• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Gullible Skeptics

Scott Sommers

Illuminator
Scott Sommers
Joined
Jul 27, 2009
Messages
3,866
A friend of mine wrote this here. I was wondering what people on the forum think about it.

There are two equal and opposite errors that take up way too much of people's time: gullibility and skepticism.

I have friends who have a tendency to be dismissive of all things "spiritual", and not without reason, as exemplified by this image:


On the other hand, I have friends who say they can see "auras", and Mrs Wonders is an expert in various more-or-less deadly martial arts whose ontological language is--if taken literally--is not consistent with a great deal of what we know about physical reality.

And I myself have witnessed quite remarkable things. For example, as part of an improv theatre workshop a group of ten or twelve people stood in a circle with gaps between us that were wide enough for someone to walk through, while one person went out of the room. We then decided that between two people there was a "doorway" into the circle, and elsewhere there were walls. We all tried to stand as neutrally as possible while remembering our respective roles. The person who had left was brought back into the room by the workshop leader and told to find the door.

Edited by Agatha: 
Trimmed in accordance with rule 4. The full article is at the link supplied above.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Scott Sommers said:
A friend of mine wrote this <your link> I was wondering what people on the forum think about it.
Click to expand...

A logical read overall, but with two major errors:

1) " 'Proving' negatives is one of the easiest things to do,"

2) "The second is skepticism, which I define as denial of phenomenon, but which often happens for a surprisingly gullible reason."

Number 1 is completely backward. Proving a negative (beyond a reasonable doubt) can be one of the hardest things to do. The non-existence of bigfoot being just one of innumerable examples.

The second error is that his definition does not envelop true skepticism. A true skeptic does not deny the existence of anything, rather they demand convincing evidence to acknowledge the reality of the topic at hand. That is how Mr. Randi always operated, if you paid attention. He never called it BS. He just pointed out that the test(s) performed provided no evidence for the claim(s) made. And he always made sure to expressly define what the actual claim was.

So, although some people who claim to be skeptics may act per your friend's definition, the bulk of the writing is inapplicable to those who adhere to the paragraph above.
 
Oh boy, the scientist guy.

He starts with a silly theater experiment. Then casually drops that he's a physicist who worked with neutrinos, and then uses the old, "If neutrinos are hard to detect, who knows what else is hidden from our puny human minds?" canard. Sure, it's more sophisticated than the usual, "If-they-only-found-gorillas-a-century ago-then-bigfoot-must-exist" line of reason, but it's still the same.

And then he doubles-down by using dowsers as an example of why skeptics are wrong.

Throughout the piece he mischaracterizes skepticism as cynical non-belief, which is a flawed argument on its own. I used to think the same way every time some skeptic ruined my ghost-hunting fun, but then I took science classes, and was forced to re-think just about everything. That's not the skeptic's fault, it's mine.

Neutrinos existed on a chalkboard as a hypothesis since the 1930s. The math suggested they were there, but it took a while for the rest of science catch up enough to record them. Same is true with Black Holes, another thing that was only a hypothesis in astrophysics labs. There are no hypothesizes, at least as far as I know of, which suggest ghosts or psychic powers are even possible as advertised.

I give him a B for effort.
 
Scott Sommers said:
Scott's "friend" said:
In a non-religious context, consider James Randi's examination of "dowsing" for water, which involved asking dowsers to wander around the upper story of a warehouse where there was a vat of water in the lower story, and see if they could detect it.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
No, he didn't do this at all.

First, it was in Australia and done by Dick Smith, a local millionaire. Prize was $100,000. The tests were conducted using buried pipes with water running through them, i.e. precisely what the dowsers claimed to be able to detect.

Second, it was the dowsers who made the claim they could dowse for water. This was agreed by them before the tests even started. They also made estimates of their success rates. And they examined the testing conditions to ensure that they were all fair, and that they agreed they were conditions they could dowse under.

