On the Fringe of Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (Michael Gordin)
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2021
- Everyone has heard of the term “pseudoscience”, typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella - astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields “pseudo” is a far more complex issue. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements - both of which display allegations of “pseudoscience” on all sides - there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. Shermer and Gordin explore the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation.
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Every episode is amazing! And it`s not interrupted by CZcams ads either, clearly you do it out of passion. Thanks Michael! Keep it going!
"It's easier to fool a person than it is to convince them they've been fooled."
I've been thinking about that one a lot and the older I get, the less I feel hurt being wrong or finding out I've been fooled. I want to know the truth of things. That's my focus and should be everyone's focus. If you now should tell me I am wrong and can show me where I'm thinking wrong, then I'll change my mind 😊
@@heavymeddle28 Well put. I'm almost seventy and heartily agree... belief revision is warranted for many things I once held dear at twenty.
@@GaderineInsomniac yes. I'm 50 and still learning about the process to not be to stubborn about "I want to be right" things and if I'm wrong I'm wrong. Just show me where I'm thinking wrong or or whatever it might be and I will change my mind. I remember discussions as a younger man and I always felt that I wanted to be right even if I knew I was wrong. So silly
Not only was he unable to provide empirical eviden , Adler & ce for evolution in the existence of intermediate forms, there was in many cases a real difficulty in imagining the hypothetical paths through which evolution had occurred. This was particularly true of various highly specialized organisms and organs, and Darwin concedes:27 It is no doubt difficult even to conjecture by what gradations many structures have been perfected ... . . . although in many cases it is most difficult even to conjecture by what transitions organs have arrived at their present state .. . 28 [Darwin, C. (1872) The Origin of Species
I'm an environmental geology student, and part of my undergrad research is looking for lead and other heavy metals in road dust, and how that impacts populations living near major roadways. Lead is quite pervasive in our environment. It can be breathed if the particles are small enough, it can infiltrate soils AND accumulate in plants, especially leafy greens, and it can leach into groundwater. Lead is bad, mkay, so there could very well be a correlation between environmental lead and intelligence and learning abilities.
Excellent episode. I would have a different interpretation of the Grievance Study. While it is true that the relevant journals will not simply "publish anything"--after all, getting into these journals is competitive, because tenure and promotion in many college/university "humanities" and social "science" departments depends on such publications. Rather, what the trio found is that they had to *frame* the nonsense at the heart of their hoax papers within the "critical theory" embraced by the journals. The :"revise and re-submit" recommendations were overwhelmingly aimed at requiring the authors to include more references to post-modern/critical theory, not at the actual nonsensical methodology or absurd conclusions in the hoax manuscripts. Once the "critical theory" and the obscurantist verbiage were in place, the journals would and did accept absurd nonsense for publication.
There are 4 methods by which we arrive at Truths, according to John Vervaeke: through proposition, participation, perspective, and procedure. Procedural methods are mostly used in the implementation of the scientific method, and this is the most refined and self-checking method we have thus far.
I find it incredible that when it comes to the demarcation of science, they still talk about "Karl Popper" without mentioning anything about the fifty years after him, nothing about Kuhn or Lakatos or Feyerabend, who are undoubtedly the three most influential who overthrew the Popperian legacy. So rather than delve into the current philosophy of science, they speak of a certain "Bayesian" approach to science, a reference to statistical inferences that hardly apply to the complexity of the discussion of demarcation or epistemology. This is not a trivial omission, since the epistemic justification of this increasing relativization of sciences that came from the second half of the 20th century until now is extremely important for the discussion about the validity of demarcations terms as "pseudoscience".
I love this channel. Thank you Michael
Me too
Despite the Bayesian nature of science in the large, there is the background (or even foreground) recognition that a theory should potentially be falsifiable.
Excellent discussion and a great introduction to an academic I did not know. Is it not time, in the light of the fundamental issues raised to re-examine the important work of Paul Feyerabend. I am surprised he seems to have been lost to history. Well worth looking up.
I’m always skeptical of skeptics
just as the therapist has to see a therapist themselves, the skeptic should also be skeptical of the skeptic. Shermer is a good one though, his classes on skepticism 101 really breakdown the fundamentals of how to question people's narratives and theories.
Authoritarians in intellectual clothing. Don't get caught out of goose-step.
There is a good reason to be since many self-proclaimed "skeptics" are liberals with high selection bias of what they are skeptical of.
Where can I find the Walter Isaacson 10-part documentary on Einstein that Shermer referred. Anyone know the name of it? Thanks in advance.
Don't know about the documentary but his book, _Einstein: His Life and Universe_was fabulous.
For most folk it isn't about truth or delusion, science or superstition, justice or oppression.....it is about a feeling of security derived from a certain identity, itself derived by an imposed worldview. We are asking people to trade "themselves" for what seems abstract and disjointed....the truth.
