The Taboo of Psi
05 Apr 2011, 4:05 pm
cdfox7 wrote:
Vexcalibur wrote:
...The concept of giant red horses that spit fire and live in the sky and are the source of all wheat in the world was "crack-brained unsubstantiated speculation" during that time and today as well. Just because the earth turned out to be round it does not mean we should believe everything claimed since then. ...
Conclusions can only be made based on historical & current knowledge. Using future knowledge is simply speculation.
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05 Apr 2011, 4:49 pm
cdfox7 wrote:
Vexcalibur wrote:
...The concept of giant red horses that spit fire and live in the sky and are the source of all wheat in the world was "crack-brained unsubstantiated speculation" during that time and today as well. Just because the earth turned out to be round it does not mean we should believe everything claimed since then. ...
Conclusions can only be made based on historical & current knowledge. Using future knowledge is simply speculation.
You miss Vex's point, so I will enlist the help of Carl Sagan to express it in another way: "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Basically, proponents of Psi are divided into scammers and gullible idiots. If you aren't making money off peddling this nonsense, then you aren't a scammer.
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05 Apr 2011, 5:25 pm
Orwell wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
Vexcalibur wrote:
...The concept of giant red horses that spit fire and live in the sky and are the source of all wheat in the world was "crack-brained unsubstantiated speculation" during that time and today as well. Just because the earth turned out to be round it does not mean we should believe everything claimed since then. ...
Conclusions can only be made based on historical & current knowledge. Using future knowledge is simply speculation.
You miss Vex's point, so I will enlist the help of Carl Sagan to express it in another way: "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Basically, proponents of Psi are divided into scammers and gullible idiots. If you aren't making money off peddling this nonsense, then you aren't a scammer.
I understand the points made. Now this is getting in the reams of faith/belief vs fact/logic.
What I was pointing to in my last comment is that we don't have the right tools right now to logical proof Psi, in the future we might.
yes now scammers are motivated by greed tho the "gullible idiots" are motivated by the fool's journey for crazy wisdom.
05 Apr 2011, 5:35 pm
Freud would refer to your previous comments as an example of projection. You reject the use of possible future knowledge as mere speculation, and immediately turn around and use postulated future discoveries as a reason why we should take psi seriously.
The issue with psi is not merely the lack of a proposed mechanism that might be discovered later. After all, Wegener did not suggest a mechanism for his hypothesis of continental drift. But he did provide evidence. Proponents of Psi have not. They have not even pointed to a measurable phenomena that needs explaining. It's all BS and wishful thinking. The fact is that there is no evidence, physical or otherwise, for psi, and no reason why we should expect there to be. Logic (through the principle of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor) would dictate that we discard the notion, since it is useless and unsupported. So you are correct in stating that this is an issue of faith/belief vs fact/logic, but you have entirely misunderstood which side is which.
_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
05 Apr 2011, 6:05 pm
Orwell wrote:
Freud would refer to your previous comments as an example of projection. You reject the use of possible future knowledge as mere speculation, and immediately turn around and use postulated future discoveries as a reason why we should take psi seriously.
The issue with psi is not merely the lack of a proposed mechanism that might be discovered later. After all, Wegener did not suggest a mechanism for his hypothesis of continental drift. But he did provide evidence. Proponents of Psi have not. They have not even pointed to a measurable phenomena that needs explaining. It's all BS and wishful thinking. The fact is that there is no evidence, physical or otherwise, for psi, and no reason why we should expect there to be. Logic (through the principle of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor) would dictate that we discard the notion, since it is useless and unsupported. So you are correct in stating that this is an issue of faith/belief vs fact/logic, but you have entirely misunderstood which side is which.
The issue with psi is not merely the lack of a proposed mechanism that might be discovered later. After all, Wegener did not suggest a mechanism for his hypothesis of continental drift. But he did provide evidence. Proponents of Psi have not. They have not even pointed to a measurable phenomena that needs explaining. It's all BS and wishful thinking. The fact is that there is no evidence, physical or otherwise, for psi, and no reason why we should expect there to be. Logic (through the principle of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor) would dictate that we discard the notion, since it is useless and unsupported. So you are correct in stating that this is an issue of faith/belief vs fact/logic, but you have entirely misunderstood which side is which.
The principle of parsimony has had its fare share to critics Einstein being one of them:
Quote:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Your Freud comment can be seen as a counter-reaction to my comment, so was that an example of counter-transference?
ZeroGravitas
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05 Apr 2011, 6:21 pm
Quote:
If multiple models of natural law make exactly the same testable predictions, they are equivalent and there is no need for parsimony to choose one that is preferred. For example, Newtonian, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. Physicists have no interest in using Occam’s razor to say the other two are wrong. Likewise, there is no demand for simplicity principles arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics. Science often does not demand arbitration or selection criteria between models which make the same testable predictions. source.
In what way does psi offer anywhere near an equivalent ability to produce testable predictions?
Scientists have often had to concede to more complex models when experimental evidence falsified the simpler model favored by Occam's razor. In these cases, the actual state of affairs could have been simpler, as the evidence and theories suggested at the time. But they weren't. Proteins do not encode genetic information, DNA does, etc. Einstein stated exactly how science works.
Psi "researchers," in contrast, have never proffered a model, let alone one which yields empirically testable predictions.
Arguing about the use of Occam's razor as it is applied within science, as opposed to psi, is much like comparing the results of adult humans and chimpanzees on the same mathematics test.
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05 Apr 2011, 6:54 pm
cdfox7 wrote:
The principle of parsimony has had its fare share to critics Einstein being one of them:
Quote:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
In what universe is that quote a rejection of parsimony? It says exactly the same thing as Occam did.
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WAR IS PEACE
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05 Apr 2011, 6:54 pm
ZeroGravitas wrote:
Quote:
If multiple models of natural law make exactly the same testable predictions, they are equivalent and there is no need for parsimony to choose one that is preferred. For example, Newtonian, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. Physicists have no interest in using Occam’s razor to say the other two are wrong. Likewise, there is no demand for simplicity principles arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics. Science often does not demand arbitration or selection criteria between models which make the same testable predictions. source.
In what way does psi offer anywhere near an equivalent ability to produce testable predictions?
Scientists have often had to concede to more complex models when experimental evidence falsified the simpler model favored by Occam's razor. In these cases, the actual state of affairs could have been simpler, as the evidence and theories suggested at the time. But they weren't. Proteins do not encode genetic information, DNA does, etc. Einstein stated exactly how science works.
Psi "researchers," in contrast, have never proffered a model, let alone one which yields empirically testable predictions.
Arguing about the use of Occam's razor as it is applied within science, as opposed to psi, is much like comparing the results of adult humans and chimpanzees on the same mathematics test.
Psi researchers use a mix of psychology research methodologies as well as the empirical. With using them methods brings the questions of validity, which fuels the questions about test results & reporting. The use of social science & scientific methods to model phenomena that's currently beyond the scope of scientific knowledge is the fundamental issue with parapsychology.
05 Apr 2011, 7:05 pm
Orwell wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
The principle of parsimony has had its fare share to critics Einstein being one of them:
Quote:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
In what universe is that quote a rejection of parsimony? It says exactly the same thing as Occam did.
He was referring to the overuse of Occam
ZeroGravitas
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05 Apr 2011, 7:05 pm
cdfox7 wrote:
Psi researchers use a mix of psychology research methodologies as well as the empirical.
This implies that these "psychology research methodologies" are not empirical. Otherwise you would have just said "Psi researchers use empirically-tested psychological models" or some such. Maybe you meant something like "physics-based"?
The word "empirical" means:
Quote:
derived from experiment and observation rather than theory
This implies that these "psychology research methodologies" are not grounded in experiment and observation.
This is a lot like saying that I can make a power plant using a rubber band, with supplementary power provided by a fusion reactor. One of them is worthless, and the other is doing all the work. Except in the case of psi, the actually meaningful "empirical" parts are actively disproving the non-empirical notions.
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05 Apr 2011, 7:22 pm
ZeroGravitas wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
Psi researchers use a mix of psychology research methodologies as well as the empirical.
This implies that these "psychology research methodologies" are not empirical. Otherwise you would have just said "Psi researchers use empirically-tested psychological models" or some such. Maybe you meant something like "physics-based"?
The word "empirical" means:
Quote:
derived from experiment and observation rather than theory
This implies that these "psychology research methodologies" are not grounded in experiment and observation.
This is a lot like saying that I can make a power plant using a rubber band, with supplementary power provided by a fusion reactor. One of them is worthless, and the other is doing all the work. Except in the case of psi, the actually meaningful "empirical" parts are actively disproving the non-empirical notions.
I made an grammatical mistake in which via deconstruction of its semantics had changed the meaning of the message.
What I was trying to say was that the current methodologies uses in psi which have taken from other fields, are unsuitable to provide creditable research.
05 Apr 2011, 7:36 pm
cdfox7 wrote:
Orwell wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
The principle of parsimony has had its fare share to critics Einstein being one of them:
Quote:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
In what universe is that quote a rejection of parsimony? It says exactly the same thing as Occam did.
He was referring to the overuse of Occam
No, he wasn't. That Einstein quote is just a restatement of Occam's Razor. Occam's original formulation was "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." The two sayings express identically the same meaning. I can assure you that neither Einstein nor any other scientist rejects the importance of searching for parsimonious explanations.
_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
05 Apr 2011, 8:09 pm
Orwell wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
Orwell wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
The principle of parsimony has had its fare share to critics Einstein being one of them:
Quote:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
In what universe is that quote a rejection of parsimony? It says exactly the same thing as Occam did.
He was referring to the overuse of Occam
No, he wasn't. That Einstein quote is just a restatement of Occam's Razor. Occam's original formulation was "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." The two sayings express identically the same meaning. I can assure you that neither Einstein nor any other scientist rejects the importance of searching for parsimonious explanations.
Its just a rule of thumb. Heuristics have the pitfall of not achieving its goals if and only if its data done not match its outcomes.
The Inventor's paradox may be a more useful rule of thumb to use with psi.
