[ Long ] A Philosophy of Science v. Pseudo-Science

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aghogday
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21 Mar 2015, 4:38 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
eric76 wrote:
It's time to see whether or not the "foe" filters can really filter out posts from specific people.

They can't. They'll just stop them appearing in the "topic review" below the box where you compose your posts.

Can we try to avoid provoking aghogday?


THANKS.

I did graduate at the top of my class in high school, and college, with three degrees.

When folks here attempt to insult my intelligence, as is already recorded here time and time, again, I 'fight' back with wit.

I read 10 to 15 times faster than the average human being, per my form of Hyperlexic Autism, and type up to around 130 words per minute, if adequately focused, as a life long pianist, per that type of specific physical skill.

IN other words, this is child's play for me requiring little expenditure of time or effort.

Honestly, it's much easier for the folks who attempt to intellectually bully me here, to avoid that, as I am both a big boy in physical stature, and standard IQ measure, always at the top of my class then and now.

I was just a wimp THEN, WITH LIMITED very high standard type I.Q. INTELLIGENCE, and no longer have that basic human problem in real life, as I am actually technically normally viewed in real life now, as an alpha male, which does provide empirical benefits that I have already provided here, ad-nauseam, in empirical evidence, per attracting hundreds of gorgeous twenty-something year old women, and THAT TYPE OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IS well worth attaining for human BASIC physical success, FOR OBVIOUS HUMAN REASONS.

I just have more to offer than most people can handle.

Treat me with respect, and the answers will be much shorter.

So again, thank you, with a voice of reason here, instead of the lowest level of critical thinking that is insulting someone else's intelligence, particularly when one cannot even fly that high to begin with..:)

I AM ENCOURAGED by the type of intelligence you offer here, friend, Walrus.


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21 Mar 2015, 4:50 pm

Thank you for your kind words aghogday.

ag, I get that you love finding creative ways to express yourself, particularly after overcoming what you have, but it does make it quite difficult for other people to have conversations when you make really long, flowery posts. Do you see that?

If you want to effectively communicate your vision, you're going to need to change your posting style.

If you view your posts as perfect works of art that should not be compromised, or else think you can't communicate more effectively than the way you are, then that's fine... but could you maybe consider the wishes of other people before you make one of those posts in an active discussion? As it is, you completely dominate conversations. Your hyper-expression makes it harder for the rest of us to express ourselves!

Again, it's great that you're a dance legend with super human strength who all the young people adore, but posting such in every thread about epistemology just makes you seem self centred. I know you're a joyous, loving person, but that's not the impression everyone is getting.



aghogday
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21 Mar 2015, 4:54 pm

eric76 wrote:
Kiprobalhato wrote:
Sometimes when someone posts something, I can't figure out if they were replying to the post immediately prior to theirs or to someone else earlier.

One solution is to cut out all but the specific point to which we are replying. Another that I've seen elsewhere is to just cut out the entire quote but leave the quote marks (like I'm doing here) so that it helps make it a bit more clear.

Edit:

It doesn't look like an empty quote helps much here.


Hmm.. I think she or he, is talking about my long a** posts, AND I respectfully agree.

They are long enough by themselves, when I am more fully motivated to explore topics..:)

And truly when SOME of the minds here, attempt to Intellectually insult me they are just going to get MORE INSTINCT, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES, (ISA'S) FROM ME..:)

But considering, I read 10 to 15 times fast than the average human being, AND HAVE REALLY FAST SCROLLING FINGERS, you can post a novel, and that will NOT be an annoyance to me, personally, at all. :)

IT'S FUN TO BE me as no one ever truly annoys me, as I have the capacity AND FUNCTIONALITY of human mind and body in balance NOT TO BE ANNOYED, PER REGULATION of human emotion, like A FRIGGING real life calm and peaceful YOGI always in the eye of whatever storm is around my environment on or offline..:)

And that my friend is SUPER KOOL LIFE, IN ACTION, MORE THAN WORDS.

