How truly skeptical is our skepticism?

[Logan38]

Please disprove Sagittarius A*.




Aaaaaand here we have the whole purpose of your post.

I do not have to disprove it. It is thought it is a super massive black hole. That means, they are not sure. It is generally accepted. There really is no full consensus about any of that. It is just in your face all over the place.

 

[StackOverflow]

I do not have to disprove it. It is thought it is a super massive black hole. That means, they are not sure. It is generally accepted. There really is no full consensus about any of that. It is just in your face all over the place.

How did scientists arrive at that "thought"?

 

[Logan38]

How did scientists arrive at that "thought"?

It all kind of started when people started thinking Einsteins theory of relativity was correct somehow. And no, you can not disprove a mathematical loop. That is not possible. There is also no general consensus that Einsteins theory of general relativity is correct.

 

[Cayvmann]

I was, just now, reading this article about some studies that turned out to be rigged by pharmaceutical companies. The article went on to talk about how “evidence-based medicine” is sometimes, in specific instances, not really “evidence-based” at all. It was a newspaper article, which I read in today’s (physical) paper, and I’m not attempting to search the article out online and link to it here, since the article itself is only incidental. I mention it only because it set me thinking : how truly skeptical is our skepticism? Or are there limits to (individual) skepticism?

I'm guessing that people who were skeptical of the results were the ones who uncovered the truth of these studies... Or maybe a witch doctor divined it over some chicken blood.

 

[StackOverflow]

It all kind of started when people started thinking Einsteins theory of relativity was correct somehow. And no, you can not disprove a mathematical loop. That is not possible. There is also no general consensus that Einsteins theory of general relativity is correct.

*Sigh* As expected, a non answer.

Some advice for your next troll account: Don't empty your magazine within a few hours. Makes it way too obvious.

Better luck next time.

 

[Logan38]

*Sigh* As expected, a non answer.

Some advice for your next troll account: Don't empty your magazine within a few hours. Makes it way too obvious.

Better luck next time.

You can look this up, what I am saying to you. There are seriously people, scientists, who are not agreeing with those theories. I am not trolling anything. I am giving you real answers.

You seem to have a certain mind set, which is different than what I am trying to tell you. Then fine, we will agree to disagree. It is as simple as that.

 

[xjx388]

The way I approach skepticism is more like applying critical thinking about things. My friend tells me there's a ghost in their house. My underlying assumption is that there is not a ghost in their house because there has never been any evidence that has convinced me that ghosts actually exist. So, I will demonstrate that it wasn't a ghost that made that door slam shut but a draft when the A/C came on, a mischievous kid, etc. Sometimes, I can't explain what made that door slam; however, this does not mean I jump to the conclusion that it must be a ghost. In order for me to change my mind about ghosts, I would need to be confronted with something more than a report about a door slamming unexpectedly. The existence of ghosts would challenge all scientific thought in physics and biology up to this point so it would take some pretty convincing evidence to change my mind.

And yes, part of it is trusting the experts. I can't possibly learn everything about everything. I accept that there is going to be some error in the scientific process. There will be fraud. I trust the scientific process to catch these errors and fraud. I'm very conservative with the meds I take, for example; I want the tried and true, not the latest and greatest.

It's just an approach to life, a way of thinking.

 

[Chanakya]

Thanks for proving my point, well better than even I would have guessed.

How exactly has your “point” been proven? Do explain.

Are you saying you actually do not see how that post clearly and with evidence exposes your fallacious thinking and wholly negates your pathetic “point”?

Not very good at this critical thinking business, are you? You don’t really know what a strawman is, do you, The Norseman? (Hint : In this context, it does not refer to a scarecrow ; and nor is it a rhetorical devise thought up just in order to make apparently witty comebacks.) You don’t really know what it means to ‘go by the evidence’, do you?

Forget critical thinking, you have difficulty parsing longer than byte-sized texts, don’t you? You didn’t really understand either that post of mine that you’ve quoted there, did you, The Norseman, or my earlier post addressed to you? You have no clue why I said your argument is just a strawman, did you? No wonder you were whining on there about “verbosity”!

Or, rather than a complete break-down of basic reading comprehension, might this simply be more “drama-queen”-ing? Might this simply be disingenuousness and play-acting rather than an honest inability to comprehend? Only you can know that for sure, but I think the latter is far more likely.

