Consensus looks great, until we see external drivers which might have influenced the community coming to consensus.

In the same way as financial whales can influence markets, intellectual whales can dominate consensus.

Hence a scientist with a spectacular record of success can easily influence consensus.

There we see intellectual capitalism, the same phenomenon as we see in finance, money attracts money, existing intellectual property attracts more intellectual property, and yet we know it all defies logic, so is not the truth of nature.

Consensus is a form of democracy, a form of market, a form of crowd wisdom, all of which are great, with the caveat that every member must be truly un-influenced by any other, and all have equivalent access to the same data sources and information.

The problem in the scientific case is that a theory proposed by a greater influencer is far more likely to be accepted by the collective, than one proposed by someone unknown, perhaps even outside the scientific community.

In the case when an unusual, potentially disruptive alternative theory is proposed, even by someone unknown, the community has to unravel what is influencing the proposer, and what is influencing the skeptics, together with all of the implications of the proposal being correct, or incorrect, appropriately weighting those with consequential outcomes, and add all of these factors into their considerations.

In the case of the origins of Earth and its relationship with the sun, for example, these considerations are extremely complex, requiring formal systems Engineering tools to correctly analyse.

And yet the outcome appears existential.

Humanity thrives on energy.

As our knowledge develops, we consume more and more energy as a species.

Our focus for that energy throughout our modern history has been to look to the Earth for our supply of it.

And yet by physics we see all energy comes from the sun.

The Earth has no internal energy supply, only stored.

And we see our use of money to date, with the mechanisms of profit, and debt, locks us into hierarchies of inequality, extracting the stored energy from our planet, with the depletion effects manifesting as increasing planetary damage.

Our financial debt converts exactly to an energy deficit with our planet, the two march hand-in-hand.

Fundamentally, we appear to justify this way of existence in the very root of our psyche by firstly believing the Earth is somehow independent of the sun, that the Earth could somehow exist without the sun.

So the question, and the debate, goes back to the origins of Earth and Sun, where still there is significant doubt, where things are still arguable, as to whether or not our profit driven, money worshipping ways might be right or wrong, so whether or not we should continue with them, or maybe just be modified in some way.

The question appears to come down to religion, no less.

We might individually claim to have no god, but do we, or do we not, as a species actually worship money?

Wealth, is what we worship, surely.

If we accept that the money being worshipped as capital was carved from the Earth, all of which represents energy, all of which came from the sun, then we might deduce we are actually built to worship energy.

Energy is wealth.

With that realised we might clearly see we are practicing a giant, unsustainable energy ponzi.

Of course we are depleting the energy of the Earth.

The consequence of getting that wrong appears to be extinction, whilst convincing ourselves we did everything possible, by “scientific” doublespeak, including things like renewable energy, which just confuse the issue.

So we really, really need an alternative “Origins” argument, that the sun and Earth are actually related to one another, that the Earth was actually born of the sun, which continues to supply all the energy, and all the wealth we know, and therefore the obvious solution to all of the problems, is to switch our attention back to the sun, as we once did in the earliest religions.

We have the technology to monetise it and are even doing that, by things like solar powered proof of work tokens.

But as long as it is arguable, whether our ways to date have been right or wrong, we will never reach consensus, therefore seem doomed to extinction.

Why should the Earth not simply be a historical coronal ejection?

Look at the still active volcanoes of Earth. Could the historical sun never never have had those also?

A powerful enough Earth volcano could send material into orbit.

Why could the sun not have done the same?

Doesn’t that make far simpler, infinitely more survivable common sense?

There really does seem to be consequences, for whatever we think.

Getting consensus on that at least, would be good start, I think.