# Soyence

*Not to be confused with [science](science.md).*

{ I did my own peer review of this article and give it 10/10. ~drummyfish }

Soyence (also spelled soyience) is [business](business.md), [propaganda](propaganda.md) and [politics](politics.md) attempting to pass as [science](science.md), nowadays typically connected to [pseudoleftism](pseudoleft.md) (hence the word *[soy](soy.md)*), [pseudoskepticism](pseudoskepticism.md), [capitalism](capitalism.md) and [corporations](corporation.md). It is what in the [21st century](21st_century.md) has taken on the role that's historically been played by the church: that of establishing and maintaining orthodoxy for the control of mass population -- this time it is so called "science" or "rationality" that's used as the tool instead of [God](god.md) and religion, however the results are the same -- this is sometimes called the *cult of science* (quite nicely summed up e.g. [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20220924050207/https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/6bi4ho/comment/dhn89le/)). Soyence is not about listening to what science says, it is about listetning to what *"reputable scientists"* say, and of course not questioning them; soyence is what the typical reddit [atheist](atheism.md) or [tiktok](tiktok.md) [feminist](feminism.md) believes science is or what Neil De Grass Tyson tells you science is. While science is about collecting facts and drawing conclusions, soyence is about setting conclusions and finding or fabricating facts that support them. One red flag to watch out in relation to soyence is a great weight put on **reputation** -- in true science reputation plays no role, only results do; reputation and its great value for one's acceptance is rather part of [politics](politics.md) (and maybe show business). Notice for example how in the past it was more common to hear "science has found X" (as in "logic itself shows this fact") rather than "scientists have found X", which is more common nowadays -- mentally we have shifted to separate people to "scientists", those who "know" and dictate what's true, and non-scientists, those who don't know and must just listen. Soyence calls itself the one and only science^TM and [gatekeeps](gatekeeping.md) the term by calling unpopular science (such as that regarding human [race](race.md), questioning official versions of [historical](history.md) events or safety of big pharma [vaccines](vaccine.md)) "[pseudoscience](pseudoscience.md)" and "[conspiracy theories](conspiracy_theory.md)". Soyence itself is pseudoscience but it has an official status, approval of [state](state.md), strong connection to [politics](politics.md), it is mainstream, popular, controlled by those in power, [censored](censorship.md) ("moderated") and intentionally misleading. Soyence can be encountered in much of [academia](academia.md), on [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) and in other popular/mainstream media such as TV "documentaries" and [YouTube](youtube.md). A soyence supporter wrongfully believes that reason wouldn't allow such a large scale mass population manipulation (despite this happening over and over throughout history) -- people at large aren't reasonable and reason [cannot](yes_they_can.md) beat [propaganda](propaganda.md); only the highest naivety could make you believe that politics will follow science -- it's the other way around, and always has been. With enough power [anything is possible](yes_they_can.md). Big science is a big dirty game just like big politics or big corporate business, anyone thinking that corruption avoids big science or that it's only found in isolated clusters is naive like an unborn child, it's the same as believing big politics is free of corruption and done by good [selfless](selflessness.md) people who are concerned about securing well being for the citizens.

*"I don’t care about individual scientists, only a consensus of scientists. [...] I don't care, titles don't matter, what matters is consensus."* --Neil de Grass on Del Bigtree's TV show

Science offers explanations for observations, soyence tries to convince you your observations are wrong, well according to the quote from the most famous of dystopian novels, *[1984](1984.md)*:

*"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."*

Compared to good old [fun](fun.md) pseudosciences such as [astrology](astrology.md) and [flat Earth](flat_earth.md), soyence is extra sneaky by purposefully trying to blend in with real science, i.e. within a certain truly scientific field, such as biology, there is a soyentific [cancer](cancer.md) mixed in by activists, corporations and state, that may be hard to separate for common folk and many times even for pros. This is extremely [harmful](harmful.md) as in the eyes of retarded people (basically everyone) the neighboring legit science gives credibility to propaganda bullshit. There is a tendency to think we somehow magically live in a time that's fundamentally different from other times in history in which it is now a pretty clear and uncontroversial fact that the name of science was abused hard by propaganda, almost everyone easily accepts that historically politically constructed lies were presented as confirmed by science, but somehow people refuse to believe it could be the case nowadays. In times of Nazism there was no doubt about race being a completely scientific term and that Jews were scientifically confirmed to be the inferior race -- nowadays in times when anti Nazis have won and politics is based on denying existence of race somehow scientists start to magically find evidence that no such thing as race has ever existed -- how convenient! And just in case you wanted to check if it's actually true, you'll be labeled a racist and you won't find job ever again.

Soyence uses all the cheap tricks of politics (also not dissimilar to those of [greenwashing](greenwashing.md), [openwashing](openwashing.md) etc.) to win stupid people over, it builds on the cult of bullying religion and creating a [war mentality](fight_culture.md), overuse of twisted "rationality" ([pseudoskepticism](pseudoskepticism.md)), creating science [bloat](bloat.md) and bullshit "scientific" fields to obscure lies, punishment of the correct use of rationality, building cults of personality ("science educators", the [gatekeepers](gatekeeping.md) of "science") and appealing to egoism and naivity of wannabe smartasses while at the same time not even holding up to principles of science such as genuine objectivity. A soyence kid will for example keep preaching about how everything should be proven by reproducible experiments while at the same time accepting [de facto](de_facto.md) irreproducible results, e.g. those obtained with billion dollar worth research performed at [CERN](cern.md) which can NOT be reproduced anywhere else than at CERN with thousands of top scientist putting in years of work. Such results are not reproducible in practice, they are accepted on the basis of pure faith in those presenting it, just as religious people accept the words of preachers. The kid will argue that in theory someone else can build another CERN and reproduce the results, but that won't happen in practice, it's just a purely theoretical unrealistic scenario so his version of what "science" is is really based on reproducibility that only works in a dreamed up world, this kind of reproducibility doesn't at all fulfill its original purpose of allowing others to check, confirm or refute the results of experiments. This starts to play a bigger role when for example vaccines start to get promoted by the government as "proven safe by science" (read "claimed safe by a corporation who makes money off of people being sick"), the soyence kid will gladly accept the vaccine and [fight](fight_culture.md) for their acceptance just thanks to this label, not based on any truly scientific facts but out of pure faith in self proclaimed science authorities -- trusting an authority (be it pope, priests, holy book or a scientific journal) is by definition [religion](religion.md) and here the soyentist is relying purely on faith, a concept he would like to think he hates with his soul. If at all a soyentist claims to follow rationality, he should perhaps read how rationalism is defined in Encyclopedia Britannica 11th edition:

*"[Rationalism is] opposed to all doctrines which rest solely or ultimately upon external authority; the individual must investigate everything for himself and abandon any position the validity of which cannot be rationally demonstrated."*

If someone accepted as a fact a sentence written on a piece of paper solely on the basis of that the paper being signed by an authority ("peer reviewed", ...), will we call it a RATIONAL deduction of the fact? If so, then call the middle ages the golden age of rationality and the Catholic church an example of rational thought.

Soyence is trying to introduce to science absolutely anti-scientific concepts such as [political correctness](political_correctness.md), "politeness", [censorship](censorship.md), [democratic](democracy.md) voting on official truth (AKA "consensus") and veto powers of authorities. While the non-scientific majority of population (those who in "democratic" systems make decisions) might not immediately see a problem with this, scientists must get alarmed because the mentioned concepts effectively **remove falsifiability**, a very basic pillar of the scientific method. Once a hypothesis becomes unquestionable -- by whatever means (even political or [cultural](culture.md) pressure, [fear](fear_culture.md), [law](law.md), economic obstacles, ...) -- it cannot be falsified and as such cannot be examined by science at all. If someone argues that it's enough for a hypothesis to be falsifiable in theory, ignoring other possible [de facto](de_facto.md) obstacles to it, then it must be admitted the discipline we are subsequently talking about is also science ONLY IN THEORY, not necessarily in practice. This is however a very subtle thing to realize, something that escapes even to many "professional scientists" -- the problematic is similar to a situation that arouse in [free software](free_software.md) where many programs are already "free only on the paper", "free" by a [license](license.md) but non-free in practical terms, e.g. due to [bloat](bloat.md).

