The two colour protocol

How to be sane

“When there is no line”

Tim West, after Professor Uliberl, 2023

“When there is no line the walls of truth are breached. All manner of fantastical beasts invade the terrain, and all manner of facts are treated as mere fancy.”

Professor Donbeig Uliberl: In Praise Of Doubt

“The ‘problems’ in philosophy are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations

I have a cunning plan.

Within hardly any time at all, we can end pseudoscience and hence false fears and hence tyranny for good…

…make it impossible.

Uh oh! 

Looks like we got someone with a ‘solution’ here.

We can purge The Citadel of Science™️ of its suffocating infestation of delusory bullshit.

Yep! We’ve got a real live one, Houston.

All that is needed…

Here we go. get the popcorn…

…is for everyone to…

Come on. Let’s hear what you’re selling…

…

(Slight pause)

(Sound of a large slow breath in and out)

All that is needed is for everyone to insist on a rigorous application of the two colour protocol:

Science: the avoidance of delusion

Ha! I knew it! 😄

…using it to examine and assess old pape…

I knew it would be all about the “Great Philosopher of Science” spreading his… 

Right. I’m terribly sorry ladies and gentlemen. I’m just going to have to deal with this fellow. He is very annoying but he does actually focus on an important point.

Just a minute.

Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

…

Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Are you talking to me?

Yes.

Clearly.

How am I supposed to know that?

Because I started to speak in italics.

What?

When I was talking to the ladies and gentlemen I spoke without italics.. Suddenly I asked a question in italics, and it was one they obviously couldn’t answer from audience land. So…

Never mind.

Can you stop all the heckling please. I’m not selling anything. I’m not offering a grand discovery. I’ve no interest at all in anything except the world returning to sanity.

Yeah! Thanks to your big special new understanding?🙃

You hoping to get the Nobel Prize for The bleedin’ obvious then?

ROFL

(Sigh).

Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Yes.

That’s the point where you are supposed to give a potted version of the story for the listeners who don’t know it.

What?

Let’s just try it again.

…Ok…

Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Don’t you think the listeners are getting sick of hearing,

“Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?”

by now?

You did that deliberately.

If you don’t do it properly this time I shan’t type you any more lines.

Oooh, very meta! OK, go on. I’ll behave.

Do you know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Where the Emperor’s tailors make a pretend suit of clothes, saying only clever people can see it, and he he walks out naked amongst his people who all pretend to see it, wanting to be seen as clever and then a small child shouts out the truth?

Yes, that’s the one.

What about it?

Would you say the small child was selling something?

Well obviously not.

Or that he was claiming to be someone great, offering a special new understanding ?

OK. Yes. I see where you’re going with this.

Was he hoping for a Nobel prize?

You’re comparing yourself to a key wise character in a classic fairy tale. Someone who is cleverer than all the others who thought themselves so clever, pointing out with innocent simplicity how everyone else misses the obvious thing staring us all in the face.

You’re using the old 

“I’m just a small child”

ploy to make an arrogant man’s delusions of grandeur appea…

Ok this is your first warning. All conversations in good faith. Otherwise you will be muted.

Eh?

Stay on point

No Ad Hominem.

No Umbrellaing.

No Sales.

No Flooding..

What the pickled trumpets are you on about?

Terribly sorry, I am also the caretaker on Dr Mike Yeadon’s Telegram and Substack. I fell into another role.

What? You help Mike Yeadon? But that’s amazing!

Proudest thing I’ve ever done, certainly.

He da man.

I agree. If everyone listened to Mike the whole Babel-onian Tower of cards would come crashing down. The perp o’traitors would be scuppered.

Absolutely. That’s why he’s the most censored of them all. He changes his position based on new awareness of data. He is not too proud to say he was wrong in the past. He has a world-class pedigree and a proven track record. He’s sharp, cautious, careful, restrained, ‘normal’ (though no normie!) And he clearly has no hidden agenda. And no time for Alt-pHarma.

Blimey. Get a room. Is this you using the same ‘narrative’ technique as above to tell the readers how cool you think Mike is?

No, it’s me using the same technique as above to tell the readers how cool Mike actually is.

Fair enough.

If it were anyone else I’d be raising an eyebrow at this point, frankly! But in his case I agree your gushing is entirely understandable.

But moving on, 

  this post is subtitled “How to be sane?” Yes?

Yes.

And yet you have not so far addressed sanity at all! You’ve been banging on about science - again.

And, not to put too fine a point upon it, the post so far seems to consist mostly of:

you talking to yourself.
…


 🧐😄

Very amusing. You know full well that I am employing Socratic dialogue.

You mean where a writer uses two apparently separate voices to…

You don’t need to do that again.

Why not? What audience are you writing for exactly?

One you expect to understand socratic dialogue but who may not know the story of the Emperor’s New Clo…

Ok. That’s enough. Can we dispense with the ‘hilarious’ theatre now please.

You are not Staying On Point yourself.

Apologies ladies and gentlemen.

My imagination ran away with me…

My main point is:

I don’t care if the colours pink and green are used or not. I don’t care if this particular small child who points to a lot of invisible clothes gets a fancy recognition from the Citadel or not,

as long as ‘Science’ purges itself of The Science™️ and then starts proper for the first time

rigorously keeping the stories and the data separate,

losing - if Professor Ioannidis is right - over 95% of papers, in reality much more and who knows how many ‘basic concepts’. Not always losing them but making their pink nature central.

The heart of what science is, has - to my knowledge - not been specifically pin-pointed before ever…

…except to every tiny child in every country for millennia as their fundamental tool for navigating reality, which is what Science is.

The thin black line

The child understands it very simply as being down to one question,

the Science Question:

“Now then, are you sure that’s the truth? Or is it just a story?”

So many names it goes by this ancient artefact:

The Sacred Scalpel,

The Sword of Doubt,

The Black Line,

Scepticism,

Destroyer of Delusions,

Banquisher of Certainty,

Fallacy’s Bane,

Mender of Madness,

Dismisser of Dogma,

The Suss that Seals the Source of Pseudoscience*

* (only three people call it that)

What does the black line do?

It stops the leakage between Pink and Green that creates Brown Stuff.

Imagination plays a helping role in Scepticism.

The facts all point one way.

X must logically be true

Until Colombo imagines other possibilities…

…and also imagines consequences of X and so sees contradictions with the evidence at the scene.

The Black Line makes use of pink stuff in being a gatekeeper for ‘what is the case’.

“What must logically be” is not necessarily Green Stuff. 

It might be Pink Stuff drawing premature conclusions from the Green evidence.

Pink Stuff can then help debunk them and / or produce other possibilities.

Pink Stuff is not bad!

Only when it is made into Brown Stuff by dragging it beyond Fallacy’s Bane.

Brown stuff

Brown stuff may be delusion - or it may be plain lying. We may never know the motive of the Black Line Breach which may in any case go in either direction ⛰️⬅️🧠 or ⛰️➡️🧠

⬅️

something which is only a story is presented as the truth.

Treating Pink Stuff, as if it were Green Stuff , certainty or belief (when used in the sense of certainty.)

Veteran Hypotheses, also known as Theories, are prime candidates for this error. See below.

So also is invisible stuff you may invent to explain some data. 😀

Depending on context, ⬅️ may be

Certainty

Idolatry

Making your images graven

The reification fallacy

Insanity

Credulousness

Gullibility

Gaslighting

Fraud

Lying

➡️

something that is the truth is presented as if it was just a story

The other direction of confusion may come under the heading, denial.

Facts treated as if only possibility. Data treated as if opinion. Reality thought part of one’s mind. External events thought your creation. Green is treated as Pink.

Other context names for denial:

Solipsism

Hubris

Sticking your head in the sand

Turning a blind eye

Airbrushing out inconveniences

Cherry-picking

Out of touch with evidence

Insanity

Blasphemy

Cover-ups

Burying the Data

Gaslighting

Fraud

Lying

My Hope: Communal Sanity

Whatever science we do going forward, of whatever type, whether we use this precise terminology or not, I hope the two colour protocol should effectively be seen as fundamental.

Sanity

In my view, it extends beyond science for me into my own life. Sanity is best defined as a successful following of the two colour protocol.

(Proper) Science is literally just organised sanity; the refusal to entertain delusions as a collective.

Science: communal sanity

On an individual basis, as we were all taught as toddlers, the two colour protocol must also be fundamental in all our own thinking, if we want to be grounded, happy, successful at negotiating the world,

sane.

Knowing what is real and what is make-believe is literally what sanity is.

These are not different ideas then, science and sanity. Sanity is keeping separate Pink and Green stuff.

Science is exactly the same, just a bit hungrier to amass more of both.

Handy guide to peace of mind

1. Be sane. How?

Avoid delusion

2.Be scientific. How?

Avoid delusion

3. Live in faith. How?

Avoid delusion.

0. Avoid delusion. How?

Separate the Day from the Night

“Separate the Day from the Night”?

I make the case that certain core religious terminology may be urging us to live in the real world rather than confusing bits of imagination for reality.

Rather than it urging us to believe (as in certainty, as in taking pictures and ideas as real ) as many seem to imagine,

it is categorically urging us never to believe but instead to live in faith (the absence of belief / delusion).

Faith: the absence of certainty, the absence of certain belief

Faith: the absence of delusion

Science = Sanity = Faith = strict adherence to the two colour protocol.

The two colour protocol:

Separate the green and pink at all stages.

From the initial objects or claimed objects and definitions, consistently throughout and in the final write-up, it must be very clear at all stages:

• What is DATA, Green Stuff?

• What is MODEL, Pink Stuff.

What is true? What are pretty pictures?

‘E’s ‘avin’ a go at the pretty pictures now!’

Gentle reader, it may sound as if I’m against pretty pictures but I certainly am not!

I am one who delights in all manifestations of the creative muse.

- in its place!

(On the right side of the thin black line)

Some pretty pictures are amazing. I love ‘em!

Some can even help generate data. Pink stuff that leads to green stuff.

Three main types of these science-fancies depending on what type of Green Stuff they can give way to in the face of existential evidence.

