Do gravity waves exist? They've been measured. Did they exist before they were measured? Likely. Did the Michelson–Morley 1887 experiment 'prove' there was no aether, or did their instruments fail to detect it? If this experiment was looking for gravity waves, they would have failed to detect them, too! Would they have concluded there are no gravity waves? Would scientist (people?!) be forever banned for looking?
People exist. Cultures exist. Different people and different cultures believe different things. Lots of people have ideas and theories about this place we live. Sometimes there is obvious evidence for our beliefs. Sometimes there is not.
We like evidence. There is evidence, for example, that medicine is mostly useful. That evidence is not an absolute, but is a statistical measure that most people, most the time, benefit. There is this thing called the Number Needed to Treat. NNT. "The NNT offers a measurement of the impact of a medicine or therapy by estimating the number of patients that need to be treated in order to have an impact on one person."
So, if 5 people have to take the drug before 1 person sees the benefit- does that mean four people were screwed? Probably not. I am probably not thinking about this right. But that is the science of it. Not everyone benefits!
If you live in this world, you probably have experience with medication. They work most the time. I myself have benefitted greatly from medication. There are some meds that did nothing. And, there were some that came with huge costs. Prednisone made me a fat kid, and I got bullied. There were meds/treatments that had the opposite affect, which irritated my doctor to no end. He really liked those medications! That, or he really liked the drug rep who brought him coffee and sex. Seriously, we get fed well at the clinic for pushing certain drugs. If they worked, would they need beautiful people flirting with doctors?
I had some bad outcomes with medications. It was like the opposite of the placebo. I took this one medication to decrease migraines, and lost the ability to speak. It's a rare side affect, but I got it.
All of that preamble to arrive here. Meds work. People who have conditions learn real quick what works and what doesn't work, and yet- Doctors are rarely likely to listen to their patients who have greater personal history with their illness than the doctor has treating that illness. a Doctor that specializes in bipolar might actually give more bipolar diagnoses than MDD, and vice versa, because doctors see what they see! Doctors frequently change the patients meds for the ones they favor. If you attend a community mental health clinic, you get the ones the state favors, which is based completely on cost effectiveness, not medicinal effectiveness.
People are frequently changing doctors, chasing the meds they favor. One might argue, doctors don't listen to patient, and don't care, which is not true, they care passionately, and yet- the average doctor visit, statistically, is maybe 10 minutes. Could a doctor really know a person in 10 minutes? If people truly get better by just being heard, 10 minutes is not enough. This is also limited by insurance, which even limits patients from asking questions, because they won't allow double billing. Doctors don't protest that too much because if they allowed one question, a patient might have a hundred questions... they have schedules to keep, and don't have time for real people and real problems.
So, what does this boil down to? Contempt is not a fear based structure, but an authority function of a primitive economic system that values commodities over human beings. Ideas, paradigms, theories, science itself- is not about conversations and or curiosity or true discovery of principles of reality. It is at its core an economic function that guides people in the formation of value. All people in this economic system are forced to participate in this game of invisible trade, and to do that they have to lie, as evidence by the practice of resume construction, and manipulate systems to ensure other consumers and sellers will value their 'stocks' over any one else's. Consider opinion a stock. Faces of contempt psychologically convinces others you hold secret cards of value, when in reality all you have is opinion. It may scientifically have validity, it might even be absolute truth, but it's still an opinion- a stock option- in this game analogy. It's a card game bluff. No one is truly better than the other, but to be convincing we buy into our own game and do things against our other principle, like being kind or humble. We are that, too. No one who has shown contempt is really bad. Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't bad, but he will be loud and just shy of histrionics to win a point by shutting down honest communication. It also happens that he holds a degree, and greater the recognition of authority, the more power the contempt face has! If you hold Tyson to the fire, he actually calms down and is more genuine in his interactions. You have to get through Tyson's game personal before you meet the real him.
In this model, never forget all people in this game are both buyers and sellers at the same time. There is truly an invisible market hand, and sometimes we all act badly because we're worried about losses in this economic game that is little better than monopoly. When we stop playing monopoly as if it were real, we might start listening, practicing more compassion, and most of life's problem will self-resolve.