The "[citation needed](citation_needed.md)" insanity that indicates lack of any brain and pure reliance on the word of authority is best exemplified by [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md). Wikipedia doesn't accept original research, observation or EVEN LOGIC ITSELF as a basis for presenting something -- everything, even trivial claims, must have a "citation" from a source WITH mainstream political views (unpopular and controversial sources are banned); Wikipedia is therefore one big propaganda ground for those with power over the mainstream media.

Soyence relies on low [IQ](iq.md), shallow education and popular "science education" (e.g. neil de grass), while making its followers believe they are smart. It produces propaganda material such as "documentaries" with Morgan Freeman (i.e. people who are good at persuasion rather than being competent), series like The Big Bang Theory and [YouTube](youtube.md) videos with titles such as "Debunking Flat Earth with FACTS AND LOGIC", so there's a huge mass of [NPCs](npc.md) thinking they are Einsteins who blindly support this cult. Soyence attacks science from within by attacking its core principles, i.e. it tries to ridicule and punish thinking outside the box and asking specific questions -- in this it is not dissimilar to a mass [religion](religion.md).

For the ones who possibly still don't get it, here is a little comparison. It is good if for now you don't see it as "good" vs "evil" (this is a separate step, left for later on), just as a comparison of what science is vs what's politics. The first step is simply to see the difference.

- example of science: "Objects close to Earth dropped in vacuum fall and accelerate at the same rate no matter their weight. Do whatever you please with this information. If you don't believe it, check it yourself. If you find a more accurate law, please let it be known."
- example of NOT science: "This claim has been published in a top science magazine and reviewed by 100 people each one having 10 PhDs and 100 science medals, so trust it or be bullied."

A **red flag** often giving soyence away is **use and embedding of political mechanisms** such as authority, credibility, voting, "[democracy](democracy.md)", consensus, peer review, fact checks, [censorship](censorship.md), [codes of conduct](coc.md), popularization, promotion (posters, social media, ...), [marketing](marketing.md) etc. True science, by definition, is something that cannot be deceiving, it is self proving and doesn't need policing, equations either work and predict or they don't, knowledge is either useful or not, there is no room for belief or ideology. Nowadays we already implicitly assume deception by requiring peer reviews, we distinguish "morally bad fact" and "morally good lies", we elect priests whose word is to be taken for fact just by the title before their name -- this is NOT true science.

Of course, once science advances, it may stop being so simple as for everyone to be able to for example check the results that scientists found, that's without doubt, the point is simply that at the stage when the field starts being a religion, for whatever reason at all, we can no longer call it science, it is simply religion that evolved from science. That is all.

With science we can utilize **[freedom distance](freedom_distance.md)** to measure "how much of a science" something is -- here we may define freedom distance as the average distance to someone who can completely grasp the presented "science" with ALL that's required, including understanding the results, verifying them himself and so on. If this distance is within a small village, we can consider it science; if it's several countries, it is not science anymore.

Soyence [popularizators](popularization.md) also like to contaminate science with emotion, with "stories" and [heroes](hero_culture.md) and other kind of bullshit that has no place in true science: true science is pure rationality, it aims for highest objectivity possible and to that emotion is an obstacle. Science is a cold, emotionless tool -- if you don't see [beauty](beauty.md) in this fact alone, science is not for you.

