7 replies to this topic

[UM-Bot]

James Randi & Richard Dawkins


Click here to watch video - 06:22s

A clip from an interview about the paranormal between James Randi and Richard Dawkins.

[Bogeyman]

I'd watch it except for anytime i see or hear either of these two ..i feel like theres nothing worth living for.....and that theres no mystery about the world...it's a feeling i dont like ...plus they both make a good case which makes it worse.
I'll be interested in what others think though.

[Please Explain]

Nah ! don't care ! i only read your post and didn't bother seeing that face.

[Tokoyo]

at about 3 minutes into the video, when there's 3:40 to go, Dawkins makes a crack about skeptical presence messing with results,
and then makes a very telling utterance.  He says,
   "I think [stutter] in order for it to be worthy of moving on to stage two, if it's inherently implausible, as these things of course are
then it must be a proper robust phenomenon which stands up to repeated experimental tests."

The general context is the early work by J.B. Rhine and associates at Duke university in the 1930s and on focused very quickly on
figuring out the mechanism and the characteristics of various PSI phenomenon, before it was universally considered to be proven.
I say it in that way, because this is to assert that the entire life of Rhine and co. should have been spent repeating experiments that
only repeatedly tested whether or not the experiments were valid in the first place.  This is obviously my interpretation, and I must
say that I do, on a more general level, understand what it is that Dawkins is referring to.  Of course, I am also reading a book,
"The problem with physics" which discusses the same flawed aspect of string theory.  I've rambled enough, but as a final note
I would like to add that I include the '[stutter]' because I am not sure exactly what he's saying.

[Blizno]

Quote

I'd watch it except for anytime i see or hear either of these two ..i feel like theres nothing worth living for.....and that theres no mystery about the world...it's a feeling i dont like ...plus they both make a good case which makes it worse.
I'll be interested in what others think though.

No mystery?!?!

Removing magical spells, gods and ghosts from the universe does not make it boring.  The universe is bigger and stranger than we can imagine and those of us now alive will not live long enough to see more than a tiny few of its secrets discovered.

Folk tales and superstitions are fun diversions but they aren't the universe - not by a long shot.  There's far too much actual amazing stuff waiting to be discovered to make grinding over and back over centuries or millennia-old fairy tales worth spending valuable time on.  There's waaaay too much real universe to be explored to waste time on ancient fantasies.

[Rodsrreal]

Just a few words ANY-THING-IS-POSSIBLE If you can't come to terms with that, kill yourself, because you are stuck in a horrible rut.

[Blizno]

Quote

Just a few words ANY-THING-IS-POSSIBLE If you can't come to terms with that, kill yourself, because you are stuck in a horrible rut.

Of course anything is possible.  It's possible that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy live in the Easter Bunny's log cabin on the moon.  I'll have to see some good evidence before I'll spend any time entertaining that notion though.

[uth]

Quote

I'd watch it except for anytime i see or hear either of these two ..i feel like theres nothing worth living for.....and that theres no mystery about the world...it's a feeling i dont like ...plus they both make a good case which makes it worse.
I'll be interested in what others think though.

Actually, IMO they don't make a particularly good case.   Randi goes after easy targets and often resorts to arrogance and ridicule in place of actual argument.  'Zen and the Art of Debunkery' describes him to a tee.     On Dawkins, in the end, it's just his opinion, and it's not difficult to find holes in it.   He too has a condescending manner which doesn't help his cause.