Science and philosophy gave him something he never thought he’d find… respect for religion |312|

I have no idea
I never mention Haisch

He wrote the paper I linked to. I guess I'd somewhat agree with you that Idealism, when understood as having an underlying mechanistic basis, seems very much like Materialism.

However it seems Dualism would also fall into that trap if you have two substances - Spirit & Matter - that interact in a way that can is governed by mechanistic relationships?

In fact I don't see how Dualism inherently gives us something better than Idealism or Materialism?
 
I tend to favour Idealism too, but one puzzle for me is that matter contains so many fundamental particles - 6 x 10^23 molecules per gram mole! (Supposedly there are about 10^80 protons in the universe (with an equal number of electrons) - but in view of the above discussion of Halton Arp, I guess that should be taken with a pinch of salt!) Does some conscious entity control all that, or is there illusion involved even at that level. I really do wonder if when someone does a quantum experiment, MAL (or whatever) simulates that to match Schroedinger's equation, but the rest of matter is simulated in a broad brush way! After all, we can never see 10^23 of anything - basically we count a few and scale up!

David

Hi David. Consider this. Avogadro's constant, viz. the number of molecules in a gram mole of anything, is an inference. If we could zoom in on the gram mole, we could in theory see individual molecules; wherever we looked, we'd see them within the gram mole. But even if we could do that, we could never see them all; only a limited number in a given location. Can we conclude then that they exist everywhere in the gram mole that we aren't looking? Where we can't consciously observe, are they there in an actualised form? That's certainly what we tell ourselves, and it leads to a powerful explanatory narrative of chemical interactions in terms of individual atoms or molecules, but is it actually so?

Chemistry involves statistical inference. Chemicals behave en masse as if they can be visualised as lots of quantised molecules or atoms. But is that actually the case? The fact that we can produce static images of what appear to be individual atoms seems to back this up, certainly.

However, QM tells us that even what we think of as a single electron can, in the double-slit experiment, interfere with itself as if a wave--except when there is the possibility of observing it going through a particular slit, when we can infer it's acting as if a particle. Maybe somewhat similarly, we can never imagise in the native state a whole bunch of what are thought of as atoms or molecules, though we can imagise one or a few of them statically.

I don't know what actual the case is, of course, but I'm still leaning towards idealism.
 
The benefits of religion are largely practical.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johns...-to-bring-tranquillity-to-Oakland-5757592.php


The 11th Avenue resident in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood was simply feeling hopeful in 2009 when he went to an Ace hardware store, purchased a 2-foot-high stone Buddha and installed it on a median strip in a residential area at 11th Avenue and 19th Street.

He hoped that just maybe his small gesture would bring tranquillity to a neighborhood marred by crime: dumping, graffiti, drug dealing, prostitution, robberies, aggravated assault and burglaries.

...

People stopped dumping garbage. They stopped vandalizing walls with graffiti. And the drug dealers stopped using that area to deal. The prostitutes went away.

 
He wrote the paper I linked to. I guess I'd somewhat agree with you that Idealism, when understood as having an underlying mechanistic basis, seems very much like Materialism.

However it seems Dualism would also fall into that trap if you have two substances - Spirit & Matter - that interact in a way that can is governed by mechanistic relationships?

In fact I don't see how Dualism inherently gives us something better than Idealism or Materialism?

Yes the interaction problem is an issue for dualisms, which the monisms dont have
But the monisms have plenty of other problems

One advantage of dualism is that it preserves the integrity of both consciousness and the material universe
It does not collapse one into the other as the monisms do
Materialism and idealism are both reductive theories
and neither can be lived coherently by a conscious human being

I find dualism accords with and preserves common sense and all I know thus far of the spiritual and physical sciences

But, I do not know as a matter of fact that I am right
I am making a judgement; a best estimation on available data
(I am definitely not a believer)

I may be mistaken
 
Arouet,

First of all, I want to congratulate you for finding out so much about this issue, and making a real contribution.

The sad part is that Halton Arp isn't with us any longer to continue this debate. It his 2012 paper (your link) he wrote:
We maintain that the primary difficulty in analyzing redshift fields based on an ejection hypothesis is simply the overlap that exists between fields of quasars that are within reach of two or more galaxies. Our quasar family detection constraints overcome this difficulty and verify the quasar periodicity signal for the 2dF data set.

