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Why I am no longer a skeptic

57 points by zephyrfalcon 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
This issue is much easier to resolve than by way of the thousands of words the article's author used. What a layman calls "skepticism", a scientist called the "null hypothesis." The null hypothesis says that an idea with no supporting evidence is assumed to be false. So in science, and to a skeptic, until there's evidence, there's no justification for taking an idea seriously. To someone not trained in science (the "sheep"), an idea is true until there's contrary evidence. To a scientist (the "goat") by contrast, an idea is false util there's supporting evidence. A sheep believes in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and UFO visitations only because these ideas haven't been disproven, but they cannot be disproven -- that would require proof of a negative, an impossible evidentiary burden. This explains most of the really weird things people believe. The remedy is skepticism, a healthy intellectual posture that awaits evidence. That's why I'm still a skeptic.
- praptak 14y ago
  The author is still a skeptic in the sense you described (first paragraph.) He just rejects the identification with the social group.
  - dalke 14y ago
    It's as boring as saying "I love science fiction but I'm not a member of SF fandom."
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Fair enough, but I think (a) skeptics aren't necessarily a group, and (b) perhaps skeptics should stand up and be counted as individuals. This view might not seem important in a society in which religious True Believers keep to themselves, or evolution deniers don't form their own political movements and try to change what's taught in school, but we don't live in that society. Pollsters regularly tally up voting blocs based on the views people are willing to express -- like the religious, and like those who reject a scientific outlook. If skeptics don't ever speak up, society might miss the fact that the outlook even exists. And reasonable people may differ.
- btilly 14y ago
  This is how skeptics want to see themselves. And yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for. (He calls several of these out.)
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for. Perhaps, but they can be called out on them, made to squirm. Sort of like the difference between a bigot and a racist.
    - btilly 14y ago
      The problem is that people who are uncritically accepting stuff they have no actual proof for, yet who see themselves as skeptics, are able to convince themselves that they are merely engaged in rational thought when they are not. As an example I offer http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/1439171211 http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/... by Sam Harris. Absolutely none of his moral claims make any sense without first accepting parts of his moral view that he fails to even question. In fact he uses an unquantified quantity called "well being" as justification for his theory. Yet the only scientifically supported definition for well being for living things is "evolutionarily successful". And by that measure, being religious and scientifically ignorant is very good for you! Yet his reasoning is utterly compelling to himself, Richard Dawkins, and many other "skeptics".
recoiledsnake 14y ago
I stopped reading here: >Science has a high media profile and a powerful lobby group: in the midst of a global recession and sweeping government cuts, science funding has generally held up or even increased Perhaps science funding has held up because science was fricking responsible for the economy booming for the last 500 fricking years? E.g. The Internet that he posted his blog on. Maybe it just might help the economy come out of recession? Science works because it delivers and the funding is there because people know that.
- noibl 14y ago
  > I stopped reading here Which the rest of your comment proves. Thanks for that.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    (Shrug) Burying the lede has its risks. If you don't want to lose your readers, don't waste their time.
    - noibl 14y ago
      Presumably, the commenter I replied to was able to read this part, since it comes just before the line they quoted: In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried. Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just wilfully spreading ignorance.
    - thaumaturgy 14y ago
      The author did not, by definition, bury the lede. It was an overall well-written, and mostly well-argued, 30-minute read. That may be greater than your current attention span, but you shouldn't presume that it's wasting anyone else's time.
    - ktizo 14y ago
Tichy 14y ago
Weird rambling. From his style of argumentation ("other skeptics are sexist and Star Trek fans") he probably wasn't a very good skeptic anyway.
- btilly 14y ago
  Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever? But if it helps you avoid cognitive dissonance to conclude that he has no clue, that's your choice.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever? Proving what exactly? Billy Graham is (was) also a well-regarded public speaker. This claim doesn't support the depth of his ideas, and can't compare to examining the ideas themselves.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    I mostly read his paragraph on sexism, which frankly struck me as very silly. What has other skeptics being sexist to do with him being a skeptic? And what has Star Trek being sexist to do with skeptics? The logic was just very bad, so he didn't convince me as a skeptic. I assumed being a skeptic would involve being rational. His ratings in an community unknown to me don't impress me at all. I mean it is cool, but I still look at what he says with skepticism. The world is full of famous people who are wrong.
