Skepticism is stupid--a rant

Ladewig said:


My list of favorite websites includes the Marilyn is Wrong website.



I have never claimed herbal preparations are worthless. I do cringe at the oft repeated claim that "there are no side effects because it is all natural," but I agree with you that herbal products do not belong in the woowoo category. On the other hand, I have no problem classifying homeopathy as woowoo. Not all unorthodox claims fall into the category of woowoo, but some are so far removed from our understanding of the world that the label of woowoo is not inappropriate.

I make no apologies for labeling the following claims as woowoo:

channeling dolphins
Scientology
homeopathy
intertstellar astral projection
past life memories
Edgar Cayce
astrology
phreneology
reading tea leaves
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Ah excellent! I'm a woo woo then. Better then being a complete pr*ck i.e a so-called "skeptic".
 
Posted by Ladewig

I make no apologies for labeling the following claims as woowoo:

channeling dolphins
Scientology
homeopathy
intertstellar astral projection
past life memories
Edgar Cayce
astrology
phreneology
reading tea leaves
Click to expand...

Plus

Christianity
Judaism
Hinduism, (to name a few, right?)

....Yes?
 
Ladewig said:
channeling dolphins
Scientology
homeopathy
intertstellar astral projection
past life memories
Edgar Cayce
astrology
phreneology
reading tea leaves [/B]
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How utterly ludicrous can you get, including "reading tea leaves" with "past life memories"? :rolleyes:
 
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Ladewig
channeling dolphins
Scientology
homeopathy
intertstellar astral projection
past life memories
Edgar Cayce
astrology
phreneology
reading tea leaves [/B]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting Ian said:


How utterly ludicrous can you get, including "reading tea leaves" with "past life memories"? :rolleyes:
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Yes shame on you Ladewig, tea leaves are no good :rolleyes: Everyone knows that crystal balls are the only way of seeing the future *gazes into the misty debth of the ball*: "I see a fire" http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34701 :D
 
Interesting Ian said:


Ah excellent! I'm a woo woo then. Better then being a complete pr*ck
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But Ian, you might not be a "pr..." but you certainly are an a-hole.
 
epeke just has a problem with taking what he gives. It riles him that he can't prove his stance.

I don't call myself a "skeptic". I came to these boards because I found it admirable that people here don't go on about their beliefs and how they know the "truth" because so and so said so.



Nor did I come even vaguely close to such an assertion.
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Now you are outright lying. You yourself said that depression having anything to do with brain chemicals are a "folk story".

You also poo pooed any evidence that there is. You can't prove your stance, so you point fingers and lie.

Nice.

The only thing I've asked for is proof. You just stand around saying "just as I expected".

Yes, you expected that I ask for proof, so give some already.

Don't run for cover in here and lick your wounds by whining to everyone about how it is "typical" for a "skeptic" to ask you to prove your point with evidence instead of saying

"that's not true, that's not true, you are just saying that because you heard someone else say that."

Then you rant on about flies instead of stating why brain chemicals have nothing to do with depression.

I'm not here to get "points". I'm only pointing out why you can't come here, tell someone they are totally wrong contrary to the evidence, and then not back it up.
 
Peskanov said:
Epepke, obviously I missunderstood your argument about the "reasoning engine".
I agree that the notion of the neocortex acting as a "logical machine" is quite naive, no problem with that.
I thinked you were referring to a lower level, the idea of the brain as a computer, that is, a machine which processes information. There is a lot of people here who oposes this view due to a narrow understanding of what a computer is...
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Not a problem. Of course, I'm well aware that any mathematical system can be approximated to an arbitrary degree of precision with gates. I also don't see that there is anything about the brain that is a smoking gun such that there is a good reason to assume that it cannot also be approximated to an arbitrary degree of precision with gates. Of course, there could be, but I don't see any compelling evidence, and in the absence of that, I'm more comfortable proceeding with the tools that we have.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
Now you are outright lying. You yourself said that depression having anything to do with brain chemicals are a "folk story".
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No I didn't.

What I said was that the concept of a "chemical imbalance" as the cause of depression was a case of folk medicine. I did not make any assertion that it had nothing to do with chemicals. This would be a stupid assertion, because just about everything in the body has something to do with chemicals.