Some further examples of soyence:

- Relying on **consensus**: This is one of the great identifying features of soyence -- what is true or not depends on whether the majority of (approved) soyentists agree it is true. When we think about it for just one second, 
we cannot miss the fact that this way of establishing truth has simply no longer anything to do with science: we no longer establish facts based on rigorous, logical conclusions, but based on VOTING, by accepting the OPINION of majority. This is POLITICS and nothing else. Common people accept this for one simple reasons: the words *consensus* and *[democracy](democracy.md)* [sound positive](shortcut_thinking.md) and 99% of common people NEVER think things through, they literally only react to whether a word sounds good or not, they never think deeper to check actual consequences. The opposing 1% -- usually true scientists, i.e. people who DO think things through -- are simply bullied out based on the consensus rule: "majority of people like this, so shut up". Everyone who knows anything about history of science knows many, if not most of the greatest advancements of science were those that went AGAINST consensus, including those of Galileo and Darwin for example -- big breakthroughs are so significant exactly because they show something assumed to have been true is in fact false -- and this is what soyence suppresses by strictly rejecting anything that goes against consensus. If science was conducted by maintaining consensus, we would have no theory of relativity, we'd still keep believing in aether, we'd be teaching children that Sun revolved around Earth, which is flat and only 6000 years old by the way, we wouldn't believe in rational numbers and in fact wouldn't even have the heretic number [zero](zero.md).
- **Hostility towards [religion](religion.md)**, seeing religion as incompatible with science and as its [COMPETITION](competition.md). Perceiving religion as a competitor to "science" reveals that such "science" IS in fact a new religion that wants to occupy the spot previously occupied by religion. True science is distinct and complementary to religion and in fact most of the greatest scientists (Newton, Tesla, Pythagoras, Einstein, ...) were religious or at least had faith in something supernatural. True science deals with the rational, provable and knowable while true religion deals with the supernatural, that which must be felts and is improvable. Both are part of EVERY human's life.
- **[gender studies](gender_studies.md)** [LMAO](lmao.md)
- "Believe in science!" The irony of sentences like this one should be so striking to not need further comments, but still: science should be the exact opposite of believing.
- "[Race](race.md) is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT and doesn't have any biological meaning." (proven by consensus)
- Any [pseudoskeptical](pseudoskepticism.md) talk trying to look "scientific", for example using jargon, [buzzwords](buzzword.md) and large thesaurus to make opinions sound "scientific".
- [Bullshit](bullshit.md) degrees, e.g. "[PhD](phd.md)" in "user experience", "ecology communication", "game level design", "diversity in software engineering" or "making [youtube](youtube.md) videos" (like that fucker from Veritasium [lmao](lmao.md)). This creates an army of relatively stupid (110 [IQ](iq.md)) conformists who are extremely [proud](pride.md) and grateful for the prestige of having become the "[soldiers](fight_culture.md) of science" and will be ready to in turn support the political consensus which will subsequently be used to cancel the true scientific minority.
- "[Women](woman.md) are as intelligent as men, if not more."
- "[citation needed](citation_needed.md)" on everything
- "Studies show that ..."
- "Science popularization" (more correctly soyence brainwashing) as in building authority of so called "scientists" so as to create a political capital.
- "This extremely lucrative [Covid](covid.md) vaccine made by us, a predatory [corporation](corporation.md), in record time is absolutely safe, don't dare question it OR ELSE, just take it 5 times a year and pay us each time you do, don't mind any side effects." --Big Pharma
- Fandom community over "science", fanboy mentality, treating scientists as celebrities, wearing "science" T-shirts and hats, watching [Big Bang Theory](big_bang_theory.md), following "I Fucking Love Science" on [Facebook](facebook.md), "rooting for science!", hostility towards anyone who doesn't support the same team.
- "You can't trust your everyday experience or things you see with your own eyes, only trust our SCIENTISTS, they know better."
- "Science says [god](god.md) doesn't exist." aka reddit [atheism](atheism.md)
- **Peer review** (better known as peer censorship): "We can't believe this because it wasn't peer censored/fact checked and/or it didn't pass the [null ritual](null_ritual.md) and/or it wasn't published in a journal on our approved literature list." (--[Wikipedia](wikipedia.md))
- "This gender studies expert has proven sex is a racial construct and has no biological meaning. You disagree? Well, do you have a PhD in gender studies? No? Then shut up you fucking sexist."
- Obsession with "novelty" and similar [buzzwords](buzzword.md) ([modern](modern.md), innovative, sustainable, green, state of the art, bleeding edge, ...). Papers have to be [advertised](marketing.md) well to gain attention, e.g. with videos on YouTube.
