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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
 Posted - 07/05/2001 : 21:49:18
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 07/06/2001 : 03:23:33 [Permalink]
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The problem here is that while it safes time your method brings with it a large amount of generalization. Generalization is one of the worst things you can have.
Another problem is that you stop keeping an open mind towards new ideas because of their source. Dismissing an idea because of it's source or similarity to other ideas is not skeptical thinking. It is having prejudices.
It can also lead to trusting ideas because they come out of a good source.
I personally tend to skeptically analyze every knew idea presented to me. I could stop as soon as I hear one of many keywords that normally signal crackpot ideas. But usually I keep going trying to find out where exactly they made their mistake. It keeps you in training.
Spotting the fallacies in theories that on some level you already know are wrong, prepares you for critically analyzing stuff you were not sure about. It can even make critically thinking make second nature, so that you start finding mistakes in information from trusted sources were you never consciously tried to find any.
My method has negative consequences as well. If you don't learn to turn it of in informal settings and places where it is not needed, you pretty fast become known as a nitpick and devils-advocate.
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 07/06/2001 : 21:33:19 [Permalink]
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quote:
The problem here is that while it safes time your method brings with it a large amount of generalization. Generalization is one of the worst things you can have.
Another problem is that you stop keeping an open mind towards new ideas because of their source. Dismissing an idea because of it's source or similarity to other ideas is not skeptical thinking. It is having prejudices.
It can also lead to trusting ideas because they come out of a good source.
I personally tend to skeptically analyze every knew idea presented to me. I could stop as soon as I hear one of many keywords that normally signal crackpot ideas. But usually I keep going trying to find out where exactly they made their mistake. It keeps you in training.
Spotting the fallacies in theories that on some level you already know are wrong, prepares you for critically analyzing stuff you were not sure about. It can even make critically thinking make second nature, so that you start finding mistakes in information from trusted sources were you never consciously tried to find any.
My method has negative consequences as well. If you don't learn to turn it of in informal settings and places where it is not needed, you pretty fast become known as a nitpick and devils-advocate.
Lars_H:
I do not see how anything you wrote has any relation to what I wrote. Or reworded -- how anything I wrote has anything to do with your comments about it.
Conceptual is like the carefully worked out General Theory of Relativity. It is full of different percepts, but is joined together by the overall conceptual framework. If one of the percepts in the concept is incorrect, the theory can be adjusted to omit the error and still stand.
With percepts this does not happen. When there is no whole (concept) into which the percepts are gathered, it will sink with the first finding of error. When an observation of nature seems to include contrary rules, this forces a change in the entire concept in order to include the finding. The concept is adjusted to fit the new observations. An example of this is the somewhat recent finding in particle physics of the lack of parity between the B meson and its antiparticle. Very recently this has been validated through many experiments: There are more B mesons than Anti-B mesons in the universe. Glory be! It has now been proved (through observation and experiment) that there were more particles than antiparticles in the early universe. Of course, in science, anything is always open to becoming overturned. Nothing in science is sacrosanct.
Concepts include a lot of percepts. A percept includes only the percept itself until it has become a part of a larger concept.
You might now think that I have simply said the same thing all over again. Sorry about that. Or, perhaps I did not define them adequately the first time. I knew perfectly well what I meant by *concept* and *percept* but may have failed to make it clear enough for others such as you.
Incidentally, when people repeat the same failed *percepts* over and over again, I stop reading, because it is a waste of time to tilt at the same foolish windmills ad infinitum.
ljbrs
Edited by - ljbrs on 07/06/2001 21:39:35 |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2001 : 17:07:18 [Permalink]
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Slight explanation to my statement:
quote:
Incidentally, when people repeat the same failed *percepts* over and over again, I stop reading, because it is a waste of time to tilt at the same foolish windmills ad infinitum.
This statement by me does not refer at all to the people who disagree with me. This refers only to writers who are anti-scientific, anti-skeptical, and who keep coming on with the same stupid, stale arguments against scientific principles and whose statements have no scientific or skeptical basis. Then again, of course, I can sometimes be found to be wrong, wrong, wrong....
ljbrs
Perfection Is a State of Growth... |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2001 : 17:35:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
Skepticism should be approached CONCEPTUALLY rather than PERCEPTUALLY. By CONCEPTUALLY, I mean having a general overall formula and method for making choices. PERCEPTUALLY would be taking each case individually without seeing the similarities and differences between all of the ideas under consideration.
quote:
The problem here is that while it safes time your method brings with it a large amount of generalization. Generalization is one of the worst things you can have.
Another problem is that you stop keeping an open mind towards new ideas because of their source. Dismissing an idea because of it's source or similarity to other ideas is not skeptical thinking. It is having prejudices.
It can also lead to trusting ideas because they come out of a good source
While it's important to keep an open mind about any claim, I do recognize patterns that make some claims more worthy of investigation than others. Support of claims with appeals to science without references comes to mind. Phrases like
"scientists say" cause the alarms goes off. Testimonials have the same effect on me. I may not dismiss the claim outright, but I know I have one to investigate. Frankly, because years of testing and finding no support for the claim that homeopathics, for example, are of any benefit beyond a possible placebo affect has made me hard pressed to treat any claim about the benefits of homeopathics without a healthy dose of skepticism. I think its fair to say that all claims are not equal.
I'm willing to cop to this prejudice if that is what it is.
Having said that, I think it's important to approach any investigation without a plan to debunk what ever the claim being made is. That is where we can get into trouble. It may walk like a duck, and it may quack like a duck, but sometimes, I suppose, it's not a duck at all. It's rare, but it happens.
As for claims that come from good sources, well, that is where peer review comes in.
All we know for sure is that everything we know is provisional. But honestly, some claims are better than others and patterns do exist.
Carl Sagan told us to keep an open mind. But not so open that our brains fall out.
The Evil Skeptic |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2001 : 20:30:20 [Permalink]
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I have learned to dismiss theories that either have no evidence or explanation or require one to have faith. Others can go after these if they want, but I don't think there are enough hours in the day.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2001 : 22:12:34 [Permalink]
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Kil and @tomic:
I feel much the same way.
I have read enough books written by the scientifically *challenged* to feel that I can no longer find time for many more rounds of such baloney. When I come up against the same blatently fallacious statements again and again (here I am generalizing, because there are so many of them in pseudoscientific literature), I simply fall intellectually asleep due to a lack of conceptual input on the part of the writers of nonsense. I do not think that any of them can be persuaded of anything, and I find it a waste of my time to continue to argue about it. I take changing such minds as a totally-lost cause. My main interest in challenging them is to prevent them from spreading drivel around to others who might have a chance of getting a good grip on science.
As a skeptic, I am more interested in science than I am in pseudoscience. I want to know what is going on in science. Since there are a number of sciences, that takes a lot of work in order to get a fundamental understanding of so many of them. The only reason I am interested in pseudoscience is because pseudoscience is dangerous to the health and future of science in this country where there is so much blather to take its place. Our students rank last in science and mathematics among the industrialized nations of the world. It is positively humiliating.
I spend a lot of every day reading: Science, Nature, Physics Today, PASP (Publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific), Scientific American, Science News, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy. I have maintained subscriptions to all of them (many of which are online). It is so very important for me to be able to keep up with it all, particularly with astronomy and physics (including astrophysics and cosmology), that it leaves little time for nonsense. I want to know. I am taking the word of the working scientists, because it is impossible for me to completely educate myself in all of these interesting fields. I leave the job of making science to the scientists in each field. I am a scientific cheerleader.
ljbrs
Perfection Is a State of Growth... |
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