the algorithm level. It’s important to draw reference to this. The past two years of digital information have been filtered. I know this because my own videos have been removed by an algorithm for mentioning Ivermectin positively. I’ll be writing on this shortly.

An imagined conversation with my critics,,,

The whole reason I am doing this independently, in my own way, is because no one in mainstream circles wants to go near this topic. The BMJ ran Brook’s story - and that is good enough for me. Perhaps you think that because her story wasn’t run by the BBC or elsewhere, it’s not worth covering. I do not think that. There have been many stories that have been misreported or totally ignored over the last two years. Something has gone drastically wrong to create such a prolonged period of failure. Someone needs to address it.

We need credible journalism in this space. If I take this to a publisher, they are going to tell me where to go, so it’s left to me to try and make sense of this. If you want to have a handle on how a story like Brook Jackson’s should be dealt with, maybe you should actually deal with her story yourself.

I understand the sensitivity of talking about vaccine safety after the vaccines have been rolled out. As I’ve said before, I’d much prefer to not be in this situation, having to sweep up the mess that the silence has created. Nonetheless, as sensitive as this is, I believe it needs to be looked at and so I published it.

Questions for me

* To those familiar with the regulatory and medical trial process - can you cast some light on the issues Brook raises? Is this kind of thing normal? Are these problems cause for concern?

Questions for mainstream journalists

* Since Brook’s story was available by November 2021, it could have given UK nationals better-informed consent over the booster shot. As such, her story is in the public interest. Why was her story deemed not to be in the public interest?

* If the answer is: “it’s the regulator’s job to interrogate these things” then what if we have a problem at the regulator? How will we ever know if we refuse to listen to whistleblowers concerned about regulatory oversight?

* Now you’ve heard Brook’s story, are you at all concerned about the total silence on her case?

Like this? Check out my series on Ivermectin

* Ivermectin Part 1: The Very Unusual Paper

* Ivermectin Part 2: A Very Unusual Business

* Ivermectin Part 3: The People Behind the Curtain

* Part 1: An Unacknowledged Influence

* Part 2: The Conflicts of Interest of those who discredited Ivermectin

* Part 3: Who is Andrew Owen?

The podcast is designed as a starting point for people who are new to the topic. If you want friends and family to understand this issue, which is hard to get into without a fight, I hope this relatively short one hour podcast will help.

Also, it’s available as a video on YouTube for now. I am expecting it to be removed by YouTube’s auto-algorithm, something I’ve seen done consistently throughout this pandemic. Talking about Ivermectin as effective is an auto-removal on YouTube as it contradicts WHO guidelines. That has been their policy, but I decided to really put that to the test. Maybe it will slip under the radar!?

Please, please, please do share it if you liked it. The number of people who find it is directly related to the number of people you share it with. Help it find its audience.

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