- "Scientists" who actually make money on YouTube and Twitter and do "science" only as a side pet project to have some "content" for their online Disneyland.
- "This goes against SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS therefore it's pseudoscience and [conspiracy theory](conspiracy_theory.md)."
- "This research is racist.", using terms such as "scientific racism".
- Bullshit "fields" like "ecology communication" and whatnot.
- This guy's research is invalid because in his spare time he makes videos on ufology and other "conspiracy theories", his REPUTATION AND CREDIBILITY is destroyed.
- "We should burn these old books that say things we don't like, just in case. When Nazis did it it was different."
- Strategically setting up experiments and/or cherrypicking facts (as well as censoring inconvenient counter evidence) so as to achieve desired results :]]]
- "This research was made by a [racist](racism.md) so it is invalid, also we should [lynch](cancel_culture.md) the guy just in case."
- Neil de grass/Morgan Freeman "documentaries", emotional "science" documentaries with famous actors and a lot of "PhD" women talking heads that make wild gesticulations and excited faces trying to tell you how EXCITING science is by suggesting there must be alien life because there are so many planets or by showing you black holes, explosive chemical reactions etc.
- Political messages and "motivational stories" inserted into "scientific documentaries".
- HERE IS THE SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT WAY TO CUT A CAKE, YOU'VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG YOUR WHOLE LIFE!
- Deducing cool facts on TV about extinct animals from their skull shapes is Neil De grass stamp of approval legit thumbs up paleonthology science yay! :)))) But trying it on humans ([phrenology](phrenology.md)) is a bad bad NONO PSEUDOSCIENCE, neil de grass frown :(((
- "We can totally trust the results of commercial research. They will be objective and sincerely publish even results that will ruin their business because even CEOs are moral people and wouldn't dare lie even if that should cost them their career. Even if a corporation wanted to do something bad there are still the excellent good people in government who won't let this happen."
- "These negative results are useful but unexciting so let's not publish them, we gotta entertain our readers to stay on the market. We GOTTA TELL INSPIRATIONAL STORIES with our papers. We have to publish exciting papers about which we can also make YouTube videos for our channel." --soyence journals
- "No, you can't research the details of historic events such as Holocaust. It is declared to have happened like this and if you suggest otherwise, you go to prison." (see anti [Holocaust](holocaust.md) denial laws)
- AGE IS JUST A NUMBER! As long as that number is higher or equal to 18, that is :)
- great part of [economics](economics.md)
- Ignoring and/or censoring results of unethical or controversial research, for example the cruel experiment performed by [Nazis](nazi.md), i.e. mixing in political decisions.
- **Absence of evidence is evidence of absence**, but only when it's convenient -- for example "Humans are of recent origin because there is no evidence of older humans existing" (so as to support their claims about human [race](race.md)), or "God doesn't exist because we have no evidence for it", or "5G doesn't cause cancer because science never found that 5G tower radiation would cause cancer" (maybe because science never had the opportunity to compare a million of people living 40 years under 5G radiation with another million of people who live exact same lives, just without 5G?) etc. But when asked about whether life exists anywhere besides Earth they will go "YES YES YES 100% YES, with so many stars and galaxies there MUST be life, [insert Drake's equation here], we just haven't found evidence yes" (here absence of evidence isn't an issue because the claim favors desired science hype). The claim "science found no evidence for X" now practically equates a claim that "science has proven that X is false", which is quite highly fucked up if you think about it.
- Obsession about words rather than ideas and concepts, e.g. what is a "disorder" and "illness" vs "divergent", emotional arguments about whether Pluto is a "planet" or not etc.
- "Feeling sexually attracted to 17.99 years old chick is a serious mental illness, please consider lobotomy and castration. 18.00 is OK. QED, le gender studies PhD honoris causa"
- When men score higher on [IQ](iq.md) tests than [women](woman.md), the consensus goes: "IQ tests are invalid, [outdated](update_culture.md) and have no value". When a suspicious study appears showing women scored 1 point higher than men, suddenly the headlines explode: "PROVEN BY SCIENCE: WOMEN SMARTER THAN MEN!11!1"
- Number of rapes has escalated by 1000%! (Because we redefined rape to include any interaction of man and woman.)
- "[Pedophilia](pedophilia.md) is a mental illness while pure [homosexuality](gay.md) is not. QED"
- Researching holocaust or vaccine safety? CONSPIRACY THEORY PSUDOSCIENCE! Theory claiming that all inventions were actually stolen from women by men and that ancient Greeks and Romans were actually black and Jesus was transsexual? PLAUSIBLE, VERY LIKELY TRUE.
- ...

Here are a few tips on how to spot soyence:

- Is trust involved? Things like authority of publishers, censorship, reviews etc.? If so, it is by definition NOT science.
- Is questioning anything at all prevented and/or punished? It is [dogma](dogma.md), not science. True science encourages questioning EVERYTHING. Once it can't be questioned, it can't be refuted and this BY DEFINITION kills the scientific method on the spot.
- Is emotion involved? Is someone putting energy into promoting it? Are they waving their hands in air and making content creator faces when explaining something to convince you by excitement rather than by pure logical arguments? If yes, it's probably a preparation of business/politics grounds, not science.
- Is money involved? Is any form of [capital](capital.md) (money, attention, power, ...) in play? Is there any form of business connected? If so, it is business, not science.
- Is politics involved? Will the results help some currently active political group? It's highly suspicious, it almost definitely can't be trusted, it's most likely not science.
- Is the mainstream spending resources on promoting it? It's soyence almost with 100% certainty.
- Weather forecasts? They literally don't work.
- ...

The cult of soyence is one of the great pillars of the system's indoctrination and brainwashing that nurtures onto [NPCs](npc.md) a mindset of mindlessness in which people obtain answers to any and all questions solely from "approved experts", allowing to establish lies which contradict what would otherwise be completely obvious, visible with the naked eye. Of course it's not necessarily wrong to take the word of an expert, nonetheless the point here is that this simple idea is twisted and taken to such an extreme that it becomes a tool for exploitation of the people: now it is FORBIDDEN to NOT take the word of an "expert" on practically every part of your life that is not the one tiny and insignificant niche that you specialize in such as selling cars or photographing weddings (and even there if you oppose the consensus you'll likely be canceled and labeled "no longer an expert in that area"): there are now eye experts that will tell you what your eyes are seeing and ear experts telling you what your ears are hearing and unless you have a [PhD](phd.md) in eye or ear "science", you must trust them. So now a common folk is completely rid of all thinking, it is possible to implant any "facts" to everyone's heads. For example (this may happen to [the author](drummyfish.md) sooner or later) it is absolutely possible for the system to imprison an absolute pacifist -- who only ever advocated against any violence at all -- for the crime of inciting violence, even if there is complete and undeniable evidence, such as his website with all his writings, that the man never called for violence and in fact did the absolute opposite -- this is possible because no one will bother reading the evidence even when it's right in front of his eyes, or he just won't believe his eyes because he is simply waiting for an "expert" to translate the real world for him, and if said expert is skilled enough in mental gymnastic -- or just plain and simple lying -- he can just translate a sentence "NEVER use violence" into it "actually" meaning "I call everyone to use violence now!". This sounds stupids and it is, and it's how reality is nowadays -- just ask yourself this: when you see a mass shooter on the news, will you go download his manifesto, read through it and make your own judgment, or will you just wait for the summary of the manifesto they'll give you on the news?

## See Also

- [pseudoskepticism](pseudoskepticism.md)
- [conspiracy theory](conspiracy_theory.md)