- Albert Einstein and what he didn’t say;
- More on Republican support for vigilante justice;
- How a drink or two enables an intense workout.
NY Times, Benyamin Cohen (a specialist on Einstein), 4 Jun 2023: Einstein and a Theory of Disinformation
The essay opens:
A decade ago, Ivanka Trump offered her Twitter followers a bit of wisdom from one of the world’s favorite geniuses to impress her legions of Twitter followers. “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. — Albert Einstein.”
There was one problem: Einstein never said that.
I’d guess that it’s hard to know whether Ivanka was *lying* exactly, or whether her conservative worldview simply befuddled her into thinking that “theories,” which she takes to be ideological ambitions, are fundamental and unchallengeable, and if facts seem to challenge them, ignore or lie about the facts.
Because Einstein would never have said that; the opposite is true. If facts don’t fit the theory, you change the theory. That’s how science works, as so many conservatives seem not to understand. (I’ve recently commented how I suspect that belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, for example, necessarily corrodes one’s sense of reason, of how evidence supports conclusions, and conclusions are beholden to evidence.)
The essay goes on with some history about the (surprising to us now, perhaps) antagonism to Einstein’s theories at the time, even among scientists. Scientists, too, have their conservative streak, if not in the same way ordinary people have; it’s human nature to cling to verities and resist change.
Long before the word “tweet” was associated with anything other than birds, Einstein’s career was nearly derailed by an early form of the disinformation now ubiquitous on social media. In 1920, skeptical scientists who deemed Einstein a crackpot, and his theory of relativity nonsense, joined forces. Their critiques were often laced with antisemitism. In that era, propaganda spread relatively slowly — one person passing it along to a friend who, in turn, would forward it to someone else, with circulation often limited by geography or language.
Einstein was annoyed by the whole endeavor. Curious about the campaign, he went to an anti-relativity event at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall where he saw that anti-Einstein pamphlets were being handed out. Nobody knew it was him. “He thought that these people were actually not very dangerous because they’re so silly and so poorly informed,” said Matthew Stanley, a historian of science and the philosophy of science at New York University and the author of a book on the fight against the theory of relativity. “He thought it’s all faintly ridiculous.”
The writer brings the issue back to the modern age of disinformation on social media. And this — the lack of intellectual humility in those who claim to challenge experts, or conventional wisdom, based on social media:
Even outside of conspiracy theorists, there’s a segment of society today that questions the very need for experts when Google’s vast servers can store information for us. We no longer need to memorize the numerical value of pi or the capital of North Dakota.
This sense of our own intellectual infallibility has led to an extreme lack of humility in all sorts of people, from politicians to celebrities to social media influencers. Asked during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election whom he turns to for advice on foreign affairs, Donald Trump cited himself.
And finishing with,
Election deniers and anti-vaxxers can now easily find comrades in their self-created bubbles, magnifying and emboldening their views. They run for office, flaunting a platform of anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism, and sometimes they win.
What would Einstein, who was driven by a lifelong curiosity to discover truths about our universe, think of the disinformation crisis social media has helped stoke? I can’t imagine he would be comfortable with the deluge of false news and incendiary tweets, nor of the elevation of everyone as an expert, a genius in his or her own mind.
I’d like to think Einstein, famous for his bons mots, would post a pithy tweet in response to the science deniers, flat-earthers and Ivanka Trump. “The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man,” Einstein once said. “Though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.”
And, yes, Einstein did actually say that.
Other Einstein quotes have been selectively promoted by conservatives to imply that he said what he didn’t really say, e.g. his metaphorical comments about God.
To this day, sites like Conservapedia (which I will not link), deny Einstein’s theories, and so much else that doesn’t conform to what was written by ancient sheepherders in the middle east.
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Here’s a thorough summary the increasing Republican approval of vigilante justice — people taking the law into their own hands, as long as Republicans approve of the perpetrators, and disapprove of the victims. Never mind the letter of the law. From Reagan and Gingrich to… Trump, DeSantis, Gaetz, Greene, Abbott, Cruz, Gosar, and others.
AlterNet, 5 Jun 2023: How the Republicans became the party of vigilante violence
Vox counts more than 40 instances, from the launch of Trump’s presidential campaign in June 2015 to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which he encouraged or endorsed violence. Following his election, threats against Congress members soared more than tenfold to 9,625 incidents in 2021 alone. “Far-right terror,”says Vox, “is currently the most significant ideological threat in the US,” with a proliferation of right-wing threats against elected officials across the country. Axios published a roster filled with others.
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One more odd item.
Slate, Luke Winkie, 5 June 2023: Get Drunk, Get Gains, subtitled “Experts aren’t so sure about my workout habit. I am.”
This concerns the writer’s workout schedule, which he has observed is more intense once he’s had a drink or two.
Evenings in my apartment’s gym tend to end with me sweating like a pig, flat on my back, dumbbells parallel above my chest, while a glistening no-ice Gin and Tonic waits on the spongy floorboards a few feet away. My body is not as limber as it used to be, and I’ll be the first to admit that my weightlifting regimen has grown elliptical and flummoxed as I wash ashore in my turgid Ben Affleck era. I rarely manifest the white-hot single-guy fervor that pushed me to my physical limits during my most chaotic fitness periods, and at 32, I constantly lose track of what I’m supposed to be doing, what muscles I want to target, and, more spiritually, how working out is supposed to feel. The best way to stay on target, I’ve found, is to get a little bit drunk.
Yeah, a little bit drunk. My sweet spot is about a shot and a half, particularly in that 20-minute glossy narcosis that occurs after you break the seal on an evening. I am all-powerful within that wondrous stupor. I can pump out bicep curls with vulgar, pre-first-date intensity; I can make loud, obnoxious Rafael Nadal grunts as I rut through sad, back-buckling squats; I can snarl at myself in the mirror and turn up the gym playlist that’s gone more or less unchanged in a decade. I can scream “LET’S FUCKING GO” after flexing out the mildest definition in my shoulders. When I’m a little bit drunk, all the damp humiliations of home exercise are sanded away. For a few moments of inebriated valor, I finally become a Chad.
It goes on with more examples and how moderation is the key.