I understand that to mean that with galaxies scattered all over the sky (but physically separated in the direction of the line of sight), you have to pick out cases where a galaxy is well separated in the sky so that overlap doesn't mess up the picture. By analogy, if you wanted to study the shape of frogs, and you only had some pictures of them mating in pools, you would want to pick out those frogs that were clearly separated from their companions!

This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

If you watch the video I posted, you can see that Halton Arp picks out a lot of details of the structure of each example he presents. This probably doesn't happen in an overall statistical sweep.

Arp also points out near the end of his talk that he interprets a supposed example of gravitational lensing (which would imply that the quasar was far away behind the galaxy (I think), was in fact an arc of matter ejected from the galaxy using the mechanisms he is proposing!
Meh: perceiving those with whom one disagrees as filled with angst is pretty common. I have no doubt that some scientists were jerks. Some people are jerks. But the published scientific work that I linked to treats him with respect
This is a point where we must continue to differ. He reports examples where people fear to take certain measurements because that might show the effects he describes, and he reports the difficulties he had in getting his work published, etc. That isn't a minor matter. Without it, it is almost certain that this phenomenon (or statistical anomaly!) would have attracted much more interest within the lifetime of Halton Arp. I fear it will now be quietly lost.

The other thing I want to emphasise, is that his theory, if accepted, would be highly destructive of a large body of work - people's whole career's - because it would render all the distance measurements on the inter-galactic scale extremely unreliable. This is a major problem - it would take an almost superhuman effort for researchers to treat this subject dispassionately.

This is the real point, that applies to this case as to many others - the pressure on people to conform is huge.

It applies in the case of ψ. Any admission of the reality of evidence of ψ would be a real shock to science - suppose that the results of experiments are partly determined by the wishes of the experimenters - just think about that proposition for a moment!

David
 
David, I really do think that your attitude is very negatively reactive and unbalanced
I mean that as an observation - not an insult; I mean you no harm
You blame Science for what is clearly a failing in human beings (scientists) not in Science
Well I totally agree (not about my being unbalanced!) that what we are talking about here is human behaviour and politics. Yes the problem is that this gets mixed into science as such.
Matters of deep space cosmology are almost entirely high octane speculation
The literature and consensus is constantly in upheaval with little turf wars going on all the time
The consensus theories shift every few years
this is the way human beings with all their personal flaws do science - imperfectly and messily
with all kinds of politicking etc
Well I suppose it is the politicking ant the etc that we are really talking about!
There are many individuals in all scientific areas who become theory mavericks
Sometimes the mavericks turn out to be right; mostly not

This is not the fault of Science; and is not good reason to turn against Science
...to throw the baby out with the bathwater
It is a good reason to understand how Science is done by human beings
and all the problems that entails on account of human nature

Science itself stands as the best method we have thus far developed for acquiring understanding of reality
I don't think you quite understand what Alex, and Martin, and I are really about here. I don't want to throw out real scientific results,
but I suppose I feel that over recent times the mix of genuinely solid results and speculation/politics has shifted towards the latter.

There is also the interesting question as to how to combine science with non-physical reality, assuming that exists. Here, I think it is vital to distinguish between what is solidly understood scientifically, and what is less so. For example, I like to point out that although science would claim to understand matter at ordinary temperatures and pressures in terms of QM and statistical mechanics, in practice the equations are way too complicated to do exact calculations - so that 'understanding' needs to be qualified.

At heart we probably don't disagree much, except that you use the word 'science' to mean the abstract method, and I use it to mean the activity as it is currently performed - warts and all!

David
 
One advantage of dualism is that it preserves the integrity of both consciousness and the material universe
It does not collapse one into the other as the monisms do
Materialism and idealism are both reductive theories
and neither can be lived coherently by a conscious human being

I find dualism accords with and preserves common sense and all I know thus far of the spiritual and physical sciences
I agree. It seems to me that the scientific process has to go through stages, and even though Idealism may be the ultimate explanation, it isn't that useful at the present point, where people are just starting to realise the shortcomings of materialism. For example, Bernardo finds he has to resort to endless metaphors to bolster his case, and I think that becomes confusing and off-putting in the end.

Lot's of science uses Newtonian mechanics, some uses QM, some uses GR, but only a small amount of it uses all the advanced theories at the same time. This means that intermediate theories - like Newtonian mechanics - are vital even now, and in the same way, Dualism will probably remain useful for a long time, even when Idealism is recognised as the ultimate theory (if in fact it is).

