4 ms·

I agree, and that we can even have this discussion on HN right now, rather than it being knocked out of the park into cranksville, ignored or flagged is pretty

by dosy 7y ago

I agree, and that we can even have this discussion on HN right now, rather than it being knocked out of the park into cranksville, ignored or flagged is pretty big. I'm no expert on (HN) zeitgeist history, but my feeling is a couple of years ago you couldn't. Things like this are rapidly seeing more public engagement.

heyitsguay 7y ago
To me that trend sounds of a kind with the slow influx of anti-vax, conspiracy theory, etc. mindsets in Internet communities; facts don't always win and the bringing together of people invested in some untrue belief provides validation and normalizes the existence of such communities. That's not to say psi investigators deserve personal attack for their efforts, it's a harmless belief. But i think it's also ok to dismiss unsupported ideas without engaging with them. As another commenter pointed out - if there is a real phenomenon there, somebody will use it to do something.
- childintime 7y ago
  > That's not to say psi investigators deserve personal attack for their efforts, it's a harmless belief. I'd say they might be offended, because as scientists they have accumulated a public body of work. Why can't it speak for itself, like all scientific work? > But i think it's also NOT ok to dismiss unsupported ideas without engaging with them. I inserted the NOT, because I think you forgot to. > if there is a real phenomenon there, somebody will use it to do something People do commonly use it, it is a part of everyone's daily life, the normally invisible undiscussed part of the why and the how. But that's not the point. Scientists, and by extension society itself, favor hard science, first and foremost because it allows them to function culturally. So now we have a culture, and cultures tend, to establish themselves, to harass those that are not a part of them. They attract those that do the harassment, and puts them in power. Power means the cultural bullies win in a court of law, regardless of evidence, and that the court will tell the other side to shut the f*ck up. The undesirable traits in the above are cultural side-effects. We live a culture which trumps science, as it wages a war. In a war we all lose, yet the one-eyed, those that trump the culture, somehow account a win. They feel they win by exempting themselves. The point is, ESP is under attack, not because it is guilty of being unscientific, but because of the existence of cultural power, and because the exploit of this power provides sociopaths with a habitat, to power abuse, cultural abuse. We are immersed in this culture, by nature it is intolerant: violent in and of itself.
  - dosy 7y ago
    strong defence, I like it.
- dosy 7y ago
  you seem pretty level-headed and well-intentioned so that's good. but I think you need to ask yourself at what point does dismissing something become ignoring reality? you use the word unsupported but that word is problematic. it's problematic because in the context of the scientific method what's supported and not is a constantly changing landscape in flux, moved by phenomena, experiments, data and their interpretation. I'm not saying you're not aware of what that word means. I'm saying that I suspect that you apply it liberally when actually scientifically that word means something like an even-handed assessment of all the evidence, over time. so if you want to have a model faithful to reality you have to be very careful about how you use that thought, about "support". so let's take the study zero ling tear. that shows some anomalous retrocausal effect. how do you update your beliefs when encountered with his paper from Cornell? the other really important point is this is a phenomenon that people experience. it's qualia, and there's lots of documented things like remote viewing blind side memories of reincarnated past lives that are validated. but even ignoring that just from the anecdotal people say they have this experience. now even factoring out the important Mass psychology and personal psychology motivators for having a belief like this do you really scientifically feel satisfied that "no effect" interpretations explain everything? in other words even framing the existing phenomena in the weakest possible form you really feel scientifically satisfied to say with integrity that there's nothing there? that it's unsupported? I think in fact the unsupported is the bold claim to make that would require some strong evidence.

by dosy 7y ago

heyitsguay 7y ago

To me that trend sounds of a kind with the slow influx of anti-vax, conspiracy theory, etc. mindsets in Internet communities; facts don't always win and the bringing together of people invested in some untrue belief provides validation and normalizes the existence of such communities. That's not to say psi investigators deserve personal attack for their efforts, it's a harmless belief. But i think it's also ok to dismiss unsupported ideas without engaging with them. As another commenter pointed out - if there is a real phenomenon there, somebody will use it to do something.

childintime 7y ago
> That's not to say psi investigators deserve personal attack for their efforts, it's a harmless belief. I'd say they might be offended, because as scientists they have accumulated a public body of work. Why can't it speak for itself, like all scientific work? > But i think it's also NOT ok to dismiss unsupported ideas without engaging with them. I inserted the NOT, because I think you forgot to. > if there is a real phenomenon there, somebody will use it to do something People do commonly use it, it is a part of everyone's daily life, the normally invisible undiscussed part of the why and the how. But that's not the point. Scientists, and by extension society itself, favor hard science, first and foremost because it allows them to function culturally. So now we have a culture, and cultures tend, to establish themselves, to harass those that are not a part of them. They attract those that do the harassment, and puts them in power. Power means the cultural bullies win in a court of law, regardless of evidence, and that the court will tell the other side to shut the f*ck up. The undesirable traits in the above are cultural side-effects. We live a culture which trumps science, as it wages a war. In a war we all lose, yet the one-eyed, those that trump the culture, somehow account a win. They feel they win by exempting themselves. The point is, ESP is under attack, not because it is guilty of being unscientific, but because of the existence of cultural power, and because the exploit of this power provides sociopaths with a habitat, to power abuse, cultural abuse. We are immersed in this culture, by nature it is intolerant: violent in and of itself.
- dosy 7y ago
  strong defence, I like it.
dosy 7y ago
you seem pretty level-headed and well-intentioned so that's good. but I think you need to ask yourself at what point does dismissing something become ignoring reality? you use the word unsupported but that word is problematic. it's problematic because in the context of the scientific method what's supported and not is a constantly changing landscape in flux, moved by phenomena, experiments, data and their interpretation. I'm not saying you're not aware of what that word means. I'm saying that I suspect that you apply it liberally when actually scientifically that word means something like an even-handed assessment of all the evidence, over time. so if you want to have a model faithful to reality you have to be very careful about how you use that thought, about "support". so let's take the study zero ling tear. that shows some anomalous retrocausal effect. how do you update your beliefs when encountered with his paper from Cornell? the other really important point is this is a phenomenon that people experience. it's qualia, and there's lots of documented things like remote viewing blind side memories of reincarnated past lives that are validated. but even ignoring that just from the anecdotal people say they have this experience. now even factoring out the important Mass psychology and personal psychology motivators for having a belief like this do you really scientifically feel satisfied that "no effect" interpretations explain everything? in other words even framing the existing phenomena in the weakest possible form you really feel scientifically satisfied to say with integrity that there's nothing there? that it's unsupported? I think in fact the unsupported is the bold claim to make that would require some strong evidence.