As time marches on the gap between these two belief systems grows wider. Science might eventually see the interconnectedness in all things because strange things happen when you're studying ever smaller parts of atoms.
What is driving science is that they are looking for something, some sort of magic substance or elixir that will enable them to construct things based on their present version of reality, which is limited. Good thing they haven't found it yet.
Moving away from nuclear physics, what else is being studied, analyzed, tracked, dissected, explored, correlated, cross-referenced, extrapolated, assumed, postulated, theorized, or almost concluded due to it having a sky-high degree of probability? Lots of things.
The tools for extensive and exhaustive research are there and are being furiously employed. So much data is being collected.
Why, with all these data collection tools running 24/7, figuring out something as complex as The Economy should be easy. Think about it- nearly every grocery store transaction in the US of A is being logged into some massive database somewhere and that data is triggering untold numbers of actions. How else could all this tightly orchestrated logistical moving of material be done? If Costco needs mushrooms, bottled water, and cheddar cheese, they're not buying it so it sits around taking up space and collecting dust in the warehouse!
Ditto pickup trucks, cell phones, shampoo, paper towels, you name it. Businesses hate carrying inventory. Best case for them is the goods show up, they're purchased, and new stuff comes in. Cash flow results.
Maybe The Economy, though, can't actually be figured out because many businesses are keeping a portion of their operations data tight to their chests, like they're on the World Poker Tour or something but nah, there is a limit to how much any business can hide its hand these days. Too much is being tracked and even though a business might not be showing what they've got the other players got enough intel to have them connecting the dots.
Think of all the cell phone data that is being gathered daily and sold to 'third party vendors'. Think about how much of that is accruing! And everybody knows what getting on the internet is like- it's like entering the damn wild west, a world rife with data miners and varmint hackers that won't stay offa upright citizen's turf, so much so that we have to have lawmen and posses chasin' 'em back to where they come from every single day.
Plus we've got the usual everyday tracking- satellites flying overhead, energy companies monitoring gasoline and electricity consumption, traders keenly studying micro-forecasts of where and when rain might fall in specific regions of the midwest, hotly negotiated futures prices of every commodity under the sun, and the constant scanning for any geo-political hiccups that might affect the flow of goods around the globe all because....
...business people love this kind of stuff. They adore data and absolutely thrive on analysis! The more data the happier they are and though they might complain that there's a lot of irrelevant data being collected nowadays it's ludicrous to think that any possible data source is being totally ignored. Businesses (and stock traders) shave profits offa everything they can, even if its just a fraction, because if you can sell huge amounts of goods, those fractions add up!
Einstein figured out Relativity- without a computer!
Jeshoots- Unsplash.com
Wouldn't take much extra dough for any superstar mathematician and his team to get pulled away from whatever algorithm they're working on to run some numbers on The Economy dontcha think? They'd just have to have access to all the data.
X number of peeps in the country vs. X number of dollars rollin' in, in real time. That ought to point to something- a baseline. Add complexity one economic sector at a time until the full picture of The Economy emerges. Maybe we could get a live functioning 3D model- like a weather forecast or an MRI slice. Something! Anything! But- the one thing that can’t be done is just that.
Old school economists throw around hazy 'facts' and 'figures' like we still live in the days before computers and extensive data tracking. But I think guys with high level security clearances working on the other side of retina scan-controlled doors know exactly what's going on. I think they're watching all this play out on multiple big screens like I watch multiple screens down at Mulligan's Pub! Like the data analysts of the sports world do, stats for every conceivable business thing are being gathered by various firms and factored into current performance evaluations and future odds. People are tracking the flow of goods and materials from place to place in such detail it would hurt your head, so much is there.
But, as long as those who want the game to continue can pretend that they don’t know what's going on, the game of 'we are disconnected from each other' can run on and I gotta wonder- if it's ridiculous now, it's only going to get more ridiculous as those piles of data increase and the ability to crunch massive numbers amplifies.
Maybe the critical mass of the public's inability to continue to believe the reasons that things have to be the way they are has yet to be reached. Dunno.
You’d at least think there oughta be a documentary or two about this on Netflix or Amazon Prime by now so….
…what's the holdup?