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I think your comment about ”trading with the occult” below is related to the point you make here: people appear to have different level of skepticism toward ”sc

I think your comment about ”trading with the occult” below is related to the point you make here: people appear to have different level of skepticism toward ”science” and ”occult”. I don’t want to go too much on a tangent here, but in my experience, it is about trust. People have lost their trust that in multiple fields the scientific process works as it should, and by association, they have lost their general trust in ”The Science” as well. This is because scientific community as a whole has failed to come up with measures proportional to the problems. I think this lack of trust makes sense, although it probably is based on emotional reaction for most people, rather than rational thinking. Trust is in short supply nowadays, so people grasp even the little trust they see. And that is more likely to be their neighbor. This may make you angry, but the science needs to earn the trust again if we want have the level of trust to be like it used to be.

the_af 4y ago
(Again, thanks for the honest and measured reply) My problem with what you are arguing has multiple sides. First, science brought us here. The people mistrusting it are using computers, tech, medicine and are possibly alive (or their ancestors were, anyway) thanks to scientific or protoscientific advances. So their skepticism is demonstrably misplaced. And what exactly are they skeptical about, anyway? "Big Pharma"? Well, that's conflating science with business -- and while there might not be such a thing as "Big Tarot" (plenty of scammers though, in the sense of preying on the weak), there's even less oversight for Tarot, so every problem you can spot with scientific endeavors is manifested tenfold with fringe practices! There. Are. No. Standards. And. No. Oversight. For. Fringe. Practices. That's what kills me. What about "regaining" trust? I don't think that's at all possible given the unequal battle between science and baloney. It takes basically nothing to make magical claims. There are no experiments, no standards, no testable assertions, it only takes some charlatan claiming the Third Moon of Jupiter or the Death card means that some stranger in your future yadda yadda. But science is built on an edifice of failures and tribulations, I can even talk about the "replication crisis" of science and that alone will tell you there's oversight! I guess that's it: science can speak about its failures; charlatans will eventually be shunned by their peers. With Tarot, palm reading, etc, they never speak about failures, there's no oversight and nobody gets shunned because they are all charlatans. How can science "fight" against that to "win" public trust, when science by its own method MUST (eventually) admit its mistakes, whereas Tarot will not, ever? No charlatan successfully won the Amazing Randi's (R.I.P.) bet. No Tarot reader either. The other person in this conversation making claims you can influence which cards get drawn by asking a question -- that would have won a tidy sum if demonstrated to Randi, how come it never happened? Shouldn't that demolish any of their fringe claims, or do people "mistrust" Randi as well?
- kukkeliskuu 4y ago
  Science may have brought us here, but that is part of the problem. That was the science of that time. That is not the same science we have today. I think it is analogous to a some high quality product brand name that has started selling some pure crap under the same brand name, while still also selling quality products. When people trust the brand name, they believe it guarantees the quality. For me, the "product strategy" of selling crap under the quality brand name is form of lying. These people are both selling crap and lying about the quality. To me that is worse than just selling crap and not lying about it. And if you buy one crap product, you will lose the trust to the whole brand name very quickly, as has happened with "the science". I see Tarot etc. are more like hand-made products on some stereotypical African market. Nobody guarantees anything. Many people try to cheat you. But you might also find good quality products from one seller. Perhaps later you find out the quiet guy who produced these solid products, one who has craftmanship. And little by little you start trusting him as you see what he has done. To me that might produce more healthy attitude than blind trust in a market that is incentiviced to produce crap. The etymology section on Occult Wikipedia page says 'as opposed to "knowledge of the measurable", usually referred to as science.' I think one needs to be very clear about this distinction. Randi's "trick" was to imply that everything is measurable. But not everything is measurable. Quality, for instance, ultimately cannot be measured. Quality can be experienced, and most people can agree on quality when they see it. But still, nobody can define objective measures about quality.
  - the_af 4y ago
    I don't buy it. The people Randi challenged were goalpost movers. They claimed pretty wild things until challenged, in which case they didn't like it and didn't accept the challenge, or argued they didn't really claim what they had claimed (often on record). He merely asked them to demonstrate the powers they claimed they had when duping people. Is that "measuring"? Why, if you claim you can move a spoon with your mind, or read other people's minds, or that you can predict the order of Tarot cards, is it unfair to ask you to demonstrate in an environment not controlled by your confederates? Is that "measuring"? I think Randi was right, and Tarot is a swindle. Scammers and swindlers attacked Randi as a person when they really should have put their... um, powers where their mouth was and shut Randi up by demonstrating what they claimed. A neat prize awaited them! Of course, no-one ever claimed that prize because it's all bullshit. > But still, nobody can define objective measures about quality. This isn't true, there are tons of metrics about quality. In software it can be fewer that N bugs per M lines of code, or whatever. For knives it could be sharpness and lack of brittleness (measured). For airplane models it could be fewer than N crashes per decade or whatever. More importantly, fringe pseudoscientists made actual measurable claims and only backed out when Randi warned them he would monitor the demonstration and bar any confederates from messing with it! So there's no "trick" except that of those refusing those very fair conditions.

