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America, the Beautiful (And Nutty): A Skeptic’s Lament
- twiceaday 15y agoThe problem is that people are very good at avoiding sources of contrasting opinion. What we need to do is force people outside of their comfort zone. Imagine if somebody rich paid for 24/7 ads on popular networks that do nothing but teach science and demystify common beliefs.
- rbanffy 15y ago> Imagine if somebody rich paid for 24/7 ads on popular networks that do nothing but teach science and demystify common beliefs. That's one more reason to get rich - to save mankind from itself. Yet, I think that, even in our skepticism, we must keep our minds open and don't forget that we must impose high standards on ourselves too. It's not enough to say homeopathy is a farce and faith cures are a joke when the more accurate statement would be that both illustrate how placebos work. Our brains are not capable of producing perfect reasoning all the time: reasoning evolved to help us elude predators. We could have ended up very inconspicuous, with better muscles, claws and teeth or being extremely allergenic - all popular ways to deal with other animals. And, for the record, I'm all in for homeopathy and faith cures - they may help remove some undesirable genetic traits from the gene pool. OTOH, the populations presenting such traits can evolve to have better immune systems. Life has a way to perpetuate itself.
- substack 15y ago> And, for the record, I'm all in for homeopathy and faith > cures - they may help remove some undesirable genetic > traits from the gene pool. OTOH, the populations presenting > such traits can evolve to have better immune systems. Life > has a way to perpetuate itself. Susceptibility to harmful ideologies really doesn't work like that. Being raised within a religion or cultural practice is an amazingly better predictor for continuing that belief in the next generation than what genes were passed along. Faith cures and placebos operate at the level of belief and culture, not the gene level. Further, look no further than the anti-vaccination movement to see how harmful medical ideas can put the general population at a greater risk for entirely preventable diseases.
- rbanffy 15y agoSorry. I was half joking. I'd much rather educate people than negligently allow them to self-select themselves out of the gene pool.
- substack 15y agoPart of my point was that "self-selecting out the gene pool" does nothing to dispel harmful beliefs. That is a culture and education problem.
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- Derbasti 15y agoThe point of homeopathy practiced today, by licensed doctors, is to administer placebo in cases where it is likely to help. Placebo is amazingly powerful--in particular when prescribed by a doctor. Funny enough, one of the most helpful medicines is seeing a doctor. Seeing a doctor has been proven to correlate very well with curing many diseases--independant of whether medication was prescribed. Keep that in mind when spreading FUD about homeopathy. Yeah, it has no medicinal effect. But that does not make it worthless, if handled properly by a trained doctor. There aren't too many ways for a doctor to prescribe placebo...
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- Luc 15y agoFriends of mine took their baby to a chiropractor when it had a cold. The chiropractor put a sugar cube on the baby's head and the baby got better in a couple of days. It works! The baby grew up and started suffering from what I presume is an allergy of the airways. They still take this kid to the chiropractor because he's such a nice and understanding man, and they have lots of self-deluding stories about how the kid's condition often improves after visits. Draw your own conclusions.
- CJefferson 15y agoThat is far too kind to the homeopathics, who are also licensed doctors. In particular, they: 1) Will often charge more than licensed doctors who don't do homeopathy. 2) Advise people not to go to their regular doctors. See the many homeopathics who claim they can cure cancer or HIV. Now, I'm not sure how many homeopathics are just very misguided, and how many are outright charlatans, but they are certainly not just helping.
- m_for_monkey 15y ago“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” R. P. Feynman
- timdefrag 15y agohttp://dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis-million-dollar-challenge http://dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis-mill...
- zotz 15y agoThere are two kinds of hucksters. One suckers the rubes. The other suckers those that believe themselves to be smarter than the rubes. Randi is the second kind.
- dasil003 15y agoThere will always be metaphysical questions. As much as it's worth fighting against people who have their head in the sand about basic scientific evidence, I don't think it's a requirement that we give up all spirituality and resign ourselves to only caring what science can prove. Human experience is after all entirely subjective, and there's no logical reason why the pursuit of objective truth should be the meaning of life for everyone.
- Karellen 15y agoWhat do you mean by "spirituality" which you think we should not give up?