(2018-05-06, 02:44 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Regardless of what anybody believes, I think there is general recognition that there is widespread skepticism amongst the scientific community, rather than acceptance.
No doubt that's true, but clearly it's a completely different statement from your previous one about the
weight of the evidence being on the sceptical side.
As laird points out, the opinion of any group of people about a scientific question is only as good as their familiarity with the relevant evidence.
The fact is that only the tiniest percentage of the population - whether scientists or lay people - has a serious interest in parapsychology. I mean an interest serious enough to read published papers, look at sceptical criticisms and weigh up both sides of the argument. I worked in a multidisciplinary scientific research group in a British university for more than a decade, and I remember parapsychology being discussed only once by my colleagues, and that in passing.
You cannot seriously be suggesting that the majority of the scientific community has an adequate familiarity with the parapsychological literature to reach an informed conclusion about the evidence. Sometimes I wonder whether more than a hundred people in the whole world are equipped to do that.
(2018-05-06, 07:34 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]Phew. Nobody’s getting upset then.
How strange. I came to the opposite conclusion. I suppose that's the trouble with URLs as a means of communication.
(2018-05-05, 05:50 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I'd even say it goes outside of evidence. If the skeptics are right you have no free will, there's no objective morality, and within the tiniest fraction of a moment in the universe's long history you'll be shuttled off into oblivion.
Why even worry about Truth in that case? Just take the proponent side as at least somewhat right, or possibly right, and live as a good person until the atoms of your body cast you into Nothingness.
This reply set me thinking of some related ideas which don't seem to really belong in this thread, regarding the experiences and writing of Leo Tolstoy. I may post a separate thread if I get my thoughts together.
(2018-05-06, 03:47 AM)Dante Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not really focusing on that information. I'm focusing on challenging your notion that this is as objective as you're suggesting, which you haven't responded to.
Because I'm not a masochist.
Like I said, this has been gone over many times before. I doubt there is any progress to be had on it. I'm not asking you to change your opinion.
Quote:Widespread skepticism in the scientific community can be for a variety of reasons. That's a nice appeal to authority that doesn't take your argument anywhere. People who aren't members of that community are also capable of thinking for themselves and critically and reasonably assessing evidence, though it has always seemed clear that you believe otherwise.
What the scientific community says about any given topic is not creed or automatically, unassailably correct.
Also a subject we've gone over many times before. The point of evidence is to spread an idea beyond true believers, to scientists who are skeptical of the idea. I can't think of an example offhand, where evidence has failed to do so.
Linda
(2018-05-06, 10:46 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Also a subject we've gone over many times before. The point of evidence is to spread an idea beyond true believers, to scientists who are skeptical of the idea. I can't think of an example offhand, where evidence has failed to do so.
Your experience obviously differs from that of Max Planck, who famously wrote:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
Indeed, it sounds almost as though Planck had never known sceptics to be convinced by evidence of a new scientific truth. Still, what did Max Planck know?
(2018-05-06, 12:19 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Examples of ideas initially ridiculed or greeted with skepticism (and one vice versa), which became accepted (rejected) in parallel with the strength of the evidence:
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of...ang_theory
...
Just picking the Big Bang as an example, the Wikipedia article does tell us something about the time-course of its acceptance:
"In 1931, Lemaître proposed in his "hypothèse de l'atome primitif" (hypothesis of the primeval atom) that the universe began with the "explosion" of the "primeval atom" — what was later called the Big Bang....
From around 1950 to 1965, the support for these theories was evenly divided, with a slight imbalance arising from the fact that the Big Bang theory could explain both the formation and the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium, ...
...
Through the 1970s and 1980s, most cosmologists accepted the Big Bang, but several puzzles remained ..."
So according to Wikipedia it took 40-60 years from the time the theory was proposed, and around 20 years after opinion was evenly divided, before most cosmologists accepted it.
To my mind, that seems entirely consistent with Planck's picture of sceptics dying off rather than being converted.
But it doesn't surprise me at all that someone thinks they know better.
(2018-05-06, 09:55 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]This reply set me thinking of some related ideas which don't seem to really belong in this thread, regarding the experiences and writing of Leo Tolstoy. I may post a separate thread if I get my thoughts together.
I was thinking it of a variation on Pascal's Wager - interesting it made you think of Tolstoy, hopefully you make this thread.
(2018-05-06, 10:46 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Also a subject we've gone over many times before. The point of evidence is to spread an idea beyond true believers, to scientists who are skeptical of the idea. I can't think of an example offhand, where evidence has failed to do so.
I think this is indicative of just how much Laird's point has passed you by. In large part, many of the parapsychology researchers chose to come to the research from a materialist or atheist background, and (reasonably) found the evidence curious, rather than just dismissing it out of hand as impossible. Then, having done the research, many of them have come to the conclusion that it may be more likely than not that the evidence is suggestive of something that is going on that is outside the scientific mainstream.
This is, of course, entirely different than what you suggest here. You seem to think that the only people to take psi evidence seriously are "true believers", and yet again have done what you've done a million times - blatantly implying that anyone who sees the psi evidence as something more than nothing is just a "true believer", and the only ones whose opinions are worth a dime are scientists who are skeptical of it. You're very, very clearly categorizing it as: "Psi evidence is legit? You're a true believer and not good at analyzing good evidence" and "Real scientist who can make unbiased determinations about the value of the evidence? Your conclusion about the evidence (which in most cases like Chris said they're not actually familiar with) must be more accurate and a result of an unbiased process of considering the evidence".
It's just unbelievable that you don't see that this is what you are doing. The evidence HAS spread beyond true believers, those who see any little thing that they might find to be "paranormal" and proclaim "ghosts are real! Telepathy is real! The afterlife is real!", to
actual, real life researchers who have studied the phenomena. Many, many of those researchers do not agree with you, and their beliefs are based on the research they have done and the
evidence they have looked at.
Have you ever considered the antithesis of "true believers"? Something akin to professional skepticism. In many instances, that is what the scientists you are referencing are, dismissing the research and the conclusions thereof without weighing the evidence against its shortcomings seriously, and without much familiarity with it.
You really are entirely oblivious to the naivety and weaknesses of your position. The psi evidence has done literally exactly what you said evidence ought to have done, in that it's been considered by serious researchers who do not agree with the unfamiliar scientific community at large. You can't seem to come to grips with the fact that that's the case.