THE AGE OF UNDISCOVERY A naive friend of mine laments the importation of arabs into France, while believing the officially declared "purpose" of the said experiment: -- what a tragic mistake! Went for business ended up being replaced... And what is the most tragic the French can't realize that their mentality and the arab mentality DIFFER GREATLY, and in many aspects incompatible... They just can not allow this thought! You already recognized the topic, and recalled the whole host of talking points. You can already imagine yourself debating for the "racist/fascist" motion; and you most certainly know what your imaginary opponent is going to throw at you... Most likely the magic word "Conspiracy Theory"! ...or something close to it, or drawing circles around it, making an impression of reasoning. But rush to the familiar waters you should not! Normal people normally think in fuzzy categories, and navigate by overlaps, thus you recognized where it is all going, by similarity with your past experience, you recalled the relevant knowledge... and slipped onto a beaten track. I implore you, hold your horses, pay attention to the details, I am about to show you another metaphorical track, less beaten, but much more straight. The man said: -- they can't think about X. But from everything we know, they could think about X not so long ago! THEY KNEW X perfectly, they understood X, they accepted X as they accept rainfall and seasons. They used the knowledge of X for practical purposes, and it was never proven wrong!!! A PIECE OF USEFUL AND EMPIRICALLY TRUE KNOWLEDGE HAS BEEN LOST. How is it even possible?! Legends of lost ancient knowledge and whole civilizations are popular among humans, as popular as they are deranged from reality (compare to the popularity of legends about noble female warriors -- feel free to explore a relation between anti-realism and aesthetic impact) -- never a lost civilization had been proven to be more advanced than its successors, and extremely rare are events of losing knowledge, and all of them result from some catastrophe. Unlearning is not normal for human societies. Such an event requires an extraordinary explanation! I can understand the JQ neurons are all firing in your head. Please bear with me, I did not say JQ yet! Let's postpone the speculations, I want you to focus on OBSERVABLE FACTS: 1. the lost knowledge, 2. the rarity and catastrophism of any known knowledge loss, 3. the age and the environment in which it happened: the abundance of information storage and transmission means, 4. the temporal proximity to us: living witnesses instead of archaeological digs, 5. our total ignorance about the details of the event despite all of the above. You see? We have quite a lot for your imaginary opponent to explain! Would it be safe to say that this knowledge-loss event coincided with the Chosenite overtake of the academia? I said "coincided" because it apparently did, but I do not reject a possibility of some causal connection. Could there be a link? Of course it could be! Academia is the place where certain authorities decide which particular knowledge to disseminate, and this place has a potential to erase knowledge as well. I wonder, was it used to this purpose ever before? I have no idea... But I can highlight some recent relevant unprecedented developments in the academia that are very transformative... (in no particular order, especially not chronological) 1. the science reached its observability limit -- we can no longer make "naked eye" observations (there are real objective causes for this to be the case in some disciplines) 2. the science became a profitable career for multitudes 3. the scientific info-sphere was flooded with minutia articles 4. the general erudition dropped, interdisciplinary connections were broken (connect it to 3,2 if you wish) 5. the role of the authority voice skyrocketed 6. the formal style and formal metrics dominate everything -- words rule over meanings 7. the academia intertwined with political corruption 8. humanities diluted the academia 9. simulational models wreck havock 10. confirmation bias is no longer sin, it became a norm! (I know it is unbelievable, because FORMALLY it is still considered a sin, but practically you should google for "event triggers LHC" -- and recall many similar cases in social studies: "of course we do not include all events in our report! it is just unfeasible!") 11. relevance is not even a question any longer (see my "The Absolute State Of Neuroscience") 12. it became possible to TALK your career through the academia 13. the chosen people came and gained the overwhelming majority Of course any two of these could be "pure coincidence", and all of them together as well, but tell me how many coincidences does it require to make all of these disconnected. Very many coincidences. Originally I composed this list to understand the Chosenite influence in science: it seemed to me they succeed in "pure sciences" much more than in VERIFIABLE sciences, and as the science at large grows progressively less verifiable, they seem to gain progressively more power. Pay attention again, I do not claim any particular causality. It is particularly funny, because EITHER DIRECTION of causality is pretty damning for the Chosen people, and the "we are simply smarter" argument is not of any help here. (No condescension, my friends, but I hope I showed you how to frame your args in order to prevent driving along the tracks prepared for you by the owners of the allowed discourse.) Look! My friend's innocent question connected my esoteric insight into the recent academia evolution with this spectacular event of losing empirical knowledge by flesh-and-bone real people!