David
 
I agree. It seems to me that the scientific process has to go through stages, and even though Idealism may be the ultimate explanation, it isn't that useful at the present point, where people are just starting to realise the shortcomings of materialism. For example, Bernardo finds he has to resort to endless metaphors to bolster his case, and I think that becomes confusing and off-putting in the end.

Lot's of science uses Newtonian mechanics, some uses QM, some uses GR, but only a small amount of it uses all the advanced theories at the same time. This means that intermediate theories - like Newtonian mechanics - are vital even now, and in the same way, Dualism will probably remain useful for a long time, even when Idealism is recognised as the ultimate theory (if in fact it is).

David

Yes I do use the word science to refer to the scientific method – not to the specific theoretical forms it takes at any particular historical period (those are always changing over time); nor to the inevitable politicking that distorts all human activity; and which will remain perennial so long as humans are relatively immature beings (I regard humanity as a work in progress)

It is in that spirit that I maintain that the scientific method is our best tool with which to systematically investigate NDEs and other paranormal and anomalous phenomena (of all classes)


Also when I argue for dualism it is specifically in relation to the nature and structure of this realm – the 3D Earth and physical universe realm
My analysis of NDE testimony and my knowledge of spiritual sciences (the esoteric etc) suggest to me that the nature and structure of the afterlife realms is quite different to this realm; and that is why I want it examined properly ie scientifically, not just anecdotally

As to the structure of Ultimate Reality I have no idea. Indeed I would suggest that it may well be that we cannot have any idea about that – on principle.
That may turn out to be another ‘hard problem’ - which is to say, we cannot describe That in terms of this

That's Chalmers’s point as I understand it: we cannot describe subjective mental experience in terms of objective physical events
And I would argue the reverse also holds

My dualism maintains the integrity of both subject and object; and avoids the reductive absurdities that both materialism and idealism fall into
and which cause them to “resort to endless metaphors to bolster” their cases

These are difficult issues to estimate and intriguing to discuss; so thank you
 
Arouet,

First of all, I want to congratulate you for finding out so much about this issue, and making a real contribution.

The sad part is that Halton Arp isn't with us any longer to continue this debate. It his 2012 paper (your link) he wrote:

Thanks, and yes shame about Arp. That said he seems to have collaborators so if they still think it had legs perhaps they will pursue it. From what I could tell, no one has yet cited the 2012 paper. I didn't have a chance to see if it has been discussed on the science blogosphere.

I understand that to mean that with galaxies scattered all over the sky (but physically separated in the direction of the line of sight), you have to pick out cases where a galaxy is well separated in the sky so that overlap doesn't mess up the picture. By analogy, if you wanted to study the shape of frogs, and you only had some pictures of them mating in pools, you would want to pick out those frogs that were clearly separated from their companions!

This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Thanks, you got it better than I did but I had the general gist. I don't take a position on if it is reasonable or not. That is for the experts to work out. That said, I've seen you, IIRC, critique other studies for post hoc applying filters over the original data set to produce the results that alter the findings. You have been sceptical of them - as you should be. These kinds of analyses are incredibly complicated, and efforts to eliminate one bias can unfortunately introduce others. Reasonable people can disagree. And competent and clever people can introduce well thought out attempts that turn out to be biased. In this case, for example, either Tang or Arp may have used methods that are biased in one direction or another. They can't both be right. That doesn't mean the other is a hack! These methods evolve study by study. The dialogue continues.

(Though you didn't comment on the second para I quoted. What do you make of it? The one where it appeared on the face of it that he selected which was his primary data set post hoc. I suspect it has to do with the readability of the results? But in that case shouldn't you just discard the parts that were not clear? I'm not sure


If you watch the video I posted, you can see that Halton Arp picks out a lot of details of the structure of each example he presents. This probably doesn't happen in an overall statistical sweep.

I'm not sure. I don't have the paper in front of me right now, but it seemed to me that one of the points was that they were using technology that produced clearer images than that which Arp used in his initial work. I'm not saying you are incorrect, however I think you need to first take a close look at what Tang did, and see what other experts say.

If I understand it correctly, the main critique of Arp's data is that it was too narrowly selected. At this time I take no position, but I suggest it is an important issue for someone to evaluate prior to reaching a firm opinion.

But this highlights my point that the there is serious treatment going on of Arp's work. Well, I guess I should ask, are you taking the position that the Tang and the other paper I linked were not serious, respectful attempts to tackle Arp's hypothesis?

