Skepticism!

[eight bits]

6 minutes ago, Will Due said:

Was I hostile or unfriendly towards you?

I don't know. I don't worry about it much. I try to stay with the arguments' pluses and minuses.

[Davros of Skaro]

Watch out for absolutes. 

[Mr Walker]

2 hours ago, Arbenol said:

I can't speak for everyone, but your definition of scepticism differs significantly from the one I posted earlier. You're using it as synonymous with 'doubt', but I think of it more as a synonym of 'questioning'. It has no inherent bias.

I agree Unless we get terms and parameters correct we could argue about difernt things

Skepticism, like all thought constructs, is an active and conscious choice of how we look at the world.

None the less.

 For arguments sake, suppose you say questioning, while I say doubting. The point is that we only question things we doubt, or around which doubt exists.

And if you question or doubt everything you don't have personal experience of, then this IS a cognitive bias, and it will produce different results using science than if you keep a open mind, or if you are a believer   

if belief produces biased results (and yes it does) then, certainly, disbelief or skepticism will do so for the same  reason You (generic) are using a cognitive construct which will shape every thing about your investigation eg the ealry scientists in England did not believe an animal like the platypus could exist, so when the first specimens were sent back to England the y were dismissed by the experts as a hoax because, clearly, such animals could not exist . They decided the physical evidence could not be real/genuine,  due to  inherent scepticism. 

Of course there are degrees of scepticism among people, from mild to extreme

Some people believe nothing is possible, until it is proven to be possible,  while others believe anything is possible, until it is proven to be impossible  

 

Ps arguing from dictionary definitions is a game that usually goes no where but quite clearly, one, if not the most  common, of definitions of scepticism is doubt.

scepticism

/ˈskɛptɪsɪz(ə)m/

noun

 

1. 1.

   a sceptical attitude; doubt as to the truth of something.

   "these claims were treated with scepticism"

   synonyms:

   doubt, doubtfulness, dubiousness, a pinch of salt, lack of conviction

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/scepticism

Scepticism is great doubt about whether something is true or useful.

There is considerable scepticism about climate change.

The report has inevitably been greeted with scepticism.

Synonyms: doubt, suspicion, disbelief, cynicism 

  https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/scepticism

doubts that someone has about something that other people think is true or right

She treated this statement with a healthy degree of scepticism.

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/scepticism

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2018 by Mr Walker

[Arbenol]

10 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

Some people believe nothing is possible, until it is proven to be possible,  while others believe anything is possible, until it is proven to be impossible  

You make some good points but just wanted to address your closing line as I think it's the most pertinent. You've described what I would think are the two extremes. I'd like to think that true scepticism lies where we find the balance between them. I don't like to use the word 'doubt' because I think it's too negative and implies and active disbelief. True scepticism involves suspending beliefs and disbliefs.

As I've got older I've become rather less dogmatic and (maybe just) a little more open minded. But I believe we should treat our minds as we would our home. It's good to be welcoming but if you're not at least a little discriminating you'll end up with a lounge full of Jehovah Witnesses and vacuum cleaner salesmen.

[SHaYap]

1 hour ago, Arbenol said:

It's good to be welcoming but if you're not at least a little discriminating you'll end up with a lounge full of Jehovah Witnesses and vacuum cleaner salesmen.

That is if you are fortunate enough to be lucky ...

~

[Mr Walker]

7 hours ago, Arbenol said:

You make some good points but just wanted to address your closing line as I think it's the most pertinent. You've described what I would think are the two extremes. I'd like to think that true scepticism lies where we find the balance between them. I don't like to use the word 'doubt' because I think it's too negative and implies and active disbelief. True scepticism involves suspending beliefs and disbliefs.

As I've got older I've become rather less dogmatic and (maybe just) a little more open minded. But I believe we should treat our minds as we would our home. It's good to be welcoming but if you're not at least a little discriminating you'll end up with a lounge full of Jehovah Witnesses and vacuum cleaner salesmen.

Funny  you should use that analogy.

Indeed, we "often" find our lounge occupied by  Jws and travelling salesmen.

It may be a country thing, but the least you can do is invite them in, and offer a cup of tea/coffee and homemade cookies  

Maybe its because we have more time, or fewer pressures and callers than city people,  that we can still enjoy the company of such people.

Only last week we spent two hours talking to a salesman  who would have liked to sell us a vibrating lounge chair. WE were upfront and said we would not buy one but spent two hours  taking about fly fishing in English lakes, the superiority of Australian beaches over English ones, life saving in both counties, shells, fishes,   and other topics of common interest. This included an exchange of photos from our phones 

He appreciated the tea and biscuits, and we enjoyed his company. 