But seriously it's time for me to go dancing in real life now, so have a great now..:)

And do continue on without me, if I am not the continuing topic here, instead of whatever it is y'all wanna talk about now, instead of me..;)


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aghogday
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21 Mar 2015, 5:00 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
Thank you for your kind words aghogday.

ag, I get that you love finding creative ways to express yourself, particularly after overcoming what you have, but it does make it quite difficult for other people to have conversations when you make really long, flowery posts. Do you see that?

If you want to effectively communicate your vision, you're going to need to change your posting style.

If you view your posts as perfect works of art that should not be compromised, or else think you can't communicate more effectively than the way you are, then that's fine... but could you maybe consider the wishes of other people before you make one of those posts in an active discussion? As it is, you completely dominate conversations. Your hyper-expression makes it harder for the rest of us to express ourselves!

Again, it's great that you're a dance legend with super human strength who all the young people adore, but posting such in every thread about epistemology just makes you seem self centred. I know you're a joyous, loving person, but that's not the impression everyone is getting.


Hopefully my previous posts will explain that well enough, without going into further excruciating detail here..:)

But never the less..;)

Dude I've been around the block about 'a million times' in real life with real flesh and blood people, close to a
hundred thousand of 'em, in decades of real life, in the real flesh and blood world OF LIFE.

I know what I am doing here, all the time, now.

Autism per cognitive empathy, is an issue long past gone of mine, decades ago, in fact.

And like I said, treat me with respect, and one will not get novels of me back.

It would not be correct for me to just let it go, without a lengthy response,

as truly there are some vulnerable people here

that people who think they are smart

TREAT LIKE CRAP.

AND I DON'T LIKE BULLIES OF THE PHYSICAL OR INTELLECTUAL variety,

AND THEY ARE no challenge to me ever, to defeat, in whatever way I determine
works best..:)


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eric76
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21 Mar 2015, 7:28 pm

And now to get somewhat back on topic:

Everyone is familiar with E=mc², but fewer with E²=m²c⁴+p²c² or it's more illuminating version E²=m²+p² that seperates the energy into the portion due to the equivalence between the rest mass and energy and the portion due to momentum of the relativistic particle. It is actually quite easy to show that the two are equivalent.

Let's distinguish between rest mass as m₀. Relativistic mass is usually expressed as m sub r, but I don't know if there is a sub r available here so let's use mₜ as relativistic mass.

Also, use β to denote the ratio between the velocity of the mass and the speed of light. β=v/c. Then the rest mass and the relativistic mass is related by mₜ=m₀/√(1-β²).

Then,

E² = mₜ²c⁴
= (m₀/√(1-β²))² c⁴
= m₀²c⁴/(1-β²)
= m₀²c⁴(1/(1-β²))
= m₀²c⁴((1-β²+β²)/(1-β²))
= m₀²c⁴(1+β²/(1-β²))
= m₀²c⁴ + m₀²c⁴β²/(1-β²)
= m₀²c⁴ + (m₀²/(1-β²))c⁴β²
= m₀²c⁴ + mₜ²c⁴β²
= m₀²c⁴ + mₜ²v²c² (Since β=v/c, βc=v)
= m₀²c⁴ + p²c² (Since p=mₜv)

Or in geometrized units and using m to refer to the rest mass rather than m₀:

E²=m²+p².



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22 Mar 2015, 3:54 am

eric76 wrote:

Everyone is familiar with E=mc², but fewer with E²=m²c⁴+p²c² or it's more illuminating version E²=m²+p²



More to the point those who feel threatened by E=mc2 (how did you get the 2 in the correct position) do not bother searching for the answer to "how do photons have energy when they have no mass?" instead they rather stupidly assume that they have found a flaw in such an almost universally accepted eqaution, and that all the worlds physicists have either missed what their brilliance can see, or have simply ignored.it in the vain hope that a cattle farmer in Western Australia won't notice it.


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22 Mar 2015, 4:50 am

I have a copy of Einstein's own description of his version of Relativity, and I've read it at least 4 times in the last 40 years hoping each time that I will catch on to how it all works. Each time I was still left uneasy and unconvinced, particularly about General Relativity and the bent, squashed spacetime bit. Since then we have got this computer thingy and I was very pleased indeed to find that there are several much more qualified than me who can identify and describe some flaws and inconsistencies that I really only had a gut feeling about.

