Science: Explanation versus obfuscation
- Thread starter DaveC426913
- Start date
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
off the beaten path of critical thinking, you mean.
"That blob is too blurry to see if it has wings, therefore it has to be advanced technology."
Is that critical thinking? Is it a valid stance to - not only take, but to double down on - when challenged, in your opinion?
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Ah but that comes back to this being, at least vaguely, a science forum. There is nothing in the rules that says people can post what they like in the Fringe without challenge. As for ad homs, that is certainly regrettable when a poster is posting in good faith. But fairly often in the Fringe we get posters that post in bad faith, e.g. with a disguised agenda or to annoy, etc. In that case it is not unreasonable to criticise the person as well as the ideas.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
What interests me the most in these discussions are the boundary issues: What is the distinction between science and not-science? If it's true that "pseudo-science" isn't "science", then why is that the case? Probably the best way to investigate the 'demarcation problem' is to examine problem cases.
In the UFO controversies, there are all sorts of sighting reports. In my opinion those are raw data to be explained. The data to be explained shouldn't just be summarily dismissed with insults and rhetorical abuse, because the whole subject is unwelcome and dismissed as "woo" by those we happen to identify with.
This raises the additional issue of what "explain" means. What are we doing when we 'explain' something?
It seems to me that a big part of what an explanation does is reduce the unknown to the known. So arguably, for an explanation to be successful, it will have to be capable of restating the unknown in terms of concepts that are already possessed and accepted. Which seems to make our current state of belief/ignorance the criterion of what we believe can and can't be the case in objective reality.
On one hand that's inevitable, since we can't comprehend things unless we possess the concepts with which to comprehend them. But the so-called "pessimistic induction" seem to be a pretty strong argument against the idea that objective reality must conform to our current beliefs and concepts.
Of course it's possible to be more speculative in our explanations, reducing the unknown instead to hypothetical possibilities. That's often how it works, and searching for evidence to confirm these speculative hypotheses seems to be one of the major ways that knowledge grows. It's the essence of both trial-and-error and the so-called "scientific method".
But isn't the idea that UFOs are vehicles created by space aliens exactly that? A speculative explanatory hypothesis? So why all the insults, sarcasm and bullying towards anyone that proposes it?
Presumably, there's some additional criterion at play here that determines what is and isn't an acceptable speculative hypothesis. So what is it?
Perhaps consistency with science as currently understood?
That's probably too strong though, since it seems to assume that while virtually all of past science was woefully incomplete if not totally wrong, today's science is totally different: final and authoritative. It would seem to exclude the possibility of future science that contradicts some deeply held scientific beliefs of today. Again, the "pessimistic induction" argues against it.
And what's more, the UFO/alien hypothesis does appear to me to be entirely consistent with science as currently understood. (Much of 'parapsychology' probably can't make that claim.)
As always, my own tendency in these matters is to adopt an attitude of friendly, curious agnosticism.
I welcome free expression of all hypotheses in the 'fringe' fora, although I am unlikely to personally accept many of them as plausible if they contradict my own beliefs about how reality is. Ghosts might fit that description. But the fact that I don't believe in spiritual survival of death doesn't mean that I summarily dismiss reports of uncanny apparitions. There are just too many of them for me to do that. Something interesting seems to be happening. I'll just say that I don't know what the apparitions were (though personally I lean towards subjective/psychological explanations in most of these cases).
In the UFO controversies, there are all sorts of sighting reports. In my opinion those are raw data to be explained. The data to be explained shouldn't just be summarily dismissed with insults and rhetorical abuse, because the whole subject is unwelcome and dismissed as "woo" by those we happen to identify with.
This raises the additional issue of what "explain" means. What are we doing when we 'explain' something?
It seems to me that a big part of what an explanation does is reduce the unknown to the known. So arguably, for an explanation to be successful, it will have to be capable of restating the unknown in terms of concepts that are already possessed and accepted. Which seems to make our current state of belief/ignorance the criterion of what we believe can and can't be the case in objective reality.
