I did a little exercise in archaeology in ET's comment archive. The first 4 comments ever mentioning the term of woo-woo were by ThatBritGuy in 2006:
It's that disconnect with reality that has to be bridged. What we have now is a system that pretends to define reality while mostly being based on hand-waving and woo-woo, with a side order of bullying and oppression.
Considering how audio reviews are mostly hand-waving and woo-woo, sometimes with a few meaningless graphs thrown in for supposedly objective air cover, and some of them are genuinely corrupt, this is not a good thing.
So you get economics which is pure made-up woo-woo, both in terms of bubbles and pretend-factors like GDP.
Reid really is a complete woo-woo-wee-wee fruityloop, isn't he?
Chopra? Gimme a friggin' break! The man is a class-A woo-woo. His 'thinking' on quantum mechanics are astrology-grade nonsense. That kind of thing is exactly what we don't need, and frankly, I though that progressives had learned their lesson after the Sokal Hoax.
Finally, there's an additional twist to this whole discussion which is that decoherence is supposed to be about breaking entanglement, a concept which figures prominently in gaianne's writeup and seems central to the "everything is connected" woo-woo (excuse me) narratives. Now the twist is that entanglement itself is not well defined. It is possible to write down a state of three particles such that depending on the result of a measurement made on A, B and C may or may not be entangled (and cyclic permutations of A, B and C). So, "connectedness" of A, B and C means that "connectedness" of B and C depends on what happens to A far away. This state is called sometimes a Borromean state, by analogy with the borromean rings which are not linked pairwise, but are linked as a set of three.
"'woo woo' is not shorthand, it's rudeness."--Bertrand Russell http://www.watchingyou.com/woowoo.html There are 41 statements to the Woo Woo credo, many of which demonstrate that it is a term coming out of Usenet flamewars--or somesuch. To understand if a person is a woo woo, one would have to run their comments via the list--and if they matched up, you can then call them "woo woos" and start an argument--it's an argumentative term, with some humour but clearly aimed at a certain Usenet type of character (the kind who reports you to the sys admin etc.) The list does have some enjoyable moments. I recommend numbers 4, 8, 9, 12, 22...wow, 22! But I don't recommend using it as shorthand because it is clearly meant to be derogatory.
There are 41 statements to the Woo Woo credo, many of which demonstrate that it is a term coming out of Usenet flamewars--or somesuch. To understand if a person is a woo woo, one would have to run their comments via the list--and if they matched up, you can then call them "woo woos" and start an argument--it's an argumentative term, with some humour but clearly aimed at a certain Usenet type of character (the kind who reports you to the sys admin etc.) The list does have some enjoyable moments. I recommend numbers 4, 8, 9, 12, 22...wow, 22! But I don't recommend using it as shorthand because it is clearly meant to be derogatory.
I've used 'woo woo' in this thread in the way (I presume) InWales meant it - which is anything unusual which doesn't currently have a scientific explanation.
I'd guess in a Borromean way it shades into self-aggrandising kookiness at one extreme, well intentioned and open minded curiosity in another, and dismissive self-aggrandising but ignorant skepticism in the third.
If anything it's probably more useful to look at socially acceptable woo-woo as a social process, because there's not much else to add about the scientific angle at this point.
I put Chicago-style economic theory in that category deliberately, because I really can't see a difference in the quality of reasoning needed to decide that 'tachyon meditation' is something special, as opposed to the reasoning behind trickle down or tax cuts for very rich people.
Except possibly that one is more consciously cynical and exploitative than the other - although which is which may not be obvious.
It bothers me that the professional scientific skeptics are keen to tackle the paranormal with crusading zeal, but seem willing to leave more mundane, but far, far more dangerous, Chicago-style pseudo-science alone.
As for audio woo-woo - endless fun there, and a diary in prep about that. :)