However, none of that will be of any interest to those who simply jump on popularised band wagons and sing whatever tune is the flavour of the moment.

Sure, science is pseudoscience if it is inconvenient to the ideology, and pseudoscience is science if it augments the ideology. Observation, reason, experiment and all that are just nuisance things that religious cranks put in the road of the wonderful dream and have nothing to do with it; eh?



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22 Mar 2015, 5:17 am

David you clearly have not bothered to read Eric's post or try to understand the Math. You also clearly are not aware of the many experiments which have verified these equations. Or are these experiments simply frauds perpetrated by rich scientists trying to hide the truth from the likes of your good self.

If you are so certain that you are correct how about you falsifying the above equations? Or showing reasonable evidence that the experiments such as observing the increased life span of Muons, to be fraudulent.

I will accept either your own calculations, verified of course , or the work of scientists with access to the relevant equipment (some how I doubt you have a particle accelerator buried in a paddock under your cattle).


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22 Mar 2015, 11:26 am

DentArthurDent wrote:
eric76 wrote:

Everyone is familiar with E=mc², but fewer with E²=m²c⁴+p²c² or it's more illuminating version E²=m²+p²



More to the point those who feel threatened by E=mc2 (how did you get the 2 in the correct position) do not bother searching for the answer to "how do photons have energy when they have no mass?" instead they rather stupidly assume that they have found a flaw in such an almost universally accepted eqaution, and that all the worlds physicists have either missed what their brilliance can see, or have simply ignored.it in the vain hope that a cattle farmer in Western Australia won't notice it.


For the special characters, I found a useful page of unicode representations of math and other symbols and cut and paste them into the wrongplanet response page. There are a number of such pages, but many are not as useful. If I find the one I did use again, I'll have to remember to save a link to it.

Sometimes I think that the Internet doesn't help. It used to be that if you wanted to find information on Relativity, you basically found either a course or a book on the subject and studied it. Our sources of information were probably more reliable even if much harder to find. Today all someone has to do is to search for the terms and click on a link and are then stuck with web pages on the subject that may or may not have any credibility at all. Instead of some good source of information, it is often easier to find things where someone who has no expertise on the subject at all but who wishes to be an expert and so posts nonsensical criticisms to prove that they are smarter than all the scientists in the world.

On those occasions where someone did grab onto one item and try to use it to "refute" the entire science it was generally for religious reasons and often either about evolution or the Big Bang (which they often confused with evolution).

When I was started reading about physics and relativity in the 1960s, I always assumed that I wasn't going to understand everything, at least not immediately. Just because I didn't understand something (or maybe because nobody understood something) didn't mean that the theory was wrong. I just meant that my understanding was less than perfect. So I never fell into the trap of reading something where someone with no understanding of the subject grasped onto one minor detail and arbitrarily claimed that it was all wrong.

I remember reading about how the photo has Energy but no rest mass in the 1960s or early 1970s, but to me it was a sign that there was future work to do, not that the science was wrong.

Today, when I see people grasp onto one minor point and try to use it to bring down an entire theory, I figure that they are just about surely a poser who understands little or nothing about science. I want to know what their credentials are -- if they really are an expert on the subject, then they might be onto something, but if they are not experts on the subject, then the odds that their criticisms are almost certainly wrong.



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22 Mar 2015, 4:31 pm

Fnord wrote:
the concept of the self-taught researcher toiling away in complete social isolation arriving at a discovery that redefines every aspect of science is nothing more than a myth.
One thing that makes self-learning a difficult way to learn science deeply is that there is little direction to the study. It is very easy to go down paths that aren't likely to lead anywhere. Also, if the student finds something difficult, he is probably more likely to skip over it and thus have a less than complete understanding of what may be some of the most vitally important parts. Also, a misunderstanding of the material is more likely to not be corrected. The result is less than desirable expertise.

