Sometimes I'm a sceptic

An old but still relevant essay Roy Stemman titled Skepticism: The New Religion addresses how spiritualism (the system of belief) is declining while its skeptics are becoming better organized. 

Just about every parapsychologist I am aware of and numerous lay paranormalists have written rants about how skeptics are wrong-minded, uninformed and hinder progress. Some even use skeptics as a foil for their publications.

I see Wikipedia as a microcosm of our society's struggle for free inquiry of frontier subjects. In the early days of the online encyclopedia, it was still possible to influence policy ... more correctly, to help establish how the few guiding principles were to be implemented. I became an editor in 2009 to help "set the record straight" for the EVP article. If you review the record, I was immediately attacked by skeptics who habitually patrol the frontier subjects to ward off encroaching heathens. Although not banned from editing the EVP article, any edits I make will, often within minutes, be reverted based on the argument that I have a conflict of interest.

As I mentioned elsewhere, three arbitrations have set official Wikipedia law to assure that frontier subjects will be forever treated as fairytales. One of them, the pseudoscience arbitration was used to stop me from editing the Rupert Sheldrake article because I was supporting a pseudoscience subject. Extending the Wikipedia mentality to the greater society, the bad them for blasphemy mentality is one of the reasons our concepts have been rejected from mainstream society.

Every effort I have made to solicit help from other paranormalists to edit Wikipedia has been ignored. Some parapsychologists have also tried to recruit help from the better organized part of our community, but I have not seen a response. It seems that people who are not normally active in organizational, research or educational parts of the paranormalist community have little taste for activism other than the typical anti-skeptic rant.

And that is my point. It is obvious that skeptics are zealots of some kind of strong belief system. I had not thought atheism would be the core belief, but that makes sense. In general, paranormalists are not zealots about their belief in survival and psi-related phenomena. Those who are are might be compared to people who admire cars but who are not apt to buy a car magazine. Most of us are determined to understand the actual nature of these phenomena, albeit some of us are happy to limit the data set.

Dominance is a human survival instinct. Siding with the dominant belief system is one of the way it shows. It does not seem to apply to curiosity-related thought. It has been this way throughout history as the majority driven by human instincts have forced compliance from the minority driven by the urge to gain understanding. This human instinct-curiosity dichotomy, by the way, is one of the ways I distinguish between the human influence and the conscious self influence in who we are.

I have often written about the fact that our freedom to publicly study these phenomena is not assured. It is a lot like pissing in the wind.

An old but still relevant essay Roy Stemman titled Skepticism: The New Religion addresses how spiritualism (the system of belief) is declining while its skeptics are becoming better organized. 

Just about every parapsychologist I am aware of and numerous lay paranormalists have written rants about how skeptics are wrong-minded, uninformed and hinder progress. Some even use skeptics as a foil for their publications.

I see Wikipedia as a microcosm of our society's struggle for free inquiry of frontier subjects. In the early days of the online encyclopedia, it was still possible to influence policy ... more correctly, to help establish how the few guiding principles were to be implemented. I became an editor in 2009 to help "set the record straight" for the EVP article. If you review the record, I was immediately attacked by skeptics who habitually patrol the frontier subjects to ward off encroaching heathens. Although not banned from editing the EVP article, any edits I make will, often within minutes, be reverted based on the argument that I have a conflict of interest.

As I mentioned elsewhere, three arbitrations have set official Wikipedia law to assure that frontier subjects will be forever treated as fairytales. One of them, the pseudoscience arbitration was used to stop me from editing the Rupert Sheldrake article because I was supporting a pseudoscience subject. Extending the Wikipedia mentality to the greater society, the bad them for blasphemy mentality is one of the reasons our concepts have been rejected from mainstream society.

Every effort I have made to solicit help from other paranormalists to edit Wikipedia has been ignored. Some parapsychologists have also tried to recruit help from the better organized part of our community, but I have not seen a response. It seems that people who are not normally active in organizational, research or educational parts of the paranormalist community have little taste for activism other than the typical anti-skeptic rant.