 

[Jodie.Lynne]

17 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

As I said just above in my post to Jodi I believe many will not give parapsychology a fair shake but will of course claim upstanding reasons. 

See, the thing is that once upon a time I did give credence to ghosts, psychic powers, faith healers, alien visitations, Atlantis and other para/super normal concepts. Before the interweb, when you actually had to read things known as "books" to get your information from. I watched every movie & TV show on the weird stuff that "couldn't be explained". I was, as they say, a true believer. And then I became disillusioned, as one by one, various ideas that once enthralled me were knocked down. 

Does that mean that the extraordinary doesn't exist? No, but the weight of evidence to support it (so far) has been insufficient to convince me that it does.

[Jodie.Lynne]

10 hours ago, third_eye said:

That is if you are fortunate enough to be lucky ...

~

Or lucky enough to be fortunate.

[XenoFish]

16 minutes ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

See, the thing is that once upon a time I did give credence to ghosts, psychic powers, faith healers, alien visitations, Atlantis and other para/super normal concepts. Before the interweb, when you actually had to read things known as "books" to get your information from. I watched every movie & TV show on the weird stuff that "couldn't be explained". I was, as they say, a true believer. And then I became disillusioned, as one by one, various ideas that once enthralled me were knocked down. 

Does that mean that the extraordinary doesn't exist? No, but the weight of evidence to support it (so far) has been insufficient to convince me that it does.

Pretty much the same thing I did. Kind of engrossed myself in the whole subject. 

[+Liquid Gardens]

14 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

 any unproven allegation is enough for pseudo-skeptics to dismiss everything. And it is impossible to stop unproven allegations so the game goes on forever. 

It is in theory rather simple to end the relevancy of unproven allegations: have some proven ones.  Those would end the game you are referring to I'd think.

[+Liquid Gardens]

13 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

ealry scientists in England did not believe an animal like the platypus could exist, so when the first specimens were sent back to England the y were dismissed by the experts as a hoax because, clearly, such animals could not exist . They decided the physical evidence could not be real/genuine,  due to  inherent scepticism. 

I wouldn't call the reasoning for disbelieving initially in the existence of the platypus a result of some 'cognitive construct' or merely term it as 'inherent skepticism'.  There were good reasons to be suspicious, in addition to the obvious that it seems to combine features of mammals and birds in ways never seen, hoaxes were apparently an entertaining pastime in the 18th Century:

Quote

Shaw’s suspicions were understandable; the 18th-century scientific community had been burned a few times. Right before entomologist William Charlton died in 1702, he sent in a new species of butterfly, which Carl Linnaeus would later include in his influential Systema Naturae. The scientific community accepted Charlton’s discovery until 1793, when another entomologist discovered ink marks carefully placed on its wings.

In 1725 Dr. Johann Beringer was tricked by local boys into collecting over 2,000 false fossils and publishing them in a book before he realized he was subject to a hoax. What’s more, fishermen had been buying expertly sewn monkey-and-fish taxidermy creations from East Asian artists for years, one of which became P.T. Barnum’s famed Feejee Mermaid just a few decades later.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-19th-century-naturalists-didnt-believe-in-the-platypus

So given that context, what should an naturalist in the 18th century think when confronted with a platypus?  If someone did not have inherent skepticism, what they would believe about it?

[papageorge1]

2 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

See, the thing is that once upon a time I did give credence to ghosts, psychic powers, faith healers, alien visitations, Atlantis and other para/super normal concepts. Before the interweb, when you actually had to read things known as "books" to get your information from. I watched every movie & TV show on the weird stuff that "couldn't be explained". I was, as they say, a true believer. And then I became disillusioned, as one by one, various ideas that once enthralled me were knocked down. 

Does that mean that the extraordinary doesn't exist? No, but the weight of evidence to support it (so far) has been insufficient to convince me that it does.

You might consider that there are plenty of overexuberant believers and overexuberant disbelievers out there but to a fair minded person the cumulative evidence that so-called paranormal things do sometimes occur to regular people wins the day in my fair mind. For me. by now the anecdotal, experimental and investigative evidence considered for quantity, quality and consistency is way over enough to convince me that something interesting and beyond our simple understanding of reality is going on. And that means we indeed live in a universe where such things are possible. Fascinating!

[papageorge1]

2 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

It is in theory rather simple to end the relevancy of unproven allegations: have some proven ones.  Those would end the game you are referring to I'd think.

I agree with your 'in theory' part but that is not what happens in debates where emotions rage.

For example, on internet forums what always happens is people at an adverse place to the idea of the paranormal hear of parapsychological experiments proving something like telepathy by fantastic odds against chance, they immediately paste back the first pseudo-skeptic criticism they can find often about alleged and unproven experimenter incompetence or cheating. And the game can go on forever.