And if the student chooses to learn the material from a poorly chosen source, he is more likely to end up woefully inexpert.

In other words, it's not that it can't happen, but it isn't likely to happen. The most likely exception is for someone who already has a great deal of expertise in a closely related field.



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23 Mar 2015, 8:24 am

DentArthurDent wrote:
More to the point those who feel threatened by E=mc2 (how did you get the 2 in the correct position) do not bother searching for the answer to "how do photons have energy when they have no mass?" instead they rather stupidly assume that they have found a flaw in such an almost universally accepted eqaution, and that all the worlds physicists have either missed what their brilliance can see, or have simply ignored.it in the vain hope that a cattle farmer in Western Australia won't notice it.


This applies in all fields of bunkum: A certain type of mental illness leads a person who has no formal education to believe with absolute certainty that he has discovered that all the real experts are wrong. He finds support from other people like himself. You cannot reason with him because he rejects all evidence, and most often will cite one other crackpot like himself who has self-published a massively-flawed (and never peer-reviewed) study, or who has a web page that cites non-existent studies, or even that blatantly lies about what real researchers have published. He turns science upside down by insisting that the one outlying study is more valid than the hundred well-conducted studies. He doesn't do real research because he does not understand the real explanations.

Often he has plans for a free-energy machine which he is convinced the government has conspired to deny to the world. Never mind that real free-energy machines (solar panels, wind chargers, etc.) are often subsidized by the government.

Other times he is less focused, merely insisting that the whole world is wrong, but with no practical value to his "discovery." Sometimes he can be found in a homeless shelter telling his theories to anyone who will listen. I worked in a homeless shelter for five years and met people like this. They were very disturbed. I found that just listening to them and nodding from time to time seemed to give them a little temporary peace. (I'm not a shrink, but sometimes just listening is helpful.) I kind of liked these guys. The ones that make me angry are the ones who are functional enough to actually build a contraption and sell it to gullible folks, scamming them out of hard-earned money. The internet is full of such charlatans selling perpetual-motion machines and the like.

A good general rule is never buy anything from someone who claims the government doesn't want you to know about their invention. And never believe anyone who claims that all peer-reviewed journals are conspiring to prevent their own brilliance from being recognized.



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23 Mar 2015, 8:35 am

This ^^^ FTW.

Very well said, Daniel; and very accurate, as well.

Had I seen this before submitting a revision to to first post of this thread, I would have included some of what you've stated so plainly (after getting your permission, of course).

May I include what you said in future revisions?

Eric and Dent ... same question?



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23 Mar 2015, 11:05 am

Fnord wrote:
This ^^^ FTW.

Very well said, Daniel; and very accurate, as well.

Had I seen this before submitting a revision to to first post of this thread, I would have included some of what you've stated so plainly (after getting your permission, of course).

May I include what you said in future revisions?

Eric and Dent ... same question?


It's fine with me.



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23 Mar 2015, 5:55 pm

If you are asking me, can you can include some of what I have said, to be quite honest I would be honoured. I have a great deal of respect for what you have to say.

@Daniel, same as Fnord well said


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23 Mar 2015, 6:07 pm

And I thank you eric76 for illuminating me on the concept of geometrical units, showing that I still have a pretty rigid, sophomoric grasp of math as applied to physics.


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23 Mar 2015, 11:33 pm

General heads-up that the OP has since updated and revised his OP and has allowed me to post it. When replying, please consider this version in place of the original from 2013.

Fnord wrote:
Here is something that I've been working on for a while - indicators that an extraordinary claim may be delusional, irrational, or otherwise refutable. I may have posted this previously, in whole or in part, but recent pseudo-scientific claims have inspired me to post it again.

This is a work in progress.

1) The claim is first made through the popular media, (i.e., blogs, tabloids, social websites, et cetera), word-of-mouth, and rarely - if ever - through an established scientific institution.

• Peer-group review is foundational to the integrity of scientific research. If a claimant is unwilling to expose his or her theories and experiments to the scrutiny of other scientists, then the claim itself is unlikely to stand up to any serious level of scientific scrutiny, and the claim is very likely to be invalid.