On one hand that's inevitable, since we can't comprehend things unless we possess the concepts with which to comprehend them. But the so-called "pessimistic induction" seem to be a pretty strong argument against the idea that objective reality must conform to our current beliefs and concepts.
Of course it's possible to be more speculative in our explanations, reducing the unknown instead to hypothetical possibilities. That's often how it works, and searching for evidence to confirm these speculative hypotheses seems to be one of the major ways that knowledge grows. It's the essence of both trial-and-error and the so-called "scientific method".
But isn't the idea that UFOs are vehicles created by space aliens exactly that? A speculative explanatory hypothesis? So why all the insults, sarcasm and bullying towards anyone that proposes it?
Presumably, there's some additional criterion at play here that determines what is and isn't an acceptable speculative hypothesis. So what is it?
Perhaps consistency with science as currently understood?
That's probably too strong though, since it seems to assume that while virtually all of past science was woefully incomplete if not totally wrong, today's science is totally different: final and authoritative. It would seem to exclude the possibility of future science that contradicts some deeply held scientific beliefs of today. Again, the "pessimistic induction" argues against it.
And what's more, the UFO/alien hypothesis does appear to me to be entirely consistent with science as currently understood. (Much of 'parapsychology' probably can't make that claim.)
As always, my own tendency in these matters is to adopt an attitude of friendly, curious agnosticism.
I welcome free expression of all hypotheses in the 'fringe' fora, although I am unlikely to personally accept many of them as plausible if they contradict my own beliefs about how reality is. Ghosts might fit that description. But the fact that I don't believe in spiritual survival of death doesn't mean that I summarily dismiss reports of uncanny apparitions. There are just too many of them for me to do that. Something interesting seems to be happening. I'll just say that I don't know what the apparitions were (though personally I lean towards subjective/psychological explanations in most of these cases).
Last edited:
That’s fair. I don’t see MR to be this “threat” that some here perceive him to be. It’s a small forum, and to me, whatever the grievances are with MR, they’ll likely never be resolved, as he’s not likely to change his opinion about certain fringe topics. Not because of ignorance or arrogance, rather due to the fact that he’s not interested in changing minds. And the fringe topic imo, is largely based on opinion, anyway.
If the forum was growing and others were chiming in and mirroring MR, I could see it being a problem. Every forum has a resident pot stirrer, but MR is thought provoking and smart in his pot stirring. As compared to obvious trolls who get the boot rather quickly (thanks mods), he’s harmless.
If the site’s traffic starts to grow with earnest, sincere posters - who become regulars, then I see a case being made as to censoring (what a cringey word but it fits) some of the fringe topics.
Until then…why fret about it?
Imagination isn’t the opposite of critical thinking.
Lol No one has stated that.
It’s fair to double down if you feel that MR is violating a forum rule or jeopardizing the integrity of the forum, but is he really doing that? Science is about exploring, and an argument could be put forth that imagination and science coincide in as much as we wouldn’t be seeing NASA putting together a group to discuss UAP’s, for example. What was once taboo, is now being taken seriously by scientists.
You’re not “wrong” to feel the way you do. I’m actually intrigued by yours and James’ commentary most of the time, in that you have strong convictions. Not unlike MR except his are not solely evidence based - and that’s why the discussion keeps going. And that’s not a bad thing.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
I think the only issue is annoyance, really, once it is clear someone is set on a course of posting fringe stuff. MR no longer annoys me because I've had him on Ignore for the last 5 years or so and have no plans to change that.
