Jimmy Wales tells "energy workers" that Wikipedia won't publish woo, "the work of lunatic charlatans isn't the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'"

All good points.

Also bad: Prescribing real drugs when no treatment is appropriate. In these cases, what the doctor is doing is essentially trying to harness the placebo effect while not actually lying to the patient.

I remember being prescribed Amoxicillin probably 5-6 times throughout my childhood, essentially as palliative care for the common cold. Looking back today, I wish the doctor had just told my mom to keep me hydrated and resting, instead of inappropriately prescribing an antibiotic that 1.) doesn’t treat my illness, and 2.) disrupts my bacterial ecosystem, and 3.) increases the risk of developing antibiotic resistant bacteria.

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What is woo? It is a nice way of saying that someone believes that magic is real. If there was a shred of evidence of magic, healing energies, whatever, scientist would be clawing their eyes out to get at it. They are willing to hunt to spend billions of dollars slamming atoms into each other just to catch a glimpse of some elusive particle. It is hilarious to suggest that people willing to bend the earth to get at some random particle to complete their understanding are just sitting around ignoring that magic is real or conveniently are ignoring that humans have some other magical form of energy.

No dude. I am sorry. There is no magic. I love sci-fi and fantasy, and I want there to be magic and mutants and people with magical healing auras. Sadly, despite the fact that we have millions of people wandering around claiming that their form of magic/chi/hippie energy/etc is real, not a single one can just pull out some solid proof speaks pretty loud and clear.

If you know someone who knows magic, for fucks sake dude, go make yourself a billionaire. It isn’t rocket science to setup up a controlled experiment. Do it a few times with repeatable results, and then get someone who doesn’t believe in magic to repeat it. It will eventually bubble up to the top and you will be wallowing in your money pit as the first person to prove magic is real.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to prove that magic is real and that the world is filled with secret energies that are apparently undetectable by the same guys who setup massive apparatuses to catch a few dozen neutrinos over the course of a decade.

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How much?

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You don’t prove your claims on Wikipedia, and the assertion that you should be able to demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the clearly stated purpose and operating guidelines of Wikipedia.

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Lying to patients about the action of a treatment is never good. It takes away a person’s autonomy over their own bodies and health care.

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What, I’m supposed to go over there again, see if the hate speech is still there, and see if the bullying is still going on?

So was mine.

Some might.[quote=“teapot, post:62, topic:26871”]
You’re tarring an entire site as hateful or unfair when you’re actually just annoyed at the people who make edits to autism and trans pages.
[/quote]

I’m tarring describing an entire site as hateful because of systemic problems, including the hate which I’ve encountered in discussions of these topics, and some other topics, which can’t possibly be restricted to these topics, and also including the insults from moderators, the attempts to force me to out myself, the baiting, the attempts to impose rules barring trans editors from trans-related topics, the attempts to bar discussion of transphobia and allow users to make dehumanizing comments but ban other users who call them out on these comments, and the way ‘neutral point of view’ has been redefined to mean ‘most influential point of view, including their slurs towards less influential groups.’

They dehumanize autistic people, they shill for groups torturing autistic children, they call for eugenics against autistic people…

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I dont have any familiarity with unicorns either.

Well they shouldn’t of been dropping jelly filled balloons on people.

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Well you were both there at the same time, but not.

Whoa.

and see if the bullying is still going on?

No, I’m saying that it’s hard to come up with systems that support opposing views without it descending into a poo-flinging match. If you have any ideas for a system to better manage how Wikipedia is moderated, I’m sure Jimmy would be all-ears.

Re: neturality/consensus: it was you claiming that consensus is confused with neutrality. I was saying that if people confuse definitions then it’s probably better to just disengage with them anyway.

I think it’s dramatic to describe an entire site as hateful, when we’re talking about the internet here. What you really dislike is hateful people who happen to want to shape certain Wikipedia subjects to their viewpoint. I can’t imagine, for example, that there’s nearly as much hatred in edits or mods on, say, the Regenerative Braking page? I am not dismissing your experience there as unusual, rare or irrelevant - you just have to keep in mind that certain topics tend to create more flame than others. Also bear in mind that smart people don’t just read Wikipedia as their source for information.

The things that you’re claiming Autism Speaks do sound awful. Do you have any links? This might be a great place to share links to the bad shit they do and you can pretty much guarantee Falcor ain’t gonna mod you :smile:

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Lord, spare me from Homeopathy Airlines. They give you a glass of water with 1 ppm of baguette in it and say “Welcome to Paris!”

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Perhaps you’re thinking of Emotionally Focused Therapy, which is indeed a very effective form of couple and family therapy based on both process and outcome research, which has publications in most major family therapy journals and a large evidence base for its success rate, including with PTSD. It is indeed a fantastic, evidence-based approach, has an extremely high quality certification program, and I can personally testify to how effective it is with distressed couples, as a 17-year veteran of family therapy. The results it’s getting with sexual abuse survivors, traumatized vets, and public safety employees (firefighters etc.) who have traumatic stress are phenomenal.

However, they are referring to Emotional Freedom Technique, a derivative of Thought Field Therapy, both of which are unmitigated woo-type bullshittery and which are all too common in my beloved Bay Area. And which has, apparently, an army of highly motivated astroturfers, meaning that it comes up much higher than the actual well-tested and researched EFT approach in a Google search.

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A WHOLE 1 PPM?!

No thanks, that’s far too rich for my blood.

I’m much more comfortable with a modest 1:10^140 bread-water molar ratio common in over the counter preparations.

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I wouldn’t call Autism Speaks “woo”, however. I do agree that Autism Speaks is pretty terrible, but as teapot mentioned, there is plenty of reference to their controversies on the page. Personally I see a trend toward a backlash against Autism Speaks (thankfully). I don’t think that’s all that relevant to this very discussion, though.

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If it cures the problem, then yes.

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They came up with some proof.

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Neither of them cure cancer.

Fucking Regenerative Braking! I hate those free-lunching bastards!

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~ Scribbles notes with a smile - gathers the phrase into favourite comeback section ~

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Thing is, at the top of the pile of True Believers, there’s always someone makin’ a pile of money out of desperate peoples’ wallets.

Since time immemorial.

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