Dilbert strikes another blow...

[Tricky]

...for sanity.

 

[Vitnir]

Scott Adams seems to have the habit of kicking silly beliefs in the groin.

 

[Cleon]

You know, for a guy who has little regard for skeptics, and Randi in particular, Adams really likes telling the woo-woos where to stuff it.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Woo-woos tend to not have any respect for woo-woo beliefs other than their own.

 

[Tricky]

Woo-woos tend to not have any respect for woo-woo beliefs other than their own.

I gotta disagree here, TBK. People like Interesting Ian tend to support any woo woo beliefs that appear (like how Ian started to try to defend Tai Chi, though he knows nothing about it) simply because it is anti-skeptical. Look at any of our forum wooists. They never attack each other, regardless of how ludicrous the claim. Well, okay, Geoff (formerly Undercover Elephant) has gone after Lifegazer, but Geoff is not the same woo-ly headed person he used to be.

 

[Brahe]

Woo-woos tend to not have any respect for woo-woo beliefs other than their own.

I also have to disagree with this statement. The best example of those endorsing woo-woo beliefs refusing to criticize one another is creationism. Creationists can't agree on the anything beyond "evolution must be wrong somehow, somewhere." Yet it is incredibly rare for creationists to actually contradict one another--they're more concerned with defeating "Darwinism" to actually do any investigation that would support their view (or rather, that would contradict and thus alienate the views of other creationists). The closest they come is when criticizing Kent Hovind, and it took years of Hovind peddling his garbage before other creationists would even do that.

On talk.origins, this problem has reached almost absurd levels of absurdity. Creationists never speak against each other, even to the point where a scientologist need not fear rebuttal from the fundamentalist Christians. By the same token, these creationists almost never reinforce each other either, and never do so substantively.

Edited to add: that first sentence of the second paragraph should read "almost absurd levels."

 

[Martin]

On talk.origins, this problem has reached almost absurd levels of absurdity

So it's not quite an absurd level of absurdity, then? But not really the non-absurd kind of absurdity, either?

 

[tedly]

You know, for a guy who has little regard for skeptics, and Randi in particular, Adams really likes telling the woo-woos where to stuff it.

Can you expand on 'little regard'? I haven't heard of this. Thanks in advance.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I still stand by my statement. Just look at the wars started because of religion. Christianity has destroyed and decimated people based on beliefs, calling Native American beliefs as savage and making fun of any belief non-christian. I work with a few non-christians that share my skeptical viewpoints on everything, except their own religion.

 

[Zep]

"Creationism" is about money, that's all. Nothing to do with religion whatsoever. The bulk of the creationists are currently distancing themselves from Hovind because he's now in serious financial hot water from the tax-man, and they don't want the same close scrutiny turned on their own little money-making operations.

Btw, I don't think I have seen anything from Scott Adams in the way of an opinion on Randi, postive or negative. But I saw this cartoon strip this morning and just had to laugh - and then Tricky beat me to posting a reference here!

 

[FIfteen Iguana]

I know the Dilbert TV show poked fun at Randi but not in a meaner way than it made fun of everything else.

However, take a look at Scott Adams' book The Dilbert Future, page 225:

Prediction 63
The theory of evolution will be scientifically debunked in your lifetime.

Large parts of that last chapter ("A New View of the Future") could be summed up as belonging to the woowoo school, althought he would probably prefer to call it applying quantum thinking or some such.

Personally, I prefer Wally as a scientific philosopher.

Fifteen Iguana

 

[Brahe]

So it's not quite an absurd level of absurdity, then? But not really the non-absurd kind of absurdity, either?

Choose one:

(1) Brahe works for the department of redundancy department.

(2) Just as investigation in physics required us to recognize new forms of matter like the Bose-Einstein condensate, the absurdities found in talk.origins also force us to recognize new categories of the irrational. Some arguments are just so stupid that even Velikovsky would say "vow, dat waz doomb." Thus, some things may be described as "merely absurd" while others go so far as to be "absurdly absurd."

 

[Beerina]

I did actually buy his book "God's Debris". He does make a disclaimer at the front that he's not promoting the validity of the items discusses, rather the book is in the overall concept.

In any event, he proposes the reason psychics work is not because they are psychic, but because, gag, they are really highly intelligent at picking out patterns, subconsciously. This, of course, still fails Randi's test. (Don't care about explanations, just wanna see some non-cheating positive results before we worry about an explanation.)