Look. It's really very simple. The notion of a chemical imbalance went out of mainstream medicine a couple of hundred years ago, when people stopped believing that disease was caused by an imbalance of the humors.

Serotonin is not part of the diet, although hallucinogenic mushrooms have a metabolite which is a serotonin analogue. Therefore, any serotonin in the brain is made by something in the body.

Are you with me on this so far?

Now, because depression can effectively be treated either by increasing the amount of available serotonin (with MAOIs) or by inhibiting reuptake of serotonin (with SSRIs), of course it has something to do with serotonin, but this is not an etiology.

I've written all this before.

There are a number of possible etiologies. Perhaps there is not enough serotonin. This suggests that the mechanisms for producing serotonin might be faulty in some way. Perhaps there is a difference in anatomy or physiology, one such possibility I have already written about, according to which even normal levels of serotonin are ineffective in depressed patients. Perhaps there is some other basic mechanism, unknown and possibly not guessed at.

Any of these, if there were good evidence for them, might constitute a real etiology, or cause, of the condition. But there is insufficient evidence, and so the cause is not known.

Are you still with me?

This is what I said, and it is what I continue to say.

Come on! Even the Zoloft commercials admit that the cause of depression is not known.

The only thing I've asked for is proof. You just stand around saying "just as I expected".
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How can I possibly give you proof for anything if you aren't even willing to read and understand what I write?
 
asthmatic camel said:
Surely you'd agree that discussion with sceptics, of whatever variety, is preferable to banging ones head against a brick wall in an attempt to talk sense to the believers ?

Interesting post by the way.

:)
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I'm not so sure. This exchange feels a lot more like a brick wall than when talking to believers. At least with believers, you know where you stand.

I mean, I think I'm talking in clear English, but what comes back is something totally different from what I said.
 
voidx said:
I get the impression you really have more of a problem with Eos than with "skeptics". Like was said, people that say they are skeptics are just people, and have all the inherent faults therein. This means that at times when they hop into a topic they know very little about, they may be tempted to talk out their arse, rather than just say...this isn't an area I know much about, I simply don't know. But in general most of your examples are kind of vague so its hard to tell.
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That's fair criticism. Since there's a thread now, I'll try to post specific examples in the future. Obviously, presenting a vague impression is not good evidence to convince people; but in this thread I mainly wanted to start and get some feedback.
 
Suggestologist said:
There's an epidemic of either/or thinking among the "skeptics" on this forum. They need a dose of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Aristotelian logic leads to the epistemological use of either/or distinctions.
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I'm going to deal with only this assertion; it's my habit to deal with specific assertions.

I think you may be right about this. I have great respect for Aristotelian logic, but like everything, it only works in a certain kind of box, and you have to appreciate the parameters of the box.

I'm reminded of the time a few years ago when I gave a talk about "The Psychology of Belief and Unbelief." It was mostly a taxonomy talk; I presented a dozen or so models of belief and compared and contrasted them. Of course, Aristotelian logic was one of them; I had to include it, because it is so well known. If there was an opinion presented, it was that people generally don't use reason unless they have an emotional attachment to it.

I expected this opinion to cause controversy, but, as usual, the most interesting thing came totally out of left field. I recounted a story of someone I had known by the name of Eugene, who considered himself a chanting Buddhist, the kind that says "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" over and over again. There was an exchange between him and a roommate of mine, which seemed to me emblematic of evidence-unawareness, but that doesn't bear going into. When I speak, I like to liven things up informally, and as Eugene claimed that he could get anything he wanted, I reported my thinking at the time, which was, "Eugene, why don't you wish for a chin?" It was a bit of a cheap shot, I'll admit, but seriously, if I could get anything I wanted by chanting, I'd wish for more hair first of all, and Eugene's most unprominent feature was his smooth and protruberance-free mandible.

Anyway, a member of the audience came up to me and told me that she was about ready to come up on stage and beat me up for being sexist. I was interested in why she came to that conclusion, as while I may be sexist, I didn't think that I had made that a point of the talk, and I am always looking for ways to improve my public-speaking skills. She responded with the idea that I had said, "Eugene, why don't you wish for a chick?"

It turned out that she was hard-of-hearing, which she admitted. More interestingly, she was a logic teacher and had trouble following my talk past the Aristotelian bit (though nobody else did). I found it ironic and amusing that someone ostensibly committed to logic could have come to such an emotional, irrational conclusion that resulted from a sensory defect that she already knew she had.

I got symbolic revenge a couple of years later, when she gave a talk which basically reduced to showing the "When God was a Woman" videotapes. Some of the attendees, knowing that I was not entirely ignorant of physics, jokingly asked me how you tap into those energy meridians. I jokingly replied, "Well, you just drive a spike down with a wire," and they appropriately replied, "No, a spike is too phallic."
 
epepke said:
I expected this opinion to cause controversy, but, as usual, the most interesting thing came totally out of left field. I recounted a story of someone I had known by the name of Eugene, who considered himself a chanting Buddhist, the kind that says "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" over and over again. There was an exchange between him and a roommate of mine, which seemed to me emblematic of evidence-unawareness, but that doesn't bear going into. When I speak, I like to liven things up informally, and as Eugene claimed that he could get anything he wanted, I reported my thinking at the time, which was, "Eugene, why don't you wish for a chin?" It was a bit of a cheap shot, I'll admit, but seriously, if I could get anything I wanted by chanting, I'd wish for more hair first of all, and Eugene's most unprominent feature was his smooth and protruberance-free mandible.

Anyway, a member of the audience came up to me and told me that she was about ready to come up on stage and beat me up for being sexist. I was interested in why she came to that conclusion, as while I may be sexist, I didn't think that I had made that a point of the talk, and I am always looking for ways to improve my public-speaking skills. She responded with the idea that I had said, "Eugene, why don't you wish for a chick?"
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It's sexist to want to have a girlfriend?? :eek: :confused:
 
Interesting Ian said:


It's sexist to want to have a girlfriend?? :eek: :confused:
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I wondered about that, too, as Eugene didn't have a girlfriend, either. His social engagements seemed to consist of Stammtisch, where I met him, and semi-weekly travels to Albany, Georgia, where apperently saying "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" is a popular thing to do. But I did not mention this.

I guess, inasmuch as I can guess at irrational reactions, that it was simply to the word "chick."
 
epepke said:


I wondered about that, too, as Eugene didn't have a girlfriend, either. His social engagements seemed to consist of Stammtisch, where I met him, and semi-weekly travels to Albany, Georgia, where apperently saying "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" is a popular thing to do. But I did not mention this.

I guess, inasmuch as I can guess at irrational reactions, that it was simply to the word "chick."
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When I was doing my first degree at University I remember being called a sexist for the most ludicrous reasons. For example, on one occasion when I was talking to this female student, I referred to men being physically stronger than women. And I deliberately emphasised the word physically as I knew that students, especially female students (albeit not exclusively so), would call me a sexist and argue that women were just as strong as men. But invariably it transpired they were using the word strength in some vague obscure metaphorical sense. Anyway, despite me saying physically stronger, I was still called a sexist by this female. :( And even when I got her to eventually realise I was simply talking about physical strength, and physical strength alone, there was considerable reluctance on her part to acknowledge the truth of this. Actually I remember one male student getting very aggressive with me, on another occasion, about this and screaming "where's your evidence!" :rolleyes:

Actually, at University I have at various times been called a sexist, a racist, a fattist and an ageist! The guy who scremed at me "where's your evidence" once accused me of being all 4! LOL Needless to say, none of these accusations had the remotest merit.

At least I've never been accused of being a speciesist! :)
 
Interesting Ian said:

~SNIP~
Actually, at University I have at various times been called a sexist, a racist, a fattist and an ageist! The guy who scremed at me "where's your evidence" once accused me of being all 4! LOL Needless to say, none of these accusations had the remotest merit.

At least I've never been accused of being a speciesist! :)
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But you are II, you detest camels. :p
 
c0rbin said:
Humans are imperfect.

Skeptics are human.

Skeptics are imperfect.

IMO, any social group you run with will have its ups and downs.
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I keep hoping for an up that is greater than zero. It's probably a peronality defect of mine.
 
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