Pseudoskeptism and acceptable versus unacceptable science [split from "infant consciousness"]

Somewhat loaded, wouldn't you agree? Like it is taken as a given that consciousness arises rather than consciousness is present from the get-go.

They just can't help themselves and in so doing risk a further erosion in confidence.  If there's one thing we really need from the scientific community in these times of unbridled and often somewhat justified skepticism its intellectual honesty.

Science: Stop stating things you can not demonstrate as refutable and fully testable.  Stay in your lanes bro's.

They just can't help themselves and in so doing risk a further erosion in confidence.  If there's one thing we really need from the scientific community in these times of unbridled and often somewhat justified skepticism its intellectual honesty.

Science: Stop stating things you can not demonstrate as refutable and fully testable.  Stay in your lanes bro's.

Yeah there is a weird "approved by committee" feel to what gets put out as "acceptable" vs "unaccpetable" science.

It apparently is pseudoscience to talk about consciousness being irreducible/fundamental but acceptable to talk about uploading your mind into a computer to live forever, pseudoscience to talk about any kind of supernatural influence/design but ok to talk about how some random alien coders might have made our reality...

The public seems to take scientific pronouncements only half-seriously now, if that...

Yeah there is a weird "approved by committee" feel to what gets put out as "acceptable" vs "unaccpetable" science.

It apparently is pseudoscience to talk about consciousness being irreducible/fundamental but acceptable to talk about uploading your mind into a computer to live forever, pseudoscience to talk about any kind of supernatural influence/design but ok to talk about how some random alien coders might have made our reality...

The public seems to take scientific pronouncements only half-seriously now, if that...

This is a feature of scientific speculation that constantly astonishes me. It is not acceptable to consider a spiritual source of the so-called "simulation" but fine, to the point of consensus, to posit some super-advanced aliens (or computers). Same thing with that which you allude to - the "singularity". Again, computers suddenly become conscious even when there is little understanding and no consensus as to what consciousness is. Even when scientists themselves dismiss such talk as coffee-table conjecture, the public seem to think these developments are almost upon us. Quantum weirdness, apparently, can be explained away by seriously proposing that a whole new physical universe can appear ex nihilo at every decision point made by every conscious mind in existence. Mind boggling just doesn't approach how I view that one. Not to be outdone, the same logic is applied to the fine tuning debate - oh well, lets just propose an infinite number of universes: problem solved!

This is a feature of scientific speculation that constantly astonishes me. It is not acceptable to consider a spiritual source of the so-called "simulation" but fine, to the point of consensus, to posit some super-advanced aliens (or computers). Same thing with that which you allude to - the "singularity". Again, computers suddenly become conscious even when there is little understanding and no consensus as to what consciousness is. Even when scientists themselves dismiss such talk as coffee-table conjecture, the public seem to think these developments are almost upon us. Quantum weirdness, apparently, can be explained away by seriously proposing that a whole new physical universe can appear ex nihilo at every decision point made by every conscious mind in existence. Mind boggling just doesn't approach how I view that one. Not to be outdone, the same logic is applied to the fine tuning debate - oh well, lets just propose an infinite number of universes: problem solved!

There’s plenty within the scientific community who views many worlds as a pseudo science. It’s not as black and white as you put it here.

There’s plenty within the scientific community who views many worlds as a pseudo science. It’s not as black and white as you put it here.

Yes but pseudoskeptics have been quite tolerant of it, and you wouldn't suffer the same career issues if you advocate for MWI vs ID.

Seems that's in part because MWI gives a way for materialist-atheists to wave away challenges to their faith.

There’s plenty within the scientific community who views many worlds as a pseudo science. It’s not as black and white as you put it here.

You seem to have missed the point entirely. It doesn't matter what  far-fetched idea they come up with, the commitment is to a materialist explanation rather than to a truly open-minded consideration of all possibilities, including design and/or what we are apt to call a spiritual reality. I can't do better than the famed materialist, Lewontin, in making that point:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

You seem to have missed the point entirely. It doesn't matter what  far-fetched idea they come up with, the commitment is to a materialist explanation rather than to a truly open-minded consideration of all possibilities, including design and/or what we are apt to call a spiritual reality. I can't do better than the famed materialist, Lewontin, in making that point:

I think you are making baseless claims. If we stick to the many world example, according to Wikipedia:

MWI's initial reception was overwhelmingly negative, in the sense that it was ignored, with the notable exception of DeWitt. Wheeler made considerable efforts to formulate the theory in a way that would be palatable to Bohr, visited Copenhagen in 1956 to discuss it with him, and convinced Everett to visit as well, which happened in 1959. Nevertheless, Bohr and his collaborators completely rejected the theory.[d] Everett had already left academia in 1957, never to return, and in 1980, Wheeler disavowed the theory.[73]

Science writer Philip Ball calls MWI's implications fantasies, since "beneath their apparel of scientific equations or symbolic logic, they are acts of imagination, of 'just supposing'".[83]

Sounds much like the reception of paranormal research to me (and completely justified)

Sounds much like the reception of paranormal research to me (and completely justified)

Yet you have physicists like Sean Carroll who believes in MWI and was on Team Skeptic arguing against an afterlife in that debate with Eben Alexander and Moody.

Also some pseudoskeptics like Strenger had referenced MWI or a Multiverse in more general sense to try and explain Fine Tuning.

It's pretty clear academia has been biased toward the atheist-materialist faith, though I would agree it is changing.

Yet you have physicists like Sean Carroll who believes in MWI and was on Team Skeptic arguing against an afterlife in that debate with Eben Alexander and Moody.

Also some pseudoskeptics like Strenger had referenced MWI or a Multiverse in more general sense to try and explain Fine Tuning.

It's pretty clear academia has been biased toward the atheist-materialist faith, though I would agree it is changing.

The man (Sean Carroll) is a fanatic. Most of the quantum fathers were agnostics.

The man (Sean Carroll) is a fanatic. Most of the quantum fathers were agnostics.

You mean "quantum fathers" like Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Pauli? Perhaps you should brush up on their biographies. Agnostic in terms of organised religion, perhaps, but for these luminaries, they might better be described as the fathers of quantum mysticism. Add to their ranks the likes of Eddington, Wigner and Bohm and you have quite a team of quantum physicists who were also mystics. 

https://phys.org/news/2009-06-quantum-my...otten.html

“Today it is seen as science vs. religion, but at the time of the foundation of quantum mechanics it was not. There were religious physicists on both sides of the controversy. Most of the important physicists held what we could call today religious beliefs, whether Western or Eastern."