Well my astrologer is going to tell me precognition is real, in three days when they read Bem’s study for the first time, while eating a bagel, after their cousin sends them a link to this article on Boing Boing.
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Watch out, you’ll make the materialists upset. 
Great, more retrograde thinking 
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This point is worth belaboring a few times for the BB editorial staff. Spreading pseudoscientific hogwash to the public as some sort of “interesting thing to ponder” dilutes our collective critical thinking skills as a society and normalizes a method of reasoning and discourse that actively hurts people.
To pick one notorious example, consider the recently deceased Joe Rogan. He has built an empire on this class of pseudoscientific propagation at the great expense of many lives.
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Ah, man, I googled it and he’s not dead. Just an asshole.
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“Is he? I’m just asking questions here. It certainly seems like something that could be true.” 
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In all fairness, I have envisioned him dead.
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I’ll pass on a bit of advice another boingboinger passed onto me some time ago. (when I groused about an ad in a boingboing post. Use the web browser Brave. It cuts way, way back on the ads
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Ah, but the title is a question. All the Cool Gang ™ in Boing Boing know what that means.
I think we should be allowed our scepticism, and a bit of gloating when it doesn’t work, without being accused of having closed minds. There may be things we do not know, but these things ought to fit in with the bits we do know. Why did he do that experiment in the first place? Because his precognition told him it would work? Yeah, right…
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Yes, although, this makes the case for the word “monotonic” to be in daily use, so we don’t have to describe something which advances at a varying rate as “linear”.
(There is some interesting discussion to be had about this, but I wouldn’t want to endorse the OP’s deliberate category errors)
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It is round here.
– Monotonic?
– Nah, make it a double. Ice and a slice, please.
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Randy did a lot of good. He’s the one who turned me from being a pseudoskeptic long before that article, when I realized that a movement that needed such a lying, goal-changing POS to move their cause forward had nothing to say.
So thanks, Randy.
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What article proved that?
It’s the same as this, “people say i’m full of beans because they’re haters” and appeals to conspiracy, but no actual useful factual research.
The bully act works on easily influenced persons and already-believers but is irrelevant to reality.
Psychic phenomena is as unproven/disproven as it has always been, so y’all need to keep the Q level claims going, apparently though gish gallops of poor metastudy.
Can anyone offer something other than academic fraud and grift? The answer is no, never.
I’m not going to argue with the personal and experiential. But when a person tries to speak for broader reality it all breaks down into these silly beliefs of oppression when the “evidence” is as nonexistent as it has been since the original parapsychology grants ran out.
Speaking of parapsychology, i do enjoy fortean stories, but in 2022 the scientism and demands for unearned respect are something the world needs much less “influencers” for than ever.
Crank magnetism is a serious matter.
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The insincere claim that it “opened” their eyes was definitely squint-worthy.
Thanks for the born-again proclamation, i guess!
Honestly the saddest thing is not talking of parapsychology (i still enjoy listening to people talk about magic and how they see the world) is how evangelical this “proof” always seems to be, the arguments stem from a wedge ala Creationism, but not physics.
It’s sort of interesting how “debunker-debunkers” don’t really understand how we should approach and define reality beyond “be more open minded”. The Joe Rogan podcast circuit loves these guests, certainly.
There are always arguments in favor of better science and killing our heroes, but these attempts lack so much concern for how to improve what we know beyond trying to prove THEMSELVES correct or projecting their flaws onto supposed “heroes”.
Sure Randi is charismatic, but that’s not why he was correct, and he exists independently as a public figure. Attacking the man to “debunk” our conception of reality is akin to “proving” the same through brutal teardowns of… Bill Nye the science guy.
I think some of this is also projecting personal approaches in how they manufacture confidence through rhetorical appeals/flourish onto others.
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If you’re going to insult the guy, at least get his name right.
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Randy?
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Ah, how sciencey.
The next question is: Can a misinformative vast literature be used intentionally as a tactic to win political debates? It seems to me that in principle it could. Suppose you and your friends wanted to push a weak argument for political purposes. You could all write a bunch of papers about it, with abstracts and numbered sections and bibliographies and everything. You could cite each other’s papers. If you wanted to, you could even create a journal, and have a peer review system where you give positive reviews to each other’s B.S. papers. Voila - a peer-reviewed literature chock full of misinformation.
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9 posts were merged into an existing topic: Agnostic or Atheist? YOU DECIDE!
Think of the Conservative Think Tank system as a parody of the university system; a network of “institutes” all founded to support an ideology, whose “scholars” write “reports” and conduct “studies” which surprise! – all re-affirm the correctness of their institute’s ideological premise.
If you’re thinking of “Creation Scientists” whose papers are “peer-reviewed” by other Creationists, you already understand how Think Tanks operate. It also helps to picture a crowd of lunatics clustered together, peeing down each others’ legs.
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I’m going to try not to picture that, but thanks.
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