Your desperate attempt to declare victory was amusing. Who is it you are trying to fool here? Yourself? Your pathetic attempt to somehow save face was cringe-making. I’d advise you not to try it again.

There’s nothing wrong with having made a mistake, even a stupid mistake. Everyone is liable to do that sometimes, even the brightest and the best. Just own up to it like a man, and that’s the end to it. That’s what I would have done, without embarrassment, in your place. If you’re unable to bring yourself to do that, then just slink away quietly (not from this forum, nor from this thread, but simply from this particular “point” -- I'll be happy to engage with you on other matters), and I will not raise this issue any more. But if you keep trying these pathetically transparent tricks to somehow bluff your way out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into, The Norseman, then your clearly documented fallacies will keep coming back to bite you. I will ensure they do. If you try to persist with this disingenuous trolling, I will be sure to haul you in by the scruff of your strawman and hold your feet to the fire.

 

[Chanakya]

Yes and what I haven't seen yet is "the point."

"How truly skeptical is our skepticism" is not a question someone asks if they think the answer is "The exact right amount." If you ask that question you think the answer is either "Too much" or (much, much less likely) "not enough."

You seem to be getting frustrated because I'm asking you to basically finish your thought. As if me going into a thread entitled "How truly skeptical is our skepticism" and asking the person to please clarify what exactly they think we aren't being skeptical about the right way is some unreasonable action.

Again I've had this exact discussion, damn near word for word, including the sidejack meta discussions about the discussion where the person argues that having this discussion isn't exactly what they are doing, a good.... 50 times at least in some form. I don't know why this particular discussion has such a specific script that people just think they have to act out every scene of but I've already seen this movie, we can skip to the end.

Enough is enough. I call BS.

You’ve got to be trolling here. You cannot possibly be making these amazingly obtuse comments in earnest.

You’ve quoted only a very small part of my post, and pretended to address it. I don’t really need to say anything further. I can simply direct you back to the entirety of my post, and the absurdity of your own response will become clearly evident.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll quote all of my earlier post here (which you’ve so very carefully part-quoted). See for yourself how stupid your own response looks now, when you consider that that is what you were responding to.

Ok, I read you. If that’s how pervasive you say you’ve found Woo, sure, that’s how it must have been.





Astute of you to think of that meta angle. I agree, some scams do start out by first referring to other scams in apparently innocuous and disarming manner. You’re perfectly right to be on guard against this.





I understand. This forum goes back a long way, and I’ve only been around for some time (although a bit longer than my modest post count might indicate), so I don’t think I’ve come across those threads.

I suppose I could always go search myself : but if you’re aware of any specific thread(s) that discuss the issues we’ve been talking of here, then could you link to them? I’m sure I’ll enjoy going through them.

And I appreciate that if you’ve been through all of this already yourself, more than once, then these discussions about basic concepts you may find tedious. But you’ll have to try to appreciate in turn, Joe, how the fact that you are aware of and comfortable with some subject does not mean that everyone shares your particular knowledge base. We all need to learn whatever it is we wish to learn, in our own time and at our own pace.





Not necessarily. If you’re examining basic concepts of skepticism that you’re yourself not fully up to speed about, that does not necessarily mean that you’re saying skepticism itself is wanting.

And even if it so happens that you do end up examining whether skepticism itself is indeed wanting, so what? Why should that be a problem? I understand and appreciate that you value skepticism, but I don’t think skepticism is something you should be putting on an altar and genuflecting in front of and trying to enforce blasphemy rules against.





You keep on using that word, Joe, but I don't think it means what you think it means!

No, seriously, I don’t think that’s what “Woo” refers to, at all.

Perhaps you’re strawmanning here? (No offense meant to you when I say that! Just trying to express my thoughts about why you might be thinking in this way. I'm not saying it's deliberate : perhaps this strawmanning is wholly unconscious.) Because it seems to have been your personal experience that questioning skepticism is followed by Woo, therefor you are, it seems to me, simply conflating those two wholly separate things.





God, not again!

Joe, it seems from your comments that you’ve been following all of this thread. (It’s short enough I suppose.) You’ve seen yourself what all has been discussed here.

I’m not saying this to be mean to you, or to “gotcha” you, but again : do you not see how you’re attacking a strawman here? How you’re not only not producing any evidence yourself to back up your claims of Woo-peddling, but instead insistently ignoring all the evidence right there in front of you, in plain view?