And that is my point. It is obvious that skeptics are zealots of some kind of strong belief system. I had not thought atheism would be the core belief, but that makes sense. In general, paranormalists are not zealots about their belief in survival and psi-related phenomena. Those who are are might be compared to people who admire cars but who are not apt to buy a car magazine. Most of us are determined to understand the actual nature of these phenomena, albeit some of us are happy to limit the data set.

Dominance is a human survival instinct. Siding with the dominant belief system is one of the way it shows. It does not seem to apply to curiosity-related thought. It has been this way throughout history as the majority driven by human instincts have forced compliance from the minority driven by the urge to gain understanding. This human instinct-curiosity dichotomy, by the way, is one of the ways I distinguish between the human influence and the conscious self influence in who we are.

I have often written about the fact that our freedom to publicly study these phenomena is not assured. It is a lot like pissing in the wind.

Yes, it’s important that skeptics realise that skepticism is a process rather than a position. The advantage of skepticism is whilst the process may occasionally let us down, or be poorly applied, it is more likely to point us in the right direction than not. To put that another way, for every fringe (frontier) theory that turns out to have merit, there’ll be many more that don’t pass muster. To support every fringe theory that flies against expert consensus in that field would seem a foolhardy approach. No individual has the expertise to assess every outlier claim, and some sort of heuristic is needed.

Here is a link to the latest skeptoid episode about The Electric Universe.

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4651

It can be read or listened to.

I can’t really assess from the episode whether the presenter is wrong or right about the EU, but I share it as he runs through some of the tools we might use to assess any claim. Do you see a problem with that process? If so where?

I see Wikipedia as a microcosm of our society's struggle for free inquiry of frontier subjects. In the early days of the online encyclopedia, it was still possible to influence policy ... more correctly, to help establish how the few guiding principles were to be implemented. I became an editor in 2009 to help "set the record straight" for the EVP article. If you review the record, I was immediately attacked by skeptics who habitually patrol the frontier subjects to ward off encroaching heathens. Although not banned from editing the EVP article, any edits I make will, often within minutes, be reverted based on the argument that I have a conflict of interest.

No one I know uses Wikipedia for anything but conversational knowledge, Quizzo drinking games, and summaries of TV shows. Academics I've talked to reject it as too biased, and the number of errors there have been noted in a few places.

It's the wrong battlefield.

[Also it will likely collapse from lack of funding in the next decade.]

To put that another way, for every fringe (frontier) theory that turns out to have merit, there’ll be many more that don’t pass muster.

"Fringe" is a favored word of the skeptics.

Skepticism is not a process it is the manifestation of a point of view. For instance, Scientism: If science does not specifically address claimed effects, they cannot be and are therefore impossible. Religion: According to Biblical instruction, communication with the other side is speaking with demons and is to be feared.

Of course, I agree with you that some ideas are nonsensical, but I am not sure skeptics have the wherewithal to know. Skeptics put up a stone wall of resistance for new ideas, thereby making it nearly impossible for trained researchers to investigate most all claims. Yes, there needs to be a better methodology for culling out the poorly conceived proposals, but that needs to be based on good research and not kneejerk responses. Calling something impossible, fraud or delusion is not the first step in culling ideas. Figuring out and explaining why they need culling is the first step. To do that, one needs to be informed.

No one I know uses Wikipedia for anything but conversational knowledge, ....

I agree that few people wanting to be credible will include Wikipedia references. Perhaps you would be surprised by the number of time I have been referred to a Wikipedia article in support of a person's argument by people who do fancy themselves as intellectuals and academics.

The rules of Wikipedia require that substantive statements are supported with other publications. The References section of articles sometimes does provide an excellent study guide.

As a layperson and director of a practitioner support group, it has become clear to me that the average person's go-to source for authoritative information is Wikipedia. Members of the lay public do not seek out a learned scientist to tell them what is true, they find a good science writer, and lacking one, they go right to Wikipedia.

Information is sticky in the sense that first bit in tend to block next incoming bits. It is very difficult for people to change their mind once a decision is made. Wikipedia is very effective in making sure that first impressions are negative.

Again, research funding goes with public opinion. To suppress or not to in courts and in government is usually decided with public opinion in mind. Research journals have little use for public opinion, as the authors tend to write to impress other researchers which confuses the bottom line for the average reader.


The point I am trying to make it that skeptics have a much more profound influence on our ability to further understanding of frontier subjects than most people realize.

No one I know uses Wikipedia for anything but conversational knowledge, Quizzo drinking games, and summaries of TV shows. Academics I've talked to reject it as too biased, and the number of errors there have been noted in a few places.

It's the wrong battlefield.

[Also it will likely collapse from lack of funding in the next decade.]

Oh, I so wish that were the case but I have my doubts. Whenever something controversial comes up in our conversations, my son has his phone in his hand and the Wikipedia "truth" is recited back to me. If I complain that the article may be biased, I am reminded that my complaint is evidence of my own bias. If I start to talk about the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, eyes start to roll and I am accused of indulging yet another conspiracy theory.

The thing is that my son and I agree on so many things including politics and much that has to do with organised religion. We are cut from the same cloth but he considers my fascination with the afterlife and associated phenomena an aberration in an otherwise rational person. He doesn't think I'm crazy but he thinks I that I'm a victim of confirmation bias. And he's certain that he has the weight of evidence on his side - as can be seen from the atheist commentaries he so favours. I can't get him to read any of the evidence that I find convincing because he trusts that it has already been debunked a thousand times over - and Wikipedia is there to confirm that trust.

But there's the point that has me in a quandary. The skeptics who routinely debunk the "good" evidence (NDEs, Ian Stevenson's research, etc., etc.,) have purportedly read that evidence. The skeptics who have decided to camp out at Skeptiko and/or this forum have likewise read our posts and presentations of such evidence. Yet we still get responses like those from Steve001 which I listed above. I get the impression that Wikipedia is not biased enough for Steve - he seems to parrot RationalWiki which is several rungs down the ladder into the depths of disinformation, ad hominem and character assassination. Sometimes I despair.

Oh, I so wish that were the case but I have my doubts. Whenever something controversial comes up in our conversations, my son has his phone in his hand and the Wikipedia "truth" is recited back to me. If I complain that the article may be biased, I am reminded that my complaint is evidence of my own bias. If I start to talk about the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, eyes start to roll and I am accused of indulging yet another conspiracy theory.

The thing is that my son and I agree on so many things including politics and much that has to do with organised religion. We are cut from the same cloth but he considers my fascination with the afterlife and associated phenomena an aberration in an otherwise rational person. He doesn't think I'm crazy but he thinks I that I'm a victim of confirmation bias. And he's certain that he has the weight of evidence on his side - as can be seen from the atheist commentaries he so favours. I can't get him to read any of the evidence that I find convincing because he trusts that it has already been debunked a thousand times over - and Wikipedia is there to confirm that trust.

But there's the point that has me in a quandary. The skeptics who routinely debunk the "good" evidence (NDEs, Ian Stevenson's research, etc., etc.,) have purportedly read that evidence. The skeptics who have decided to camp out at Skeptiko and/or this forum have likewise read our posts and presentations of such evidence. Yet we still get responses like those from Steve001 which I listed above. I get the impression that Wikipedia is not biased enough for Steve - he seems to parrot RationalWiki which is several rungs down the ladder into the depths of disinformation, ad hominem and character assassination. Sometimes I despair.

For committed partisans sure, Wikipedia is an asset. But in a general sense how many people care what's written on Wikipedia?

I just had a talk w/ my neighbor - we both work in tech - about luck, and he was telling me he's convinced some people seem to have auras that alter probability. He even notes the idea that with a large enough sample some people will seem lucky, but says he still believes in luck.

I've had convos about ghosts and djinn with people in medical school, about God w/ people in clinical research, astral projection w/ people working at Yahoo, and so on. Younger people seem even more inclined to give some benefit of the doubt to astrology, magic(k), etc.

Tie this to the projected growth of the religious population, and the fact "nones" are not necessarily materialists. Think of the amount of cross-lingual conversation will happen as translation software gets better, and the decline of materialism as the default assumption in Western STEM academia. We will have more theist scientists, and thus more STEM academics on a global scale who are not inclined toward materialism.

As Lauryn Hill once said, "Change comes slow or not at all", but it does come.

In any case, the very fact skeptics are camped out on Wikipedia would make it poor strategy to try and influence people that way. Wrong battlefield.

Tie this to the projected growth of the religious population, and the fact "nones" are not necessarily materialists. 

This one has always annoyed me when I've had to fill in census forms. I tick "no religion", as do some of the people I know, but that does not mean we are atheists, it just indicates we are not religious. Nevertheless, after the last census, the atheists were crowing about their growing numbers which counted those like myself among their ranks.

As Lauryn Hill once said, "Change comes slow or not at all", but it does come.

This line alone earned the ‘like’.   I just hope that change beats global annihilation!

(‘Everything is Everything’ doesn’t really work for me, but it reminded me of ‘Everything is Perfect’)

"Fringe" is a favored word of the skeptics.

Skepticism is not a process it is the manifestation of a point of view. For instance, Scientism: If science does not specifically address claimed effects, they cannot be and are therefore impossible. Religion: According to Biblical instruction, communication with the other side is speaking with demons and is to be feared.

Of course, I agree with you that some ideas are nonsensical, but I am not sure skeptics have the wherewithal to know. Skeptics put up a stone wall of resistance for new ideas, thereby making it nearly impossible for trained researchers to investigate most all claims. Yes, there needs to be a better methodology for culling out the poorly conceived proposals, but that needs to be based on good research and not kneejerk responses. Calling something impossible, fraud or delusion is not the first step in culling ideas. Figuring out and explaining why they need culling is the first step. To do that, one needs to be informed.


I agree that few people wanting to be credible will include Wikipedia references. Perhaps you would be surprised by the number of time I have been referred to a Wikipedia article in support of a person's argument by people who do fancy themselves as intellectuals and academics.

The rules of Wikipedia require that substantive statements are supported with other publications. The References section of articles sometimes does provide an excellent study guide.

As a layperson and director of a practitioner support group, it has become clear to me that the average person's go-to source for authoritative information is Wikipedia. Members of the lay public do not seek out a learned scientist to tell them what is true, they find a good science writer, and lacking one, they go right to Wikipedia.

Information is sticky in the sense that first bit in tend to block next incoming bits. It is very difficult for people to change their mind once a decision is made. Wikipedia is very effective in making sure that first impressions are negative.

Again, research funding goes with public opinion. To suppress or not to in courts and in government is usually decided with public opinion in mind. Research journals have little use for public opinion, as the authors tend to write to impress other researchers which confuses the bottom line for the average reader.


The point I am trying to make it that skeptics have a much more profound influence on our ability to further understanding of frontier subjects than most people realize.

My perspective is that Skeptics have very little influence on any of this. Yes, you can see a lot of bluster coming from Skeptics (and I use the capitalized version to refer to the organized movement to influence hearts and minds). But Skeptics follow what scientists/academics tell them. Change the science/academic perspective, and the Skeptics will follow. Skeptics obviously have little influence on the layperson, since believers vastly outnumber the nonbelievers (in the US, anyways). And Skeptics also have little influence on the the scientists/academics. Nobody threw in the towel on climate science when some famous Skeptics (e.g. Randi, Shermer) professed doubt on Global Warming, for example. And most of my colleagues (medicine) never heard of even the more famous debunkers of alt-med. They didn't adopt or research alt-med because of the evidence (i.e. evidence against effectiveness), not because Novella told them not to.

What you are really noticing is the divide between a scientific/academic perspective and a layperson perspective. We can't hope to have an understanding of a particular field without the years/decades of deep knowledge and experience of those within the field, so we look to others to provide some sort of "summary" for us. "Public opinion" is guided by who we look to, which tends to be guided by our beliefs/desires. Skeptics have the advantage in this, by a desire to be guided by scientific evidence. However, more laypeople are guided by non-evidence based processes, like faith, palatability, peer groups, etc.

If parapsychology wants more interest and funding, then they need to build the science/academic route by performing good quality research (as has been pointed out by parapsychologists for more than a decade), instead of continuing to waste their time on poor quality methodologies. Most scientists aren't interested in parapsychology because the research doesn't pass the "sniff test", not because of something Randi said. However, get some research out their which does, and the ideas will spread (as has been demonstrated over and over in the history of science).

Linda

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0399-z
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ak/568630/ 
http://jeksite.org/psi/conclusions.htm
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/jo...arch.1249/
http://cobe.paginas.ufsc.br/files/2014/1...e.RCT_.pdf
https://handbook-5-1.cochrane.org/chapte...proach.htm

My perspective is that Skeptics have very little influence on any of this.

You are reciting the party line that science will prevail and laypeople do not understand. That is like science's ideal gas or textbook science methodology. I do agree with you that science is supposed to help all of us understand our world.

In practice, the discovery-to-market process is overshadowed by political influences ... ideological interests and social engineering. One of the most important ideological influences has been the skeptic's success in establishing pseudoscience as a threat to the public. 

Two ideas are common themes for research parapsychologists. One is that it is a career killer to get even close to anything paranormal. It is said that mainstream scientists run for the door at conferences when paranormal is mentioned. The second is that there is so little funding for serious parapsychological research.

The common factor is the scarlet letter-pseudoscience. We funded a little research as the Association TransCommunication. Managing that included trying to explain to people why there was so little money for research.  Why Has There Not Been More Study of the Paranormal? is an old essay spelling that out as I understood at the time. The main point is the idea that skeptics have talked the National Science Foundation into accepting their definition of pseudoscience as published by “Losh et al” which is a reference to an article in the Skeptical Inquirer. This is published in the Science and Engineering Indicators 2016, Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding

A further comment about “pseudoscientific beliefs” in that chapter is based on a reference from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOPS) now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), which states: “According to one group studying such phenomena, pseudoscientific topics include yogi flying, therapeutic touch, astrology, fire walking, voodoo magical thinking, alternative medicine, channeling, psychic hotlines and detectives, near-death experiences, unidentified flying objects and alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, homeopathy, faith healing, and reincarnation.” The (late) celebrity skeptic, James Randi, is one of the founders and is the publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer.

To complete the circle, Reference 67 in the Wikipedia pseudoscience article is the 2006 Science and Engineering report. Kamarlin, for your son, click on the View History tab and see how unstable such a mature but controversial article can be. Reading under the Talk tab will show how the inclusion of what is pseudoscience is expanding. Especially look at the Archived discussion to see some of the arguments. There are some important arguments against the classification. Pseudoscience averages 1,800 views a day.

I describe an Academic-Layperson Partition in terms of the paranormalist community, but I expect it exists throughout our society. The effect is that scientists abdicate their responsibility (which we fund) to educate the public about their work in understandable terms. In the paranormalist community, that which scientists seek to study is produced by laypeople. I explored the resulting problems in Open Letter to Paranormalists: Limits of science, trust and responsibility.

An important point. many of us try to work with people who do not distinguish between belief and discerning consideration of the evidence. In my opinion, belief is evidence of intellectual laziness that plagues all levels of society including academics. The cure is not isolation, as is done with bullshit terms like pseudoscience and sniff test. It is done with education and by teaching people to think.