Before diving into the specifics, first it’s important to orient one’s thinking appropriately. The subjects in this book are scientific in nature, but the hard part isn’t as much the “science” as it is the thought processes that block rationality. What follows are cautions for you, the reader. Additionally, this will serve to prime you for paradigm-shifting concepts I discuss later that may cause cognitive dissonance (that is, psychological discomfort). Sometimes easing into jarring subject matter is most palatable to the mind.
1.Falsifying one model does not require having a viable or complete alternative model. When a claim is put forward, the burden of proof is on the party making the claim. If observations falsify the claim, then the claim must logically be discarded—regardless of whether a new, viable claim can be made to replace the old one.
In other words, it’s permissible to show that a model is incorrect without providing a new and comprehensive model to replace it. In such scenarios, we’re left in the uncomfortable but intellectually honest position of saying, We simply don’t know the answer.
Cosmology researcher Austin Whitsitt describes this principle using the phrase “falsification is independent of replacement”: the exercise of falsifying one model is independent of finding a definitive replacement model.20 This is a process of elimination that narrows down the possible truths.
Here is an example: You’re working with a team on a multiple-choice test in school that has options A, B, C, and D as possible answers. You’re required to submit an answer to your teacher, but the caveat is that your entire team must agree on the answer that you submit. Your teammates are convinced that the answer is option A. However, your analysis leads you to conclude that A cannot be correct. You tell your team the news, excited that you narrowed down the set of possibilities. But to your shock, your team dismisses your work. Although they cannot deny that you’ve falsified option A, they ask with skepticism, But do you know, instead, what the correct answer is? If it’s not A, is it B, C, or D? You reply, I don’t know. That’s a separate analysis, and I haven’t gotten there yet. Your team replies, You don’t know the answer? Okay, then the real answer must be A. We’re sticking with that. This is irrational and illogical, but it can happen with rebuttals to scientific models.
Whitsitt gives another example that’s illustrative: Imagine that you go to your parents’ home and find in their closet official legal papers showing that you were adopted. All the paperwork is there: you were indeed legally adopted. Then you tell your friends, Hey, you won’t believe this: I was adopted! I found the paperwork! Your friends reply, Who are your real parents, then? You reply, I don’t know. That requires a separate line of inquiry. I’d have to look into that much further, but the truth is that I might never know who my real parents are. All I know with certainty is that I was adopted. Your friends reply, We refuse to believe that you were adopted until you tell us who your real parents are.21 This is the same sort of irrationality that can occur within science: even after one model is falsified, there’s a bias toward sticking with it if a comprehensive replacement model isn’t provided.
The psychological desire to have complete answers clouds logical thinking, as opposed to being able to sit in the unknown. There is often a tendency to feel more comfortable living with a lie than living with uncertainty.
This concept is essential to hold in mind while reading the coming chapters. In this book, I make no definitive claims about the true nature of the cosmos—and for reasons that I will discuss, there are limitations that make it impossible to promote a definitive model today. Instead, in this book I aim to expose flaws in the claims put forward by mainstream science. Hopefully by deflating confidence in the existing model, more attention will go toward new and better models.
The approach is similar to the Vedic philosophy of neti neti (“not this, not that”).22 In other words, one arrives at the truth by continually finding what is not true, thereby leaving a narrower and narrower subset of possible candidates for the truth.
2.Black swans falsify a model. Imagine a model that claims: “All swans are white.” You travel around the world, and you find white swan after white swan. You conclude that the model works well and is highly predictive of reality. Then, one day, you come across a black swan. That black swan destroys your model because your model says that “all swans are white.”23All means all. A single anomaly makes your model unviable because your model is no longer able to accurately describe reality. This may sound obvious, but it needs to be stated explicitly. There is often a psychological tendency to excuse mistakes and defend the consensus model by using mental gymnastics, even if contradictory evidence is presented.
These mental gymnastics often include post hoc rationalizations: an idea is made up out of thin air to “explain away” the apparent anomaly, thereby allowing that model to seem like it still works.
Dark matter and dark energy might turn out to be examples of this rationalization. Observations in astrophysics failed to align with the mainstream model, so scientists effectively concluded: Dark matter and dark energy must be there. But what if they’re not there, and the fundamentals of modern cosmology—including gravity and general relativity theory—are simply wrong?
3.Double standards are everywhere in debates about cosmology. If an existing model explains reality “pretty well,” it’s easy to sweep under the rug seemingly minor errors, incomplete ideas, or unexplained phenomena.
However, when a new, competing model is proposed, there can be a tendency to quickly dismiss it if there is even a single unexplained issue…while at the same time being willing to tolerate unexplained issues in the existing, mainstream model. This is, of course, irrational and intellectually inconsistent, yet it happens regularly. If one is willing to be so harsh toward a new model, one should be equally ready to let go of the existing model.
For instance, mainstream science seems willing to accept the problems with dark matter and dark energy, and the absence of a unifying theory of physics. Yet when the “nonmainstream” ideas I discuss in this book are proposed, there’s a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss them if there’s even a single concept that is difficult to conceptualize.
4.Observations do not, on their own, reveal the cause(s) of those observations. Imagine a situation in which people get sick with similar symptoms after attending a party. Then they conclude that they “caught” something contagious. This is certainly one reasonable hypothesis. But to stop there would be illogical. The fact that people got sick after being in the same place at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean that a contagious, microscopic germ caused the symptoms. People can get sick for many reasons that have nothing to do with germs. For instance, what if people at the party were exposed to the same toxin floating in the air, emanating from the materials in the building, or sitting in the food and drinks served at the party? What if the attendees were exposed to high levels of radiation or electric and magnetic fields (EMFs)? What if they were exposed to a similar psychological stressor that translated into sickness? What if there was a “bioresonance” between the “energy fields” of the people that mimicked germ-based contagion? Yawns seem to be “contagious,” but they don’t come from a germ. Women’s menstrual cycles sometimes synchronize when they share a living space, but that isn’t believed to come from a contagious germ. Furthermore, what if there is some other cause that isn’t understood by modern science?
Rather than really digging for the truth, it’s easy to find ourselves in a place of intellectual laziness whereby a single explanation emerges, and we stop thinking any further. Once we’ve decided on the explanation, we erroneously use that as the basis for the model into which all future observations are forced.
This work is, of course, not about medicine (I covered that topic in my book An End to Upside Down Medicine [2023]). But the fallacious reasoning observed throughout medicine often occurs in cosmology as well. Andrew Kaufman, MD, made this very observation in his 2023 lecture titled “Fallacies, Fraud & Pseudoscience: The Parallels Between Cosmology and Biology.” In his words: “You can observe a set of phenomena in nature and you can come up with a model or a hypothesis to explain it….But when you stick to circular reasoning, you feel that your explanation is the only possible solution….[It’s advisable to] always think: ‘If I can come up with another logical explanation for this set of phenomena, then we know that the proposed explanation or model is not necessarily correct because there are many other models that could also be correct.’”24
An example of this type of thinking arises in discussions about heliocentrism (the belief that Earth revolves around the Sun), versus geocentrism (the belief that the Sun revolves around Earth). Heliocentrism is fundamental to the consensus cosmological paradigm, yet physicists rarely acknowledge that observations attributed to heliocentrism could also fit into a geocentric cosmology. We’re simply so accustomed to presupposing the truth of heliocentrism that we struggle to envision Earth at the center—even though our experience is that the luminous bodies in the sky move around Earth, and Earth feels to us like it is stationary. Many prominent, mainstream physicists have discussed this, including Stephen Hawking. In his book The Grand Design (2010), coauthored by Leonard Mlodinow, they stated: “Our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.”25 Let that sink in. There is more to come on this topic. [emphasis added]
The broader problem here is related to a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. It goes like this:
If P, then Q.
Q, therefore P.
An example:
If it rains, then the grass outside will be wet.
The grass outside is wet; therefore, it rained.
This conclusion, of course, ignores many other possible causes of wet grass that have absolutely nothing to do with rain. The grass could have been wet because of sprinklers, for instance.
How often do we get stuck in a particular belief system without considering other possible explanations?
5.The way celestial bodies in the sky look and behave doesn’t necessarily imply that Earth looks and behaves in the same way. If you look at bodies in the sky through a telescope, it is not logical to conclude that Earth must share those same qualities. An alternative possibility—and one that must be considered among intellectually honest seekers—is that Earth is unique or distinct relative to those bodies observed in the sky. For instance, the assumption that Earth is just like “other planets” presupposes that Earth is a planet rather than something else. Alternatives need to be considered in fully comprehensive analyses.
6.Testing something on Earth alone, in the present moment, is insufficient to draw conclusions about the broader cosmos in the past and in the future. Scientists can run experiments on Earth today, but they often extrapolate and make claims that ignore important presuppositions. As stated by physicist Robert Bennett, PhD:
When we design a test, the test has to match what the hypothesis claims. So, if you claim something that is going to apply throughout all space, you cannot test it only on Earth. If you say it’s in the Solar System, you have to be able to test it throughout the Solar System. This is what’s overlooked very often in the statements of laws—the scope of the laws—in space.
Same goes for time. Does the law only apply at a certain time? This is violated [frequently]….You cannot know what happened in ancient times if you make measurements on data in current time. You can only assume that nothing has changed between when the event occurred and when you actually did the measurement. And this is an assumption that is often incorrect.
[Also,] when you look at the stars in space, what you’re looking at are dots of light that are interpreted as being the same type of light production that is being done in the Sun. But there’s no proof of that. The spectrum of the stars—none of them are the same as the spectrum of the Sun. So we’re making assumptions that what we see in starlight is the same as we see in sunlight.…
[In summary,] when you look at a law, you must always ask, “What is the scope in space and time?” This is what I see most often violated in what I call “mainstream thinking.”26 [emphasis added]
7.The way our eyes see obscures reality, and many of us are unaware of this issue; thus, we fail to make the necessary mental adjustments. On the most fundamental level, our eyes only show us a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum: we don’t see radio waves, x-rays, microwaves, infrared light, and more (see the image that follows). Even though we can detect invisible light with technology, we tend to be biased by what we can see with our eyes. Therefore, judging the cosmos by our eyes alone is problematic.
Visible light is only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of the spectrum exists beyond what our ordinary vision can detect. Our eyes show us only a sliver of reality.27
Beyond that, it’s important to acknowledge that we cannot see forever. Light attenuates, meaning that its intensity fades as it moves through a medium (such as the air and atmosphere).28Similarly, a visual phenomenon known as perspective can lead us to erroneously interpret objects to be rising or falling as they become more distant from us, when in reality they’re not actually rising or falling. Put another way: our brains process visual information in a way that can skew perception. Ultimately, our visual space is curved and limited. It is neither linear nor infinite. More on this later.
8.Math is a tool; it is not direct evidence that a model is correct. Consider the following quotation from Arthur C. Clarke in his 1963 book Profiles of the Future:
The lesson to be learned…is one that can never be repeated too often, and is one that is seldom understood by laymen—who have an almost superstitious awe of mathematics. But mathematics is only a tool, though an immensely powerful one. No equations, however impressive and complex, can arrive at the truth if the initial assumptions are incorrect. It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. When this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them. What is even more incredible, they refuse to learn from experience; they will continue to make the same mistake over and over again.
Some of my best friends are astronomers, and I am sorry to keep throwing stones at them—but they do seem to have an appalling record as prophets.”29 [emphasis added]
Physicist Nikola Tesla stated it another way in 1934: “Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”30
In this book, I will not delve into math. But inevitably the question may arise in your mind: Wouldn’t equations have proven modern cosmology already? If the assumptions baked into the equations haven’t been correct, however, then the resulting math wouldn’t tell us what we need to know. And perhaps that’s what has been happening in cosmology.
9.Beware of the “appeal to personal incredulity” logical fallacy. When encountering paradigm-shifting concepts, there can be a tendency to think, I cannot conceive how this could possibly be true. I cannot, in my own mind, list all of the steps needed in order for it to have happened in the way that it is claimed. I don’t fully understand it. Therefore, I reject it.
Truth doesn’t depend on our ability to fathom it. Just because one can’t comprehend something doesn’t mean that this thing is not true. Similarly, there might be ideas beyond our current knowledge that we haven’t even considered—“unknown unknowns.”31
20For example, see Austin Whitsitt’s content on his many social media channels, including his YouTube channel titled Witsit Gets It: https://www.youtube.com/@Whitsitt.
21Ibid.
22I first heard this comparison to Vedic philosophy made by Thomas Cowan, MD.
23Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term black swan with his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (second edition, 2010).
24Andrew Kaufman, MD, “Fallacies, Fraud & Pseudoscience: The Parallels Between Cosmology and Biology,” https://rumble.com/v44kwso-fallacies-fraud-and-pseudoscience-the-parallels-between-cosmology-and-biolo.html. 3:00–5:20.
25Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 56.
26Witsit Gets It, “In The Field – Robert Bennett Ph.D. – Part 1,” https://www.youtube.com/live/5j0wCrkzfwk, 12:45–15:10.
27Figure reconstructed from NASA introduction to electromagnetic spectrum, https://science.nasa.gov/ems/01_intro.
28Attenuation of light is a well-known phenomenon. For instance, “Fog attenuation in the visible and IR regions is reviewed from an empirical and theoretical point of view” is mentioned in Naboulsi et al., “Fog attenuation prediction for optical and infrared waves,” https://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/optical-engineering/volume-43/issue-2/0000/Fog-attenuation-prediction-for-optical-and-infrared-waves/10.1117/1.1637611.short.
29Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, 7.
30Tesla, “Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World,” https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/radio-power-will-revolutionize-world.
31A phrase used by Donald Rumsfeld. See Graham, “Rumsfeld’s Knowns and Unknowns: The Intellectual History of a Quip,” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/rumsfelds-knowns-and-unknowns-the-intellectual-history-of-a-quip/359719/.
An End to the Upside Down Cosmos
Rethinking the BigBang, Heliocentrism,
the Lights in the Sky…
and Where We Live
Mark Gober
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