    - btilly 14y ago
      If you read it again, you'll see that he did not attempt to lay out his section on sexism as a rational argument, but merely as a series of observations. The Star Trek reference was an analogy to what he observes among skeptics. I think that this is appropriate. If you've thought about sexism, and have observed skeptic communities, then you'll have no trouble recognizing the validity of his observations based on your own. If you have not observed skeptic communities, then you can either take his word for it, or else go out and do your own first hand observations. And finally if you've never actually thought much about sexism, well, how could he reasonably begin to explain? In short, either you get it and further explanation is superfluous, or else you don't and his attempting to enlighten you would take him seriously off course. Either way there is no point in having him try to present an airtight logical argument.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Online forums, whatever their subject, can be forbidding places for the newcomer; over time, most of them tend to become dominated by small groups of snotty know-it-alls Human interaction is woven out of several different materials. One of these is social dominance. It's even more fundamental to our psychology than sex. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html Unfortunately, while it's widely recognized in much of the civilized world that letting our sexual impulses run unfiltered in the professional context is detrimental to a relaxed workplace where people feel free to interact openly, most people seem to deny the existence of our need to seek and test social dominance. This often leads to the pollution of communication and debate. There is nothing wrong with sexuality in the workplace, so long as it's discrete and consensual. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with dominance behavior in forums, so long as it serves substantive debate. When dominance takes a back-seat to the love of knowledge, things are okay. When it's the other way around: considered harmful. (I suppose Galileo had some experience with this.) > The truth is, I became a skeptic for aesthetic reasons, and the truth is, its aesthetics now repel me. I increasingly find the core skeptical output monotonous and repetitive: there are only so many times you can debunk the same old junk, and I've had it up to here with science fanboyism. And when skeptics talk about subjects outside their domain of expertise, I'm struck by how irrelevant their comments are, and how ugly, shrill and trivial. I've noticed that techies often create mini "crapsack worlds" in forums and in games. (And I'm not referring to colorful backstories for a game, but in the actual social dynamics between players or commenters.) Much of it can be characterized as "immaturity." However, that label alone isn't so helpful. It's better to ask: what makes a society or a place wonderful? What best encourages a high signal to noise ratio?
raverbashing 14y ago
I wholeheartedly agree The "skeptics" seem to have one objective: offend anyone who has any form of religion. Or take the Lance Armstrong case, some "skeptics" were saying if you believe he doped you are "anti-science" because his exams never came back positive. What a bunch of idiots. Modern tests detected evidence of blood manipulation. So in a sense "skeptics" are just like the religious anti-scientific crowd, but saying "blah blah science" instead of "blah blah religion". But guess what, they don't know enough about science to say that.
xaa 14y ago
The author attacks skeptics' obsession with quantifiable knowledge at several points in the essay (e.g., the comp ling section), without providing an alternative. We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable -- "soft" sciences. They don't work very well.
- noibl 14y ago
  > We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare-quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational linguistics though.
  - xaa 14y ago
    I hope I'm not misstating the author's position. In my reading, he goes well beyond pointing out that some fields, such as linguistics or medicine, have made stronger cases than their data can support. He actually says "I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge", and later, that [in order to successfully advance a particular scientific field] we need to "admit the presence and value of non-scientific knowledge". The nature of this non-scientific knowledge is not entirely clear from the essay but seems to be some mixture of culture and common sense. He throws out several such claims without addressing the problems that come along with accepting non-quantifiable or non-scientific knowledge into a traditionally scientific discipline. For example, if you make a hypothesis that is not quantifiable, how can you determine the degree to which your data supports it?
    - noibl 14y ago
      Fair enough. I was just pointing out your use of the word ["sciences"] to describe the same thing as the author's "non-scientific knowledge". Whatever form this knowledge is supposed to take, "science" as a term for it is explicitly rejected. On a more substantive point: You acknowledge the difficulties faced by "soft sciences". Does that mean you accept that there are whole categories of real-world phenomena of which it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to systematise whatever "knowledge" we do have? I don't think that position is incompatible with respect for science.
lmm 14y ago
>rom his writings, I gather that Dawkins would be content to live in a world where gentle Anglican vicars presided over their bored, civilised congregations in England's vales and hills, while the British Empire did its dirty work elsewhere, in places like Kenya, India, and West Cork. He saves his real ire for the creeds of the unruly natives — all those nasty Muslims and Catholics and tribalists who don't know their place. Islam gets called out more often because it does more damage. Most of the English CofE faithful, I suspect, don't actually believe in their religion; they attend the services and get on with their lives. They're not preaching the evils of condoms or calling for the lynching of those who criticised them or, yes it has to be said, undertaking terrorism in the name of their religion. >This is not the place to describe the many problems and hypocrisies of neoliberalism. Suffice it to say that I do not believe that liberal democracy, which condemns the majority of the world's population to varying degrees of slavery, is a perfect system. I do not believe that the metaphors of liberal democracy allow us a perfect view of reality. And therefore I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge. It might be the best we've got, but when it comes to human advancement — including the advance of science itself — other sources of knowledge can be just as useful, and often more important. Simply untrue. Indeed the scientific method may be only the best we've got rather than perfect, but that still makes it the best we've got. "other sources of knowledge" - like what, mysticism? are less useful. >What's more, skeptics never acknowledge that racial science was defeated by political ideology, and not by science itself. In fact, there was nothing that could have defeated it within the empirical framework of racial scientists. Their racist experiments confirmed their racist hypotheses based on their racist observations. But while the science supported them, politics, in the aftermath of World War 2 and the Holocaust, did not. After 1945, racial science became politically unacceptable in western liberal democracies, and remains so in spite of the various attempts to revive it. It was not disproved by the scientific method; instead, the political ideologies behind racial science were discarded, and replaced by new ones that did not accommodate it. Which is a bad thing, because it makes it very hard to be confident we know the truth about racial matters. Racist "science" is unscientific, but so too is politically correct "science"; which is more harmful is indeed a matter of politics, because both are simply expressions of politics. Neither is founded in science or skepticism. >Cheating people out of their money is one thing, but cheating them out of their lives is quite another. To read some skeptic takes on alternative medicine, you'd think only heart disease rivalled it as a killer. It's true that alternative medicine is not going to cure anyone of serious illness, but it's also generally true that the terminally ill only turn to it when real medicine has given up hope on them. Generally, but not exclusively. People really do die because they looked to "alternative medicine" rather than medicine; the fact that most people who use "alternative medicine" don't does not really excuse this.
wisty 14y ago
Alright, so some skeptics can be pricks. Self-declared skeptics are mostly reformed Calvinists ... what do you expect?
chalst 14y ago
I'm in some sympathy with the OP's idea that skepticism can be a shield against criticism of one's own prejudices, but when calling out the prejudices of particular skeptics, he seems to rely a great deal on extrapolation. The OP's abandonment of skepticism does not seem to have turned him into a nice guy.
coolestuk 14y ago
The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee. Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM. Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that there may be as many as 100,000 victims. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mutilation-might-be-illegal-but-it-still-takes-place-in-the-uk/ http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mut... Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell. When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in not bringing prosecutions. It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of stories in the last decade is no more than 20. When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is racist to get involved. So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.
- grifaton 14y ago
  I don't think anybody's suggesting that Dawkins called Skepchick "Muslima".
- desas 14y ago
  I bet I've listened to discussions of FGM on Womans Hour on radio4 at least twenty times in the last half decade. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it currently receives enough attention.
- LaGrange 14y ago
  "Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two." No they didn't. It's a common subject in blogs, forums and such less-visible mediums. But if you think it's easy to get into the media with that, you're wrong -- you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons -- even I, if faced with a mainstream article that focuses on FGM, would grow suspicious, since when the media cares about women this much?
berntb 14y ago
As far as I can tell about the blog comment: Some left wing guy do personal attacks. The post was from 2011 -- I thought most left wing people had stopped claiming evolutionary psychology was like frenology from racist right wingers? Especially after this: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revisited/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revis... Edit: Please don't start post rebuttals to HN from the other end of the political scale, or something. Idealism is better kept off HN. Edit 2: Clarity.
spauka 14y ago
That was certainly an interesting if not completely ridiculous read... The author seems to spend most of his time generalizing and erroneously misinterpreting the view points of those he perceives as skeptics (the most heinous of which include his characterization of skeptics as people who "hate and fear" philosophy, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard). He seems to have misguided views on everything from modern medicines use of the placebo, to the development of fields such as computation linguistics and medical science. Here's the deal, if the author can demonstrably prove that people who use homeopathy know that it is just a placebo, then they can go for it. But they don't. If the author can show that there exist better methods for researching language, then go for it, but he doesn't. In fact, as someone who is interested in the field and friends with many computational linguists, let me tell you they are trying to look for better models to deal with the uncertainty inherent in NLP, and I'm not even sure where his statement that computational linguists fear pragmatics comes from. That is complete crap. Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true. I.E. yes, the atheist community on reddit can have misguided views, and yes people like Hitchens and Dawkins and the like are subject to their own personal biases, but both those people and indeed most of these communities are acutely aware of this fact and spend a lot of time trying to come to terms with it (look at the recent furor about whether the glorification of people posting snarky remarks made to "fundies" on reddit constituted a positive step). His rant against the skeptic conspiracy against feminism is also something which I found incomprehensible, and as far as I can tell completely untrue. I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and oversimplifications. P.S. I did enjoy the bit about the skeptics movement being a neoliberal conspiracy.
- koide 14y ago
  - He's assuming people go to alternative medicine after real medicine, that assumption might be wrong, but it's not even a main point in his argument. - He talks about Linguistics, not NLP, so I don't know what your friends have to do with that part. - The only thing about conspiracies there is where he says he understands why conspiracy theorists create the theories: to avoid reality becuase reality sucks for them. - There is no mention of a conspiracy against feminism, only that there is a sexist background in the whole group. - Also, no conspiracy about neoliberalism, only an argument: If you believe science should be in charge of revealing all reality to us, you should support an environment in which science can thrive with nothing that would take it back, and that is liberal democracy nowadays. It seems we read a different article. There are lots of worthy discussion points, but lets discuss them, not just vaguely oversimplify or dismiss them.
rjd 14y ago
Well its the difference between being skeptical about things, and being a skeptic. One is a gut feeling you shouldn't accept things, and the other is a mind state/religion. With one you can accept you where wrong, with the other you just change topics and begin the next assault why something is wrong. I find most people who proclaim to be 'a skeptic' quite intolerable after a short period because they are always trying to find new ways to laud mistakes over people, always putting people down, and more often than not lifting themselves above others through humiliation. More or less just intellectual bullying, often without realizing it.
calibraxis 14y ago
How do people (who basically agree with this article) evaluate the rationality movement? My limited experiences reading mostly lesswrong.com lead me to think they avoid many of these problems. I have no idea whether they actively try to counter institutional sexism, Islamophobia, neoliberalism, etc; but at least I've seen little-to-nothing so far which actively reinforces these problems either. (But I'm not deeply acquainted with them.) Strikes me as a very healthy alternative to these skepticists in the article. Focusses a lot on introspection and effective action, rather than attacking others.
- lmm 14y ago
  Not my experience at all. lesswrong as a community is rife with sexism, and takes a very strongly neoliberal position on ethical questions. I'm not sure about Islam specifically (if anything there seems to be a lot more hate for Christianity, largely from posters who have had unpleasant personal experiences with it), but there's quite a lot of angrily (as opposed to rationally) anti-religious sentiment there too. I mostly avoid that community these days.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
dbcooper 14y ago
Why on earth am I seeing this nonsense on Hacker News? Is there a shortage of new languages or something. ;-)
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Perhaps because relatively few users have enough karma to downvote a story. I've never been clear on how much karma it takes to do that, actually -- does anyone know?
tokenadult 14y ago
Previous discussion, from a submission by Alex3917 319 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721
cellularmitosis 14y ago
In the "sexist bastards" section, his train of thought appears to be implying something like: Randall Monroe expressing a sexual preference for nerdy girls in his web comic is not much different than forcing a woman to wear a burka. Did I read that correctly?
Tycho 14y ago
Christopher Hitchens, for all his thuggery What thuggery was this??

57 points by zephyrfalcon 14y ago

This issue is much easier to resolve than by way of the thousands of words the article's author used. What a layman calls "skepticism", a scientist called the "null hypothesis." The null hypothesis says that an idea with no supporting evidence is assumed to be false. So in science, and to a skeptic, until there's evidence, there's no justification for taking an idea seriously. To someone not trained in science (the "sheep"), an idea is true until there's contrary evidence. To a scientist (the "goat") by contrast, an idea is false util there's supporting evidence. A sheep believes in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and UFO visitations only because these ideas haven't been disproven, but they cannot be disproven -- that would require proof of a negative, an impossible evidentiary burden. This explains most of the really weird things people believe. The remedy is skepticism, a healthy intellectual posture that awaits evidence. That's why I'm still a skeptic.

praptak 14y ago
The author is still a skeptic in the sense you described (first paragraph.) He just rejects the identification with the social group.
- dalke 14y ago
  It's as boring as saying "I love science fiction but I'm not a member of SF fandom."
- lutusp 14y ago
  Fair enough, but I think (a) skeptics aren't necessarily a group, and (b) perhaps skeptics should stand up and be counted as individuals. This view might not seem important in a society in which religious True Believers keep to themselves, or evolution deniers don't form their own political movements and try to change what's taught in school, but we don't live in that society. Pollsters regularly tally up voting blocs based on the views people are willing to express -- like the religious, and like those who reject a scientific outlook. If skeptics don't ever speak up, society might miss the fact that the outlook even exists. And reasonable people may differ.
btilly 14y ago
This is how skeptics want to see themselves. And yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for. (He calls several of these out.)
- lutusp 14y ago
  > yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for. Perhaps, but they can be called out on them, made to squirm. Sort of like the difference between a bigot and a racist.
  - btilly 14y ago
    The problem is that people who are uncritically accepting stuff they have no actual proof for, yet who see themselves as skeptics, are able to convince themselves that they are merely engaged in rational thought when they are not. As an example I offer http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/1439171211 http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/... by Sam Harris. Absolutely none of his moral claims make any sense without first accepting parts of his moral view that he fails to even question. In fact he uses an unquantified quantity called "well being" as justification for his theory. Yet the only scientifically supported definition for well being for living things is "evolutionarily successful". And by that measure, being religious and scientifically ignorant is very good for you! Yet his reasoning is utterly compelling to himself, Richard Dawkins, and many other "skeptics".

recoiledsnake 14y ago

I stopped reading here: >Science has a high media profile and a powerful lobby group: in the midst of a global recession and sweeping government cuts, science funding has generally held up or even increased Perhaps science funding has held up because science was fricking responsible for the economy booming for the last 500 fricking years? E.g. The Internet that he posted his blog on. Maybe it just might help the economy come out of recession? Science works because it delivers and the funding is there because people know that.

noibl 14y ago
> I stopped reading here Which the rest of your comment proves. Thanks for that.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  (Shrug) Burying the lede has its risks. If you don't want to lose your readers, don't waste their time.
  - noibl 14y ago
    Presumably, the commenter I replied to was able to read this part, since it comes just before the line they quoted: In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried. Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just wilfully spreading ignorance.
  - thaumaturgy 14y ago
    The author did not, by definition, bury the lede. It was an overall well-written, and mostly well-argued, 30-minute read. That may be greater than your current attention span, but you shouldn't presume that it's wasting anyone else's time.
  - ktizo 14y ago

Tichy 14y ago

Weird rambling. From his style of argumentation ("other skeptics are sexist and Star Trek fans") he probably wasn't a very good skeptic anyway.

btilly 14y ago
Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever? But if it helps you avoid cognitive dissonance to conclude that he has no clue, that's your choice.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever? Proving what exactly? Billy Graham is (was) also a well-regarded public speaker. This claim doesn't support the depth of his ideas, and can't compare to examining the ideas themselves.
- Tichy 14y ago
  I mostly read his paragraph on sexism, which frankly struck me as very silly. What has other skeptics being sexist to do with him being a skeptic? And what has Star Trek being sexist to do with skeptics? The logic was just very bad, so he didn't convince me as a skeptic. I assumed being a skeptic would involve being rational. His ratings in an community unknown to me don't impress me at all. I mean it is cool, but I still look at what he says with skepticism. The world is full of famous people who are wrong.
  - btilly 14y ago
    If you read it again, you'll see that he did not attempt to lay out his section on sexism as a rational argument, but merely as a series of observations. The Star Trek reference was an analogy to what he observes among skeptics. I think that this is appropriate. If you've thought about sexism, and have observed skeptic communities, then you'll have no trouble recognizing the validity of his observations based on your own. If you have not observed skeptic communities, then you can either take his word for it, or else go out and do your own first hand observations. And finally if you've never actually thought much about sexism, well, how could he reasonably begin to explain? In short, either you get it and further explanation is superfluous, or else you don't and his attempting to enlighten you would take him seriously off course. Either way there is no point in having him try to present an airtight logical argument.

stcredzero 14y ago

> Online forums, whatever their subject, can be forbidding places for the newcomer; over time, most of them tend to become dominated by small groups of snotty know-it-alls Human interaction is woven out of several different materials. One of these is social dominance. It's even more fundamental to our psychology than sex. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html Unfortunately, while it's widely recognized in much of the civilized world that letting our sexual impulses run unfiltered in the professional context is detrimental to a relaxed workplace where people feel free to interact openly, most people seem to deny the existence of our need to seek and test social dominance. This often leads to the pollution of communication and debate. There is nothing wrong with sexuality in the workplace, so long as it's discrete and consensual. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with dominance behavior in forums, so long as it serves substantive debate. When dominance takes a back-seat to the love of knowledge, things are okay. When it's the other way around: considered harmful. (I suppose Galileo had some experience with this.) > The truth is, I became a skeptic for aesthetic reasons, and the truth is, its aesthetics now repel me. I increasingly find the core skeptical output monotonous and repetitive: there are only so many times you can debunk the same old junk, and I've had it up to here with science fanboyism. And when skeptics talk about subjects outside their domain of expertise, I'm struck by how irrelevant their comments are, and how ugly, shrill and trivial. I've noticed that techies often create mini "crapsack worlds" in forums and in games. (And I'm not referring to colorful backstories for a game, but in the actual social dynamics between players or commenters.) Much of it can be characterized as "immaturity." However, that label alone isn't so helpful. It's better to ask: what makes a society or a place wonderful? What best encourages a high signal to noise ratio?

raverbashing 14y ago

I wholeheartedly agree The "skeptics" seem to have one objective: offend anyone who has any form of religion. Or take the Lance Armstrong case, some "skeptics" were saying if you believe he doped you are "anti-science" because his exams never came back positive. What a bunch of idiots. Modern tests detected evidence of blood manipulation. So in a sense "skeptics" are just like the religious anti-scientific crowd, but saying "blah blah science" instead of "blah blah religion". But guess what, they don't know enough about science to say that.

xaa 14y ago

The author attacks skeptics' obsession with quantifiable knowledge at several points in the essay (e.g., the comp ling section), without providing an alternative. We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable -- "soft" sciences. They don't work very well.

noibl 14y ago
> We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare-quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational linguistics though.
- xaa 14y ago
  I hope I'm not misstating the author's position. In my reading, he goes well beyond pointing out that some fields, such as linguistics or medicine, have made stronger cases than their data can support. He actually says "I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge", and later, that [in order to successfully advance a particular scientific field] we need to "admit the presence and value of non-scientific knowledge". The nature of this non-scientific knowledge is not entirely clear from the essay but seems to be some mixture of culture and common sense. He throws out several such claims without addressing the problems that come along with accepting non-quantifiable or non-scientific knowledge into a traditionally scientific discipline. For example, if you make a hypothesis that is not quantifiable, how can you determine the degree to which your data supports it?
  - noibl 14y ago
    Fair enough. I was just pointing out your use of the word ["sciences"] to describe the same thing as the author's "non-scientific knowledge". Whatever form this knowledge is supposed to take, "science" as a term for it is explicitly rejected. On a more substantive point: You acknowledge the difficulties faced by "soft sciences". Does that mean you accept that there are whole categories of real-world phenomena of which it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to systematise whatever "knowledge" we do have? I don't think that position is incompatible with respect for science.

lmm 14y ago

>rom his writings, I gather that Dawkins would be content to live in a world where gentle Anglican vicars presided over their bored, civilised congregations in England's vales and hills, while the British Empire did its dirty work elsewhere, in places like Kenya, India, and West Cork. He saves his real ire for the creeds of the unruly natives — all those nasty Muslims and Catholics and tribalists who don't know their place. Islam gets called out more often because it does more damage. Most of the English CofE faithful, I suspect, don't actually believe in their religion; they attend the services and get on with their lives. They're not preaching the evils of condoms or calling for the lynching of those who criticised them or, yes it has to be said, undertaking terrorism in the name of their religion. >This is not the place to describe the many problems and hypocrisies of neoliberalism. Suffice it to say that I do not believe that liberal democracy, which condemns the majority of the world's population to varying degrees of slavery, is a perfect system. I do not believe that the metaphors of liberal democracy allow us a perfect view of reality. And therefore I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge. It might be the best we've got, but when it comes to human advancement — including the advance of science itself — other sources of knowledge can be just as useful, and often more important. Simply untrue. Indeed the scientific method may be only the best we've got rather than perfect, but that still makes it the best we've got. "other sources of knowledge" - like what, mysticism? are less useful. >What's more, skeptics never acknowledge that racial science was defeated by political ideology, and not by science itself. In fact, there was nothing that could have defeated it within the empirical framework of racial scientists. Their racist experiments confirmed their racist hypotheses based on their racist observations. But while the science supported them, politics, in the aftermath of World War 2 and the Holocaust, did not. After 1945, racial science became politically unacceptable in western liberal democracies, and remains so in spite of the various attempts to revive it. It was not disproved by the scientific method; instead, the political ideologies behind racial science were discarded, and replaced by new ones that did not accommodate it. Which is a bad thing, because it makes it very hard to be confident we know the truth about racial matters. Racist "science" is unscientific, but so too is politically correct "science"; which is more harmful is indeed a matter of politics, because both are simply expressions of politics. Neither is founded in science or skepticism. >Cheating people out of their money is one thing, but cheating them out of their lives is quite another. To read some skeptic takes on alternative medicine, you'd think only heart disease rivalled it as a killer. It's true that alternative medicine is not going to cure anyone of serious illness, but it's also generally true that the terminally ill only turn to it when real medicine has given up hope on them. Generally, but not exclusively. People really do die because they looked to "alternative medicine" rather than medicine; the fact that most people who use "alternative medicine" don't does not really excuse this.

wisty 14y ago

Alright, so some skeptics can be pricks. Self-declared skeptics are mostly reformed Calvinists ... what do you expect?

chalst 14y ago

I'm in some sympathy with the OP's idea that skepticism can be a shield against criticism of one's own prejudices, but when calling out the prejudices of particular skeptics, he seems to rely a great deal on extrapolation. The OP's abandonment of skepticism does not seem to have turned him into a nice guy.

coolestuk 14y ago

The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee. Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM. Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that there may be as many as 100,000 victims. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mutilation-might-be-illegal-but-it-still-takes-place-in-the-uk/ http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mut... Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell. When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in not bringing prosecutions. It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of stories in the last decade is no more than 20. When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is racist to get involved. So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.

grifaton 14y ago
I don't think anybody's suggesting that Dawkins called Skepchick "Muslima".
desas 14y ago
I bet I've listened to discussions of FGM on Womans Hour on radio4 at least twenty times in the last half decade. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it currently receives enough attention.
LaGrange 14y ago
"Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two." No they didn't. It's a common subject in blogs, forums and such less-visible mediums. But if you think it's easy to get into the media with that, you're wrong -- you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons -- even I, if faced with a mainstream article that focuses on FGM, would grow suspicious, since when the media cares about women this much?

berntb 14y ago

As far as I can tell about the blog comment: Some left wing guy do personal attacks. The post was from 2011 -- I thought most left wing people had stopped claiming evolutionary psychology was like frenology from racist right wingers? Especially after this: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revisited/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revis... Edit: Please don't start post rebuttals to HN from the other end of the political scale, or something. Idealism is better kept off HN. Edit 2: Clarity.

spauka 14y ago

That was certainly an interesting if not completely ridiculous read... The author seems to spend most of his time generalizing and erroneously misinterpreting the view points of those he perceives as skeptics (the most heinous of which include his characterization of skeptics as people who "hate and fear" philosophy, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard). He seems to have misguided views on everything from modern medicines use of the placebo, to the development of fields such as computation linguistics and medical science. Here's the deal, if the author can demonstrably prove that people who use homeopathy know that it is just a placebo, then they can go for it. But they don't. If the author can show that there exist better methods for researching language, then go for it, but he doesn't. In fact, as someone who is interested in the field and friends with many computational linguists, let me tell you they are trying to look for better models to deal with the uncertainty inherent in NLP, and I'm not even sure where his statement that computational linguists fear pragmatics comes from. That is complete crap. Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true. I.E. yes, the atheist community on reddit can have misguided views, and yes people like Hitchens and Dawkins and the like are subject to their own personal biases, but both those people and indeed most of these communities are acutely aware of this fact and spend a lot of time trying to come to terms with it (look at the recent furor about whether the glorification of people posting snarky remarks made to "fundies" on reddit constituted a positive step). His rant against the skeptic conspiracy against feminism is also something which I found incomprehensible, and as far as I can tell completely untrue. I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and oversimplifications. P.S. I did enjoy the bit about the skeptics movement being a neoliberal conspiracy.

koide 14y ago
- He's assuming people go to alternative medicine after real medicine, that assumption might be wrong, but it's not even a main point in his argument. - He talks about Linguistics, not NLP, so I don't know what your friends have to do with that part. - The only thing about conspiracies there is where he says he understands why conspiracy theorists create the theories: to avoid reality becuase reality sucks for them. - There is no mention of a conspiracy against feminism, only that there is a sexist background in the whole group. - Also, no conspiracy about neoliberalism, only an argument: If you believe science should be in charge of revealing all reality to us, you should support an environment in which science can thrive with nothing that would take it back, and that is liberal democracy nowadays. It seems we read a different article. There are lots of worthy discussion points, but lets discuss them, not just vaguely oversimplify or dismiss them.

rjd 14y ago

Well its the difference between being skeptical about things, and being a skeptic. One is a gut feeling you shouldn't accept things, and the other is a mind state/religion. With one you can accept you where wrong, with the other you just change topics and begin the next assault why something is wrong. I find most people who proclaim to be 'a skeptic' quite intolerable after a short period because they are always trying to find new ways to laud mistakes over people, always putting people down, and more often than not lifting themselves above others through humiliation. More or less just intellectual bullying, often without realizing it.

calibraxis 14y ago

How do people (who basically agree with this article) evaluate the rationality movement? My limited experiences reading mostly lesswrong.com lead me to think they avoid many of these problems. I have no idea whether they actively try to counter institutional sexism, Islamophobia, neoliberalism, etc; but at least I've seen little-to-nothing so far which actively reinforces these problems either. (But I'm not deeply acquainted with them.) Strikes me as a very healthy alternative to these skepticists in the article. Focusses a lot on introspection and effective action, rather than attacking others.

lmm 14y ago
Not my experience at all. lesswrong as a community is rife with sexism, and takes a very strongly neoliberal position on ethical questions. I'm not sure about Islam specifically (if anything there seems to be a lot more hate for Christianity, largely from posters who have had unpleasant personal experiences with it), but there's quite a lot of angrily (as opposed to rationally) anti-religious sentiment there too. I mostly avoid that community these days.
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dbcooper 14y ago

Why on earth am I seeing this nonsense on Hacker News? Is there a shortage of new languages or something. ;-)

CamperBob2 14y ago
Perhaps because relatively few users have enough karma to downvote a story. I've never been clear on how much karma it takes to do that, actually -- does anyone know?

tokenadult 14y ago

Previous discussion, from a submission by Alex3917 319 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721

cellularmitosis 14y ago

In the "sexist bastards" section, his train of thought appears to be implying something like: Randall Monroe expressing a sexual preference for nerdy girls in his web comic is not much different than forcing a woman to wear a burka. Did I read that correctly?

Tycho 14y ago

Christopher Hitchens, for all his thuggery What thuggery was this??