Aya

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

They are the Tyrants of Aaaactually.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh lord.  I remember this now.

And this is where the majority of his responses in this thread come from:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Skeptical_conspiracy

In June 2013, Sheldrake began endorsing the opinion of Spiritualist crank Robert McLuhan that a group called Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia‎ (GSoW) were coordinating the actions of editors at the online encyclopedia to unfairly label subjects as pseudoscience and promote a skeptical point of view about psychic phenomena. He also came to believe they unfairly targeted his own Wikipedia biography article for special abuse.

Yup. I love how it all boiled over into this MASSIVE CONSPIRACY OF SKEPTICS. This is made especially hilarious considering the GSoW bring all the froth and flame of the lady at a church bazaar who thinks that knit shawl would really look better in a nice lavender.

I really need you to footnote that, young man! Citation needed!

\

[LMNO]

Wait a second...


RAW's The New Inquisition speaks of Sheldrake.  The connection becomes clear. 

I don't have the book in front of me right now.  I may remember to look it up when I get home.

Also,

They are the Tyrants of Aaaactually.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wait a second...


RAW's The New Inquisition speaks of Sheldrake.  The connection becomes clear. 

I don't have the book in front of me right now.  I may remember to look it up when I get home.

Oh, that's going to be interesting... I look forward to hearing more context. The unfolding of Holist's profound gullibility has certainly made for a more amusing morning that I expected, what with the sleep deprivation.

[Doktor Howl]

We can solve for it algebraically.

"In the Illusionary Universe: The Illusion of Force equals the Illusion of Mass times the Illusion of Acceleration."

IU: I(f) = I(m)*I(a)

IU: I(f) = I(m)*I(a)
I     I        I      I

IU: I(f) = I(m)*I(a)
I     I        I      I

U: f=m*a

Psh. This equation relies on the assumption that I=I. SUCH HUBRIS!

Indeed. I must have forgotten that in some instances, force equals mass times vindaloo.

My proof is Roger's ass.

QED, bitches.

I have recently become addicted to Thai food.  Which is like going from a fission bomb to a hydrogen bomb.

force = pad thai times Roger's intestinal flora.  Which are big and hairy and have tattoos that say "Mom" on their cilia.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, it's really all coming together now:

After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock's and Rupert Sheldrake's talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

We're not censoring the talks. Instead we're placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

At TEDxWhitechapel on January 13, 2013, Graham Hancock gave a passionately argued talk in which he described the transformative impact that ayahuasca (containing the drug DMT) had had on him and argued that responsible adult usage of such drugs was a fundamental right. The talk was viewed more than 130,000 times on YouTube.

TED's scientific advisors who viewed the talk expressed to us grave concerns about it. For example, it suggests a world view in which DMT can connect users directly to "seemingly intelligent entities which communicate with us telepathically." Graham Hancock does state he makes no claim to the reality status of these entities, but he also argues that they can teach and heal us, claims that are well outside orthodox scientific thinking.
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/

What I want to know is, Holist, if you want to believe so badly, why can't you just go ahead and be religious, instead of trying to shoehorn your religion into science, or trying to distort science so it can comfortably accommodate your religion?

Frankly, I don't understand why you and your ilk want to make the world smaller with hand-waving and magic, but it's your prerogative to believe in the supernatural if you want to. What's not your prerogative is the corruption of science in an attempt to give your beliefs legitimacy.

The beauty of science is that every answer raises a thousand new questions. That may be too big and scary for you to cope with, but that doesn't give you the right to try to diminish the vast wondrousness of the natural world for everyone else by explaining it away with superficial ideas about special magic science vibrations that work outside of the realm of all the other science.

[LMNO]

I found an imaged copy of The New Inquisition on Scribd.  I had forgotten what the main thrust of the book is, to wit:

The Scientific Method is flawed and unreliable, and people who rely on it at the exclusion of all else are Idolators.

He then goes on to speak of perception psychology, General Semantics, and poor interpretations of Quantum.

Oh, and he uses the word SUMBUNALL. 

Found the Sheldrake part.  It seems that the problem here, as we have well discussed, is that RAW was speaking, first and foremost, not about Science being flawed, but that scientists were being overly dogmatic and dismissve of new ideas.

And RAW's conclusion was that the case for Darwinism is strong, but not airtight, because Weird Shit happens; and that Sheldrake has a lot to prove before his ideas can be considered true, but still: Weird Shit happens.

It doesn't take much for an Acolyte to treat a Guru's Pure Agnosticism as Proven Truth.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Oh lord.  I remember this now.

And this is where the majority of his responses in this thread come from:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Skeptical_conspiracy

In June 2013, Sheldrake began endorsing the opinion of Spiritualist crank Robert McLuhan that a group called Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia‎ (GSoW) were coordinating the actions of editors at the online encyclopedia to unfairly label subjects as pseudoscience and promote a skeptical point of view about psychic phenomena. He also came to believe they unfairly targeted his own Wikipedia biography article for special abuse.

Yup. I love how it all boiled over into this MASSIVE CONSPIRACY OF SKEPTICS. This is made especially hilarious considering the GSoW bring all the froth and flame of the lady at a church bazaar who thinks that knit shawl would really look better in a nice lavender.

I really need you to footnote that, young man! Citation needed!

\

Wait a second...


RAW's The New Inquisition speaks of Sheldrake.  The connection becomes clear. 

I don't have the book in front of me right now.  I may remember to look it up when I get home.

Also,

They are the Tyrants of Aaaactually.

[LMNO]

Read on a bit more.  The Sheldrake section wasn't about Sheldrake being right.

The point RAW was making was that Darwin is seemingly held up as TRUTH™, and dismisses other theories.

RAW then brings up Sheldrake, Kroptokin, de Chardin, Lovelock, Smuts and Dreisch (neo-Lamarckians), Bateson, Bergson, McDougal... Even Neitzche, Jung, and Reich; and points out that most people haven't even heard those names before, and therefore have no grounds to refute them, apart from what the Experts with the biggest megaphones have to say.

What he doesn't point out is twofold: First, while Kai was still around, she clearly was updating her priors about Darwinism, to the point that "Darwinism" wasn't even a thing anymore.  The understanding of Evolution itself is evolving, as new information comes to light.  Secondly, while no one person has refuted all of them, all of them have been examined and been found wanting, so the collective understanding refutes most of the ideas; and the ones that aren't refuted are folded into the common current understanding.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I found an imaged copy of The New Inquisition on Scribd.  I had forgotten what the main thrust of the book is, to wit:

The Scientific Method is flawed and unreliable, and people who rely on it at the exclusion of all else are Idolators.

He then goes on to speak of perception psychology, General Semantics, and poor interpretations of Quantum.

Oh, and he uses the word SUMBUNALL. 

Found the Sheldrake part.  It seems that the problem here, as we have well discussed, is that RAW was speaking, first and foremost, not about Science being flawed, but that scientists were being overly dogmatic and dismissve of new ideas.

And RAW's conclusion was that the case for Darwinism is strong, but not airtight, because Weird Shit happens; and that Sheldrake has a lot to prove before his ideas can be considered true, but still: Weird Shit happens.

It doesn't take much for an Acolyte to treat a Guru's Pure Agnosticism as Proven Truth.

Oh dear.

I'm not a big fan of RAW and find most of  his writing rather tedious, but I agree with him that old, established scientists tend to be overly dogmatic and dismissive of new ideas. Further, they tend to be deeply entrenched in their own disciplines and rarely look out from inside them, which leads to all kinds of fascinating crossed wires when one discipline "discovers" a phenomenon that has been well-described and researched in another discipline for decades (economics in particular comes to mind; they seem to love to re-invent the wheel).

The stereotype of science being dominated by old white men has a very solid foundation in truth, but the funny thing is that it isn't renegades, outsiders, or fringe elements that butt up against this issue most fiercely; it's new scientists just beginning their careers, who don't yet have reputations, seats, or grants to protect and can afford to take risks in their research. It is particularly new researchers who come from "nontraditional" backgrounds, ie. low income, older students, women and people of color who butt up against the rigidity of the old school.

I am fond of a rather famous saying by the great scientist Max Planck: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

If the scientific method was perfect it wouldn't be science, it would be a law, such as gravity. The practitioners of science are constantly missing or overshooting their goals, adjusting, and trying again. Often it's the mistakes and the failures, not the successes, that lead to the most interesting or important discoveries. Science is self-correcting, but it takes time and repetition. The irony of Holist arguing with me about the dogmatism present in science is that he's not the one who has to hammer away at it simply in order to run experiments or write research papers that tenured researchers can't see the value in: I am. Yet he is convinced that because he watched a couple of TEDx talks, read a book or two, and took ayahuasca and saw fairies that he's an enlightened forward-thinker, fighting the good fight to free science from its chains of dogma, and that because I'm part of the monolithic Scientific Establishment as a student, that my eyes are blinkered and I can only think within my academic box.

