Skepticism, Skeptics & Debunkers

Thanks to a post by Perry at the 'Ships Propulsion' thread, I've came to learn about these skeptics: http://www.thincs.org/ I'm amazed about how everything is put in doubt nowadays. Where is the elusive truth...?

As we are discussing climate skepticism at a couple of threads in these forums, I wondered what other matters do have strong skeptics movements. Googling for the word 'skeptics' brought in 4.010.000 results. How to swim in that sea? I'm lost.

Let's beging lerning about skepticism. A first approach here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism

From there:

Activist skepticism
"Activist skeptics, self-described "debunkers" are a subset of scientific skeptics who aim to expose in public what they see as the truth behind specific extraordinary claims. Debunkers may publish books, air TV programs, create websites, or use other means to advocate their message. In some cases they may challenge claimants outright or even stage elaborate hoaxes to prove their point, such as Project Alpha."

I propose this thread to discuss about skepticisms, skeptics, debunkers and the like.

So what is your favourite skeptic-debunker or what is your favourite skepticism theme?

Cheers.

 

Isn't it, - a Sceptic, - just someone who says "no" to something someone else has postulated? - - - (my dictionary in this computer -notebook- recognises "septic" - how well informed of colloquial Australian English...) - - - - Rhyming slang for "septic tank" = "Yank"....

This is presented wearing my erudite "titfer" or "tit-for-tat" = "hat"

 

Guillermo
We can even relate this to boat design and marketing hype

Brian (Masalai)
It’s thinking about what someone tells you and looking for evidence that it is apparently correct. Many social beliefs and urban myths abound simply because we are often not skeptical enough.

Our natural response is to believe what we are told. We learn from experience or education to be skeptical. Children lack skepticism and are easily indoctrinated or preyed upon.
Many adults are very gullible and are easily targeted for financial fraud because they lack skepticism. The captive Princess scams we get in our emails have been running since Victorian times and still people get taken in.

A good example of urban myth debunked by skeptical researchers is that of glass flowing over time. Another in Australia is the white tailed spider bite causing ulcerative skin conditions. It is because people were skeptical that these have been shown to be myth.

Various organizations around the world have offered millions of dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any 'paranormal' ability. Despite hundreds of thousands of people claiming and even selling paranormal services no-one has ever been able to claim a reward, there is definitely room for some healthy skepticism.

 

Sorry -- I am not sure I believe you. I will have to give this some thought.

 

Whenever I'm suspicious I just whip this baby out and?..oh look...it's pegged!

 

I like the meter, where did you get it from and do they measure other things ?

Not sure if its working very well!! -- are you working that at the back?

 

Guillermo
I am surprised
an avid global climate change scheptic
posting

my god man there is hope on this green earth
B

although I am "skeptical" of there being any strong scientific argument against the consensus view on global warming

all in good fun friend
all in good fun

 

That would be most proper to these forums. Where shall we begin with?

Cheers.

 

MikeJohns, that is why I have been suggesting that protagonists confine themselves to Cut-&-Paste all the raw data and making a comment on that - most public analysis has been more effectively laundered than illicit profits from an illegal drugs deal....

Expect a US dollar note in the millions to get a pack of cigarettes.... My key date is end March 2009 to see the trend potential for US financial capacity and after that any argument may well be redundant.... - I hope not but fear the prospect

 

fare enough G
fare enough
so I ask
what is the most convenient rig
gaff rigged or mast head
critics would say that the pointing ability or the weight aloft of the gaff rigged makes it outdated
but gaff rigged has proven itself over ages past

B

 

Scientific skeptics, extraordinary claims.....

We live in a time where science and technology provide remarkable insights into our everyday world. I believe the phrase "extraordinary claims" reveals a distrust of these insights and a basic lack of understanding of how solid the foundations are which underpin each new advance and 'breakthrough' in science.

I often hear a phrase which distills this distrust:

"How can THEY know that?" A refrain heard when some some finding is discussed at the local watering hole. "They" are the scientists, engineers and in many cases even doctors. I believe there is a natural even beneficial reluctance on the part of individuals to give up direct understanding of the world which surrounds us. This understanding is now however a product of advanced and increasingly specialized study. A individual must to some degree simply trust in the process which develops our understanding of these topics. "Healthy skepticism" is the phrase du jour. I believe this skepticism serves as nothing more than a retrenching to the self contained knowledge of the individual, knowledge which is in fact just formalized ignorance of topics which do not readily yield to casual study.

