Sunday, September 26, 2021
Circling
Some rare NON-pointmissing, via MindMatters as usual....
Does that mean that there is no difference between science and pseudoscience? No, it does not. Although there is no definite dividing line between day and night, we can all agree that clear examples of each are easy to find. In the same way, we can all agree that, say, physics and chemistry are clear examples of true sciences and astrology and homeopathy are excellent examples of pseudoscience. So how are we doing this? The best approach appears to be one that does not attempt to apply a definitive list of strict criteria but instead accepts that there are certain ‘benchmarks’ that characterise what we think of as good science. First and foremost, science is a set of methods for attempting to gain veridical knowledge. It is not an established body of ‘facts’ that must never be questioned. Personally, I no longer believe in paranormal phenomena such as precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. I could be wrong, of course, and maybe one day new evidence of a robust and replicable paranormal phenomenon will be presented that will lead me to change my mind. After almost a century and a half of systematic research, I’m not holding my breath.Getting there. Telepathy and precognition DEFINITELY happen SOMETIMES. They can't be turned on and off like an engine or a flashlight, so they can't be examined in a standard controlled experiment. A more profitable examination would treat the SOMETIMES as a skill, not a theory. What conditions are conducive to telepathy and precognition? Who seems to be most sensitive? How can we increase our sensitivity? As fucking usual, Russians were working on this SKILL for quite a while, and we were dismissing it just as we dismissed Lamarck. Russian science has a record of being right, and we have a record of being wrong. = = = = = When you start from absolute determinism, ESP and precognition aren't a problem. The old Arabs and Persians started there, and the Euros who picked up science from them (Brahe, Kepler, etc) were thinking in the same mold. The universe is a massive clock, with an infinite pattern of interfering waveforms from its parts. An observer who is sensitive to those waveforms should be able to predict the future pattern of the waveforms. Real astrology, as I've been pointing out, was an attempt to systematize those patterns, or at least the part of the patterns formed by our nearby planets. I've been circling around this question for several months. and still haven't managed to pull it together. Apparently I'm not predestined to cinch up the topic yet.
Labels: Equipoise, Not AI point-missing, skill-estate
¶ 8:32 AM