He's wrong. But he'll never see it, because that's not how his world works. And people like him are how we end up with measles epidemics and babies dying of pertussis in fucking 2014.

[Doktor Howl]

I can't remember who said it, but:

"If a young scientist tells you it's possible, he's likely right.  If an old scientist tells you it's impossible, he's likely wrong."

Which isn't really accurate, but still.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Read on a bit more.  The Sheldrake section wasn't about Sheldrake being right.

The point RAW was making was that Darwin is seemingly held up as TRUTH™, and dismisses other theories.

RAW then brings up Sheldrake, Kroptokin, de Chardin, Lovelock, Smuts and Dreisch (neo-Lamarckians), Bateson, Bergson, McDougal... Even Neitzche, Jung, and Reich; and points out that most people haven't even heard those names before, and therefore have no grounds to refute them, apart from what the Experts with the biggest megaphones have to say.

What he doesn't point out is twofold: First, while Kai was still around, she clearly was updating her priors about Darwinism, to the point that "Darwinism" wasn't even a thing anymore.  The understanding of Evolution itself is evolving, as new information comes to light.  Secondly, while no one person has refuted all of them, all of them have been examined and been found wanting, so the collective understanding refutes most of the ideas; and the ones that aren't refuted are folded into the common current understanding.

The problem with old white men writing books is that they can only write from the perspective they know, which is based on their experiences, and if their experiences don't include being in school learning biology in the twenty-teens, then they have no way of knowing WHAT is held up as TRUTH™, especially if they're dead. It is relatively safe to say that most of RAW's assumptions about "what is believed about the world" were at least 40 years out of date when he wrote them, partly because I can guarantee you that there is no less than a 20-year lag time between a new understanding being embraced by the new wave of working scientists and it making its way into public school textbooks and from there into the popular lexicon... and from there, how long before someone like RAW writes about it, and from then, how long before someone reads it and believes it to be an accurate current representation?

That is one of the dangers of anyone writing about the way the world is; they can only write about what they know about the way the world is. The irony being, of course, that that's one of the things RAW wrote about.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can't remember who said it, but:

"If a young scientist tells you it's possible, he's likely right.  If an old scientist tells you it's impossible, he's likely wrong."

Which isn't really accurate, but still.

This is a good quote, and it seems familiar... maybe I can dig it up.

Found it! Arthur C. Clarke.

[Dildo Argentino]

This whole thing about whether the physical universe exists or not is pissing me off.

It comes down to one thing: replication.  If I do action X in context Y it results in Z.

If Roger does action X in context Y it results in Z.
If Nigel does action X in context Y it results in Z.
If Hoopla does action X in context Y it results in Z.
If you do action X in context Y it results in Z.

If one proposes that everything on the opposite side of our eyeballs is an illusion, then it turns out that proposed illusion has demonstrable rules, and those rules are true for everyone.  And those rules have an effect on our bodies, and those effects are the same on every body.  So the proposed illusion has exactly the same characteristics as an objective external universe. 

So, to call that an Illusion is inserting a meaningless term into our understanding of these effects. It can be easily removed without changing the nature of the effects, nor the observed rules.

Unless, unless... your claim is that the proposed Illusion is mutable, and is open to subjective change.  IS that what you're saying?

No, I am not claiming that. But that's not the only unless. I refer you to Descartes' evil demon. The chicken, after all, is convinced all it's life that the benevolent master is there to supply it with food and shelter... until the day it stops believing things altogether.

The other thing that occurred to me is that as in fact the doer is unavoidably a part of the context of an action, it is in fact not possible for two different people to do X in context Y. Contexts get sorted and narrowed for relevancy (unavoidably, really, ungroomed contexts are just too large).

[Dildo Argentino]

What I want to know is, Holist, if you want to believe so badly, why can't you just go ahead and be religious, instead of trying to shoehorn your religion into science, or trying to distort science so it can comfortably accommodate your religion?

Frankly, I don't understand why you and your ilk want to make the world smaller with hand-waving and magic, but it's your prerogative to believe in the supernatural if you want to. What's not your prerogative is the corruption of science in an attempt to give your beliefs legitimacy.

The beauty of science is that every answer raises a thousand new questions. That may be too big and scary for you to cope with, but that doesn't give you the right to try to diminish the vast wondrousness of the natural world for everyone else by explaining it away with superficial ideas about special magic science vibrations that work outside of the realm of all the other science.

What I want to know, Nigel, is why you keep talking to me if, as you previously claimed, you are glad I have decided to ignore you.