the_af 4y ago

(Again, thanks for the honest and measured reply) My problem with what you are arguing has multiple sides. First, science brought us here. The people mistrusting it are using computers, tech, medicine and are possibly alive (or their ancestors were, anyway) thanks to scientific or protoscientific advances. So their skepticism is demonstrably misplaced. And what exactly are they skeptical about, anyway? "Big Pharma"? Well, that's conflating science with business -- and while there might not be such a thing as "Big Tarot" (plenty of scammers though, in the sense of preying on the weak), there's even less oversight for Tarot, so every problem you can spot with scientific endeavors is manifested tenfold with fringe practices! There. Are. No. Standards. And. No. Oversight. For. Fringe. Practices. That's what kills me. What about "regaining" trust? I don't think that's at all possible given the unequal battle between science and baloney. It takes basically nothing to make magical claims. There are no experiments, no standards, no testable assertions, it only takes some charlatan claiming the Third Moon of Jupiter or the Death card means that some stranger in your future yadda yadda. But science is built on an edifice of failures and tribulations, I can even talk about the "replication crisis" of science and that alone will tell you there's oversight! I guess that's it: science can speak about its failures; charlatans will eventually be shunned by their peers. With Tarot, palm reading, etc, they never speak about failures, there's no oversight and nobody gets shunned because they are all charlatans. How can science "fight" against that to "win" public trust, when science by its own method MUST (eventually) admit its mistakes, whereas Tarot will not, ever? No charlatan successfully won the Amazing Randi's (R.I.P.) bet. No Tarot reader either. The other person in this conversation making claims you can influence which cards get drawn by asking a question -- that would have won a tidy sum if demonstrated to Randi, how come it never happened? Shouldn't that demolish any of their fringe claims, or do people "mistrust" Randi as well?

kukkeliskuu 4y ago
Science may have brought us here, but that is part of the problem. That was the science of that time. That is not the same science we have today. I think it is analogous to a some high quality product brand name that has started selling some pure crap under the same brand name, while still also selling quality products. When people trust the brand name, they believe it guarantees the quality. For me, the "product strategy" of selling crap under the quality brand name is form of lying. These people are both selling crap and lying about the quality. To me that is worse than just selling crap and not lying about it. And if you buy one crap product, you will lose the trust to the whole brand name very quickly, as has happened with "the science". I see Tarot etc. are more like hand-made products on some stereotypical African market. Nobody guarantees anything. Many people try to cheat you. But you might also find good quality products from one seller. Perhaps later you find out the quiet guy who produced these solid products, one who has craftmanship. And little by little you start trusting him as you see what he has done. To me that might produce more healthy attitude than blind trust in a market that is incentiviced to produce crap. The etymology section on Occult Wikipedia page says 'as opposed to "knowledge of the measurable", usually referred to as science.' I think one needs to be very clear about this distinction. Randi's "trick" was to imply that everything is measurable. But not everything is measurable. Quality, for instance, ultimately cannot be measured. Quality can be experienced, and most people can agree on quality when they see it. But still, nobody can define objective measures about quality.
- the_af 4y ago
  I don't buy it. The people Randi challenged were goalpost movers. They claimed pretty wild things until challenged, in which case they didn't like it and didn't accept the challenge, or argued they didn't really claim what they had claimed (often on record). He merely asked them to demonstrate the powers they claimed they had when duping people. Is that "measuring"? Why, if you claim you can move a spoon with your mind, or read other people's minds, or that you can predict the order of Tarot cards, is it unfair to ask you to demonstrate in an environment not controlled by your confederates? Is that "measuring"? I think Randi was right, and Tarot is a swindle. Scammers and swindlers attacked Randi as a person when they really should have put their... um, powers where their mouth was and shut Randi up by demonstrating what they claimed. A neat prize awaited them! Of course, no-one ever claimed that prize because it's all bullshit. > But still, nobody can define objective measures about quality. This isn't true, there are tons of metrics about quality. In software it can be fewer that N bugs per M lines of code, or whatever. For knives it could be sharpness and lack of brittleness (measured). For airplane models it could be fewer than N crashes per decade or whatever. More importantly, fringe pseudoscientists made actual measurable claims and only backed out when Randi warned them he would monitor the demonstration and bar any confederates from messing with it! So there's no "trick" except that of those refusing those very fair conditions.