These clowns at CSICOP, and the rest of the so-called skeptic community, have been giving science and skepticism a bad name. Their skepticism only ever goes in one direction - it's never turned on the claims of institutional science, for example - and is really just a very dishonest way of defending one, very narrow ideological interpretation of "science". Why should science not be able to investigate the so-called paranormal, and follow the data wherever logic may lead? Instead certain conclusions are ruled out a priori, regardless of what the data says, which is not at all scientific.
A strong case can be made that in nowadays’ broken sciencescape the so-called paranormal research is the most rigorous of all—it has to, to have a shot at fending off the incessant attacks by zealous [not only] canines tasked with guarding the perimeter 😊
Indeed, but despite decades of doing their research to exacting procedural standards, achieving highly replicable results, and demonstrating statistical significance well beyond the usual threshold for acceptance, the field is still considered pseudoscience.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," the 'skeptics' say. At this point I find the claim that the skeptics are motivated by science to be quite extraordinary.
The paranormal is the only legitimate field for scientific enquiry. Consider what happens when science investigates the normal. All people have built in generations of experience dealing with the normal, a subtly nuanced, context sensitive, way of dealing with the normal, called common sense Scientific investigation of the normal discovers that the previous understanding of some part of the normal was not understood in sufficient detail, or with enough rigor and attempts the ham-fisted, child with his first color crayon, top down interventions from outside which we all have way too much experience with. The common-sense no longer works because the context in which it was evolved has been sexually assaulted in its eye socket. Neither does the scientific solution work because it came from the outside, knew nothing about the context, was not sensitive to any of the details, assuming of course that it wasn't corrupt and bought and paid for to produce some result regardless of what data said. So, Science isn't a delicate enough tool, or a trustworthy enough tool to ever fiddle with things that ordinary people know about and deal with in their daily lives.
The only legitimate areas for science then are: the unusual, the uncanny, the abnormal. Science's legitimate business is to take the paranormal and normalize it. To lay out in broad strokes an undiscovered country, not to remain forever the fiefdom of science but that ordinary people might be able to build houses and homes there. Science is only legitimate as a rough and ready pioneer as an engineer of domesticity it is a nightmare. As a boss 9-5 science is the worst. Science is ideal for going to the moon. Science is miserably inept at going to the grocery store. If Science would make us a rough map of how hauntings work that would be truly useful but for trying to fix the details of my interactions with my next door neighbor Science is a pest, rather a pestilence. If Science wants to tell us what kind of mask to wear in Challenger Deep we should humbly listen. But if Science tells us what kind of mask to wear to visit our grandmother we should kick the bums to the curb. **obviously written in my facsimile of the style of Chesterton and with the greatest love and respect for the same
An interesting part of the problem is the indoctrination against male intuition. Men, of whatever philosophical persuasion, in the modern world have as their real religion Epistemology. 'If I can't demonstrate it I can't act on it' is what I mean. We have been conditioned to think much less about what is true than about our grounds for believing the truth. But the part of the mind that compares and measures is not by any stretch the most perceptive or reliable. The obvious net effect of this idea is to paralyze men of principle while not hindering at all unscrupulous men, and I can't help if this is the root of the modern domination by the priestesses of nonsense. Those of us who care about truth must regain the ability to act unreflectedly on what we believe to be true or we will always be dominated by those who act unreflectedly on what they believe to be in their own best interest, and care nothing for truth or (genuine)altruism.
I made a similar point to this in the Tonic Discussions episode. The only legitimate definition of the paranormal is "that which is beyond current scientific understanding" ... which is precisely the domain, again almost by definition, in which scientific inquiry is most fruitful.
Legitimate field for scientific enquiry: theoretical framework. Exhibit A: higher symmetries --> quantamagazine.org/a-new-kind-of-symmetry-shakes-up-physics-20230418 🤸 Kinda re-evaluating scientific common sense, and then taking a logical step further made possible in newly-lit terrain.
🗨 Symmetry means fewer details to keep track of. That’s true whether you’re doing high-energy physics or laying bathroom tile.
🗨 Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other. ~~John Michael Greer
Amwd chimes in on evenly general plane:
🗨 when something really bad happens,[...] it doesn't come out of nowhere. Instead,[...] it built on a festering issue in the background most people had ignored. ~~A Midwestern Doctor
Good definitions! It is rather silly when you think about it: physics has no way of predicting anything except for super-specific, highly controlled, extremely limited experiments. It can't even predict chemistry, never mind actions of biological life. And yet we pretend everything can be reduced to it, and this should take precedence over the most common sense insights from our experience. This just one example...
It always baffles me how backwards is the common public misconception about complexity of sciences. Hard sciences: the very term puts us on the wrong path.
The right sequence is physics→chemistry→biology/physiology/medicine→psychology, none reducible to predecessor(s). Therefore I was soooo elated to learn from amwd about the great explanatory power of zeta-potential: for many bodily effects, chemphysics/physchemistry proves enough! 🤩
Given their enormous subjects, economy and sociology and politics occupy a realm of their own, hardly discernible at all to the myopic eye of science 'proper'. CAS (complex adaptive systems) may be the right way to categorise, but don't even begin to describe the dynamic fractal mess of intertwining intricate feedback loops.
Good essay, thanks! Too bad this organization couldn’t get all those shows about psychics and ghost hunters off the air and get the Spiritualist church disbanded. Then they might have a slight chance.
The Spiritualists cite scientific research on mediumship that proved it’s a real phenomenon. I know several good mediums who do it on a volunteer basis and the ACCURATE information they access is amazing. I have personally experienced telepathy and remote viewing, as well as mediumship—we all have these buried capabilities.
I think what the scientific materialism suppresses the most are our innate human abilities. We’re disconnected from who we really are. The Church did the same with the doctrine of dispensation, because empowered populaces fight back against manipulation & abuse. Can’t have that now, can we?
CSICOP also needs to work a lot harder on convincing the Pentagon that remote viewing is not real!
These clowns at CSICOP, and the rest of the so-called skeptic community, have been giving science and skepticism a bad name. Their skepticism only ever goes in one direction - it's never turned on the claims of institutional science, for example - and is really just a very dishonest way of defending one, very narrow ideological interpretation of "science". Why should science not be able to investigate the so-called paranormal, and follow the data wherever logic may lead? Instead certain conclusions are ruled out a priori, regardless of what the data says, which is not at all scientific.
Frankly, I think the term "skeptic" can be safely disposed of at this point.
I've thought, for a long time, that not having a name for the people indulging in it is a serious barrier to fighting scientism.
Which, as it happens, was the subject, just yesterday, of my very first non-reactive Note on Substack Notes: https://substack.com/profile/58430783-malcolm-ramsay/note/c-15679040
Seriously.
A strong case can be made that in nowadays’ broken sciencescape the so-called paranormal research is the most rigorous of all—it has to, to have a shot at fending off the incessant attacks by zealous [not only] canines tasked with guarding the perimeter 😊
Indeed, but despite decades of doing their research to exacting procedural standards, achieving highly replicable results, and demonstrating statistical significance well beyond the usual threshold for acceptance, the field is still considered pseudoscience.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," the 'skeptics' say. At this point I find the claim that the skeptics are motivated by science to be quite extraordinary.
The paranormal is the only legitimate field for scientific enquiry. Consider what happens when science investigates the normal. All people have built in generations of experience dealing with the normal, a subtly nuanced, context sensitive, way of dealing with the normal, called common sense Scientific investigation of the normal discovers that the previous understanding of some part of the normal was not understood in sufficient detail, or with enough rigor and attempts the ham-fisted, child with his first color crayon, top down interventions from outside which we all have way too much experience with. The common-sense no longer works because the context in which it was evolved has been sexually assaulted in its eye socket. Neither does the scientific solution work because it came from the outside, knew nothing about the context, was not sensitive to any of the details, assuming of course that it wasn't corrupt and bought and paid for to produce some result regardless of what data said. So, Science isn't a delicate enough tool, or a trustworthy enough tool to ever fiddle with things that ordinary people know about and deal with in their daily lives.
The only legitimate areas for science then are: the unusual, the uncanny, the abnormal. Science's legitimate business is to take the paranormal and normalize it. To lay out in broad strokes an undiscovered country, not to remain forever the fiefdom of science but that ordinary people might be able to build houses and homes there. Science is only legitimate as a rough and ready pioneer as an engineer of domesticity it is a nightmare. As a boss 9-5 science is the worst. Science is ideal for going to the moon. Science is miserably inept at going to the grocery store. If Science would make us a rough map of how hauntings work that would be truly useful but for trying to fix the details of my interactions with my next door neighbor Science is a pest, rather a pestilence. If Science wants to tell us what kind of mask to wear in Challenger Deep we should humbly listen. But if Science tells us what kind of mask to wear to visit our grandmother we should kick the bums to the curb. **obviously written in my facsimile of the style of Chesterton and with the greatest love and respect for the same
Good points. I wrote an article a while ago about how silly it often is when Science tries to mess with common sense: https://luctalks.substack.com/p/when-common-sense-trumps-science
Just read it. Very good stuff.
An interesting part of the problem is the indoctrination against male intuition. Men, of whatever philosophical persuasion, in the modern world have as their real religion Epistemology. 'If I can't demonstrate it I can't act on it' is what I mean. We have been conditioned to think much less about what is true than about our grounds for believing the truth. But the part of the mind that compares and measures is not by any stretch the most perceptive or reliable. The obvious net effect of this idea is to paralyze men of principle while not hindering at all unscrupulous men, and I can't help if this is the root of the modern domination by the priestesses of nonsense. Those of us who care about truth must regain the ability to act unreflectedly on what we believe to be true or we will always be dominated by those who act unreflectedly on what they believe to be in their own best interest, and care nothing for truth or (genuine)altruism.
I made a similar point to this in the Tonic Discussions episode. The only legitimate definition of the paranormal is "that which is beyond current scientific understanding" ... which is precisely the domain, again almost by definition, in which scientific inquiry is most fruitful.
Legitimate field for scientific enquiry: theoretical framework. Exhibit A: higher symmetries --> quantamagazine.org/a-new-kind-of-symmetry-shakes-up-physics-20230418 🤸 Kinda re-evaluating scientific common sense, and then taking a logical step further made possible in newly-lit terrain.
🗨 Symmetry means fewer details to keep track of. That’s true whether you’re doing high-energy physics or laying bathroom tile.
Former(* Archdruid:
🗨 Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other. ~~John Michael Greer
Amwd chimes in on evenly general plane:
🗨 when something really bad happens,[...] it doesn't come out of nowhere. Instead,[...] it built on a festering issue in the background most people had ignored. ~~A Midwestern Doctor
--
(* assuming there’s such a thing 😇
Good definitions! It is rather silly when you think about it: physics has no way of predicting anything except for super-specific, highly controlled, extremely limited experiments. It can't even predict chemistry, never mind actions of biological life. And yet we pretend everything can be reduced to it, and this should take precedence over the most common sense insights from our experience. This just one example...
You can only manage what is measured 😉
It always baffles me how backwards is the common public misconception about complexity of sciences. Hard sciences: the very term puts us on the wrong path.
The right sequence is physics→chemistry→biology/physiology/medicine→psychology, none reducible to predecessor(s). Therefore I was soooo elated to learn from amwd about the great explanatory power of zeta-potential: for many bodily effects, chemphysics/physchemistry proves enough! 🤩
Given their enormous subjects, economy and sociology and politics occupy a realm of their own, hardly discernible at all to the myopic eye of science 'proper'. CAS (complex adaptive systems) may be the right way to categorise, but don't even begin to describe the dynamic fractal mess of intertwining intricate feedback loops.
That's really neat and on point daiva. It won't let me reply to you so I put my reply to you here.
Good essay, thanks! Too bad this organization couldn’t get all those shows about psychics and ghost hunters off the air and get the Spiritualist church disbanded. Then they might have a slight chance.
The Spiritualists cite scientific research on mediumship that proved it’s a real phenomenon. I know several good mediums who do it on a volunteer basis and the ACCURATE information they access is amazing. I have personally experienced telepathy and remote viewing, as well as mediumship—we all have these buried capabilities.
I think what the scientific materialism suppresses the most are our innate human abilities. We’re disconnected from who we really are. The Church did the same with the doctrine of dispensation, because empowered populaces fight back against manipulation & abuse. Can’t have that now, can we?
CSICOP also needs to work a lot harder on convincing the Pentagon that remote viewing is not real!