Modest science versus criminally arrogant tinkering

Bill Gates visits Klaus Schwab darling Mark Rutte
Bill Gates visits Klaus Schwab darling Mark Rutte [1]

Fortunately, there are many, and more and more, people worldwide who are extremely critical of Bill Gates. A crucial aspect is almost always left out of consideration, however. Very often critical comments and reflections are exclusively about the man’s wrong intentions. What is missing is an emphasis on his skills and limitations.

There can be no doubt about it: Gates is a very creative and gifted person.
Perhaps even more than Vladimir Ilyich Uljanow or Adolf Schicklgruber were. (Men better known by their more commonly used names Lenin and Hitler).
More than two years ago I wrote quite extensively about Gates in a rather long article in Dutch about Vaccinations, Corona and Conspiracy Panic (Vaccinaties, Corona en Complotpaniek).
I will update two passages from it here and go into them in a little more depth.

Artificial solar eclipse

In early 2021, a plan, a particularly ambitious plan by Harvard, Bill Gates and the Swedish Space Corporation, was canceled. The experiment to block sunlight with gas would take place near the city of Kiruna in northern Sweden. An area where mainly Sami live. The experiment was called Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx).

At the time I didn’t think about the meaning of the term ‘Perturbation’…
The message stated that the experiment had been “called off”. That only means that it was stopped: it was not rejected as dangerous, nonsensical or immoral.
In the linked article from an organization behind that experiment, there was mention of results from a subsequent “social engagement process”. Using this concept fueled my distrust. For that reason, I subscribed to the emails for “… more information and future updates on the SCoPEx Advisory Committee’s work…”. Concerned people, anywhere in the world, would thus be kept informed of developments.
However, never in the last two years have I received any progress notification!
That committee was very ambitious. Do read this:

We modestly [sic] hope that the processes we develop and employ to evaluate SCoPEx can both responsibly guide this particular experiment and serve as a model for other geoengineering research.

So I did not receive a message, but now that I am looking for more and more recent information, I read that the Advisory Committee has published a number of updates on its own site about their actions: four in 2021 and three in 2022.

Read these Guidelines for Local Engagement for the SCoPEx project! and let it sink in: there is no substantive evaluation with regard to inciting climate panic.
The approach is completely clear: it is about massaging the minds of the stupid citizens to go along with ‘us wise scientists and politicians‘. Without using those qualifications ‘stupid’ and ‘wise’, of course.

At the end of 2022, a similar experiment was actually carried out by a company with the chilling name ‘Make sunsets‘.

Mexico’s government reacted furiously. And it received remarkably strong support from an unexpected quarter: an organization that produces reviews of scientific contributions from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Quote:

Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads. 
Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field.

For an organization that formulates par excellence understatedly, this is truly devastating criticism. And rightly so.

Perturbation

But I had not previously thought about that word ‘perturbation’ at all.
The unsurpassed Merriam Webster gives the following synonyms:
anxiety, commotion, confusion, disorder, disruption and disturbance. I would now summarize it as ‘poke’. So the experiment involved ‘controlled poking’ …

Understanding versus creating

In the 80s and 90s I worked in IT. There was a wonderful expression going around among programmers; Easy to remember because it rhymes in Dutch:

Mijn computer is een paskwil:
Hij doet wat ik zeg en niet wat ik wil.

A direct English translation is less beautiful: “My computer is a prankster: it does what I say and not what I want” (perhaps there is a completely different English expression that addresses the same issues, I don’t know of one).
It’s actually about a bit of frustration, but there is also an important, indisputable truth in it. Computers ALWAYS do EXACTLY what you tell them to do. Yes ALWAYS: even when ‘quantum- features’ are used.

Developing lightning-fast, complex, well-functioning computer software at a high level requires a lot of knowledge, talent and creativity. All things considered, however, there is no relationship whatsoever with natural science!
There is no need to understand how material reality – the part of it which exists independently of our decisions, acts and progress – works. Because of this distance from natural science, people like Bill Gates lack the modesty that is self-evident for gifted natural scientists.

In the worst cases – like that of this Bill Gates himself – they are just phenomenal manipulators and tinkerers. Or to put it more kindly: idiot savants.

There is a fundamental difference between understanding and constructing, creating.

Creating is more like tinkering.

Note 1:

Video and text about Mark Rutte as Klaus Schwabs darling.

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