Arp also points out near the end of his talk that he interprets a supposed example of gravitational lensing (which would imply that the quasar was far away behind the galaxy (I think), was in fact an arc of matter ejected from the galaxy using the mechanisms he is proposing!

Ok, that's his interpretation, others interpret otherwise. isn't this standard in science? My main issue is not whether Arp is right or not, but whether it is true that his ideas have been ignored or not.

I'll respond to the rest in a separate post a bit later.[/QUOTE]
 
To cut to the chase, you'd expect this if there's God. Saying that, this Entity could be necessarily hidden, otherwise monstrously overwhelming to finite beings
Maybe that's why paranormal phenomena are often rather weak, not always, yet meaningful in their myriad forms, which is the message.
 
That said, I've seen you, IIRC, critique other studies for post hoc applying filters over the original data set to produce the results that alter the findings. You have been sceptical of them - as you should be. These kinds of analyses are incredibly complicated, and efforts to eliminate one bias can unfortunately introduce others.
Yes, but Haltern Arp - who I saw described as one of the greatest observational astronomers - seemed to favour actually analysing pictures of individual galaxies - I don't think he relied on these big statistical surveys. This is part of the point, he seemed to find a lot of structure in those images and their associated spectra - for example if you listen to the video, he spotted pairs of quasars hurtling off in opposite directions. I suspect a lot of that gets washed out in the statistical technique unless you apply a filter of some sort to miss out the jumbles of data.

I am fairly sceptical of studies that rely on heavy statistical analysis!

I am also wary of people who debunk other people's work without actually contacting them and trying to agree what might have gone wrong with the original work. As I think I mentioned before, as a postgraduate, I was an author on a paper that debunked a previous piece of work. However, my prof and I went to see the guy (OK - one reason to be nice to him was that he ran the most powerful NMR spectrometer at the time!) and we talked it over and he agreed that what we were saying was right, and his name also appeared on the paper.

People who do a vastly different experiment to debunk a paper (think to some extent of Wiseman and Sheldrake) get my back up - if a piece of research is wrong, it should be possible to say why!

David
 
The real core of the problem is that science today is mostly controlled by corporations and the profit motive
Science has been coopted and become the handmaiden of the merchants

It's not 100% clear that's the case? At least it doesn't seem to be the whole story (thanks to Jim who, IIRC, posted these previously) ->

Bad Science Muckrakers Question the Big Science Status Quo

....Dr. Thomas Stossel at Harvard Medical School points out.

Stossel calls overly restrictive conflict of interest regulations “a damaging solution in search of a problem.” A self-described “typical academic socialist, totally living on grants for the first third of my career,” Stossel says his eyes were opened in 1987, when he was asked to serve on the scientific advisory board of Biogen (now Biogen IDEC), a fledgling biotech startup that went on to become a tremendous success. “I realized how fundamentally honest business people are compared to my academic colleagues, who’d run their grandmothers over for recognition.”

Also note that corporations have gotten annoyed at bad science.

Drug companies sounded an alarm several years ago. They were concerned that an increasing proportion of clinical trials was failing, and that much of their research effort was being wasted. When they looked into the reasons for their lack for success, they realized that they were basing projects on scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals, on the assumption that most of the results were reliable. But when they looked more closely, they found that most of these papers, even those in top-tier academic journals, were not reproducible. In 2011, German researchers in the drug company Bayer found in an extensive survey that more than 75% of the published findings could not be validated.

In 2012, scientists at the American drug company Amgen published the results of a study in which they selected 53 key papers deemed to be “landmark” studies and tried to reproduce them. Only 6 (11%) could be confirmed.
 
... quasars ...

It seems no blue shifted quasars have been found which you'd expect from Arp's ejection hypothesis, as some would be seen moving towards us.
Red shift is away, blue shift is towards.

1. Ref. here ... https://www.astro.umd.edu/~miller/teaching/astr422/lecture13.pdf ... University of Maryland astronomy course.

Halton Arp ... has managed for decades to neglect the point that we should in that case see lots of blueshifted quasars ejected towards us.


2. Ref. here ... http://sci.physics.research.narkive.com/2N2UXiXB/conjecture-on-baez-s-quasar-without-a-host-galaxy

Dr. Ulf Torkelsson, astrophysicist ... Firstly if the quasars are actually ejected from galaxies, then we would expect to see some blue-shifted quasars,
or at least we should be able to see galaxy-quasar pairs in which the quasar has a smaller redshift than the galaxy, but such pairs are not observed.


Dr. Ulf Torkelsson's background ... Uni. Gothenberg, http://physics.gu.se/~torkel/research.html
 
Contained from last post
This is a point where we must continue to differ. He reports examples where people fear to take certain measurements because that might show the effects he describes, and he reports the difficulties he had in getting his work published, etc. That isn't a minor matter. Without it, it is almost certain that this phenomenon (or statistical anomaly!) would have attracted much more interest within the lifetime of Halton Arp. I fear it will now be quietly lost.


A few things to note here, both to the specific case and to the broader issue this raises.

On the specific case some questions that should be answered before reaching a conclusion here. (Note, these aren't rhetorical, I don't know most of the answers). Also, I'm sure there are elements I've left out so please feel free to add.

Re the measurements:
  • from which paper of his is he referring?
  • Were they referenced by critics in other publications (including both peer and non peer reviewed)
  • is it true that no one else applied them?
  • If so, we're reasons provided?
  • How does he reach the conclusion that the reluctance of his critiques was primarily due to fear that he was correct? Is he guessing? Did someone admit this?
Re difficulties getting published
  • how does his hit rate in being published compare to others?
  • How many other submissions was he generally competing against
  • Were reasons given? Fundamental errors noted, etc? What were the circumstances?
  • Are there reasons, other than prejudice, that could account for the papers not being published?
In terms of generating interest if more papers were published:
  • How much interest did the papers he did get published attract?
  • How many papers were actually published?
  • How about other writings, lectures, etc.
  • How much attention did they receive? How broadly know did his hypothesis come
  • How many other researchers have followed his line?
  • What reason is there to suppose that additional papers would have been any better received?

Incidentally, I did a google scholar search on halton arp and got 1700 hits. I'm sure not all are on point but even adding "redshift" in I still get more than 800. Many of them have dozens, if not 100s of citations (with a few being cited more than 1000 times). I'm not claiming this as a reliable stats, but skimming it certainly gives the impression of a person whose works are pretty well out there.

I'm not suggesting that he may not have been treated unfairly at times - or that some people weren't jerks towards him - but despite thay he appears to have been prolific and oft cited. I have not doubt that he thinks he merits more attention, but what exactly should our criteria be for considering someone to have been ignored or not given due consideration?

I'm not looking to excuse bad behaviour (I'm a strong advocate for civility as you know), or the times where he wasn't published or given access, just treating it as a separate issue from an analysis of what actually was published by him and others in the scientific community addressing his work. That it, is could be both true that he's been mistreated in some ways, but also true that his work did get a lot of attention and was not ignored. If that's the case, then we have to ask, at what point should we consider it legitimate to stop devoting resources to lines of work that have not been well received by the general scientific community? And where Arp's line of research should be considered in that context?

The other thing I want to emphasise, is that his theory, if accepted, would be highly destructive of a large body of work - people's whole career's - because it would render all the distance measurements on the inter-galactic scale extremely unreliable. This is a major problem - it would take an almost superhuman effort for researchers to treat this subject dispassionately.

This is the real point, that applies to this case as to many others - the pressure on people to conform is huge.


I hear where you are coming from, but I think we need to put it in perspective.

There is absolutely no question that people are naturally biased in favour of their pre-existing beliefs. My position, however, is that this applies to everyone, to each of us, not just to one group. It applies to halton arp, his critics, to you, and to me. The problem is ubiquitous and must be approached as such. We tend to think of it as a moral deficiency, but really it is part of the human condition. And it can have positive as well as negative effects.

Sure there are in groups and outgroups, where in groups often get more of their fair share and are treated better. But changing those groups up isn't likely to solve the problem, it's just going to mix it up. Paradigm changes don't get rid of this dynamic, they just shake it up.

It gets even more complicated than this, because there aren't just two groups, there are many many groups. And people often belong to more than one of them. And in some contexts being part of a group makes one part of the ingroup, and in another context being part of the same group makes them part of the outgroup! And then there are subgroups within the groups, with their own in and out group dynamics!

And yes, people are protective of their territory. It's not just a question of dogma or bias, but also one of limited resources. Of course scientists are going to try and protect their turf - there are only so many research dollars out there and if person A gets a grant that means person B didn't. This doesn't just happen between ingroups and outgroups, but within each group as well. There's little reason to believe that paradigm change would change that dynamic.