Because the one thing skeptics insist on is that there is no trickery played on candidates attempting to prove paranormal claims. There was no predetermined outcomes, everything had to be fair and above board and properly scientific. These were tests of the dowsers' own claims, not some sleight-of-hand made up by the skeptics to humiliate them.

And guess what - results no better than chance. So not successful at all.

What follows is what your "friend" and thousands of claimants did beforehand - blaming the tests, Smith, Randi, scientists and everyone under the sun. Anyone else but themselves for being demonstrated that they do not in fact have these "powers".
 
MBDK said:
Number 1 is completely backward. Proving a negative (beyond a reasonable doubt) can be one of the hardest things to do. The non-existence of bigfoot being just one of innumerable examples.
Click to expand...

I don't think there's any "reasonable" basis to think that bigfoot could possibly be real.

If it existed, someone would have found an actual specimen by now, dead or alive. Hell, we've found dinosaur bones, we've found so many things that actually exist, but if a thing is real it must leave some kind of physical trace.

The fact that there are people who believe in it anyway doesn't mean that such belief is "reasonable." After all, some still claim that the earth is flat. We even have pictures of the earth from space. After a certain point, trying to prove something to a person who is willfully ignorant and will not accept proof is pointless.
 
Norman Alexander said:
No, he didn't do this at all.

First, it was in Australia and done by Dick Smith, a local millionaire. Prize was $100,000. The tests were conducted using buried pipes with water running through them, i.e. precisely what the dowsers claimed to be able to detect.

Second, it was the dowsers who made the claim they could dowse for water. This was agreed by them before the tests even started. They also made estimates of their success rates. And they examined the testing conditions to ensure that they were all fair, and that they agreed they were conditions they could dowse under.

Because the one thing skeptics insist on is that there is no trickery played on candidates attempting to prove paranormal claims. There was no predetermined outcomes, everything had to be fair and above board and properly scientific. These were tests of the dowsers' own claims, not some sleight-of-hand made up by the skeptics to humiliate them.

And guess what - results no better than chance. So not successful at all.

What follows is what your "friend" and thousands of claimants did beforehand - blaming the tests, Smith, Randi, scientists and everyone under the sun. Anyone else but themselves for being demonstrated that they do not in fact have these "powers".
Click to expand...

Why should Scott's friend blame himself?
 
Neutrinos were predicted by a theory that is also consistent with pretty much everything else we've observed, on pretty much the most fundamental levels of observation we're capable of. And when we went looking for them, we found them pretty much where theory predicted. And when we saw they didn't look quite like what we expected, we looked closer and figured out what we were missing. And the part that we were missing was also consistent with the theory that predicted them.

Scott's friend should let us know when auras or ghosts or any other damn paranormal thing rises to the standard of normal set by neutrinos.
 
Last edited:
From the article, that appears on what is apparently the author's very own website:

"The second is skepticism, which I define as denial of phenomenon"

So the writer has created his own definition to argue against instead of arguing against what skepticism actually is. As fine an example of straw as one is likely to encounter.

And the comment there by our very own Scott Sommers confirms that he is in agreement with the straw. Or that he is merely trying to create traffic for his friend's web page. Or maybe both.
 
Yeah, it's hard to come up with a worse definition for skepticism than "denial of phenomena". Either English is not the author's primary language, or that is one mighty dishonest woo slinger
 
Another thought - perhaps it is the author's intent to define as a gullible skeptic anyone who takes his article seriously.
 
Applying actual scepticism to the claimed Invisible Door experiment:

1: Chance. Only two tries is almost certainly going to give a wonky result. If you flip a coin and it comes up heads both times, should you assume the further odds of coming up heads are 100%?

2. Door locator responding to unintended nonverbal cues.

3. Of course, fakery/use of confederates has to be considered. Actually, the claimed setup suggests it may be more likely than not.

The author said they "ran out of time" to test further. What, we're they contestants on The Amazing Race? It would take less than a minute to choose the subject and send them out of the room, have the group leader choose a 'door', and callthe subject back in to 'find' it. Funny that they made time and room available to set this up but could only do this twice. Not enough time, you see.

