You totally misunderstand me. I did not say that scientific discourse makes paranormal claims stick out as woo-woo. What I said is that the good think about scientific discourse is that it provides a structure within which woo-woo sticks out like a sore thumb. I studied theoretical physics so I am well acquainted with scientific woo-woo, having dabbled in it myself. Sometimes I had to stop a discussion with 'guys, if we don't stop waving our hands we'll take off flying'.
Which is why I don't think stepping outside the constraints of scientific discourse is "liberating": if you want to get anywhere with it, it forces you to exercise more critical thinking about most claims that are made so it is a lot more work. Especially claims that are not independently verifiable even in principle.
Of course, overreliance on the scientific method leads to suspending critical judgement of scientific claims, and bad things happen
but equally science has it's frauds and it has those who fiddle their stats and extrapolate whatever conclusion they want without it being fully grounded with evidence. But this slips through even with peer review to be seen as legitimate research, when actually it is just as woo-woo as a woman pretending to be psychic and telling people what she thinks they want to hear in a reading, possibly causing them harm.
Drop the with it, it just makes things ambiguous again. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Migeru:
I did not say that scientific discourse makes paranormal claims stick out as woo-woo. What I said is that the good think about scientific discourse is that it provides a structure within which woo-woo sticks out like a sore thumb.
I interpret these two things to be broadly the same so I'm obviously not following your logic.
And yes using a scientific structure has its worth but there are some things that don't appear to be verifiable or we don't know how to go about robustly observing and trying to seek an explanation. I don't think this necessarily means those experiences are not valid in themselves, that is all I was trying to say. Ad astra per aspera
Your diary does not contain woo-woo that I can see. Refer to the Crackpot Index. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
That's usually called scientism, and it's - not helpful. Although unfortunately it's not uncommon.
The problem is that the cranks and kooks who like to live on the fringes are often so ridiculous that there's so much noise that any signal becomes buried. Between authoritarian scientism on one hand, way out woo-woo watchers on the other, and the occasional deliberate fraudster, it gets to be very messy.
Fraud in science isn't actually all that uncommon. There have been studies of both graduate and post-grad papers, and falsified, or at least massaged, results aren't all that rare.
That's why reproducibility is so important. If one person says something, you can take their point or leave it. If the same thing happens to a hundred people, it's much more likely to be worth paying attention to.
The problem with so-called woo-woo is that it's not very lab friendly. And because of scientism, even when evidence piles up it's not accepted, and no one is interested in trying to reproduce it because it's a sure way to end your career.
It's not just woo-woo which suffers from the same problem. Science is fanatically political, and becoming more so, and that has blunted its effectiveness over the last few decades.
Secretary: "Oh, I don't. I split them evenly across the department."
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
It was brilliant, and still is :)
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
(that the spontaneous nature of blogging stimulates, unfortunately!) ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
to mig:
playing with metaphor, the overton window signifying the common wisdom, the fact that an economy/energy blog should even bother to comment on diaries like these, and the surge of interest from women as well as men when they occur, all suggest a shift, from where i stand... also peoples' attitudes to these phenomena seem a tad less judgmental than last winter, when similar discussions led to bad blood.
so it is amazing, but not how you meant, i think...
i do have a record of misunderstanding you sometimes, so excuse me if i inadvertently pushed your buttons there.
;) ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