[XenoFish]

33 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

You might consider that there are plenty of overexuberant believers and overexuberant disbelievers out there but to a fair minded person the cumulative evidence that so-called paranormal things do sometimes occur to regular people wins the day in my fair mind. For me. by now the anecdotal, experimental and investigative evidence considered for quantity, quality and consistency is way over enough to convince me that something interesting and beyond our simple understanding of reality is going on. And that means we indeed live in a universe where such things are possible. Fascinating!

[Jodie.Lynne]

17 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

For me. by now the anecdotal, experimental and investigative evidence considered for quantity, quality and consistency is way over enough to convince me

Then you have extremely low thresholds for evidentiary standards.

For the record, the plural of anecdote is NOT data.

Do you know why you never see 'faith' healers regrow a lost limb? Because they can't! Their "healing" is a hoax for monetary gain.

Bigfoot? In the decades that people have been searching for this creature, why hasn't any skeletal remains been found? or their dwelling places?

Psychic powers, if HALF the people claiming 'abilities beyond those of mortal men' were true, why aren't they using their abilities to help people? If I could move objects with my mind, I'd be responding to cave-ins and earthquakes to help rescue victims. Or finding missing persons. Or reading minds to prevent mass shootings. Or something to benefit the species.

Aliens. One question: If (a HUGE if) they are visiting our planet, then why not do so in a way that is absolutely demonstrable? Surely, they are advanced enough that we aren't a threat. Why not openly show themselves instead of 'abducting' isolated individuals?

 

[eight bits]

1 hour ago, papageorge1 said:

For example, on internet forums what always happens is people at an adverse place to the idea of the paranormal hear of parapsychological experiments proving something like telepathy by fantastic odds against chance, they immediately paste back the first pseudo-skeptic criticism they can find often about alleged and unproven experimenter incompetence or cheating. And the game can go on forever.

"Fantastic odds against chance," in the usual sort of statistical significance finding, means just that: something very probably really happened, something deserving a causal explanation.

But that's all it means. It doesn't tell you whether you've observed cheating, incompetence, or the direct intervention of some invisible intelligent power. Now, if the person reporting the results has been caught cheating in the past, or "overlooking" major methodological flaws now or in the past, or now refusing even to discuss alternatives to their very own favorite theory of why it has to be spooky woo, then those are discussable context of the observed results, and fair game in the search for the non-chance explanation.

Few predictors of human behavior do much better than what somebody has done in the past, they will do again when they can.

The Paranormal "Research" theme song:

 

Edited December 2, 2018 by eight bits

[XenoFish]

How about this. You have someone is room A and the object that they are attempting to influence in room B. (let's say this is a ball). Now the person in room A has no direct connection to the ball in room B. Cameras are set up, everything is as "air tight" as possible. If the individual in room A is able to remotely move this ball, say levitate it off the table. Good. That's one attempt. If this same person can do this 100 times consistently. Can do this under even stricter conditions. The same test and techniques are proven by other labs, showing that this is legit. Then we'd have something to make us really question psychokinesis. The very same thing for telepathy. In room B you'd have someone or something (like a pet), the person in room A would have to psychically discern what was in room B with 100% accuracy. 

From what I can tell is that psychic readings are pretty much nothing more than guess work. Hit n' miss.

[+Sherapy]

On 11/30/2018 at 11:03 AM, danydandan said:

Maybe I should have been more specific. Apologises that's my fault I was looking for the actual method.

As for example, if I told you all our memories are effectively useless and are malleable. We really should not trust our own memory. What would you do to conclude the feasibility of my statement?

I would say you have a good point in that one who is using Skepticism would not rely solely on their own memories as the be all end all in arriving at a conclusion. 

 

[+Sherapy]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:37 PM, Mr Walker said:

Personally i would say that is a subjective and debatable  opinion.

The human mind and brain is CAPABLE of almost  perfect recall, even down to remembering every event of every day in your life, or every name and number in a city phone book.

  We Know this because a few humans achieve it, and other feats of memory.

So the real question becomes;  why do so many humans have unreliable or poor memory, when their minds are capable of much more?

It is not a matter of function, but of practice IE one can be taught to have a far better memory and accurate  observation  almost to the point of perfect recall.

In judging your comment, a person would have to, in large part, rely on their own abilities and memory capability to check it's validity.

  Then one can research more general facts about human mind cognition, and memory function. 

You are asserting a claim that in reality is your own belief. 

You do this a lot.

Skepticism give or take  is the ability to practice discernment, and the accounting for ones emotions, beliefs, needs, existing memories, biases, preferences and expectations and who the hell you are relating to before ever reach a conclusion. 