To have run out of time for experimentation that takes basically no time after it is set up sounds strongly like the first two Door Finders were in on the setup.
 
Puppycow said:
I don't think there's any "reasonable" basis to think that bigfoot could possibly be real.

If it existed, someone would have found an actual specimen by now, dead or alive. Hell, we've found dinosaur bones, we've found so many things that actually exist, but if a thing is real it must leave some kind of physical trace.

The fact that there are people who believe in it anyway doesn't mean that such belief is "reasonable." After all, some still claim that the earth is flat. We even have pictures of the earth from space. After a certain point, trying to prove something to a person who is willfully ignorant and will not accept proof is pointless.
Click to expand...

Oh, I am reasonably sure bigfoot is and always has been a mythological/misidentified creature. Yet, I ask YOU, when do you consider that to have been proven, with how much effort, and over how long a time frame? As this is merely a supportive example of the inherent difficulties in proving a negative, I stand by that logic.
 
Norman Alexander said:
No, he didn't do this at all.

...snip...

Second, it was the dowsers who made the claim they could dowse for water. This was agreed by them before the tests even started. They also made estimates of their success rates. And they examined the testing conditions to ensure that they were all fair, and that they agreed they were conditions they could dowse under.

Because the one thing skeptics insist on is that there is no trickery played on candidates attempting to prove paranormal claims. There was no predetermined outcomes, everything had to be fair and above board and properly scientific. These were tests of the dowsers' own claims, not some sleight-of-hand made up by the skeptics to humiliate them.

And guess what - results no better than chance. So not successful at all.

...snip...
Click to expand...

Although he is still wrong he's not wrong in that way!

His point about dowsers is that dowsers themselves may not understand what they can do so although they are happy to agree that they can detect water by way of their divining rod they may in fact be detecting it by other means. I presume he is meaning explanations like they may "unconsciously" detect water by observing their surroundings, that they have noticed subtle signs of water being present that most people will miss. Of course this is also wrong but it would "explain" why they fail under controlled conditions... they were being tested for the wrong ability! Which is, as you say him looking for a way to "rationally" dismiss the evidence that they can't dowse for water.
 
Darat said:
Although he is still wrong he's not wrong in that way!

His point about dowsers is that dowsers themselves may not understand what they can do so although they are happy to agree that they can detect water by way of their divining rod they may in fact be detecting it by other means. I presume he is meaning explanations like they may "unconsciously" detect water by observing their surroundings, that they have noticed subtle signs of water being present that most people will miss. Of course this is also wrong but it would "explain" why they fail under controlled conditions... they were being tested for the wrong ability! Which is, as you say him looking for a way to "rationally" dismiss the evidence that they can't dowse for water.
Click to expand...
Except that the dowsers agreed that they would use their dowsing methods to locate underground water. So that is what was being tested, not their ability to be hyper-observant, etc.

They also agreed in advance that the test setup was fair for them. They were even involved in the design of the test process.

So if their so-called abilities were actually the result of, say, knowingly observing other relevant clues in a landscape then they were rather silly in attempting this test where such clues would have been clearly missing. By the way, many native peoples already have and use such observations to find water. So this is hardly a paranormal skill, just a learned one.

The other point Randi pointed out about dowsing is that most geographies have water tables below them to a certain extent and at varying depths. So it would actually be hard to miss them.
 
Steve said:
From the article, that appears on what is apparently the author's very own website:

"The second is skepticism, which I define as denial of phenomenon"

So the writer has created his own definition to argue against instead of arguing against what skepticism actually is. As fine an example of straw as one is likely to encounter.

And the comment there by our very own Scott Sommers confirms that he is in agreement with the straw. Or that he is merely trying to create traffic for his friend's web page. Or maybe both.
Click to expand...

Someone else, probably the author, has already posted this a few years back on this board.
 
The title of this thread is an oxymoron. A sceptic is someone who requires objective evidence before accepting any claim, which is the exact opposite of gullible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom