The Treachery of Realities

Safeguarding Truth in the Age of Science Denial

Series: 

Author:
Sal Restivo
This volume targets the contemporary atmosphere of lies, post-truths, and alternative facts. Previously, we had no reason to think humanity was about to have its dinosaur moment; we could be confident of surviving for millennia. It now seems that humanity's future might be a matter of decades, given the variety of existential threats we face, from climate change and asteroids to robots and AI. We are not going to save ourselves driven by faith, belief, hopes, prayers, and wishes in an atmosphere of science deniers. What is required is an investment in a renewed and re-energized secular worldview, guided by the sociological imagination and opposed to conventional reasoning and action.
Copyright Year:
2025
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ISBN:
978-90-04-72157-9
Publication:
31 Mar 2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-72156-2
Publication:
10 Apr 2025
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Sal Restivo, retired, taught sociology at universities in the U.S., UK, Europe, Brazil, and China for 50 years. He is a former President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. His recent publications include The Social Brain (Lexington Books, 2023) and Inventions in Sociology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Path of this Book

Overture

Bio-Sketches

Part 1
The Sociology of Reality
1 A World of Post-truths, Lies and Alternative Facts
1 The Post-truth Regime

2 Conclusion


2 The Iron Laws of Reality
1 Introduction

2 Epistemic Vigilance versus Machiavellian Vigilance (Thomson, 2023)

3 Through the Cultural Looking Glass

4 Beauty, Terror, and the Sublime

5 A Child of the Book

6 The Road to Reality

7 Free Will

8 Open and Closed Systems

9 The Rejection of Transcendental Realities

10 Religion

11 Science

12 The Technological Fix

13 Sociology as a Science

14 Cosmology

15 Subscendental Realities

16 The Myth of Individualism

17 Objectivity

18 Conclusion


3 Existential Threats
1 Interlude: Principles of Sociocultural Evolution

2 Existential Threat: The Very Idea

3 On the Mathematics of Existential Threats

4 Death by Alien Invasion

5 Death by Mass Extinction

6 Death by Asteroid

7 Death by Super Volcano

8 Death by Solar Flare

9 Death by Auroras

10 Death by Climate Change

11 Death by Geo-engineering

12 Death by Nuclear Winter

13 Death by Pandemic

14 Death by Bioterrorism

15 Death by Salt

16 Death by De-education: The American Example

17 Death by Social Relations

18 Death by Supernova

19 Death by Gravity

20 Death by Black Hole

21 Death by Tipping Points

22 Death by Truth

23 Conclusion


4 Death by Chatbots, ai, and Robots: A Case Study in Existential Threats
1 Generative ai

2 ai Experts Increasingly Afraid of Their Creations

3 Trinity: A Lesson in Science

4 Oppenheimer Redux

5 Pandora’s Box & Frankenstein

6 ai and Ethics

7 Technology Assessment for ai

8 The False Equivalence Trap

9 Who Is Hallucinating?

10 The Hallucinations

11 Are We Over-Worrying the ai Problem?

12 gai and Consciousness

13 A Note on Turing

14 What Else Can Go Wrong

15 The Robots Are Coming

16 Robots ‘r’ Us

17 Progress, the Very Idea

18 Conclusion


Part 2
Encounters with Reality
5 Reality Is Real: The Dangers of Romancing Reality
1 Das Ist Nicht Physik, Das Ist Theologie

2 Reality Is Real

3 Review

4 Reality Redux 1

5 Taming Consciousness

6 Conclusion


6 Reality Confronts the News as an Existential Threat
1 Supreme Realities

2 The Headlines

3 The Reality of Violence
 3.1 Violence in the News


4 Violence and Disconnections

5 Intervention: Dunning-Kruger Chickens Come Home to Roost

6 The Irreality of Nostradamus

7 The Reality of Sex

8 What Kind of Life Form Criminalizes Sex?

9 The Reality of Religion
 9.1 Mania from Heaven


10 The Reality of Religious Freedom

11 The Reality of Us: News on Who and What We are

12 Conclusion


7 The Reality of the Social Brain: A Case Study in the Existential Threat of Individualism
1 Connectomes

2 Brain-Machine Interaction (bmi) and Brain-Computer Interaction (bci)

3 A Case Study: Einstein, Genius, and Social Networks

4 The Woman in Einstein’s Social Brain

5 On Breaking the 11th Commandment and Committing Sociology

6 Conclusion


Part 3
Evolution, Culture, and Survival Wisdom
8 The Cooperative Principle in Evolution
1 Introduction

2 From the Cooperative Principle to Love as an Evolutionary Mechanism

3 Interlude: Mediated Communication

4 Love, Society, Culture, and Evolution

5 An Evoutionary Sociology of Love

6 The Humanistic Conception of Love

7 Love and Human Liberation

8 The Future of Intimate Relationships

9 Summary

10 Conclusion


9 Survivability
1 The Pillars of Sustainability

2 Data, Data, and More Data

3 The Morality of Science

4 Survival Wisdom

5 The United Nations and Sustainability

6 Conclusion


10 Capitalism: Ideology Contra Economy
1 The Black Hole Economy

2 Will the Real Karl Marx Please Stand Up?

3 Capitalism in Ideal Type Terms

4 Capitalism (Ideal Type Format)

5 Capitalism: the Bottom Line

6 Conclusion


11 What Is to Be Done?
1 The Anarchist Social Order (See Bibliography on Anarchism and Social Order in References)
 1.1 The Goals

 1.2 Resources

 1.3 Activities


2 Education Reconstructed

3 Intervention: A Note on Alienation

4 Managerialism

5 Conclusion


12 A Secular Humanist Worldview: Prologue to Anarchy
1 The Secular Worldview Narrative Unfolds

2 Levels of Reality

3 Science

4 Secular

5 Anarchism

6 A Secular Worldview Unfolds

7 A Secular Worldview Crystallizes

8 Secular Humanism

9 The Anarchist Imagination

10 Conclusion: Anarchism in the Real World


13 Anarchism, Properly Understood
1 Anarchism Redux

2 Social Anarchism

3 Coda

4 Conclusion: Once Again, What Is to Be Done?


Part 4
Paradigm for Transition
14 What Is Real, after All?
1 A Reiteration

2 Reality Redux 2

3 The Garden of Epicurus

4 Realistic, Not Rational, Hedonism

5 What Is to Be Done?

6 A Different Beginning

7 Intervention: The Problem of Meaning

8 We Are Not Oysters

9 Origins

10 Hedonism Then

11 The Transition

12 The Erotics of the Revolution

13 Doomerism?

14 Conclusion: the Walls of Imprisonment


Appendix 1: The Reality Fallacies as the Foundation of the Iron Laws of Reality

References and Further Readings

Index

This book adopts a critical humanist sociological perspective on the current political and ecological climate of existential threats and is addressed to general readers and professionals at all levels.
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