It applies in the case of ψ. Any admission of the reality of evidence of ψ would be a real shock to science - suppose that the results of experiments are partly determined by the wishes of the experimenters - just think about that proposition for a moment!

We've talked a lot about the inherent bias of people, but there's also a competing instinct that people have: curiosity, a drive towards discovery, excitement of discovering something new. How many scientists dream of being the next Einstein? To make that great discovery that changes everything? Sure individual scientists may not feel great when their work is overturned, but that's a regular feature of science as it progresses. Judges don't like being overturned on appeal either.

When previous work is overturned, those scientists don't just quit right (absent allegations of fraud or retirement, etc.) They don't say, well, let's shut down shop! They evolve with the discoveries.

New discoveries create new opportunities for people to make their marks. It keeps them interested in their work.

So what we see is a balance of two basic drives, both which serve a purpose: The bias towards existing believes enhances stability. Slow change is smoother, and less callamatous to a society (think the blood drenched french revolution compared to the bloodless quiet revolution of Britain). Being too susceptible to new ideas can lead to fickleness and indecision, and reduce focus. Setting high bars for change helps weed out bad ideas.

The drive for change and new discoveries leads to innovation, progress, stimulation, expansion, creativity.

Both are essential for a well functioning society, the upshot is they often clash.

The point is, in order to make things better we have to properly understand what's going on. Doing so helps us stop seeing each other as enemies, and helps us realize that competition of ideas is a good thing. We want a diversity of opinion in society. We want people to have to compete for their ideas to prevail. It's not always going to be smooth sailing, and there will be winners and losers, but overall the system seems to work.

This is how we repair the bad behaviour. It can help us stop thinking of the other as evil idiots, stop obsessing over motives, and actually focus on the substance of these matters.
 
Yes, but Haltern Arp - who I saw described as one of the greatest observational astronomers - seemed to favour actually analysing pictures of individual galaxies - I don't think he relied on these big statistical surveys. This is part of the point, he seemed to find a lot of structure in those images and their associated spectra - for example if you listen to the video, he spotted pairs of quasars hurtling off in opposite directions. I suspect a lot of that gets washed out in the statistical technique unless you apply a filter of some sort to miss out the jumbles of data.

I am fairly sceptical of studies that rely on heavy statistical analysis!

With all due respect, though, you seem to be making a bunch of assumptions here. I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, but don't you think you need to check out what the other guys are actually doing before reaching conclusions? Correct me if I'm wrong but the way you phase it indicates to me that you have solely (or primarily) looked at Arp's side, but not the substantive work (I mean the published papers, not the gossip).


I am also wary of people who debunk other people's work without actually contacting them and trying to agree what might have gone wrong with the original work. As I think I mentioned before, as a postgraduate, I was an author on a paper that debunked a previous piece of work. However, my prof and I went to see the guy (OK - one reason to be nice to him was that he ran the most powerful NMR spectrometer at the time!) and we talked it over and he agreed that what we were saying was right, and his name also appeared on the paper.

People who do a vastly different experiment to debunk a paper (think to some extent of Wiseman and Sheldrake) get my back up - if a piece of research is wrong, it should be possible to say why!

David

Heh, I've tried to engage you on the Wiseman dogs that know debate in the past, and even did a detailed analysis at one point (think it was on the old forum). While I don't think all your critiques of Wiseman here are off (particularly with regards to some public comments he's made), I think you're quite off on your analysis of the paper itself. Also note that its strange to bring up Wiseman as an example specifically here given that Wiseman did consult with Sheldrake on that experiment. But this is a whole separate discussion.

As for your point about appraoching the original author, I'm sure that can be good at time, but it hardly seems like a necessity. The work should speak for itself, right? I imagine different scientists have different approaches there.

But you should be skeptical of all work. The way to do that though is to focus on the details, evaluate the claims. That means getting into the nitty gritty. One thing you haven't mentioned much of is the content of the papers themselves! ;)
 
The point is, in order to make things better we have to properly understand what's going on. Doing so helps us stop seeing each other as enemies, and helps us realize that competition of ideas is a good thing. We want a diversity of opinion in society. We want people to have to compete for their ideas to prevail. It's not always going to be smooth sailing, and there will be winners and losers, but overall the system seems to work.

This is how we repair the bad behaviour. It can help us stop thinking of the other as evil idiots, stop obsessing over motives, and actually focus on the substance of these matters.

Which system seems to work overall? Democracy or Science?
 
Back
Top