wegs:
You talk about "some members" here getting wound up. That happens on both sides of the fence, but it seems you're picking out one side for special criticism. If a pro-UFO person tells lies, for example, then you might expect a skeptic to get "wound up" - annoyed at the dishonesty. On the other side, I find that it is often the case that pseudoscience proponents tend to get wound up when their views are questioned or challenged and they feel like they have no adequate response. When that happens, pseudoscientists often resort to a number of well-trodden tactics. For instance, some compare themselves to Galileo or some other famous figure who was unjustly persecuted for his ideas, implying that their pseudoscience will be vindicated at some future time and that they are both smart and ahead of their time. Another tactic that is almost invariably used by pseudoscientists is to claim that their opponents are closed minded and haven't given the pseudoscientist a fair hearing. Yet another tactic is the Gish Gallop: to dump a whole lot of information, mostly irrelevant, and demanding that skeptics refute each item; if the skeptics can't or won't attempt that, they assume their case is proven by default, somehow. There are many other common defense mechanisms. Cries of censorship are another one that springs to mind. Often, the last thing the pseudoscientist will do is to try to support his arguments with evidence, because that requires actual effort and risks failure.
As I said previously, if you'd prefer a forum that is clear of skeptical discussion and input, there are plenty of them on the internet. If critical analysis upsets you, maybe this is not the place for you. Just saying. (Again, please don't read "you" as a personal attack on you, wegs. I don't think you, personally, are averse to hearing the skeptical view on things. But some people are scared of that; that prefer to live in warm cozy bubble of fantasy.)
Of course, some pseudoscientists have no interest in learning anything. Some of them are hardened warriors from past internet battles. Those ones won't let anything get through to them. They only come to argue. For those people, we offer thoughtful criticism and the opportunity for them to make themselves look like irrational fools.
Don't get me wrong. In all initial interactions with pseudoscientists, I try to keep an open mind, and to greet them with courtesy and an open ear. Respect, though, is something that must be earned. The course of a conversation can head in lots of different directions. If people lower themselves to being dishonest and making unprovoked personal attacks, they tend to lose both credibility and respect. Ideally, I want people to be honest about what they do and don't know. I want the UFO people to honestly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence they have. I'm not going to pretend I know there are no aliens, because I don't. I would like the UFO enthusiasts to stop pretending to know there are aliens, because they don't know that.
I think you might be seeing what you want to see, there. Calling somebody out for arguing dishonestly, for instance, is not an ad hominem attack. What is being addressed is the argument, primarily. Of course, ways of arguing inevitably tend to reflect something about the character of the arguer. If one argues dishonestly, that indicates that one is content to be dishonest, which brings into question one's character in a more general way.
You talk about "some members" here getting wound up. That happens on both sides of the fence, but it seems you're picking out one side for special criticism. If a pro-UFO person tells lies, for example, then you might expect a skeptic to get "wound up" - annoyed at the dishonesty. On the other side, I find that it is often the case that pseudoscience proponents tend to get wound up when their views are questioned or challenged and they feel like they have no adequate response. When that happens, pseudoscientists often resort to a number of well-trodden tactics. For instance, some compare themselves to Galileo or some other famous figure who was unjustly persecuted for his ideas, implying that their pseudoscience will be vindicated at some future time and that they are both smart and ahead of their time. Another tactic that is almost invariably used by pseudoscientists is to claim that their opponents are closed minded and haven't given the pseudoscientist a fair hearing. Yet another tactic is the Gish Gallop: to dump a whole lot of information, mostly irrelevant, and demanding that skeptics refute each item; if the skeptics can't or won't attempt that, they assume their case is proven by default, somehow. There are many other common defense mechanisms. Cries of censorship are another one that springs to mind. Often, the last thing the pseudoscientist will do is to try to support his arguments with evidence, because that requires actual effort and risks failure.
No skeptic here is protesting against UFO enthusiasts putting their case for alien visitation or other woo. That's what this subforum is here for. But you must expect the skeptics to protest against shoddy thinking, lack of analysis, poor arguments, flimsy evidence and so on.
As I said previously, if you'd prefer a forum that is clear of skeptical discussion and input, there are plenty of them on the internet. If critical analysis upsets you, maybe this is not the place for you. Just saying. (Again, please don't read "you" as a personal attack on you, wegs. I don't think you, personally, are averse to hearing the skeptical view on things. But some people are scared of that; that prefer to live in warm cozy bubble of fantasy.)
