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July 2, 2015 - 7:24am
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Zen and the Art of Debunkery
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Applies marvelously well to global warming supporters.
Say it isn't so....
I suspect it could also apply - or perhaps more appropriately apply - to the Global Warming skeptics. The supporters actually aren't skeptics. But wouldn't an even better example be UFO skeptics? Or more to the point, the Tice Clock skeptics? Or the Intelligent Chip skeptics?
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
An excellent and descriptive list, Geoff, of many people’s reactions.
These reactions only occur when people have been presented with descriptions of other people’s observations !! If other people did not observe and report phenomena, then there would be nothing to ‘debunk’. Both Michael G and I use the same sentence – “That one can tell, from the sentences they use, exactly where someone is in the level of what have been their experiences”.
As an example (and this is not meant as a criticism but purely as an example of what I mean). In other words, if one has not actually had the experience, then the following is a typical response.
It is the sentence someone made in a separate posting :-
>>> “Combined with physics, and my knowledge of both optics and analogue and digital systems design and signal theory, I can make the following theoretical observation:
Applying any treatment to a CD or substituting any expensive DIGITAL cabling I would contend has absolutely zero effect on the sound. “ <<<
I use that as an example because ONCE one HAS experienced one ‘treatment’ or another applied to a CD change the sound from that CD, then one can never again use the sentence I have just quoted.
One such CD ‘treatment’ I will refer to was described in an article by Robert Harley in the October 1990 issue of Stereophile entitled “The Cryogenic Compact Disc”. In my opinion this was one of the most significant articles in the history of audio – because it challenged the very background from which the particular poster (and so many others) produced his sentence (and from which background he has based his thinking) - >>> “Combined with physics, and my knowledge of both optics and analogue and digital systems design and signal theory, I can make the following theoretical observation. Applying any treatment to a CD I would contend has absolutely zero effect on the sound” <<<.
This is not an attack of that person in any way !! It is just that their sentence was SOOOOO typical an example of many people’s reactions to other’s observations !!
Perhaps John Atkinson could provide a link to the article I refer to as I, personally, do not have the computer skill to do so ?
Regards,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
The link to the Robert Harley article in As we See It is
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/822/index.html
Cheerios,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dramatica
More good stuff. And a POP QUIZ. Pearl Harbor, sneak attack!
More from Debunkery
• Although science is not supposed to tolerate vague or double standards, always insist that unconventional phenomena must be judged by a separate, yet ill-defined, set of scientific rules. Do this by declaring that "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence!" -- but take care never to specify where the "ordinary" ends and the "extraordinary" begins, or who gets to draw the line. This will allow you to manufacture an infinitely receding horizon that keeps "extraordinary" evidence just out of reach at any point in time.
• In the same manner, insist on classes of evidence that are impossible to obtain. For example, declare that unidentified aerial phenomena may be considered real only if we can bring them into laboratories to strike them with hammers and analyze their physical properties. Disregard the accomplishments of the inferential sciences -- astronomy, for example -- which gets on just fine without bringing actual planets, stars, galaxies and black holes into its labs and striking them with hammers.
POP QUIZ - Does anybody see the connection between the next paragraphs and one of the regulars here? Answer at 11.
• Assert that "investigations are ongoing, and are expected to reveal nothing out of the ordinary."
• Practice debunkery-by-association. Lump together all phenomena popularly deemed unorthodox and suggest that their proponents and researchers speak with a single voice. In this way you can indiscriminately drag material across disciplinary lines or from one case to another to support your views as needed. For example, if a claim having some superficial similarity to the one at hand has been (or is popularly assumed to have been) exposed as fraudulent, cite it as if it were an appropriate example. Then put on a gloating smile, lean back in your armchair and calmly say, "I rest my case."
• At every opportunity invoke the unassailability of cold logic. Ignore the fact that logic, however watertight, can never be more true or useful than the unconscious assumptions and fudged data underlying its application.
• Keep an arsenal of scientistic buzzwords at the tip of your tongue. So armed, you can effortlessly explain away even the most firmly acknowledged mysteries with a few impressive phrases and a wave of your hand. For example, the undeniable but incomprehensible facts of animal migration may be definitively ascribed to a "biological spatio-temporal vector-navigation program." Likewise, you may call upon such quasi-substantial conceptual conveniences as "biological clock," "self-organization" and "cellular memory" to deflate any suggestion that orthodox science may lack satisfactory explanations for intractably puzzling phenomena.
• Establish a crusading "Scientific Truth Foundation" staffed and funded by a hive of fawning acolytes. Then purport to offer a million-dollar reward to anyone who can repeatably demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon. Set the bar for paranormality nowhere in particular. Set the bar for repeatability at a "generous" 98%, safely ensuring that even normal scientific studies that demand a mere preponderance of evidence, or average results above chance, would fail to qualify for the prize. Should someone actually meet or exceed your criteria you can effortlessly dismiss their claim by pointing out that they'd just proven the phenomenon to be perfectly normal!
Cheerios,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica