Re: psychoceramics: Cult of Personality --- the last 48 hours

[nathanshumate @ juno.com (Alex N Shumate)]

Gee, it's nice to get your e-mail and find that ever single
Psychoceramics post is from a thread you started!

Being dope-slapped in most of the posts wasn't quite as fun...

Didn't mean to step on any toes (or at least, not as many toes as I
apparently got); I jsut have this thing about laughing at people's faces
instead of behind their backs. Somehow I gotthe impression in my
childhood that it was more polite .  I got into a lot of polite
fistfights as a child...

A couple of specific replies.  I'm not going to bother including all the
tags, so I'll leave each of you to recognize who I'm speaking to.

>But why bother poking these folks with a "Ha ha, you're stupid" 
>message?
>
>Frankly, I'm doing the same to you -- for assuming you speak for all 
>of us,

I had couched my original suggestion in a "maybe we ought to" kind of
suggestion format; I didn't presume to speak for everyone.  I realize
that there's as much diversity on the sane side of the fence as on the
insane.


>         That truly is mean-spirited, in a way most of us were raised 
>to
>avoid.  It's tempting, but better we should indulge in our yucks in 
>seemly
>privacy.

Again, that's my warped sense of courtesy you're pointing out, not to
mention my fondness for debate (especially when I know I can win by the
rules of the contest -- sanity, logic, etc...)

>> Now I think I was wrong. Letting people bash science and spew 
>nonsense as
>> fact degrades us all and over time gives creedence to the next 
>loonie that
>> takes one step further out of reality. Read the Skeptical Inquirer, 
>
>I disagree.  I am of the opinion that the militant Gardnerite skeptics 
>
>are a bad thing, even discounting the entertainment value of kooks.
>Theirs is a crusade to heap ridicule upon every unorthodox idea, and
>a lot of accepted ideas started out as unorthodox if not kooky.  
>(Take,
>for example, the idea that smoking causes lung cancer;  it's common
>wisdom now, but it was once ridiculed by the establishment.)
>
>Even if one doesn't go to the extremes that some militant skeptics 
>do, attempting to get rid of kooks or discourage the expression of 
>kooky ideas can reduce memetic diversity, having an adverse effect
>on the memetic ecology.
>
I agree with this one. Diane Kossy makes the same point in Kooks -- why
do we need to protect people form "bad science"? Is good science too weak
to stand up without its own zealots defending the faith?

>I must say I've never been tempted at all. I'll point and haw with you 
>all,
>but I'd never let the Subjects themselves know our feelings. Truly, 
>what
>good would it do anyone?

I nominate you for sainthood.

>I was not merely baiting Our Nathan (or any of the rest of you) when I 
>drew
>the analogy between religion--which I regard as an alternate and 
>larger
>form of kookery--and crackpotting proper. I am beginning to be 
>suprised at

That was baiting? Amateur. You should see ME do it.

>misapprehensions about how the world works. So do the (usually very 
>nice)
>missionaries who come to the door, with whom I have often tried to 
>have
>reasonable and questioning conversations. So do the crackpots that are

I probably shouldn't reveal that I was one of those nice missionaries...
I'll protect myself by at least keeping secret the particular
denomination...


>"They" are "deluding other nuts," indeed. But not only. I dare you to
>wander around some street or hallway, interviewing the half dozen most
>intelligent and insightful people you wish, and *not* discover some 
>deeply
>questionable belief. And it probably wasn't picked up from an
>overcapitalized one-page flyer about CIA antigravity robots, either.
>
>It seems to me a belief in miracles is little different than a belief 
>in
>fairies, except that it has been pre-formed by others' stories. A 
>belief in
>the stronger stuff that Fritjof Capra or Frank Tipler have published 
>on the
>New Agey Consequences of Quantum Mechanics is little different from
>Archimedes Plutonium's work, except that the former have better 
>publishers.
>If you ask an informed laboratory biologist or chemist about the
>computational simulations we do here at SFI in the field of "Complex
>Systems" (always Capitalized), I'll bet they'll shake their heads and 
>grin
>at the weirdness of it all.

>To the point: On what do you found your strong belief that you can 
>make a
>difference by denouncing nonsense-spewing loonies? What do you really 
>know
>of how these folk think? Cite a case study. Why do people believe what 
>they
>do? Why must they believe at all? Where's the data?

Just for the record (though I know this post wasn't addressed to me
specifically), I never claimed to be able to change anyone's mind. 
Deeply-held beliefs are not the province of logic -- my own are my
evidence.  But when someone tried to pass off such a deeply held belief
as not only logically supportable, but dead obvious to anyone who hasn't
been hoodwinked by the mainstream under-the-thumb media etc., that's when
I think the person could stand being taken down a peg.

Stephen Jay Gould did a good column a couple of months ago about the
separate provinces of religion and science.  Insert said column here.


In conclusion, then:
That teaches me to post without thinking! I'm not relly a bad person,
honest -- and if I do succumb to debating/baiting any of our featured
performers, I'll be sure to leave the Pychoceramics list out of it.


Nathan
(penitent and humbled)