SPLIT: Magidgique Discussion from Intro Thread

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In my understanding of the argument, which is based on reading Telarus' posts, geocentricity was based on the current understanding of physical laws.

Not unless Aristotle was born in the 1600s.

[Cramulus]

Another example would be in the book Laboratory Life, by Woolgar and Latour. They are sociologists who positioned themselves in a hormone research lab in the 1970s and tried to observe the sociological processes in place during the creation of facts. Really fascinating book.

There's a few chapters on this hormone called TRF.

In the beginning, whether TRF was real or not was anybody's call. They spent a few years collecting data and making arguments one way or the other.

Eventually some scientists with enough credibility convinced everybody that TRF was real.

Then there were YEARS of research devoted to synthesizing it. Thousands of goats were sacrificed for their glands. There were still scientists who didn't believe it existed, but after the consensus shifted, nobody took them seriously.

Later, they would discover that TRF never did exist. It took a while to get to the truth, but the unsupported belief ended up being the correct one.

[Cramulus]

In my understanding of the argument, which is based on reading Telarus' posts, geocentricity was based on the current understanding of physical laws.

Not unless Aristotle was born in the 1600s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Aristotelian_science_and_empiricism

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Another example would be in the book Laboratory Life, by Woolgar and Latour. They are sociologists who positioned themselves in a hormone research lab in the 1970s and tried to observe the sociological processes in place during the creation of facts. Really fascinating book.

There's a few chapters on this hormone called TRF.

In the beginning, whether TRF was real or not was anybody's call. They spent a few years collecting data and making arguments one way or the other.

Eventually some scientists with enough credibility convinced everybody that TRF was real.

Then there were YEARS of research devoted to synthesizing it. Thousands of goats were sacrificed for their glands. There were still scientists who didn't believe it existed, but after the consensus shifted, nobody took them seriously.

Later, they would discover that TRF never did exist. It took a while to get to the truth, but the unsupported belief ended up being the correct one.

I think that's a good example.  It's also a proper model of the scientific method & peer review triumphing over dumbfucks.

Also, I would dispute that sociology is a science...Though it sounds like most of the work was done by neurologists.

Lastly, fuck goats. Science NEEDS piles of dead animals to move forward, and goats are evil little shits who turf up the damn lawn and get into your compost heap.  They should be wiped out.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In my understanding of the argument, which is based on reading Telarus' posts, geocentricity was based on the current understanding of physical laws.

Not unless Aristotle was born in the 1600s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Aristotelian_science_and_empiricism

Yes, I see nothing there that disputes my claim.  The scientific method uses empiracism, but it is possible to use empiracism without using the scientific method.

[Cramulus]

one of their main critiques of the scientific process was that uncertainty gets erased once something achieves fact-hood.

For example, in the beginning, people were still really uncertain about whether or not TRF existed... there were arguments about data collection methods, whether or not the scientist presenting data was credible, all sorts of things.

Eventually, when TRF was discovered to be real, all that uncertainty went out the window. Nobody references those arguments after TRF is a proven fact.

But it turns out it WASN'T a fact all along. All that uncertainty that had been swept under the rug was being obscured by scientist's credibility.


In Laboratory Life posits that if we look at the creation of facts through a social lends, we can see that there is a game being played with credibility. Scientists accumulate it, hoard it, spend it, and share it just like a form of currency. If they invest their credibility in something that doesn't pan out, they can lose it. If they invest it in something that turns out to be great, they get more of it.

The creation of facts is moderated by the expenditure of credibility. And this serves an important function! But it is a source of much confusion too.

In my understanding of the argument, which is based on reading Telarus' posts, geocentricity was based on the current understanding of physical laws.

Not unless Aristotle was born in the 1600s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Aristotelian_science_and_empiricism

Yes, I see nothing there that disputes my claim.  The scientific method uses empiracism, but it is possible to use empiracism without using the scientific method.

Aristotle used a scientific method. He wasn't just making up myths about things, he's using empiricism. People tested this stuff. Our contemporary scientific method is different, but I think this still fulfills LMNO's request for horrendously wrong scientific beliefs which are based on actual scientific methods.

anyway, I don't have much more to say about that, it was Telarus' argument anyway 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

one of their main critiques of the scientific process was that uncertainty gets erased once something achieves fact-hood.

For me, uncertainty is erased once something is accurately expressed in math.  Then it's law.  Until then, it's theory, which implies a high degree of confidence, but not certainty.

An example of law would be the law of gravitation, which measures the acceleration of two masses toward each other.

An example of theory would be evolution, which enjoys a perponderance of evidence.

Aristotle used a scientific method.

Sorry.  I thought we were talking about the scientific method.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I think what trip and I are both saying is not a problem with the scientific method, but the scientific process.

Let's not pretend that Peer Review always produces Truth. The creation of facts is also a social process, and is, as such, muddied by monkeys.

Like democracy -- it's the best thing we've come up with, but it's not perfect.


please do not interpret this as HURR SCIENCE IS BAD

It is more of a social process than most people imagine—there's less neat and tidy calculations on lab equipment and more groups of scientists all sitting around going "WTF is this shit?!"

At least according to Kevin Dunbar who has been researching how the scientific method actually works, in contrast to how it's portrayed in textbooks:

While the scientific process is typically seen as a lonely pursuit — researchers solve problems by themselves — Dunbar found that most new scientific ideas emerged from lab meetings, those weekly sessions in which people publicly present their data. Interestingly, the most important element of the lab meeting wasn't the presentation — it was the debate that followed. Dunbar observed that the skeptical (and sometimes heated) questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as the scientists were forced to reconsider data they'd previously ignored.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1

I highly recommend people read the entire article, it's chock full of lines that easily could have come from the BIP.

[*GrumpButt*]

Good post. Full of stuff for me to look at once my kids are all in bed.

Did someone say goats?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9_CdNPuJg
Work safe, I'm just retarded and can't figure out how to get the vid up. -.-

[Telarus]

Ah, the Aristotle reference was to show that humanity (or a group of them) had got some things pretty damn right (knowing the earth was roughly spherical, calculating the rough diameter by measuring how shadows had different lengths at different Latitudes... that's some sharp thinking). They just got something wrong, and it stuck in our culture and actually shaped arguments FOR god's existence for hundreds of years.

Same thing with the loss of the Cure for Scurvy. At one point it was known that lemon juice totally prevented scurvy (post 1747, see article linked later). It wasn't known why (that scurvy is a severe lack of vitamin C). By the 1900's tho, when British Navy scientists started looking at the "supposed" curative properties of lemon juice, they had actually switched to cheaper Indian limes (due to the advancements in steam powered travel and the connections with the East India Co, this became cheeper than opting for Sicilian lemons), and all prep on-board ship was done in copper cauldrons.... which happens to totally neutralize most of the C in the lime juice. At the same time, scurvy was attacking upper class infants (because they upper class just had to feed their infants the fancy preserved baby foods which were all the rage, and didn't start them on fresh fruit early as it was more expensive and harder to acquire).

Thus, it was "scientifically determined" (through tests using copper equipment) that lemon juice had nothing to do with Scurvy, and it was basically abandoned.

MORE: http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm

I agree with Roger, Science! seems like the best error-correction system we've come across. But I don't pretend it, or the scientists whose work I'm interested in, are infallible. But I don't jump on the "EVERYTHING is possible, no even that" crystal-waiving nonsense bandwagon either.

I don't see (my personal use of the models of) Mysticism/Magick as competing with science or religion to offer an explaination of reality (unless you're on the wrong motorcycle with the fat trustafarian college chick, then it's probably the definition you're going to use).

I think that techniques from those models are valid brain-change systems, and that you can get repeatable results, but pretty much only in the NLP/psychology/memetics/martial-arts/marketing sense. (FUCK am I agreeing with Ben Mack?!?!?.... nah, he was just agreeing with RAW.) But I don't think I can throw invisible fireballs out of my bellybutton.

I agree with Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

This goes doubly for anyone caught in the mainstream American reality-tunnel. THEY can't tell the FUCKING DIFFERENCE.

Shit, we've genetically altered goats to produce spider silk enzymes in their milk so that we can make BODY ARMOR out of it.

How many CCs of mouseblood and black candles are we going to need for that again?

Some scientist spag in Florida genetically engineered a breed of oranges to naturally produce THC, because his son got his college money taken away over a possession bust involving a single joint. He managed to mail out about 150 sample envelopes of the seeds before the FBI showed up and politely asked him to knock it off. Sounds like a wicked hex to me.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Using the telepathic skills I developed during a rigorous period of occult training in my parent's basement, I'll go ahead and answer the question you're thinking about:

There is no term that doesn't sound terminally spaggy that describes making significant changes to one's goals and behavior:

"I'm working on some life changes."

"I'm restructuring the business model of my brain." 

"I'm doing a spiritual inventory."

"I'm exploring a new reality tunnel."

"I'm breaking out of my BIP."

"I'm using bullshit myths to facilitate personal growth."

"I'm doing some self-hypnosis to overcome my crippling anxiety."

"I'm doing butt magick with a long candle and Cthulu."

See?

Any sort of long term introspective endeavor that has an objective of significantly changing how you relate to yourself and other people is impossible to talk about without resorting to words that make you sound like an asshat.

I know a large chunk of occultists are riddled with superstition, but not all of them. When people really take this model-agnostic strain of occultism to heart, science becomes just another useful set of assumptions for accomplishing some things. I think adopting a worldview that allows for the possibility of the supernatural can be a highly entertaining and worthwhile experience as well, and not just for trolling.

You can use sound logic and sound science but still utterly fail to complete your objectives. On the flip side, you can use faulty logic and pseudoscience but still reach your goal. Considering how steeped in bullshit people are, utilizing bullshit is probably the better bet.

Look at it this way, most discordians and subgenii merely regurgitate what other members of discordia have already done without really evolving the ideas or adding new twists. But we're not going to forfeit the term to morons—why should I allow the preponderance of idiots to own the term, "magick"?

[Cramulus]

great post, Net   

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Look at it this way, most discordians and subgenii merely regurgitate what other members of discordia have already done without really evolving the ideas or adding new twists. But we're not going to forfeit the term to morons—why should I allow the preponderance of idiots to own the term, "magick"?

Because it gives me a chance to blow bile and bits of organs I probably need all over the place?

TGRR,
Truth in advertising.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

And I didn't even have to show up with armor and a horse...

[Adios]

I am going to suck this thread up with my chaos madghiqal penis and when it gets full I am going to spew forth the most horrible poison never imagined all over the lot of you.