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Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a ha

Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point because his goal is to discredit science. It's why so many of his books focus on scientists being arrogant egotists. In fairness he wrote this before it became a political taking point, but his type of rhetoric directly lead to the political environment we have now. He's an example of everything he claims is wrong. He demonizes sources with proven track records and he doesn't understand. Why should we take his opinion seriously?

georgeecollins 7y ago
You said it yourself: He wrote fiction. Everything he is writing here is about things that claim to be something else.
Diederich 7y ago
> Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction ... Can you expand on that? I presume you're talking about his book, "State of Fear". I guess "Andromeda Strain" could be in that category. I found most of his books interesting, educational and often insightful.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? Even if he has written books that don't follow this pattern, Jurassic Park surely does; I'm not sure why you didn't mention it yourself
  - liability 7y ago
    > Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? No, that's an inaccurate and uncharitable summarization of his literary career. Scientists fucking up covers some of his more popular works accurately, Jurassic Park more than the rest, but other stories have the scientists/doctors working hard to save lives, or otherwise behaving admirably. Sphere has the scientists accidentally acquire godlike powers, only to willingly relinquish those powers for the greater good. In fact, in several of his novels, including Jurassic Park, I think there is stronger anti-corporate sentiment than there is anti-science sentiment. The book makes clear that the problems at Jurassic Park are caused by a corporation cutting corners to turn a profit on a complex system before pausing to understand what they were dealing with. In the novel, the park owner John Hammond is consumed by dinosaurs. For whatever reason the movie let him live, and otherwise tuned down the anti-corporate angle. In the book his idiocy and greed made him a villain, but the movie makes him seem like a cuddly victim. In the book the two heroes are paleontologists (scientists) who were not to blame for the disaster but nevertheless behaved heroically in their attempts to mitigate harm. A similar theme is found in Airframe though, which covers the interactions between a crash site investigator trying to find a truth that's inconvienent to the airline (that the pilot was to blame.) It could have been about aircraft engineers or aerospace scientists fucking up... but it wasn't. Disclosure and Rising Sun are controversial for their own reasons, but both have prominent anti-corporate themes. Then there are the novels that seem unrelated to the discussion at all, like Eaters of the Dead which was a retelling of Beowulf from the perspective of an Arab traveler from Baghdad.
    - Diederich 7y ago
      Great roundup, I agree with all of this. > Scientists fucking up covers some of his more popular works accurately, Jurassic Park more than the rest To this I would add: one group of scientists are fucking up, but another group are trying to do the right thing.
  - Diederich 7y ago
    > Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? Some of his books have the premise that some scientists are short sighted and myopic, while others aren't. We can briefly talk about Jurassic Park the book, which I assume you have read. The movie shares only the most broad story arcs with the book. ....and I started typing a synopsis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)#Plot_sum... is pretty good. To your point: yes, there's a group of scientists that fucked up, and there's another group of scientists that are trying to honestly work things out. I'd say the biggest antagonists in Jurassic Park are big corporate interests. Upon reflection, aside from his first couple of books, that seems to be a common theme.
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      I used the word "scientists" and that's probably my fault. I don't think it substantially changes the argument that Jusrassic Park is "fear mongering", though, especially in the context of the original article. The the corporation and its scientists are tied together in that they try to predict the future, which as Crichton kindly explains, is completely impossible. The corporation believes that investing money will lead to profits later, and the scientists it employs believe that their safety measures and female-only population will prevent things from going wrong. The "good" scientists only react to events in the past and the present; observing the dinosaurs as they are, taking action against immediate threats, and reconstructing the series of events that led to the catastrophe. The chaos mathematician may as well be a self-insert in the context of this article; he spends half his time explaining to people that nothing can ever be predicted, with mathematical "proof".
      - Diederich 7y ago
        Yes, there are antagonists in the novel Jurassic Park who are scientists, just as there are in State of Fear. It hardly generalizes to everything Michael Crichton has written though.
        NoodleIncident 7y ago
coolblah 7y ago
Wow, ad hominem much?
melling 7y ago
He’s complaining about the news. I’d say the news has gotten even worse. Now the President of the United States also does it. There must always be an enemy. It’s currently the Squad? Socialism? “We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it.»
TomMckenny 7y ago
>his type of rhetoric directly lead to the political environment we have now Indeed, his examples are comically telling: CNN and MSNBC but not Fox which had equivalent and bigger audiences. But for our present time, I presume the point of resurrecting a 17 year old speech from a fiction writer is to further reduce confidence in a press that dare criticize the ruling party.

georgeecollins 7y ago

You said it yourself: He wrote fiction. Everything he is writing here is about things that claim to be something else.

Diederich 7y ago

> Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction ... Can you expand on that? I presume you're talking about his book, "State of Fear". I guess "Andromeda Strain" could be in that category. I found most of his books interesting, educational and often insightful.

NoodleIncident 7y ago
Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? Even if he has written books that don't follow this pattern, Jurassic Park surely does; I'm not sure why you didn't mention it yourself
- liability 7y ago
  > Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? No, that's an inaccurate and uncharitable summarization of his literary career. Scientists fucking up covers some of his more popular works accurately, Jurassic Park more than the rest, but other stories have the scientists/doctors working hard to save lives, or otherwise behaving admirably. Sphere has the scientists accidentally acquire godlike powers, only to willingly relinquish those powers for the greater good. In fact, in several of his novels, including Jurassic Park, I think there is stronger anti-corporate sentiment than there is anti-science sentiment. The book makes clear that the problems at Jurassic Park are caused by a corporation cutting corners to turn a profit on a complex system before pausing to understand what they were dealing with. In the novel, the park owner John Hammond is consumed by dinosaurs. For whatever reason the movie let him live, and otherwise tuned down the anti-corporate angle. In the book his idiocy and greed made him a villain, but the movie makes him seem like a cuddly victim. In the book the two heroes are paleontologists (scientists) who were not to blame for the disaster but nevertheless behaved heroically in their attempts to mitigate harm. A similar theme is found in Airframe though, which covers the interactions between a crash site investigator trying to find a truth that's inconvienent to the airline (that the pilot was to blame.) It could have been about aircraft engineers or aerospace scientists fucking up... but it wasn't. Disclosure and Rising Sun are controversial for their own reasons, but both have prominent anti-corporate themes. Then there are the novels that seem unrelated to the discussion at all, like Eaters of the Dead which was a retelling of Beowulf from the perspective of an Arab traveler from Baghdad.
  - Diederich 7y ago
    Great roundup, I agree with all of this. > Scientists fucking up covers some of his more popular works accurately, Jurassic Park more than the rest To this I would add: one group of scientists are fucking up, but another group are trying to do the right thing.
- Diederich 7y ago
  > Isn't the premise of every one of his books "scientists fuck it up, leading to exciting circumstances"? Some of his books have the premise that some scientists are short sighted and myopic, while others aren't. We can briefly talk about Jurassic Park the book, which I assume you have read. The movie shares only the most broad story arcs with the book. ....and I started typing a synopsis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)#Plot_sum... is pretty good. To your point: yes, there's a group of scientists that fucked up, and there's another group of scientists that are trying to honestly work things out. I'd say the biggest antagonists in Jurassic Park are big corporate interests. Upon reflection, aside from his first couple of books, that seems to be a common theme.
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    I used the word "scientists" and that's probably my fault. I don't think it substantially changes the argument that Jusrassic Park is "fear mongering", though, especially in the context of the original article. The the corporation and its scientists are tied together in that they try to predict the future, which as Crichton kindly explains, is completely impossible. The corporation believes that investing money will lead to profits later, and the scientists it employs believe that their safety measures and female-only population will prevent things from going wrong. The "good" scientists only react to events in the past and the present; observing the dinosaurs as they are, taking action against immediate threats, and reconstructing the series of events that led to the catastrophe. The chaos mathematician may as well be a self-insert in the context of this article; he spends half his time explaining to people that nothing can ever be predicted, with mathematical "proof".
    - Diederich 7y ago
      Yes, there are antagonists in the novel Jurassic Park who are scientists, just as there are in State of Fear. It hardly generalizes to everything Michael Crichton has written though.
      - NoodleIncident 7y ago

coolblah 7y ago

Wow, ad hominem much?

melling 7y ago

He’s complaining about the news. I’d say the news has gotten even worse. Now the President of the United States also does it. There must always be an enemy. It’s currently the Squad? Socialism? “We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it.»

TomMckenny 7y ago

>his type of rhetoric directly lead to the political environment we have now Indeed, his examples are comically telling: CNN and MSNBC but not Fox which had equivalent and bigger audiences. But for our present time, I presume the point of resurrecting a 17 year old speech from a fiction writer is to further reduce confidence in a press that dare criticize the ruling party.