• Presenting a claim in such a way as to embellish on its economic aspects ("Investors could make millions!") and that lack specific details of how the discovery was made may indicate that the research itself is incomplete, and that the researcher in only looking for more funding.

• Presenting a claim in such a way that the alleged poverty of the claimant is revealed implies that the true focus of the claim is on the acquisition of money, and not on any aspects of the claim itself.

2) The person making the claim may also claim that a powerful group (i.e., "Big Pharma", "Big Science", "Military-Industrial Complex", "New World Order", et cetera) is trying to discredit or suppress evidence for the claim.

• They may claim that influential people fear that the discovery itself may change the balance of political power and wealth, and thus overturn society.

• They may claim that they have taken the ethical/moral high ground, and further claim that it is their critics that are spreading the lies and deceptions.

• They may claim that the scientific establishment dupes ordinary people into thinking they are doing something for greater good, and that these ordinary people they have been lied to and deceived.

• They may claim that scientists engaged in another line of research are in direct competition, and do not want their own funding jeopardized.

• They may claim that the "failure" of the scientific establishment to adequately explain an anomalous effect or event that is key to the claimant's own claim is taken as proof for the truth of some unsupported fantastical claim.

• They may claim that powerful politicians that are heavily invested in the current Military-Industrial complex want to maintain the status-quo, at least until they can get their hands on the discovery.

• They may claim that a conspiracy, which has the stated purpose of suppressing "Forbidden Knowledge" (i.e. "Things Man Was Not Meant To Know"), is also trying to suppress any knowledge of the claimant's alleged discovery.

3) The person making the claim provides unclear evidence (vague or incomplete "proof") that is open to widely subjective interpretation.

• Blurred photographs are a stock-in-trade of people making para-normal claims, and for those claiming the existence of mythical creatures. If the objects depicted in the photograph have no distinct or definable form, then the more likely cause is poor photography or a broken camera.

• Previously discredited documentation from pseudo-scientists is presented as "proof" of the new claim.

• "Expert Sources" are cited that can not be verified - either because they don't exist, they are conflated from several unrelated sources, or they simply don't have the proper credentials to qualify them as experts in the field under discussion.

4) The person making the claim provides evidence that is purely anecdotal, circumstantial, or that involves convoluted arguments.

• The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. Just because 'everybody' reports the same effects, it does not make the claim any more valid.

• Anecdotes are used to elicit and inspire an emotional reaction to, and thus an emotional connection with, the claims being made - such claims include the existence of astral projection, ghosts, precognition, telepathy, and other 'paranormal' activities.

• The claimant may redefine specialized words and terms to suit his claim, and then use these redefined words in a vain attempt to 'validate" his claim.

• Circumstantial evidence, while able to bring a murder conviction in a court of law, is useless when the preponderance of factual material evidence is more certain than any convoluted set of purely coincidental circumstances.

• Effects that are indistinguishable from random events can be 'revealed' only by the application of tortuous and questionable statistical methods.

5) The person making the original claim may also claim that the claim is valid because many people, both past and present, believe that the claim is valid.

Example: The myth persists that tens of thousands of years ago, before the last ice age, and before history was written down, humanity (or what passed for humanity at the time) produced remedies of miraculous power for every ailment, unmatched by anything modern science has ever produced, and that modern science can not even begin to fathom. Part of the myth includes what merchants of quackery call "Alternative Medicine" and "Unknown Forces". Since there is no written record of any medical discovery or method older than a couple of thousand years, there can be no verification that any "alternative medicine" existed before that time, or that it even worked.

• If there are no surviving records, then it is safe to assume that those records never existed in the first place, no matter how strong or popular the belief in them may be.

• Mere belief proves nothing.

• Even when the population of "believers" is exponentiated by several factors, the shear magnitude of the believing population still proves nothing.

6) The person making the claim has performed his or her 'research' in isolation, and without support from the scientific establishment. Another myth persists that the only real science taking place is in hidden laboratories where misunderstood and uneducated geniuses toil 'round the clock unlocking the secrets of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

• The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life.

• Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists, past and present, collaborating and communicating from many locations.

7) The person making the claim may also propose that only previously unknown laws of nature or supernatural forces can explain his or her experimental results.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' work only to support the claim.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' can only be assumed, but not measured.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' can not be expressed in mathematical terms, because (to the claimant) maths are used by the scientific establishment to obscure its data and make the data more difficult for "real" scientists to understand and use.

• The failure of accept science to explain an effect or event adequately is taken as proof for the truth of some unsupported fantastical claim (e.g., "Argument from Ignorance" or "Elenchi Ignoratum").

• The claimant presents as 'evidence' events that are indistinguishable from random events, and that can not be reliably predicted or reproduced by others.

• If the effects of the theoretical existence of a previously unknown natural law are indistinguishable from the effects of the non-existence of a previously unknown natural law, then the law in question itself is invalid.

8 ) The claimant has an emotional tie to the claim, such that valid material evidence - or the people that present it - that contradicts or negates the claim in whole or in part are denounced in some way.

• The claimant declares or implies that only someone intimately familiar with the research could possibly understand its significance.

• The claimant declares or implies that no one else understands science as much as he to begin with.

• The claimant declares or implies that he is being 'bullied' by all of the people who disagree with him.

• The claimant's defense may seem to take on all the religious fervor of a revival meeting.

• The claimant declares or implies that anyone who expresses skepticism is either ignorant of 'real' science, or is a shill for those who would keep news of the discovery suppressed.

• The claimant declares or implies that anyone who expresses skepticism is directed to look up the data for themselves. "I have done my homework" is a mantra for this form of passive-aggressive attack.

• When presented with overwhelming opposition to his claims, the claimant will resort to ad hoc "reasoning" to explain why he believes that the skeptics are out to get him (e.g. he expresses paranoiac opinions).

• The claimant will attack the credibility of anyone who exposes the fallacious nature of his claims. These attacks will usually include out-of-context quotes, insults, personal attacks, and assorted other unfounded claims (unrelated to the original claim) that bring into question the education, ethics, knowledge, intelligence, and moral character of his critics.

• Friends of the claimant will often chime in with their own reasons why critics 'should' believe the claimant. These reasons often have little - if anything - to do with the claim itself.

• The randomized double-blind test is the most important means by which we learn what works and what doesn't, because it eliminates any emotional preference for one outcome over another.

9) The person making the extraordinary claim will seem to place greater importance on being believed than in presenting any valid or verifiable evidence to support the claim.

• He will present all manner of excuses why he can not provide mathematical proof or a material demonstration of his claim.

• He may claim that demonstrations and maths will not convince those do not wish to believe.

• He may claim that no one else would understand the significance of a demonstration or a mathematical description.

• He may claim that the world is not yet ready for the full impact of his discovery.

• He may claim that the only valid evidence for his discovery is arrived at intuitively, and only after viewing a ranting video or reading a rambling document.

• He may claim that an obvious conspiracy theory is not a conspircacy theory, and that he is not

10) Finally, the claimant may directly or indirectly attack those who successfully refute the claim.

• The claimant will declare that he is not attacking anyone, but only defending himself from the hostile intentions of others.

• The claimant dismisses the refutation solely on the basis of some irrelevant fact or supposition about the refuting party.

• The claimant points out (rightly or wrongly) that the refuting party is in circumstances such that they are disposed to take a particular position (i.e., they are on a competitor's payroll, they are voluntary shills, they have a personal or intimate relationship with a member of the opposition, et cetera).

• The claimant may offer a link to an on-line document or video that "explains everything", but which really has an embedded "Trojan Horse" or other malware program that that will damage your computer or make it completely inoperable.

...

Well, that's about all that I have so far. As I said, this is a work in progress, and you are all free to believe it, ignore it, or challenge it, each as you see fit.

Believing in false science allows the comfort of having something to believe in without the discomfort of actually having to learn something.


_________________
הייתי צוללת עכשיו למים
הכי, הכי עמוקים
לא לשמוע כלום
לא לדעת כלום
וזה הכל אהובי, זה הכל.