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..."almost every major idea in the history considered unlikely quackery". Every major idea? Perhaps many hypotheses were considered inconceivable. But certain
by andrewfelix 14y ago
..."almost every major idea in the history considered unlikely quackery".
Every major idea?
Perhaps many hypotheses were considered inconceivable. But certainly not quackery.
Scientific ideas tend to me testable. A lot of what this guys suggests is entirely unfalsifiable. He may as well be discussing Pastafarianism.
- jonasvp 14y agoHave you heard anything about Sheldrake apart from this blog post? For every one of his hypothesis he provides experiments to test and falsify them. The problem is that he's already condemned for drawing the "wrong" conclusions so every scientist who even goes near his ideas and tries to test them is ostracized.
- j2d3 14y agoum, he said, even in the part you actually quoted: "...ALMOST every major idea" - so yeah - ALMOST Every...
- aneth4 14y ago> Every major idea? Ok, maybe not even almost every major idea (I did use the word "almost"), but pretty much by definition every major conceptual shift, from a round earth, to relativity, to microorganisms. > Scientific ideas tend to me testable. A lot of what this guys suggests is entirely unfalsifiable. He may as well be discussing Pastafarianism. Scientific ideas do tend to be testable. This doesn't mean we can't have ideas that are not testable or not yet testable. Hopefully, every idea will some day be falsifiable, but we can't rely on that. We may need to speculate in untestable territory before we find a plausible and reasonable theory that is testable. And as you know, science does not tell us that anything is true, only that some things can't be proven false. There is more to life than testable scientific understandings. I could love my mother or I could not love my mother. Can you test that? Because you can not test it, does it mean it should not be mentioned and is not important? Human love, creativity, and consciousness are perhaps the most interesting and important parts of existence, yet they are not currently testable from an experiential viewpoint, and they may never be. There are qualities of the consciousness, which by definition are qualities of existence - love, color, taste, beauty, suffering, pain, joy - which can only be explained scientifically in their mechanical reflections in brain matter. Science can not tell us anything about the qualitative conscious experience of these qualities are, yet those qualities may be the most important part of the universe. What would the universe be without the conscious experience of its wonder and beauty?
- handyman5 14y ago> There is more to life than testable scientific understandings. I could love my mother or I could not love my mother. Can you test that? Because you can not test it, does it mean it should not be mentioned and is not important? No, but it does mean that it's not science.
- upquark 14y ago>I could love my mother or I could not love my mother. Can you test that? In theory, yes. What happens inside your brain isn't untestable or sacred, we're just not there yet technologically (but we'll get there).
- aneth4 14y agoLove is a subjective experience of consciousness. We must first have some clue about what consciousness is, then perhaps we will be able to scientifically explain what love is.
- upquark 14y agoIf I create a device that predicts with 99% accuracy whether a test subject loves their mother (by looking at the subject's brain), without ever answering any of your questions about consciousness, would you retract the above statement?
- aneth4 14y agoNo, because you would not be explaining what love is, any more than explain what pain is by showing me the brain patterns the light up when I twist your nipple. Whether of not you can test for love is immaterial to explaining the experience.
- upquark 14y agoWhen did I say I want to be explaining what love is? I said it's testable in theory, and you don't seem to be arguing against that.
- disgruntledphd2 14y agoIn fairness to Sheldrake, he writes about these ideas, and then goes off to test them. See Seven Experiments that Could Change the World, and his later books which tested the effects. A meta-analysis has supported the sense of being stared at. I will find the link later and included it. I believe it was in the British Journal of Social Pyschology around 2005.
- aneth4 14y agoWould love to see that. I'd add that if one can sense a stare, this opens the door to a huge array of psychic abilities. Perhaps we can communicate more than a stare, perhaps this really all is pseudo-science, experimental bias, and statistical anomaly. I'd like to know. The mechanism may be as simple as the brain's high sensitivity to electromagnetic fields from other brains, or as mysterious as a cosmic consciousness.
- disgruntledphd2 14y agoHere you go: http://j-node.homeip.net/wfb/research%20archive/psi/schmidt_british-j-psychology_2004.pdf http://j-node.homeip.net/wfb/research%20archive/psi/schmidt_... On a side note, Jessica Utts is wonderful. I actually did my undergraduate thesis on this, but didn't find a significant effect (there was an effect, but the study was underpowered).
- pitchups 14y agoAnother scientist, Dean Radin in his books - "The Conscious Universe" and "Entangled Minds" has compiled a very detailed and persuasive meta-analysis of experiments and phenomena that defy conventional scientific explanations.
- glhaynes 14y agoHow many well-respected scientists find it persuasive? Not many, to my understanding.
- pitchups 14y ago