I agree! I do expect that pseudoscientists will bring illogical arguments, and arguments that are poor for other reasons. After all, the reason they believe in pseudoscience in the first place is often because they have never learned how to think critically about this stuff. My hope is that they can learn just a little about how real science is done and go away with a little more knowledge than they arrived with.
Of course, some pseudoscientists have no interest in learning anything. Some of them are hardened warriors from past internet battles. Those ones won't let anything get through to them. They only come to argue. For those people, we offer thoughtful criticism and the opportunity for them to make themselves look like irrational fools.
Don't get me wrong. In all initial interactions with pseudoscientists, I try to keep an open mind, and to greet them with courtesy and an open ear. Respect, though, is something that must be earned. The course of a conversation can head in lots of different directions. If people lower themselves to being dishonest and making unprovoked personal attacks, they tend to lose both credibility and respect. Ideally, I want people to be honest about what they do and don't know. I want the UFO people to honestly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence they have. I'm not going to pretend I know there are no aliens, because I don't. I would like the UFO enthusiasts to stop pretending to know there are aliens, because they don't know that.
Last edited:
The educational value lies in showing people what science is and how it differs from pseudoscience. Maybe you missed the point.For a sub-forum that is designated as psuedoscience, i.e. as not science, I find it humourous that people can spend so much of their time crying about how what is in there is not science. Ah well.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
He can be a little slow. I get it and I can appreciate the great job that scienceforums has been doing. Little by little I'm sure minds are being educated and persuaded.
wegs:
What do you think we're worried about him threatening? Is he a threat to our understanding of science or the world? Hardly. Are his views so amazing and unexpected that he is threatening to make us rethink the very idea of a "science forum"? Of course not. He's mostly the usual sort of run-of-the-mill gullible fool who buys into the whole package of pseudoscience. This subforum is here to welcome those kinds of people. If nothing else, it clears the junk out of the Science sections.
MR's fantasies are actually quite benign, in the scheme of things. The ideas he is pushing threaten relatively minimal harm to others - if people accept them they will waste their time on nonsense etc. But people do a lot of that, anyway. The real threats we need to worry about are political extremists, not UFO nuts.
It's easy to laugh and think "Ha ha. Nobody would ever actually say/think something like that!" But, if you pay attention, you'll see over and over again that this is exactly the way that MR thinks.
There's nothing new about the latest government panel or NASA investigating UAPs. This has happened, on and off, for 70 years. It's fine to dedicate a relatively small amount of resources into this, if for no other reason than to keep the general public happy that their beliefs are being taken seriously. Meanwhile, science just gets on with doing what science does, and the military gets on with doing what the military does, and the government gets on with doing what the government does.
I do have strong convictions about the best ways to find the truth about things. Scientific methods and critical thinking are tried and tested, and both have proven their worth time and again. The alternatives - mystical imaginings, supernatural assumptions, wishful thinking, pseudoscience - have produced very little value.
I also have strong convictions about being open and honest - both with others and with oneself. It is frustrating to me that so many people do not share these convictions (although, of course, the other side of that coin is that many do).
We're back to MR, again. Understandable, since he is a rather prolific poster here. However, he's no threat. He's more of a clown, really. He can fetch stuff from the internet which the adults can discuss, and he can make silly, unsupported claims about it. But that's about as far as he goes.
What do you think we're worried about him threatening? Is he a threat to our understanding of science or the world? Hardly. Are his views so amazing and unexpected that he is threatening to make us rethink the very idea of a "science forum"? Of course not. He's mostly the usual sort of run-of-the-mill gullible fool who buys into the whole package of pseudoscience. This subforum is here to welcome those kinds of people. If nothing else, it clears the junk out of the Science sections.
MR's fantasies are actually quite benign, in the scheme of things. The ideas he is pushing threaten relatively minimal harm to others - if people accept them they will waste their time on nonsense etc. But people do a lot of that, anyway. The real threats we need to worry about are political extremists, not UFO nuts.
