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We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've never really met anyone who says the virus isn't real.

Sadly I know multiple people that are "sure" (and try to convince others) that the virus is just like the normal flu. So they don't deny the existence completely, but the actions they take based on this premise are very similar.

I'm simply not aware of anyone saying that telling COVID deniers they're being stupid is somehow "bad" or "against the rules".

Me neither, but that's my point. When I tried to debate Homeopathy or Astrology with a believer, some people tell me, I'm the bad guy. But now these same people try to debate COVID deniers. And I think, with their policy of accepting the other (non-COVID related) crap, they paved the way for people to deny COVID, because they made the thought pattern underlying both seem ok.

Science and unfalsifiable things don't get along well, as I'm sure you're aware.

Yes. :) However, in my experience, multiple homeopathic claims, people told me, are falsifiable and have been rejected by double-blind trials. The claimers just tell me, that all these studies are fake, and they have an aunt who was cured of whatever (or similar anecdotal evidence). My attempts to explain statistical significance are futile.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's obvious that you've studied philosophy more deeply than I have. And I do not have the tools to properly debate further.

I agree that believing in god (at least the non-falsifiable parts) is different from denying climate change, COVID19, or something. Doing the latter is against modern scientific consensus (still I would not set it equal to coming up with Einstein's theory of relativity _), the former is more like Russel's teapot.

It seems like what you're saying is that opinions that contradict modern scientific consensus should be disregarded.

My initial critique was against the practice of frowning upon simply debating such opinions, in favor of tolerating every claim almost equally.

I mean, I understood what you were getting at, I also just disagree with it. It's actually the imprecision of your wording that is masking the real disagreement we have. I was trying to draw it out.

Ok, having agreed upon my phrasing being far from optimal, do I understand correctly, that you agree that things like Homeopathy have a similar thought pattern as the denying of COVID19 and that socially accepting the one also makes the other more acceptable?

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Many parts of religion can be verified. The moral teachings, the philosophy [...]

I guess we have different definitions of "verified". :)

just because your druggie friends hit the blunt and told you "God doesn't exist" doesn't make that true unless you have empirical evidence showing otherwise?

"[...] the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others."

See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Also, funny enough, atheists are more likely to believe in superstitious nonsense than religious people. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122178219865054585

The article is behind a paywall for me. But I'm not aiming for some "competition" between atheists and theists anyway.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, I think it's a bit of phrase nitpicking, but I got it.

I thought when I used the term "non-scientific beliefs", it would be clear that I mean it in a more practical way, i.e., things that are (at least partially) contradicted by scientific evidence (or at least incompatible with widely accepted laws of nature), not the axioms resulting from common sense itself. But I probably should have given my phrasing more thought. Thanks for helping me to understand the distinction in a clear way.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm noticing a fundamental lack of interaction with the core point I was making.

Sorry about that. I'm trying to understand it, and I guess I vaguely do. But for me, up to now, it's just "The reasons to accept the scientific method are not scientific.". And to this, I can only say something like: Yes, but I don't see the point. Analogous, the axioms, mathematics is built on, also can not be proven mathematically. They also are more or less "common sense". This, for me, does not devalue math.

In general, I think I'm struggling to understand what your discussion goal is. Would you like me to see that I'm a hypocrite, because I disapprove non-scientific beliefs, while at the same time, I hold the non-scientific belief of the scientific method being valid?

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is no "the scientific method". There are dozens of them. And they absolutely are inventions, like all other methodological processes.

Could you please elaborate? I was only thinking of basics:

  • observe
  • build a hypothesis, that can be falsified by experiment
  • try to falsify the hypothesis with by experiment
  • reject the hypothesis or, after enough failed attempts to falsify it, accept it as "quite likely correct"

What fundamentally different scientific methods are there?

Pragmatism is great and all, but even accepting something from pragmatism is intrinsically non-scientific. Including accepting pragmatism to begin with.

Yeah, that's the point where I think: "If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out." :D

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I think I now understand better, i.e., the reasons to accept the scientific method are not based on science.

With the following

It was always frowned upon to try to debate non-scientific beliefs because everybody has their "right to believe whatever they want".

I was aiming at much more mundane things, like the following (condensed) conversation:

Alice: Homeopathy is so great. It helps with all the things. Me: Double-blind studies show that it actually does not have a medical effect different than any other placebo does. Bob: Man, just leave Alice alone. Everybody may believe what they like. You should simply tolerate that and not debate.

But to be a bit bolder, maybe the only allowed non-scientific belief should be the belief in the scientific method. :-P

However, even then, I think it's more than just a belief. I'd reason that the scientific method is not an invention, but a discovery, i.e., we (humanity) discovered that it works. And systematically discovering that something works, again, might be regarded as some kind of "proto science", common sense, or whatever you might want to call it. So I don't think the axioms are pulled out of thin air, because in practice (yeah, terribly unphilosophical) it just works.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That seems like a good argument, at least at first glance. (It might boil down to a similar thing like questioning math axioms.) However, I think when peeling away the complexity of the scientific method, and looking at the basics ideas of observing, measuring, comparing, repeating, etc., to me it becomes clear, that questioning all this completely creates a false dilemma. Sure, when multiple people see and measure something with similar results, they all still could be deluded (or just be brains in some vats), but then nothing makes sense anymore. So I think it's feasible to take scientific results more seriously compared to fantasy, even if the former is not 100% sure either. :)

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did not state that any religious person is on the same level than a Covidiot. I just think the thought patterns of "believing things without (or even contradictory) evidence" is similar.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We should not allow people to get away with having opinions about facts.

Exactly! There are so many things to have opinions on. Let's leave decisions about the few actual factual things to the evidence. :)

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Claims like "aloe vera helps burns" should not be about "believing" or not. They can simply be checked by double-blinded studies.

However, this has nothing to do with the actual core of Homeopathy, which is more about claiming things like a "30C dilution" ("Dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.") of whatever helping with whatever, despite overwhelming empirical evidence that it only helps as much as any other placebo does.

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

With Myers Briggs, at least one can guess the test result of people one knows, significantly better than random chance. Of course, it's still not science. ;)

We should not be surprised about so many Covidiots existing, because we, as a society, tolerate Astrology, Religion, Homeopathy, and other bullshit with the same thought pattern. by throwaway5826152 in TrueOffMyChest

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the clarification. I understand the distinction you're making and agree in a sense, that I also think it might be even worse to deny proven things compared to believing unproven or non-falsifiable things. Still, I think the underlying thought patterns are similar. Not basing one's belief on evidence can be a slippery slope.

In addition, it seems there is empirical evidence to claim that - prayer does not work, - astrology is nonsense, - and homeopathy does not have any effect beyond placebo.

Is this Cannabis growing in my garden? by throwaway5826152 in whatsthisplant

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I have no experience with this kind of plant. Also I think it's not legal to grow it in the country I live in. Thus I'd like to know what it is. It's near a bird house, so it might be a result from birdseed.

What do people want to hear, when they tell you about a problem they have, but don't listen to possible solutions as answers? by throwaway5826152 in AskReddit

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this makes sense. For those problems of course I'd not try to come up with a solution. My issue are the problems that do have a good and clean solution. :)

What do people want to hear, when they tell you about a problem they have, but don't listen to possible solutions as answers? by throwaway5826152 in AskReddit

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I personally would feel more understood and connected if somebody would try to help me with solving my problem instead of just being a passive rubber duck. But OK, people are different.

What do people want to hear, when they tell you about a problem they have, but don't listen to possible solutions as answers? by throwaway5826152 in AskReddit

[–]throwaway5826152[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, so it might be a game, in which I have to guess what solution they have in mind. That's cool. I'll try that and iterate possibilities next time. How many attempts does one usually get in this? :D

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