Here in the US scientific skepticism is a well subsidized cottage industry. Science and the validity of scientific knowledge in our society has become a posture in our political landscape. Our esteemed president in speaking to a rural industry said: "Those politicians and scientists in Washington don't know what they are talking about, we know what the truth is". From denying industry was the cause of acid rain during to Reagan era, to Bush's refusal to regulate mercury, scientific findings are attacked when out of step with what is seen as a more valid agenda.

My favorites?

The ever popular Flat Earth lobby...:

"The facts are simple," says Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research Society. "The earth is flat."

The Flat-out Truth http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm


"The key to skepticism is to continuously and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between “know nothing” skepticism and “anything goes” credulity."
Skeptic » About Us » A Brief Introduction http://www.skeptic.com/about_us/

 

hear hear
there is healthy skepticism
and then there is just plane ignorance
the flat earth society's got a handle on the ignorant part
reminds me of people who look at all the melting ice and insist
we aren't warming
and if we are
the billions of tons of crap we've managed to spew into the atmosphere every year has nothing to do with it
when it's such a no brainer to everyone else

 

The Truth

Skepticism is fundamentally a questioning of the "truth value" of some premise. The issue of what is meant by "the truth" has been with us for a long time.

For most the Truth is a function of who makes the premise. For these people, if the person making the premise is held in high regard then the premise must also be held in high regard, that is, it is true. Aristotle listed this practice in his list of logical irrelevancies for the simple reason that what someone says has absolutely no intrinsic truth value in and of itself. (Google on argumentum ad verecundiam for more and a list of similar logical fallacies.)

On the positive side of the question there have been two very significant contributions. The first was from Aristotle, who claimed that a premise that could be verified empirically (i.e. actually found and demonstrated in nature) was "true." This became known as the "Correspondence Theory of Truth" because the premise in question corresponded with the actual evidence. Aristotle's theory was taken as essentially the "last word" on the subject until Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) proposed a complementary theory of truth which was far more powerful and has become the basis for all modern scientific investigation. Hegal's theory is generally known as the "Coherence Theory of Truth."

Hegal's Coherence proves a difficult concept for many people, but let me begin with an example to illustrate. Imagine you have four different ways to calculate some variable, say the bending stress on a mast. Each method uses different factors to arrive at the answer. As a designer you can just pick your favorite and run the numbers, or you can sit down and run the numbers using each method available to you. In the former case you will have an answer, and it may or may not be the "true" answer --- you could have easily made an error. In the later case where you came to the same answer (assuming you did) from four different directions there is little doubt that the answer is true. These answers were "coherent" and the fact of their coherence is a very strong argument, in itself, for the truth value of the answer obtained.

We appear to all be born with some inherent logical ability, and at some fundamental level usually recognize that coherence among the elements of a matrix of premises is "good." English speakers here will recognize that children often make logical generalizations such as pluralizing "goose" as "gooses" (in English, plurals are usually made by adding 's' to the end of a word, but there are many exceptions. In this case the plural of goose is geese). Logically, the child is correct when he does this, it it the English language that is "wrong." The child has done exactly what we, as parents, should hope he would do: he has logically generalized a coherent rule from a bunch of examples, and in doing so has demonstrated that logic is an innate behavior.

The true strength of Hegal's approach lies in it's ability to project the "mind's eye" where the photon receptors on our faces have no hope of going. The field of "science" is really a collection of many sub-fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc., up to the complexity of studying humanity itself. The truth of all the premises contained within all these different approaches to the same basic problem (the reality we find ourselves a part of) lies in the coherence of the parts. This coherence, in turn, is as strict as any mathematics and is bi-directional in the sense that a given arrangement of coherent premises can "force" a specific conclusion. Or, in other words, cause the person practicing to "see" a particular conclusion. Let me give an actual example.

Not long ago astronomers noted that the mathematics describing the orbits of the known planets were slightly discrepant with the measurements made of these same orbits. In a nutshell, the discrepancy could be explained if a certain small mass was proposed to exist at a certain position. The presence of this unknown mass would make the incoherency noted coherent, in other words. Or, in yet other words, that mass could be "seen" by the mind before any instrument spotted it empirically. In 1930 the unverified mass was searched for and found. We now call it Pluto.

At the other extreme Physicists "see" atoms, protons, electrons, quarks and even "strings" of mass-energy way too small for any instrument to see, and they do this by projecting to conclusion the premises of science. At all possible points in this huge matrix of premises coherence is maintained and insisted upon, both logically and empirically. If coherence is ever found to be violated a focus is placed on the discrepancy and work concentrated exactly there to find the error and remove it. So the matrix is ever evolving and being constantly refined.

But is it "true?" Yes indeed --- and absolutely not!

The shear size of the scientific matrix of knowledge and it's strictly enforced coherent nature argue strongly for the truth value of the whole. Still, details are constantly refined, new phenomena constantly discovered and fit within the matrix. Truth is a dynamic concept in this sense, as is science itself. There are no absolutes here!

And speaking of absolutes, those readers who prefer the certainty of absolutes through religion cut themselves off from a real appreciation of "truth" in any realizable sense of the word. This is why I personally despise all religions. I think that to raise any human to "believe" anything without question and to just "have faith" despite all evidence to the contrary is nothing less than child abuse. When you insist that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy really exist you cut off healthy skepticism and you blind the child to the dynamic sight we call science. I find this practice horrid and as good an example of "evil" as is possible!

BillyDoc

 

The most fundamental thing to be skeptical about is whether or not there is a god. Did a god create the universe? If god created the universe, who created god? And who or what created god's creator? Is god active in your life? Does god answer your prayers? Does god heal your wounds and illnesses? Why does god not heal amputees? Is there more than one god? Is there one and only one "right" god? If so, which one? Is the Christian bible the real word of god? Or is the Talmud the real word of god? Is the Quran the real word of god? If god wrote these books, or caused them to be written, why has god not written anything more modern in the last 1,400 years? Why is god, or those that god chooses, such poor writers? The bible is full of contradictions.

Do you really want to open up this forum on boat design and boat building to these questions on general skepticism? Certainly right now there is tremendous skepticism with religion, brought to the fore, of course, by the 9/11 attacks and subsequent attacks around the world, most recently of course those that happened this week in Mombai, India.

I find it highly ironic that this country (the United States) was founded upon secular principles, in which religion-based politics were explicitly excluded from our form of government, although guarantees were installed to respect all religions. The word "god" does not appear anywhere in the US constitution. Yet many people in this country have subverted history to their own religious ends. What is equally ironic is that while one may testify in court by swearing an oath upon a Christian bible, under the fear of god's wrath, one very likely could not answer testimony based on faith or the idea that "god told me so". A statement of faith could not and would not be accepted as valid testimony. Rather, only evidence, hard and fast facts and scientifically based opinions, are acceptable. What a dichotomy!

Therefore, Guillermo, where do you really want to go with your proposal? Open this up to general skepticism, or only scientific skepticism with respect to boat design and boat building?

Eric

 

"What are you rebelling against Johnny?" "What have you got?" Marlon Brando.

Guillermo has raised a subject nearer to my heart than you could possibly expect. The lies we have been told about that most delightful of pleasures------I mean FOOD.

My mother was a force of Nature. She said she preferred eating rather than sex, because there are three meals per day. Sadly she died in 1995, but she did not suffer fools gladly and I am delighted to confirm that I do not either.

It is therefore my great pleasure to set free, those of you who are self limited by doubt as to how you should move forward and embrace the bullet.

Go to the WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION and be shriven of your illnesses. Of course, there will be Doubting Thomases who will not believe until the stick their fingers in zounds, however this is not for them. After all most people are wimps when it comes to mealtimes. Would you believe that there are mothers of children here in the UK who do not have a clue how to cook? All they can do is heat up ready meals :?: :?: :?: :?: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3429999.stm

Anyway, for those with an eye on the main chance I give you, guts and grease. http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html

If you can stomach that then try this. What's Wrong with "Politically Correct" Nutrition? http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/pcnutrition.html

If there is one of you left who is not tut tutting, then this is just for you.
http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm



"Stand by to repel boarders" "Weigh anchors" "Avast behind"