 

 

. "what gets encoded into memory is determined by what a person attends to, what they already have stored in memory, their expectations, needs and emotional state. This information is subsequently integrated (consolidated) with other information that has already been stored in a person's long-term, autobiographical memory. What gets retrieved later from that memory is determined by that same multitude of factors that contributed to encoding as well as what drives the recollection of the event. Specifically, what gets retold about an experience depends on whom one is talking to and what the purpose is of remembering that particular event (e.g., telling a friend, relaying an experience to a therapist, telling the police about an event). Moreover, what gets remembered is reconstructed from the remnants of what was originally stored; that is, what we remember is constructed from whatever remains in memory following any forgetting or interference from new experiences that may have occurred across the interval between storing and retrieving a particular experience. Because the contents of our memories for experiences involve the active manipulation (during encoding), integration with pre-existing information (during consolidation), and reconstruction (during retrieval) of that information, memory is, by definition, fallible at best and unreliable at worst.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2015.1010709

 

[zep73]

For me scepticism is to not take anything for granted. Scepticism is anti-dogma.

Science itself is currently in a small crisis, where some scientists try to make dogmas, and others try to oppose them.

Dogmas will bring science to a halt. Death to dogmas! All hail free interpretation! 

[XenoFish]

I'm going to ask one last time. At what point does "maybe" become "no"?

The way I see it is that you can only be skeptical to a point. 

Does the lack of real evidence cause it? 

[Mr Walker]

6 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

I wouldn't call the reasoning for disbelieving initially in the existence of the platypus a result of some 'cognitive construct' or merely term it as 'inherent skepticism'.  There were good reasons to be suspicious, in addition to the obvious that it seems to combine features of mammals and birds in ways never seen, hoaxes were apparently an entertaining pastime in the 18th Century:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-19th-century-naturalists-didnt-believe-in-the-platypus

So given that context, what should an naturalist in the 18th century think when confronted with a platypus?  If someone did not have inherent skepticism, what they would believe about it?

They had heard about the beast but did not believe it was possible from within their known taxonomies and biology.   Thus when shown  a  dead specimen from Australia they decided it was a fake/hoax.

The scepticism  should not have extended to, or influenced their perception of,  the reality before them.  

Sure ,having been fooled before, they should have examined carefully, but to refuse to believe  after  2 decades of examination ? 

Edited December 2, 2018 by Mr Walker

[Jodie.Lynne]

22 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

Yes, that's the same Dean Radin but just written about by Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia

As I said in my earlier post to you, any unproven allegation is enough for pseudo-skeptics to dismiss everything. And it is impossible to stop unproven allegations so the game goes on forever. I did my homework on this very subject.

I went to the link you provide, but it seems that the entirety of the article is a rant about how Wikipedia is being "overrun" by sceptics.

If you have a link to an article, or articles that prove the allegations against Radin were false, then I'd love to see them.

[Mr Walker]

6 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I'm going to ask one last time. At what point does "maybe" become "no"?

The way I see it is that you can only be skeptical to a point. 

Does the lack of real evidence cause it? 

No/never, can never be a legitimate  response, without concrete evidences for non existence.

Equally, yes can never be absolute, without concrete evidences FOR existence. 

[papageorge1]

4 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

Then you have extremely low thresholds for evidentiary standards.

My standard is using all the information at hand and determining what is most reasonable to believe.

4 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

 

For the record, the plural of anecdote is NOT data.

 

A body of anecdotal evidence considered for quantity, quality and consistency can effect my understanding of the world. This is a normal human processing and learning skill

 

4 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

 

Do you know why you never see 'faith' healers regrow a lost limb? Because they can't! Their "healing" is a hoax for monetary gain.

Bigfoot? In the decades that people have been searching for this creature, why hasn't any skeletal remains been found? or their dwelling places?

Psychic powers, if HALF the people claiming 'abilities beyond those of mortal men' were true, why aren't they using their abilities to help people? If I could move objects with my mind, I'd be responding to cave-ins and earthquakes to help rescue victims. Or finding missing persons. Or reading minds to prevent mass shootings. Or something to benefit the species.

Aliens. One question: If (a HUGE if) they are visiting our planet, then why not do so in a way that is absolutely demonstrable? Surely, they are advanced enough that we aren't a threat. Why not openly show themselves instead of 'abducting' isolated individuals?

 

The thrust of your examples seem to be to say that if these things are real they must be dramatic. I believe psychic abilities are a generally weak but real human ability so dramatic consistent abilities should not then be expected. What I see is consistent with my beliefs or, better put,  formed my beliefs on the issue.