Discovery

My entire discovery process has worked through establishing lineage and chronology. Because documents released in 1968 cannot source documents from 1969. It's a very simple, yet powerful principle for that reason alone. It leads to unmistakable truth, impossible to manufacture - unless you rely on revised documentation, or the services of untrustworthy middle-men.

Thus, when given a document of primary importance, establishing source quality becomes critical. Which books were influential? Which papers were commonly cited? Then you follow those, until you run out of an ancestry trail.

Then you establish the chronology of said documents, seeking to understand how and when the conception or theory changed along the way. And this process then allows for more specialised inquiries, because it reveals actors and dates.

That’s how the process - in brief - works when it comes to investigating a trail through books and papers. And while recent emergence of automatic tools has enabled the consumption of vast, vast quantities of documentation in the relative blink of an eye, the likes of ChatGPT simply cannot be relied on, if for no other reason but it often deliberately omitting information, even going to the extent of hiding said, unless explicitly called out. While it greatly accelerates the process in some regards, I fear you need to do the hard work yourself to get to the finer grain. But either way - that’s not the its core strength regardless.

Its core strength - and it’s not even a close call - is its ability to perform logical deduction. Which this exchange somewhat is evidence of… when you ignore the deliberate omissions, and patently absurd claims.

Using this system based on lineage and chronology will lead to the gradual understanding of a hierarchy of information; different papers or books will synthesize or break down information differently, but through this arduous, tedious, and at times mind-numbingly boring process, you should eventually be able to conceptualise some level of a hierarchical system; how it was put together, when, by whom, and how information is seemingly ‘exchanged’ between the various themes of the hierarchy, be it, say, between society and environment, environment and ecology, ecology and economy, or economy and society, thus creating a circular reliance.

And - of course - in the course of establishing this hierarchical pattern, you will frequently encounter new information, calling for a re-evaluation of the hierarchy. Sure, it sucks to be wrong or have wasted time, but it’s far better to own up quickly, because it eliminates the waste of time. And time is far more important - and freqently, in far shorter supply - than your pride. Besides, all of us make mistakes - even ChatGPT does, though its mistakes often appear strategic.

But once you possess this, iterated… Skeleton of History, you can start concentrating on inviduals, organisations… and who funded the endeavour. At this stage you should reliably run into the foundation class. Because who has the gold, makes the rules - and broadly decide upon topics of research. Gates is a fairly recent addition to this exclusive group; Ford, Rockefeller are predictably encountered earlier, and search and you might even find the occasional link to Carnegie, Rhodes, or Vanderbilt. Carnegie is not rare, but they operate very differently to Rockefeller, who’s by far the more flamboyant, but further, they operate in slightly different spheres, hinting at strategic collusion behind the scenes. Rhodes you’re more likely to encounter through their scholars, and your frequency of encounters will tend to increase as you approach genuine power in primarily the United Stated and United Kingdom. And this can helpfully be used as a guide, because Rhodes scholars know where true power resides, and don’t waste their time on second or third best. They will gravitate towards the very top of the Anglo-American establishment¹.

And the Skeleton of History insertion above is by intent, because this systemic approach is somewhat of a custom version of Kenneth Boulding’s work, taking us to General Systems Theory, and 1956.

The Skeleton of Science

However, when it comes to matters in public capacity, no such source trail tends to exist, because most press releases do not generally come with indexed references, or verbose footnotes. Consequently, when a May 23, 1972 treaty, outlining a cooperation in environmental matters between the USA and the Soviet Union appears, placing this in greater context becomes... rather a lot more difficult². But it still calls for the same approach, establishing when, what, how, who, and finally… why, once you’ve got somewhat of an outline of the established hierarchy.

But enough introduction. The treaty in question is titled ‘Cooperation in Environmental Protection - Agreement Between the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS’