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My diatribe against “skeptics” (2016)

125 points by mathgenius 4y ago

ubertaco 4y ago
This has shades of the "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" essay[1], which I revisit periodically despite being someone in a different "Tribe" (to use that author's language), and find pretty helpful. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
beardicus 4y ago
This talk is... not great. Being a controversial contrarian isn't too helpful when you're mostly just wrong and misinformed. I commend him for at least linking to the responses of his critics, though I'm not sure he's ever addressed them. I'd suggest reading Steven Novella's response at least: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is-skeptical-of-skeptics/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is...
- bberrry 4y ago
  Novella expressed everything I felt inside but couldn't possibly articulate as well. Thank you for linking
civilized 4y ago
Hmm. Laurence Krauss is a "hack physicist"? That doesn't seem very consistent with his career achievements [1]. Surely we can disagree with someone without making inaccurate personal attacks? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss
- technothrasher 4y ago
  The entire thing read as a bit of an ad hominem. Skeptics can be tribal like anybody else, and they can get things wrong or not investigate things that should be. Ok, that's all true but not particularly insightful. Picking one thing that the Skeptical community seems to accept and then focusing on it with good arguments and evidence instead of attacking "Skeptics" would have been more useful and likely better received.
  - civilized 4y ago
    There is a type of criticism where the author seems to expect respect for their outsider status and anti-tribal attitude, which they see as increasing their objectivity, and this seems to liberate them to criticize viewpoints labeled "tribal" without sufficient substance. It's the substance of a criticism that validates it, not a self-assessed position as an objective outsider.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Never heard of him before but his whole life is apparently science focused: > In 2011, Krauss defended his association with Epstein, saying "As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    That's a pretty typical attitude in the community at that time ("allegations aren't evidence"). Krauss' behavior was an open secret in the skeptic community for a long time and it was no surprise when he got metoo'd.[1] [1]https://philosophytorres.medium.com/here-are-what-some-folks-are-saying-about-the-recent-allegations-against-lawrence-krauss-e4c444b2d715 https://philosophytorres.medium.com/here-are-what-some-folks...
jzb 4y ago
The thing that turned me off against Dawkins' book, which I thought I would love, was that it just read as <em>mean</em> to me. It's been ages since I read it so I can't summon specific quotes, but here I was reading a book where I agreed with the premise but just found it to be mean-spirited. I'm in the atheist camp, and I've certainly got my thoughts about religion dominating culture, but I agree with Horgan here: Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. That's not particularly useful.
- d23 4y ago
  > Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. Dawkins was absolutely an important stepping stone for me breaking away from my extremely religious upbringing.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    I also found Dawkins while I was losing my faith, but all I can attribute to him is an edgy phase of that process where I thought it was cool to pick fights with religious people to poke holes in their arguments. I regret that now, but thankfully it was only a phase that I grew out of a year or two later (before I managed to burn too many bridges with very nice and reasonable people who happen to be religious.) Had Dawkins not existed, the ultimate outcome would have been the same. I think once you go down the path of doubting, the obvious contradictions in religion stack up fast and drive you further along in that process, regardless the influence of Dawkins. Reading the bible had a lot more to do with my atheism than Dawkins. It was impossible to reconcile the contents of that book with the christian god as had been taught to me as a child, so the whole thing unraveled.
    - d23 4y ago
      Yeah, I get that. I think I'm more bothered by the gross sweeping generalization that not a single individual would be convinced by him. I'm guessing you probably found a bit of an aversion to those kind of simplifications in your faith-shedding process too.
Pxtl 4y ago
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- Throw8394 4y ago
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- rooster694 4y ago
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d23 4y ago
I'm skeptical of a lot of what he says here, but it seems unnecessary to hide him from Q&A and whisk him off stage (if that's what happened).
dooglius 4y ago
His very first example of a "hard target", string theory, has been criticized repeatedly by Neil deGrasse Tyson (and many others), one of the people he explicitly accuses of being "in tribe". The rest of the article is downhill from there; I see numerous other errors/inaccuracies just from a skim. Seems like these are just a bunch of substance-free attacks from a contrarian. Sure you can find some individual people saying some questionable and unsubstantiated things, but his broader claim of groupthink doesn't hold water.
- bena 4y ago
  I think you're conflating multiple groups. Think of each thing as their own group. "String theory" people are a group, "simulation" people are another group. While some of the string theory group may also be simulation people, it's not a guarantee. And I think that's the problem overall with his essay. There is no big group here. There are lots of groups and people are members of some and are against others. It's also disingenuous to call someone not skeptical of an issue just because they disagree with you. It's quite possible that Neil deGrasse Tyson has considered the simulation question critically and skeptically, and still come to the conclusion he has. The other major issue is that it's all very surface level. I don't know how much time he was given, so he may have picked topics he disagrees with and presented people that agreed with them to demonstrate that there can be opposing views even among notable people in the field. The core idea is one that is just kind of not needed to be said anyway. Everyone, when presented with the idea, "We should be skeptical of even scientific claims", will probably say "Well, no shit, that's how science works". So it's an idea people already think they do. And it really just gives them ammunition to claim other people aren't doing it enough.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    > It's quite possible that Neil deGrasse Tyson has considered the simulation question critically and skeptically, and still come to the conclusion he has. That's possible but I wouldn't bet on it. He's not a philosopher, he's a science entertainer who runs a movie theater. The meat of his career is commentary on popular sciency subjects, most of them very far his actual academic expertise (astrophysics.) I figured this out after watching his twitter account for a while. Wall-to-wall poorly conceived hot takes on popular subjects that he obviously didn't put much thought into. If he thinks he can get hired for interviews/talks/books talking about simulation theory, I believe he'd do it even if he personally considered it to be unscientific nonsense.
eynsham 4y ago
Horgan disagrees with adherents of scientism not on their epistemology but on some of their claims. That’s why, apart from a quick mention of falsifiability, he mostly simply negates what, e.g., Dawkins says—on cancer, or genetics, or multiverse theory. Now I happen to think that he might be right, and that on most of these questions there is a fact of the matter amenable to investigation, but this is really quite a lazy approach; it’d be ambitious to properly address even one of these in a discussion of this length.
trabant00 4y ago
Any model of reality except reality itself is lossy. A model that can fit inside a human brain is extremely lossy. The only thing that differentiates between models is usefulness, but that is debatable too, if you consider short vs long term effects. Be careful what you wish and all that... So we could all use a little modesty when it comes to the models that we build inside our heads. On the other hand, a model which you know is flawed will never drive you to act stongly. So a certain ammount of faith in what you believe is required for action and implied in that is the rejection of opposing beliefs.
- mistermann 4y ago
  The first rule about Reality Club is...
b1c1jones 4y ago
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heresie-dabord 4y ago
> [Dawkins] hates religion so much that it impairs his scientific judgment. We can all agree that no one is perfect. But let's also agree that impaired thinking is indeed the enemy. Every time there is impaired thinking, a hornswoggle of the innocent and the credulous is probably well underway. And the crucial moment to challenge impaired thinking is when it presumes to dictate public policy.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  How do you even challenge a theocracy, whose adherents believe they're right and can deploy any amount of violence or legal loopholes? Nobody can fix "impaired thinking" of a person who firmly believes they're in the right, no matter the logic errors or negative consequences you bring. Self-righteousness is much worse than faulty thinking. Unfortunately for everyone involved morality is easily absolved, abdicated and deferred to authority, which requires no moral reasoning nor logic. Religions tend to enforce such authoritarian approach - be it a holy text, guru, ruler/head or even social convention. Questions are ultimately forbidden, branded as sin or heresy if they pass some arbitrary boundary.
  - heresie-dabord 3y ago
    > How do you even challenge a theocracy, whose adherents [... ] deploy any amount of violence Living under any real dictatorship will eventually become intolerable, but a murderous kakistocracy leaves you only one sane choice: get yourself and your family out of there.
hash872 4y ago
Just regarding the US healthcare stuff- life expectancy is determined by public health measures, medicine is just tinkering around the fringes of that. The US has lower life expectancy because of higher obesity rates, gun deaths, traffic deaths, and drug overdoses. Until resurrection is patented medicine obviously cannot bring back to life a patient who's just been shot or died in a car accident. So the 'the US spends a lot on healthcare but has low life expectancy' argument is a non-sequitur, public health is an entirely separate field. There's still a criticism of the US there, it's just subtly different from the one he's making. I don't want to mention his other errors because they're culture-war bait, but I saw two not just enormous inaccuracies but famously partisan ones that are endlessly repeated despite being trivially easy to disprove. So, while I like his overall argument here, the glaring partisan inaccuracies doesn't exactly raise my opinion of Horgan as a thinker
- jurimasa 4y ago
  Do you mean "he's not a Republican like me"?
- ChancyChance 4y ago
  I agree to make a valid comparison exclude gun and car deaths from healthcare statistics. Unfortunately, Horgan has citations, but you don't. So I can't really do much with your claim because without facts it is an opinion. If this were a debate that would score a point, but we're not competing with rhetoric: this should be a forum with facts. Because I *believe* you are correct, but I have no data so it remains a belief: facts would have helped!
  - civilized 4y ago
    Fortunately there was an article on this very recently [1]. Here's an archived link if needed [2]. > One statistic in particular stood out: one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will. > And this is a very American problem. These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests. Far trickier to tackle than most health issues where everyone is pulling in one direction. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774... [2] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW
freedude 4y ago
Horgan isn't exactly wrong. Accepting "established science" is always anti-science. How will you know Einstein was correct if you don't endeavor to test his hypothesis?
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Established science these days (since late 19th century) involves testable hypothesis, solid mechanical explanation and rigorous experiment when possible, reproducible too. "Unestablished" "science" tends to skip one or more of these. A lot of "soft" sciences also skip a lot of steps before publishing findings. The most commonly skipped one is describing experiments in sufficient detail for them to be possible to reproduce. The other is making unwarranted conclusions from a special group or situation.
- rajin444 4y ago
  Ideally your culture has evolved a common set of norms that enable it to be high trust. Another word for this is “religion”. Additionally, having a more similar than not genetic makeup may be necessary (the diverse society experiment is still ongoing).
phkahler 4y ago
I think "scientists" need to stick with the program and stop calling stuff like the multiverse a theory at all. The correct scientific term is hypothesis, which is quite literally a hypothetical, carrying much less weight than a theory. Stop claiming your speculation is a theory
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  Hypothesis and theory are the same thing. Multiverse, being unfalsifiable, is neither.
  - danparsonson 4y ago
    Colloquially they're used interchangeably but the dictionary definitions (and therefore usage in maths and the sciences) are different: Theory: A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. Hypothesis: A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Examples: the Special Theory of Relativity (very well tested, and used for real world applications), and the Riemann Hypothesis (a result in mathematics that appears to be correct but so far has not been proven).
LeroyRaz 4y ago
I am an atheist, but I thought Dawkin's book, the god delusion, came across frankly as ignorant. There are whole canons of theological thought which counter many of his arguments, as theologians raised those concerns ages ago and have been thinking about them for literally thousands of years. I think maybe he served a role though. An unreasonable voice can still be a valuable one, however much I might dislike that fact
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  So your criticism is based on an appeal to authority? Do you value medicine based on humors more than the scientific method? They are more ancient and are thoroughly argued.
  - optionalsquid 3y ago
    It's been a long time since I read The God Delusion, so my memory is hazy, but I read it after having read books like Nicholas Everitt's The Non-Existence of God and Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, and I remember being disappointed with how comparatively weak Dawkins' treatment of the subject was. As LeroyRaz pointed out, these arguments are not new and a lot of back-and-forth has been (and is) happening, but from what I recall Dawkins only ever addressed weaker (layman's) versions of those arguments and it felt pretty obvious that he was writing about a subject far outside of his area of expertise
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      What are the stronger arguments for a god then? Because having been raised in churches and studying under university trained apologists I've only encountered weak arguments. All relying on appeals to authority or unfalsifiable claims. Even the premise of a god strikes me as impossible and/or irrelevant given it must also exist outside the bounds of our experience.
      - optionalsquid 3y ago
mellosouls 4y ago
I like Horgan as a writer, and while I would probably disagree with some of his assertions and positions, his criticism here of the self-deluding and smug stance of the more tribal elements of the skeptical/atheist/scientistic camp is fully justified and righteous, and proved completely correct by the obnoxious counter-attacks he documents.
- EnergyAmy 4y ago
  Meh. After reading both the linked page and this link[1] that someone else posted in this thread, I definitely agree with this take from the latter: > After reading his article, it is safe to say that Horgan does not have the first clue about scientific skepticism. The result was a parade of straw men supported by cherry picked and often misinterpreted examples. I don't see obnoxious counter-attacks, I see people correctly pointing out that he's wrong. [1]: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is-skeptical-of-skeptics/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is...
  - rthorat 3y ago
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  - peterashford 3y ago
    As someone with a degree in Philosophy, I think he's in the right about skepticism and the people he's aiming at are deserving targets.
- bsder 3y ago
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photochemsyn 4y ago
This article is a little painful to read, because it neglects discussing some core methodologies of scientific inquiry, which could improve its arguments. Probably the most important issue is the need for painstaking care when it comes to experimental design and observational data collection, the absolute necessity for independent replication, and recognition of the ease with which scientists can fool themselves (or others) either accidentally or deliberately. In the modern world, the white robes of the religious authorities have been replaced in many areas by the white robes of the scientific authorities, and they can unfortunately be just as biased and unreliable as their previous cohort. Clearly there's a huge profit motive when it comes to scientific claims about drug efficacy; there's also bureaucratic motivations, i.e. retaining control of academic institutions and funding streams by whatever means necessary, and so on. If you want to see how science can go wrong, there are many examples, but one of the best and most accessible is the story of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union. Another, for ideological balance, is the rise of the Milton Friedman school of economic thought in the United States, whose practitioners were just as ideologically biased and free of careful analysis of data as the Lysenkoists were, while similarly proclaiming their field to be 'mathematically sound' and 'science-based'. If we want to be even more controversial, Anthony Fauci's dieheard support for reckless gain-of-function research could be placed in a similar category (well, it does work, but creating hundreds of new infectious diseases is a bad idea), and Fauci's bureaucratic career has some interesting parallels to Lysenko's. Then we could open the box labelled "the safety and efficacy of antibiotics and vaccines in the context of failures of public health in the era of the return of infectious disease threats"... (Holding this opinion is still fairly risky and likely to be flagged in many discussions as out-of-bounds). Science is really hard to do well, that's the bottom line - but it's still the only reliable method for resolving fundamental physical, chemical and biological issues. So don't let internal debates within the scientific community be used as fodder for anti-science lunatics, either.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >In the modern world, the white robes of the religious authorities have been replaced in many areas by the white robes of the scientific authorities, Clearly humans do not change and will not change. There were always a small number of independent thinkers and their proportion will generally a constant, as long as humans do not change biologically.
moritzwarhier 4y ago
I enjoyed this article a lot and I am saddened by some (not all) comments here. I think many people who grow up as non-religious thinkers or choose by themselves to reject sprituality and/or religion, go through the same humility-inducing phases after growing up, so to speak. I still don't believe in god but true nihilism is something to be afraid of. As is science reduced to being a tool to increase profit. Re: Dawkins I understand the discussion here boils down to exactly the pointa that the article makes. Re: Lorenz Krauss I agree that calling someone a "hack physicist" is bad style and unneeded. However, reading the linked article behind these strong words was gratifying and interesting, I feel thankful that the author used this form of clickbait. I have no idea about Krauss and won't judge his scientific achievements as I am not a phywicist and probably will have forgotten his name in a couple of days. I have however read endless trails of Quantum ane String theory pop-science woo that is not very good at making understable or falsifible Points. Re: Mental illness I wholheartedly agree. There are desparate people being told "SSRIs are like Insuline for you", right now, all over the world, because of flawed commercialized science. People are being harmed by this type of pseudo science, in very serious ways.
- HKH2 3y ago
  Lawrence Krauss did not deliver what was written as the title of that book, but calling him a hack is not nice.
kodt 4y ago
This feels more like an attack on the crowd that posts on /r/atheism on reddit than the scientific community. But that sub attracts a lot of "edgy" teens who are just rejecting the way they were raised, they are indeed a "soft" target.
- watwut 4y ago
  That is because scientific community and sceptics are two different groups. There is some overlap, but there is also huge overlap between scientists and christians. Many scientists are religious, actually.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Far fewer scientists are religious than the general population, which makes sense because the ability to think rationally affects both. Dawkins's problem is that religion is not the disease but the symptom of underlying irrationality. Solve for irrationality, and you solve for any problems religion creates. Hitting religion head-on works poorly because of social pressures, but fixing science education to focus on the process for how we know things instead of what we know can fix society in a way that makes it easier for individuals to reject religious beliefs while also addressing the problems Horgan wants to fix.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  It's a call to the people in the room at a Skeptics conference to be scientific and skeptical and not selectively so. I'm writing this comment based on my general experience in the community, which I was pretty into at that time. Until around 2010, the Skeptics community, which kind of centered around several conferences and meetups with the same recurring "big names". It was getting a libertarian bent, with lots of the big names at these conferences being very scientific and thorough in debunking of things like homeopathy and religion, but dismissive of soft-science advances, and often dismissive of things like sexual harassment (even at community events) and mistreatment of minorities (often this would be chalked up to just being the fault of religion). You often couldn't always put your finger on it, but it seemed like the arguments for small government, private healthcare, no gun control didn't seem as.. scientific. And often there was a few people in the crowd who were experts in the topic of discussion looking around the room and wondering why seemingly everyone else was nodding in agreement. Those people slowly found each other and still attended meetups and enjoyed some speakers but were skeptical of others. Around 2010 there was a noticeable divide in the group. Group A were people that wanted to apply skepticism broadly within the community and assert that more social topics ought not to be just status quo forever. A few were angry, but mostly it was people that didn't think the community was inwardly skeptical enough, or just got bored of making fun of chiropracters. Group B were people that looked up to the big names without much critical thought and were happy to be skeptical of religion and often had good discussion but just as often avoided good discussion if it was uncomfortable to the group or to the big names. Also people that didn't really engage and probably didn't notice anything change. The groups started to separate, in person and online, and group A generally gathered around known, but not "big name" bloggers, authors and youtubers. I remember being in that group and realizing things were worse than I thought, once you were in a room of like-minded people, there were a lot of open secrets shared about who was a creep and who was a creep apologist. Most of the stories were about patterns of behavior. Then in 2011 elevatorgate and Richard Dawkins tonedeaf reply happened.[1] This was a big wedge and a small but still surprising number in group B became really nasty to the first group. Since then group A was not really a group loosely knit, with some focused on one issue or another, but deliberately not really having much leadership. Group B shed some people into A or away altogether as a minority of people in Group B doubled down on being assholes. But still group B had a lot of people who weren't engaged enough to see the drama or piece together that skepticism wasn't always evenly applied. This speech is for those people. Online it was shared heavily by people that had already left and felt resonance with it. Funny enough, group B kind of imploded starting around 2016. A few big names were metoo'd, and it turns out some skeptics including big names were happy to be less than skeptical of alt-right adjacent views. I think Skepticism lost steam as people found more draw to align on and discuss political issues, especially in America. Covid happened and conferences and meetups stopped. Now the conferences and meetups are back and although a lot have moved on, it looks like those are mostly Group A people and let's say ex-group B people. [1]https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate
_a_a_a_ 4y ago
I tried reading John Horgan's articles published in ScientificAmerican until I worked out what was annoying me about them other than they were generally poor – it's because they're basically about him. He's a self promoter and any truth in what he's saying is secondary to his ego. Just a sceptic's take. Make up your own mind
- karmakaze 4y ago
  > I hate preaching to the converted. If you were Buddhists, I’d bash Buddhism. But you’re skeptics, so I have to bash skepticism. At least he admits to being a preacher to lesser groups.
satisfice 4y ago
Skepticism means doubting, not bashing. Doubting is a negative, it undoes. It doesn’t create an alternative— but it helps to create a space for alternatives.
deleted 4y ago
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whack 4y ago
> In the last century, prominent scientists spoke out against U.S. militarism and called for the end of war. Scientists like Einstein, Linus Pauling, and the great skeptic Carl Sagan. Where are their successors? Noam Chomsky is still bashing U.S. imperialism, but he’s in his nineties. He needs help! Far from criticizing militarism, some scholars, like economist Tyler Cowen, claim war is beneficial, because it spurs innovation. That’s like arguing for the economic benefits of cancer or slavery. The author brings up some good points, but the above attack on Tyler Cowen comes across as either bad-faith or a severe lack of critical thinking skills. You can read Cowen's article for yourself, it is linked below. Cowen never once recommended that any nation pursue war or militarism. He was merely pointing out a possible causal link between war and innovation. Which is exactly what every scientist should aim to do - find causal links, even if we wish those links didn't exist. As a reader of the article, I would hope we are wise enough to understand that even if a causal link exists, there are still many other important reasons to not pursue war. I know this sounds nitpicky, but I only bring this up because I notice this becoming more and more frequent. People repeatedly attack and shame researchers who find facts and causal links that we wish didn't exist. This is classic shooting-the-messenger. Do we really want to live in a world where researchers are too afraid to publish any studies that yield inconvenient truths? Because we're halfway there already. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-...
hydrok9 4y ago
If God exists, they sure aren't here when we need them...
jll29 4y ago
Great essay. I wish there were more people genuinely motivated by searching for the truth (as opposed to just trying to be right). Probing our own views (being self-critical) and those from our own group (peer review) is indeed more important than going after "soft targets" outside, such as astrology.
simple-thoughts 4y ago
There’s a certain strain of progressive thought, going back over 150 years, that connects these seemingly unrelated ideas: - Blank slate: human genetics are trumped by environment - Born Good: humans are good in their natural state and socialized to be violent - Equitable: humans naturally want to be equal These positions have varying degrees of scientific support but all of them are highly contested and at least partially wrong. Horgan in his article is interesting in that all of his attacks support progressive opinions and none of them go after that group’s sacred. This indicates he is a member of a tribe he is not aware he is in.

125 points by mathgenius 4y ago

This has shades of the "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" essay[1], which I revisit periodically despite being someone in a different "Tribe" (to use that author's language), and find pretty helpful. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

beardicus 4y ago

This talk is... not great. Being a controversial contrarian isn't too helpful when you're mostly just wrong and misinformed. I commend him for at least linking to the responses of his critics, though I'm not sure he's ever addressed them. I'd suggest reading Steven Novella's response at least: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is-skeptical-of-skeptics/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is...

bberrry 4y ago
Novella expressed everything I felt inside but couldn't possibly articulate as well. Thank you for linking

civilized 4y ago

Hmm. Laurence Krauss is a "hack physicist"? That doesn't seem very consistent with his career achievements [1]. Surely we can disagree with someone without making inaccurate personal attacks? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss

technothrasher 4y ago
The entire thing read as a bit of an ad hominem. Skeptics can be tribal like anybody else, and they can get things wrong or not investigate things that should be. Ok, that's all true but not particularly insightful. Picking one thing that the Skeptical community seems to accept and then focusing on it with good arguments and evidence instead of attacking "Skeptics" would have been more useful and likely better received.
- civilized 4y ago
  There is a type of criticism where the author seems to expect respect for their outsider status and anti-tribal attitude, which they see as increasing their objectivity, and this seems to liberate them to criticize viewpoints labeled "tribal" without sufficient substance. It's the substance of a criticism that validates it, not a self-assessed position as an objective outsider.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Never heard of him before but his whole life is apparently science focused: > In 2011, Krauss defended his association with Epstein, saying "As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  That's a pretty typical attitude in the community at that time ("allegations aren't evidence"). Krauss' behavior was an open secret in the skeptic community for a long time and it was no surprise when he got metoo'd.[1] [1]https://philosophytorres.medium.com/here-are-what-some-folks-are-saying-about-the-recent-allegations-against-lawrence-krauss-e4c444b2d715 https://philosophytorres.medium.com/here-are-what-some-folks...

jzb 4y ago

The thing that turned me off against Dawkins' book, which I thought I would love, was that it just read as <em>mean</em> to me. It's been ages since I read it so I can't summon specific quotes, but here I was reading a book where I agreed with the premise but just found it to be mean-spirited. I'm in the atheist camp, and I've certainly got my thoughts about religion dominating culture, but I agree with Horgan here: Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. That's not particularly useful.

d23 4y ago
> Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. Dawkins was absolutely an important stepping stone for me breaking away from my extremely religious upbringing.
- stametseater 4y ago
  I also found Dawkins while I was losing my faith, but all I can attribute to him is an edgy phase of that process where I thought it was cool to pick fights with religious people to poke holes in their arguments. I regret that now, but thankfully it was only a phase that I grew out of a year or two later (before I managed to burn too many bridges with very nice and reasonable people who happen to be religious.) Had Dawkins not existed, the ultimate outcome would have been the same. I think once you go down the path of doubting, the obvious contradictions in religion stack up fast and drive you further along in that process, regardless the influence of Dawkins. Reading the bible had a lot more to do with my atheism than Dawkins. It was impossible to reconcile the contents of that book with the christian god as had been taught to me as a child, so the whole thing unraveled.
  - d23 4y ago
    Yeah, I get that. I think I'm more bothered by the gross sweeping generalization that not a single individual would be convinced by him. I'm guessing you probably found a bit of an aversion to those kind of simplifications in your faith-shedding process too.

Pxtl 4y ago

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Throw8394 4y ago
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rooster694 4y ago
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d23 4y ago

I'm skeptical of a lot of what he says here, but it seems unnecessary to hide him from Q&A and whisk him off stage (if that's what happened).

dooglius 4y ago

His very first example of a "hard target", string theory, has been criticized repeatedly by Neil deGrasse Tyson (and many others), one of the people he explicitly accuses of being "in tribe". The rest of the article is downhill from there; I see numerous other errors/inaccuracies just from a skim. Seems like these are just a bunch of substance-free attacks from a contrarian. Sure you can find some individual people saying some questionable and unsubstantiated things, but his broader claim of groupthink doesn't hold water.

bena 4y ago
I think you're conflating multiple groups. Think of each thing as their own group. "String theory" people are a group, "simulation" people are another group. While some of the string theory group may also be simulation people, it's not a guarantee. And I think that's the problem overall with his essay. There is no big group here. There are lots of groups and people are members of some and are against others. It's also disingenuous to call someone not skeptical of an issue just because they disagree with you. It's quite possible that Neil deGrasse Tyson has considered the simulation question critically and skeptically, and still come to the conclusion he has. The other major issue is that it's all very surface level. I don't know how much time he was given, so he may have picked topics he disagrees with and presented people that agreed with them to demonstrate that there can be opposing views even among notable people in the field. The core idea is one that is just kind of not needed to be said anyway. Everyone, when presented with the idea, "We should be skeptical of even scientific claims", will probably say "Well, no shit, that's how science works". So it's an idea people already think they do. And it really just gives them ammunition to claim other people aren't doing it enough.
- stametseater 4y ago
  > It's quite possible that Neil deGrasse Tyson has considered the simulation question critically and skeptically, and still come to the conclusion he has. That's possible but I wouldn't bet on it. He's not a philosopher, he's a science entertainer who runs a movie theater. The meat of his career is commentary on popular sciency subjects, most of them very far his actual academic expertise (astrophysics.) I figured this out after watching his twitter account for a while. Wall-to-wall poorly conceived hot takes on popular subjects that he obviously didn't put much thought into. If he thinks he can get hired for interviews/talks/books talking about simulation theory, I believe he'd do it even if he personally considered it to be unscientific nonsense.

eynsham 4y ago

Horgan disagrees with adherents of scientism not on their epistemology but on some of their claims. That’s why, apart from a quick mention of falsifiability, he mostly simply negates what, e.g., Dawkins says—on cancer, or genetics, or multiverse theory. Now I happen to think that he might be right, and that on most of these questions there is a fact of the matter amenable to investigation, but this is really quite a lazy approach; it’d be ambitious to properly address even one of these in a discussion of this length.

trabant00 4y ago

Any model of reality except reality itself is lossy. A model that can fit inside a human brain is extremely lossy. The only thing that differentiates between models is usefulness, but that is debatable too, if you consider short vs long term effects. Be careful what you wish and all that... So we could all use a little modesty when it comes to the models that we build inside our heads. On the other hand, a model which you know is flawed will never drive you to act stongly. So a certain ammount of faith in what you believe is required for action and implied in that is the rejection of opposing beliefs.

mistermann 4y ago
The first rule about Reality Club is...

b1c1jones 4y ago

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heresie-dabord 4y ago

> [Dawkins] hates religion so much that it impairs his scientific judgment. We can all agree that no one is perfect. But let's also agree that impaired thinking is indeed the enemy. Every time there is impaired thinking, a hornswoggle of the innocent and the credulous is probably well underway. And the crucial moment to challenge impaired thinking is when it presumes to dictate public policy.

AstralStorm 4y ago
How do you even challenge a theocracy, whose adherents believe they're right and can deploy any amount of violence or legal loopholes? Nobody can fix "impaired thinking" of a person who firmly believes they're in the right, no matter the logic errors or negative consequences you bring. Self-righteousness is much worse than faulty thinking. Unfortunately for everyone involved morality is easily absolved, abdicated and deferred to authority, which requires no moral reasoning nor logic. Religions tend to enforce such authoritarian approach - be it a holy text, guru, ruler/head or even social convention. Questions are ultimately forbidden, branded as sin or heresy if they pass some arbitrary boundary.
- heresie-dabord 3y ago
  > How do you even challenge a theocracy, whose adherents [... ] deploy any amount of violence Living under any real dictatorship will eventually become intolerable, but a murderous kakistocracy leaves you only one sane choice: get yourself and your family out of there.

hash872 4y ago

Just regarding the US healthcare stuff- life expectancy is determined by public health measures, medicine is just tinkering around the fringes of that. The US has lower life expectancy because of higher obesity rates, gun deaths, traffic deaths, and drug overdoses. Until resurrection is patented medicine obviously cannot bring back to life a patient who's just been shot or died in a car accident. So the 'the US spends a lot on healthcare but has low life expectancy' argument is a non-sequitur, public health is an entirely separate field. There's still a criticism of the US there, it's just subtly different from the one he's making. I don't want to mention his other errors because they're culture-war bait, but I saw two not just enormous inaccuracies but famously partisan ones that are endlessly repeated despite being trivially easy to disprove. So, while I like his overall argument here, the glaring partisan inaccuracies doesn't exactly raise my opinion of Horgan as a thinker

jurimasa 4y ago
Do you mean "he's not a Republican like me"?
ChancyChance 4y ago
I agree to make a valid comparison exclude gun and car deaths from healthcare statistics. Unfortunately, Horgan has citations, but you don't. So I can't really do much with your claim because without facts it is an opinion. If this were a debate that would score a point, but we're not competing with rhetoric: this should be a forum with facts. Because I *believe* you are correct, but I have no data so it remains a belief: facts would have helped!
- civilized 4y ago
  Fortunately there was an article on this very recently [1]. Here's an archived link if needed [2]. > One statistic in particular stood out: one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will. > And this is a very American problem. These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests. Far trickier to tackle than most health issues where everyone is pulling in one direction. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774... [2] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW

freedude 4y ago

Horgan isn't exactly wrong. Accepting "established science" is always anti-science. How will you know Einstein was correct if you don't endeavor to test his hypothesis?

AstralStorm 4y ago
Established science these days (since late 19th century) involves testable hypothesis, solid mechanical explanation and rigorous experiment when possible, reproducible too. "Unestablished" "science" tends to skip one or more of these. A lot of "soft" sciences also skip a lot of steps before publishing findings. The most commonly skipped one is describing experiments in sufficient detail for them to be possible to reproduce. The other is making unwarranted conclusions from a special group or situation.
rajin444 4y ago
Ideally your culture has evolved a common set of norms that enable it to be high trust. Another word for this is “religion”. Additionally, having a more similar than not genetic makeup may be necessary (the diverse society experiment is still ongoing).

phkahler 4y ago

I think "scientists" need to stick with the program and stop calling stuff like the multiverse a theory at all. The correct scientific term is hypothesis, which is quite literally a hypothetical, carrying much less weight than a theory. Stop claiming your speculation is a theory

Georgelemental 4y ago
Hypothesis and theory are the same thing. Multiverse, being unfalsifiable, is neither.
- danparsonson 4y ago
  Colloquially they're used interchangeably but the dictionary definitions (and therefore usage in maths and the sciences) are different: Theory: A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. Hypothesis: A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Examples: the Special Theory of Relativity (very well tested, and used for real world applications), and the Riemann Hypothesis (a result in mathematics that appears to be correct but so far has not been proven).

LeroyRaz 4y ago

I am an atheist, but I thought Dawkin's book, the god delusion, came across frankly as ignorant. There are whole canons of theological thought which counter many of his arguments, as theologians raised those concerns ages ago and have been thinking about them for literally thousands of years. I think maybe he served a role though. An unreasonable voice can still be a valuable one, however much I might dislike that fact

paulryanrogers 4y ago
So your criticism is based on an appeal to authority? Do you value medicine based on humors more than the scientific method? They are more ancient and are thoroughly argued.
- optionalsquid 3y ago
  It's been a long time since I read The God Delusion, so my memory is hazy, but I read it after having read books like Nicholas Everitt's The Non-Existence of God and Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, and I remember being disappointed with how comparatively weak Dawkins' treatment of the subject was. As LeroyRaz pointed out, these arguments are not new and a lot of back-and-forth has been (and is) happening, but from what I recall Dawkins only ever addressed weaker (layman's) versions of those arguments and it felt pretty obvious that he was writing about a subject far outside of his area of expertise
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    What are the stronger arguments for a god then? Because having been raised in churches and studying under university trained apologists I've only encountered weak arguments. All relying on appeals to authority or unfalsifiable claims. Even the premise of a god strikes me as impossible and/or irrelevant given it must also exist outside the bounds of our experience.
    - optionalsquid 3y ago

mellosouls 4y ago

I like Horgan as a writer, and while I would probably disagree with some of his assertions and positions, his criticism here of the self-deluding and smug stance of the more tribal elements of the skeptical/atheist/scientistic camp is fully justified and righteous, and proved completely correct by the obnoxious counter-attacks he documents.

EnergyAmy 4y ago
Meh. After reading both the linked page and this link[1] that someone else posted in this thread, I definitely agree with this take from the latter: > After reading his article, it is safe to say that Horgan does not have the first clue about scientific skepticism. The result was a parade of straw men supported by cherry picked and often misinterpreted examples. I don't see obnoxious counter-attacks, I see people correctly pointing out that he's wrong. [1]: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is-skeptical-of-skeptics/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/john-horgan-is...
- rthorat 3y ago
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- peterashford 3y ago
  As someone with a degree in Philosophy, I think he's in the right about skepticism and the people he's aiming at are deserving targets.
bsder 3y ago
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photochemsyn 4y ago

This article is a little painful to read, because it neglects discussing some core methodologies of scientific inquiry, which could improve its arguments. Probably the most important issue is the need for painstaking care when it comes to experimental design and observational data collection, the absolute necessity for independent replication, and recognition of the ease with which scientists can fool themselves (or others) either accidentally or deliberately. In the modern world, the white robes of the religious authorities have been replaced in many areas by the white robes of the scientific authorities, and they can unfortunately be just as biased and unreliable as their previous cohort. Clearly there's a huge profit motive when it comes to scientific claims about drug efficacy; there's also bureaucratic motivations, i.e. retaining control of academic institutions and funding streams by whatever means necessary, and so on. If you want to see how science can go wrong, there are many examples, but one of the best and most accessible is the story of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union. Another, for ideological balance, is the rise of the Milton Friedman school of economic thought in the United States, whose practitioners were just as ideologically biased and free of careful analysis of data as the Lysenkoists were, while similarly proclaiming their field to be 'mathematically sound' and 'science-based'. If we want to be even more controversial, Anthony Fauci's dieheard support for reckless gain-of-function research could be placed in a similar category (well, it does work, but creating hundreds of new infectious diseases is a bad idea), and Fauci's bureaucratic career has some interesting parallels to Lysenko's. Then we could open the box labelled "the safety and efficacy of antibiotics and vaccines in the context of failures of public health in the era of the return of infectious disease threats"... (Holding this opinion is still fairly risky and likely to be flagged in many discussions as out-of-bounds). Science is really hard to do well, that's the bottom line - but it's still the only reliable method for resolving fundamental physical, chemical and biological issues. So don't let internal debates within the scientific community be used as fodder for anti-science lunatics, either.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>In the modern world, the white robes of the religious authorities have been replaced in many areas by the white robes of the scientific authorities, Clearly humans do not change and will not change. There were always a small number of independent thinkers and their proportion will generally a constant, as long as humans do not change biologically.

moritzwarhier 4y ago

I enjoyed this article a lot and I am saddened by some (not all) comments here. I think many people who grow up as non-religious thinkers or choose by themselves to reject sprituality and/or religion, go through the same humility-inducing phases after growing up, so to speak. I still don't believe in god but true nihilism is something to be afraid of. As is science reduced to being a tool to increase profit. Re: Dawkins I understand the discussion here boils down to exactly the pointa that the article makes. Re: Lorenz Krauss I agree that calling someone a "hack physicist" is bad style and unneeded. However, reading the linked article behind these strong words was gratifying and interesting, I feel thankful that the author used this form of clickbait. I have no idea about Krauss and won't judge his scientific achievements as I am not a phywicist and probably will have forgotten his name in a couple of days. I have however read endless trails of Quantum ane String theory pop-science woo that is not very good at making understable or falsifible Points. Re: Mental illness I wholheartedly agree. There are desparate people being told "SSRIs are like Insuline for you", right now, all over the world, because of flawed commercialized science. People are being harmed by this type of pseudo science, in very serious ways.

HKH2 3y ago
Lawrence Krauss did not deliver what was written as the title of that book, but calling him a hack is not nice.

kodt 4y ago

This feels more like an attack on the crowd that posts on /r/atheism on reddit than the scientific community. But that sub attracts a lot of "edgy" teens who are just rejecting the way they were raised, they are indeed a "soft" target.

watwut 4y ago
That is because scientific community and sceptics are two different groups. There is some overlap, but there is also huge overlap between scientists and christians. Many scientists are religious, actually.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Far fewer scientists are religious than the general population, which makes sense because the ability to think rationally affects both. Dawkins's problem is that religion is not the disease but the symptom of underlying irrationality. Solve for irrationality, and you solve for any problems religion creates. Hitting religion head-on works poorly because of social pressures, but fixing science education to focus on the process for how we know things instead of what we know can fix society in a way that makes it easier for individuals to reject religious beliefs while also addressing the problems Horgan wants to fix.
johnwalkr 4y ago
It's a call to the people in the room at a Skeptics conference to be scientific and skeptical and not selectively so. I'm writing this comment based on my general experience in the community, which I was pretty into at that time. Until around 2010, the Skeptics community, which kind of centered around several conferences and meetups with the same recurring "big names". It was getting a libertarian bent, with lots of the big names at these conferences being very scientific and thorough in debunking of things like homeopathy and religion, but dismissive of soft-science advances, and often dismissive of things like sexual harassment (even at community events) and mistreatment of minorities (often this would be chalked up to just being the fault of religion). You often couldn't always put your finger on it, but it seemed like the arguments for small government, private healthcare, no gun control didn't seem as.. scientific. And often there was a few people in the crowd who were experts in the topic of discussion looking around the room and wondering why seemingly everyone else was nodding in agreement. Those people slowly found each other and still attended meetups and enjoyed some speakers but were skeptical of others. Around 2010 there was a noticeable divide in the group. Group A were people that wanted to apply skepticism broadly within the community and assert that more social topics ought not to be just status quo forever. A few were angry, but mostly it was people that didn't think the community was inwardly skeptical enough, or just got bored of making fun of chiropracters. Group B were people that looked up to the big names without much critical thought and were happy to be skeptical of religion and often had good discussion but just as often avoided good discussion if it was uncomfortable to the group or to the big names. Also people that didn't really engage and probably didn't notice anything change. The groups started to separate, in person and online, and group A generally gathered around known, but not "big name" bloggers, authors and youtubers. I remember being in that group and realizing things were worse than I thought, once you were in a room of like-minded people, there were a lot of open secrets shared about who was a creep and who was a creep apologist. Most of the stories were about patterns of behavior. Then in 2011 elevatorgate and Richard Dawkins tonedeaf reply happened.[1] This was a big wedge and a small but still surprising number in group B became really nasty to the first group. Since then group A was not really a group loosely knit, with some focused on one issue or another, but deliberately not really having much leadership. Group B shed some people into A or away altogether as a minority of people in Group B doubled down on being assholes. But still group B had a lot of people who weren't engaged enough to see the drama or piece together that skepticism wasn't always evenly applied. This speech is for those people. Online it was shared heavily by people that had already left and felt resonance with it. Funny enough, group B kind of imploded starting around 2016. A few big names were metoo'd, and it turns out some skeptics including big names were happy to be less than skeptical of alt-right adjacent views. I think Skepticism lost steam as people found more draw to align on and discuss political issues, especially in America. Covid happened and conferences and meetups stopped. Now the conferences and meetups are back and although a lot have moved on, it looks like those are mostly Group A people and let's say ex-group B people. [1]https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

I tried reading John Horgan's articles published in ScientificAmerican until I worked out what was annoying me about them other than they were generally poor – it's because they're basically about him. He's a self promoter and any truth in what he's saying is secondary to his ego. Just a sceptic's take. Make up your own mind

karmakaze 4y ago
> I hate preaching to the converted. If you were Buddhists, I’d bash Buddhism. But you’re skeptics, so I have to bash skepticism. At least he admits to being a preacher to lesser groups.

satisfice 4y ago

Skepticism means doubting, not bashing. Doubting is a negative, it undoes. It doesn’t create an alternative— but it helps to create a space for alternatives.

deleted 4y ago

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whack 4y ago

> In the last century, prominent scientists spoke out against U.S. militarism and called for the end of war. Scientists like Einstein, Linus Pauling, and the great skeptic Carl Sagan. Where are their successors? Noam Chomsky is still bashing U.S. imperialism, but he’s in his nineties. He needs help! Far from criticizing militarism, some scholars, like economist Tyler Cowen, claim war is beneficial, because it spurs innovation. That’s like arguing for the economic benefits of cancer or slavery. The author brings up some good points, but the above attack on Tyler Cowen comes across as either bad-faith or a severe lack of critical thinking skills. You can read Cowen's article for yourself, it is linked below. Cowen never once recommended that any nation pursue war or militarism. He was merely pointing out a possible causal link between war and innovation. Which is exactly what every scientist should aim to do - find causal links, even if we wish those links didn't exist. As a reader of the article, I would hope we are wise enough to understand that even if a causal link exists, there are still many other important reasons to not pursue war. I know this sounds nitpicky, but I only bring this up because I notice this becoming more and more frequent. People repeatedly attack and shame researchers who find facts and causal links that we wish didn't exist. This is classic shooting-the-messenger. Do we really want to live in a world where researchers are too afraid to publish any studies that yield inconvenient truths? Because we're halfway there already. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-...

hydrok9 4y ago

If God exists, they sure aren't here when we need them...

jll29 4y ago

Great essay. I wish there were more people genuinely motivated by searching for the truth (as opposed to just trying to be right). Probing our own views (being self-critical) and those from our own group (peer review) is indeed more important than going after "soft targets" outside, such as astrology.

simple-thoughts 4y ago

There’s a certain strain of progressive thought, going back over 150 years, that connects these seemingly unrelated ideas: - Blank slate: human genetics are trumped by environment - Born Good: humans are good in their natural state and socialized to be violent - Equitable: humans naturally want to be equal These positions have varying degrees of scientific support but all of them are highly contested and at least partially wrong. Horgan in his article is interesting in that all of his attacks support progressive opinions and none of them go after that group’s sacred. This indicates he is a member of a tribe he is not aware he is in.