If you check back, it won't be hard to find of instances where MR has claimed that because he can't see wings in an blobby UFO video, the blobby thing can't possibly be a plane with wings. Too many times to count, MR has stated straight out that a fuzzy picture or video can't be something mundane, for no other reason than that thing doesn't look like a mundane thing to him, at first glance.
It's easy to laugh and think "Ha ha. Nobody would ever actually say/think something like that!" But, if you pay attention, you'll see over and over again that this is exactly the way that MR thinks.
Every now and then, when he thinks he can get away with it. I have caught him out telling knowing lies on a few occasions. He backs off whenever his accumulated warning points get too high. Then, once enough of them expire due to time he becomes more provocative and outrageous again. I no longer think this is entirely accidental or subconscious, although perhaps I'm overestimating him.
UFOs have always been on the fringes of science, by which I mean that scientists are aware of this subcommunity of enthusiasts who sits at the fringes and makes claims that they mostly can't support. Now and then, scientists will glance over a case that sparks their interest. When they discover that, as usual, there's insufficient evidence to support any wild claims, or they discover that the case has a straightforward mundane explanation, they leave it and go back to doing some useful science.
There's nothing new about the latest government panel or NASA investigating UAPs. This has happened, on and off, for 70 years. It's fine to dedicate a relatively small amount of resources into this, if for no other reason than to keep the general public happy that their beliefs are being taken seriously. Meanwhile, science just gets on with doing what science does, and the military gets on with doing what the military does, and the government gets on with doing what the government does.
Please understand: I don't have strong convictions about whether aliens are visiting Earth. If they are, they are; if they aren't, they aren't. I'm honestly quite happy to follow the evidence, either way. I would be incredibly excited to discover that aliens are visiting us, I assure you.
I do have strong convictions about the best ways to find the truth about things. Scientific methods and critical thinking are tried and tested, and both have proven their worth time and again. The alternatives - mystical imaginings, supernatural assumptions, wishful thinking, pseudoscience - have produced very little value.
I also have strong convictions about being open and honest - both with others and with oneself. It is frustrating to me that so many people do not share these convictions (although, of course, the other side of that coin is that many do).
There's no problem with continuing to discuss UFO cases. That's why this subforum exists.
Last edited:
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
This is not called Imagination Forums.Imagination isn’t the opposite of critical thinking.
Seriously, if imagnation is what people want, shouldn't they go to a site that embraces that? Why here? Why come to a place that explicitly stresses that "...we retain in all areas of debate an ethos of respect for the scientific method, which demands critical analysis, clear thinking and evidence-based argument."?
You are mistaken.
I don't follow your logic here.
Imagination may be a jumping off point to find a new area of study but that doesn't mean we use imagination in our analysis process.
What we use is "...critical analysis, clear thinking and evidence-based argument."
Crying about it is educational? Or did you miss the actual point I was making. Again? Ah, well.
Well, it's not called Politics Forums or Linguistics Forums or Religion Forums either, but we talk about all those things here. In fact, we have subforums literally created for exactly those discussions.
I have no problem with a pseudoscience forum as long as the nonsense doesn't leak into other (real) forums. If you don't like the pseudoscience forum - don't visit it!
You mean... you mean we're not forced to engage with those threads, those topics? We're at liberty to not type replies? We're free to ignore threads, and people, we don't wish to involve ourselves with?Wow! This is news to me! This is a game-changer! I better go and lie down!
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Sorry, faulty Analogy.
Scientific method versus imagination are examination types (ways we talk about things). With which we would explore subject matter (as you say: things we talk about), such as UFOs politics and linguistics.
I don’t entirely disagree, but the thread currently running about UFO’s that has caused such a stir, would have never made it past the first page, if we are looking at those cases/claims strictly in terms of tangible evidence. Speculation, imagination, eyewitness testimony, and opinion take up a good portion of that thread which is why that section exists - to “house” topics that don’t fit in the hard science sections of the site.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Indeed. That is an astute observation.
