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> I wonder why this topic triggers it? I think that this is one of those topics that is pefectly ready for inconclusive bike-shedding: easy to build an opinio

> I wonder why this topic triggers it? I think that this is one of those topics that is pefectly ready for inconclusive bike-shedding: easy to build an opinion and argue about it "safely" - without any risk of losing someone's face when proven wrong due to insufficient data. It's some kind of sport where after the match both sides gp home feeling superior to the other because there's no objective way to establish the winner.

graderjs 5y ago
Totally with you on that. The point you make is the key where there's no risk for being wrong. You have no skin in the game you can be a armchair, in the stands commentator, who doesn't actually have to get any results, and you're not wearing it for any choices or for the accuracy of what you're saying. Combine that with ego and the desire to lord it over other people by pretending they're idiots and I think you have a large part of the explanation for how people interact about this. This dynamic is not confined to this topic obviously but I think it's kind of a tragedy because it would be interesting and great to see some real logical scientific investigation of this stuff you know from all different actors, just like it would to see real investigation of parapsychological phenomenon, but there's too much craziness, stigma and exactly what you said involved for that to happen easily I think. That to me is a tragedy and major missed opportunity for us humans to learn something to push forward our knowledge at the frontier of what we understand, in the place where science should really excel, and should really be able to be like a shield to go beyond our limitations of ego, group think and emotion... it's the exact place where in these topics it's the weakest. So the very things that we could understand more about that are so interesting it's like we've crippled ourselves from doing that because of our mass psychology and however these topics have been manipulated by whoever.

graderjs 5y ago

Totally with you on that. The point you make is the key where there's no risk for being wrong. You have no skin in the game you can be a armchair, in the stands commentator, who doesn't actually have to get any results, and you're not wearing it for any choices or for the accuracy of what you're saying. Combine that with ego and the desire to lord it over other people by pretending they're idiots and I think you have a large part of the explanation for how people interact about this. This dynamic is not confined to this topic obviously but I think it's kind of a tragedy because it would be interesting and great to see some real logical scientific investigation of this stuff you know from all different actors, just like it would to see real investigation of parapsychological phenomenon, but there's too much craziness, stigma and exactly what you said involved for that to happen easily I think. That to me is a tragedy and major missed opportunity for us humans to learn something to push forward our knowledge at the frontier of what we understand, in the place where science should really excel, and should really be able to be like a shield to go beyond our limitations of ego, group think and emotion... it's the exact place where in these topics it's the weakest. So the very things that we could understand more about that are so interesting it's like we've crippled ourselves from doing that because of our mass psychology and however these topics have been manipulated by whoever.