It is common knowledge of science that significant earthquakes cannot be predicted.
Prof. Ikeda's "Theory of Release from the Desk"
This paper is a chapter transmitted on July 1, 2011, from my hospital room at Kitano Hospital, where I was hospitalized for eight months after a doctor declared that I had a 25% chance of living.
It is from a column by Professor Kiyohiko Ikeda that appeared in the July 8 issue of Asahi Weekly, to which I subscribed at the time.
It is now a must-read not only for the people of Japan but also for people around the world.
The black lettering in the text is mine.
Professor Robert Geller, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, published an opinion piece in the April 14 electronic edition of the British scientific journal Nature. In it, he said that now is the time for the Japanese government to frankly tell its citizens that earthquakes cannot be predicted.
It has long been common knowledge in the scientific community that significant earthquakes cannot be predicted.
The government has been wasting enormous amounts of taxpayers' money under the illusion that it is impossible to predict earthquakes.
Under the guise of predicting significant earthquakes, the government has created the Law Concerning Special Measures Against Large-Scale Earthquake Countermeasures, and the competent authorities and a few privileged seismologists have continued to suck the sweet juice.
The same is true of earthquake prediction and global warming prevention, where taxpayers' money is poured down the drain to incite fear among the public and to claim that something that cannot be done can be done under the guise of the dubious principle of the precautionary principle.
I once said that the more dubious a scientific theory is, the more critical it is politically.
In the case of global phenomena such as global warming and significant earthquakes, it is impossible to prove the validity of the theories that predict them experimentally.
It is because you cannot experimentally cause a significant earthquake or global warming based on a theory.
However, because these phenomena profoundly impact people, the discourse that these phenomena can be predicted or controlled can send a powerful political message.
It is where a scientifically unprovable theory becomes a politically solid theory.
I once wrote somewhere that power is a suitable control device and that the discourse of controllability, whatever it may be, seems attractive to power.
Indeed, at the dawn of science, it was once dreamed that if only the laws of physics and the arrangement of matter were known, the future would be entirely predictable.
It is called Laplace's Demon.
Although it is now clearly understood that Laplace's demon does not hold in both practical and theoretical terms, it is easy to understand that science cannot predict future phenomena.
We humans are part of Nature, not the other way around.
Even an elementary school student can understand that one part cannot understand all.
Whether it is countermeasures against major earthquakes or global warming, we can make a law, and taxpayers' money can be spent on it.
However, we cannot predict major earthquakes or control global warming.
This is because earthquakes and temperatures do not obey laws.
People living in the almost controllable space of cities may have forgotten such a natural fact.
＊From here on, I send the lowest "vulgarity" in history, Naoto Kan and Masayoshi Son, who are no longer a criminal against the nation of Japan, to read this article, mainly because earthquakes and temperature do not obey the law, with eyes wide open.＊
KIYOHIKO IKEDA was born in Tokyo in 1947 and completed his doctoral course at the Graduate School of Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University. He is a biologist and currently a professor at the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University.
Major publications include "Kankyo Mondai no Uso (Lies of Environmental Problems)" and "Honto no Kankyo Mondai (True Environmental Problems)" (co-authored with Mengji Yoro).
2024/3/10 in Tokyo