Great interview as always Micheal… you want to stay current you might want to REALLY get a much broader understanding of Postmodernism… just a thought…
It's possible for anxiety about untruth to be more dangerous than untruth itself.
I think I was the guy who believed everything I was told. Then I got to be almost a conspiracy guy. Like 2012 and David Icke and so on... Then when I found out that so much of that nonsense was just drivel, now I don't believe anything anymore. Or shall I say, I'm willing to accept that I can be fooled and I don't want to believe wrong things so my new default position is to be sceptical. And it feels great. Now I try not to listen and if I do listen, I want to try to research for myself as much as possible. Like this "new" ufo wave... I'm listening, I'm interested but I try to listen to, what I believe is, unbiased physicists, taking it in but has come to the conclusion that I don't know anything. That should be everyone's focus. The truth. Where the evidence leads. Even if I don't always like where it leads, I like to try to focus on the truth
This general topic is extremely important, as we seem to have an ascendant faction disastrously thirsty for centralized truth arbitration, seemingly ignorant of the history of the foibles of science. Too bad the work here is being conducted by such shawdy reasoning "... no one having heard of it through any kind of espionage..." Sir, the very nature of espionage is such that its findings are not found in the set of available data. Intelligence services, in other words, have come across this technology, or it's earlier phases, or they haven't - either way, YOU have not heard of their hearing of it. The same goes for if it's our own developement. Some day the conspiracy theory debunking principal of "too many secret holders" will arrive, but that by no means has arrived yet, especially for something less juicy than say a real, or government fabricated, alien crash landing. There are a good many reasons why you haven't heard of the findings of espionage, chief among them being the protection of sources. There's an enormous body of knowledge about other countries that many countries hold, that their citizens know nothing about and are barred from knowing about (most of which is not exciting). How does this even need to be explained?
min 17:00 is key
min 45:00 continental drift
min 46:00 the church did not persecute Galileo because of his theory but because he could not prove it
min 49: both theories were mathematically equivalent
min 47:00 Darwinism was accepted even though there was no underlying mechanism, just like gravity. but not the continental drift
min 55:00 popper vs bayes
I've heard the phrase 'Quantum' so many times that even if its uttered by someone working on the European CERN project I just hear 'WOO".
It is tricky, because the language of quantum mechanics attracts a lot of new-age goofballs and conmen. Quantum mechanics is a legitimately scientific field, though, so it can't ALL be dismissed as woo. There are people who really do understand it, and there is actually information there to be understood. There was one Dawkins questioner who actually made the point that the trinity and quantum mechanics are similar, because both are difficult to understand.
@@billscannell93 Sounds like your quarks are out of alignment.
Good news, everyone! I can sell you a remedy for both of your problems: Quantum infused globuli.
Matt Daemon!!! 😊
How do you know science is correct. The scientific method includes predictability. If there is no predictability it's not science.
🦋
Some of the best evidence is a review of the literature, that seems like what Carl Sagan did. It won't convince everyone but those it does will have better narratives to convince others. And then they tell two friends... oops dating myself
When it comes to thinking about ufo's being aliens, i tend to think many scientists set their priors a bit too low. In my mind it's not too far fetched that aliens have advanced technology that allows them to visit us. Im not saying ufo's are aliens by the way, all I'm saying is I take that possibility more seriously than some. On the other hand, I think the ufo community does a lot of harm to themselves by taking an adversarial approach to the debunkers. They don't seem to take very seriously the possibility that ufo's are not aliens.
Flat Earth matters.👍
Light is perturbation in a medium. (I.e. An ether)
Noy pseudoscience.
When are you going to get Bret Weinstein on?
It would have been informative if your discussion could have gone into the details of the Arizona Election Audit and the surrounding political pushes from both sides and the unusual push for the involvement of the Justice Dept. And if we are to be scientifically technical about it, since the "aether" was brought up as a talking point, if space can curve (as a manifold) according to Einstein, how is it not considered a type of malleable manifold quanta (aether) acted upon by gravity? Within a pure and unquantizable space, a curve of that space cannot be formed because there is nothing which could be considered a curvable manifold.
1:14:20 - "What about the freedoms of the people to not get your bugs?"
Everyone knows vaccines work and if vaccines work, then people are "Free to not get anyone else's bugs" by getting vaccinated, because "science".
So what I got from this is...UFO'S are real. Haha
Where you not embarest by your unreasonably critical opinion of Graham Hancock's book Fingerprints of the gods when you where having a debate on JRE as for Alax Jones as overblown as he is he seems to be rite more often than wrong. And the skeptics are just as guilty as any one for creating there owne followers like a religious group
Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were born on the same day and number in the 260 day Mayan calendar. Their differences are clearly elucidated by examining their decans. The date of birth is a determining factor in many facets of life, but is not well established when using bad tools. Tesla born on the day of electricity, Foreman, Ali, and Frazier all born within ten days,... etc etc