The three types of science-fancies:

1. Science Prophecies - statements that certain existential DATA will one day be observed.

2. Universal Hypotheses - universal statements that certain existential DATA can never be observed. Some things can’t happen. Equivalently, some things must happen.

3. Decideables - Either/or existential ‘leads’ to check.

All of these are pink stuff. These are pretty pictures.

They are not truth.

But

DATA from the real world may evaporate any of them and leave a piece of truth instead.

Truth from fancy

a) Science Prophecies may be fulfilled.

A story dies and a new existential fact is born.

When a black swan is found, “Black Swans Exist” stops being a story, pure pink stuff. Now it’s pure green stuff. If someone then claims it is Pink Stuff they are unaware of or in denial of the DATA (or are mischievous).

NOTE : Science Prophecies can never be shown false. E.g.

Purple Swans exist

b) A Science Decideable may be shown true or false

either way a new existential fact is born. This is because an existential true fact

always goes hand in hand with its opposite, false unfact.

They really form a fact-unfact equivalent pair

Which we can simply summarise by the true member of the pair.

So a decideable gives way to two possible such pairs.

This tiny table will stand the weight of my entire family

c) A Universal Hypothesis may be shown false (falsified)

and again a new fact is born, namely that the story that was suggested to limit reality is wrong.

One existential (counter) example is enough to falsify a Universal Hypothesis

You can always trust what you see on the BBC

A Universal Hypothesis can never be shown true.

Bricks let go of, in air, with no wind or other matter inhibiting it or pushing it, will always start to move downwards.

d) A Veteran Hypothesis

The Universal Hypothesis though it cannot be shown true, becomes much more interesting when it can’t be shown false despite repeated efforts!!!!

Bricks let go of, in air, with no wind or other matter inhibiting it or pushing it, will always start to move downwards.

then it becomes the back bone of science.

It can generate a massive dataset of earnest, imaginative failed attempts to falsify it.

And thus it may become a veteran hypothesis, a Theory.

This is a big bunch of green DATA, truth that so far the falsifiable story has not been able to be falsified.

The story is Pink but it’s associated with a lot of good solid Green that gives us confidence in it as a map of reality, simply because it hasn’t yet failed.

It’s the nearest any Pink gets to being Green.

But

It’s still Pink.

“Bricks, when dropped, fall if they can”

Most people would say this is true. But it isn’t of course.

This is a story. It’s Pink Stuff. Pink stuff is never true.

In this instance, mistaking this pink as green will probably not cause too much grief.

This is because

“Bricks when dropped have fallen SO FAR” IS a true statement. (Well… …. ….)

However, the habit of confusing veteran hypotheses for truth is in general

VERY DAMAGING.

Sometimes stories that seem ‘as near true as it gets’ get taken as truth - and come back to bite you in the bum.

Hard scepticism. The bottom line: it may be a simulation

The caveat of Hard Scepticism always holds strong.

Experience is true. Interpretation of it is not.

Interpretation of upstream information within a dogmatic pink framework takes place almost immediately upon arrival. It is then packaged up into memory as if it were green stuff.

If all your friends describe a fantastic Bob Dylan concert last night, do you know that a Bob Dylan concert took place?

You do not.

There are many scenarios involving dreams or hypnotism or hallucinogens whereby it turns out the incident never happened. You experienced the conversation. This is the Green part. But the ‘content’ of the information may be pink.

Let’s say it was true that you heard your friends and they were convincing.

Possibly all your friends are good actors, may be it was a prank… or possibly they truly feel they witnessed a Bob Dylan concert last night.

Sodium Pentathol may determine it’s the latter.

This still does not mean you know the Bob Dylan concert is true - in your witness in your experience.

To save running through many many ways your friends could have been fooled, or any of a thousand other loop-hole possibilities we can just

cut to the chase.

The simulation possibility.

We can ALWAYS face the epistemological dead-end: the possibility that removes the need for all other imaginative possibilities.

Returning to

“Bricks fall if released unimpeded in the air on earth”

This is not true.

It is a veteran hypothesis, ie a Theory.

We could never show it true. There is no sense in which it could be true. It’s a story, a map.

It might be thought that this philosophical nitpicking is pointless and unconstructive. I shall endeavour to show that it is not - rather, that it is vital to remaining sane / scientific that truth and story are seen for what they are and that even near certainties are rigorously kept pink and not treated as green (brown)

The ultimate clinching argument

All the DATA / experience, we have ever ‘received’ / witnessed could have been fed to us brain-in-a-jar / Matrix style. All rules, habits, patterns, tendencies, structure and even consistency of the universe may change in a flash-drive.

Tomorrow, bricks may rise sometimes..

To dismiss this possibility with absolute certainty is not scientific or sane.

Confusing high-probability, near-certainty with certainty is an insidious habit that allows delusion to flourish - though in this case it seems harmless.

You may feel that being aware of the pinkness of unchanging gravity is not helpful.

I disagree.

Suffice it for now to say that keeping a clear division between pink stuff and green stuff is possible.

It simply means,

never pretending to know what you don’t

Free track for today.

Life (s a pile of bollocks)