What do you really expect me to answer to that question of yours, that you insist on asking me again and again?

 

[Chanakya]

Best I can say is I am completely skeptical of any aspect of religion/religious texts.
But I am not at all skeptical of properly done and heavily peer reviewed science!!!!!

Outside of those two, I check things out myself.

If that’s what works for you, that’s great. That’s just right for you then. (I’m only thinking my way through this myself, I don’t really have any very clear ‘position’ as such on this yet -- but what both Tommy Jeppesen and kellyb had to say to this seems to makes sense : that how skeptical you choose to be is itself a legitimate subject for skepticism. That is, how skeptical you choose to be is ultimately a subjective issue.)

As for trusting experts in specific disciplines, you’re perfectly right in your place to do that of course if that appears reasonable to you, but I think you may find this article interesting in this context (it was referred to me upthread by kellyb).

 

[Chanakya]

The only thing I'd say is "too much" skepticism is if it provokes some sort of decision paralysis

That sounds reasonable. While the extent of your skepticism is (it seems to me) a wholly subjective matter, nevertheless if that skepticism leads to “decision paralysis” then it is probably a good idea to re-assess how you’re doing this.

Of course, that is nowhere near the “only thing” that matters here -- there are many other factors that can legitimately inform one’s skepticism -- but if all you’d meant to say there is that that’s the “only thing” you want to say about this here (without implying that that is the only relevant factor in play here), then that sounds reasonable to me.

 

[Chanakya]

Rather an odd way to defend one's self from the accusation of absurd verbosity.

Context.

I like to look at every side of some issue, and don’t mind talking aloud about it when relevant -- that is, relevant in my personal, subjective assessment. (For instance, I could simply have said “Context” in response to you just now, just that one word, and stopped right there. It would have been a valid enough response. But I choose to go into somewhat greater detail in order to explain my meaning clearly.) That’s how I’d prefer others to respond to me, clearly and in depth, and that’s how I myself choose to respond to others. I don’t think that choice needs “defending” at all!

I recognize that others may have their own views about the form in which discourse is presented. Given that they’ve taken the trouble to engage with me, I try to engage with that view with an open mind, even when that view is, at times, phrased less politely than one may have wished. (For evidence of this I’ll refer you to psion10’s post #60 on page 2 and his rather painful attempt at humor there, and my response #65 to that post.) But there are limits to that engagement, limits to my capacity and willingness to tolerate unprovoked rudeness.

To properly explain why I’d said what I did to The Norseman will require another very long-winded post (even more long-winded that this one ). If you’re at all interested in learning about this context, I’ll refer you instead to all the posts that poster has addressed to me in this thread, as well as all of my responses to him. A quick CNTRL-F of the word “Norseman” across each page of this thread should give you the relevant posts easily enough. (And if you’re not interested in those details, that’s fine too. Then just take it from me that the apparent oddness that you refer to is explained partly by how I tend to think and write, and partly by the context leading to those remarks.)

 

[Chanakya]

If the universe is physical, then my ability to answer "No!" to the claim that the universe is physical, is also physical. That is in part what you have to learn to be a general skeptic. It goes like this, you have to learn to avoid treating the universe as a thing itself and something which is around us. The universe is also in you and you are a part of the universe.
So for this exchange as it relates to empiricism, there are 2 aspects: Intra-cognition and external sensory input. Now if you only accept external sensory input, I can catch you, because you also rely on intra-cognition, i.e what goes on in your brain as your brain or inside your cognition.
So here it is unpacked:
The universe is physical means to some people that all knowledge can be expressed as an observational external sensory input evidence. I.e. "only observational external sensory input evidence is real" or some other variant to the same effect. But the trick is to recognize that that the sentence "only observational external sensory input evidence is real" is not observational external sensory input evidence. The sentence is a case of intra-cognition, so thus empiricism as 2 aspects: Intra-cogntion and external sensory input!
Naive empiricism as it connects to scientism is the idea that the universe can be explained only with external sensory.
So science comes in 2 forms: "Broad" and "narrow" empiricism.

What you say seems to make sense. To be honest, I haven’t really been able to wrap around the full implications of all that you say there, but on the whole what you say seems to make sense.

As for how this might apply to personal and everyday skepticism :

Am I right in thinking that what you’re saying here is essentially this : that the subjective and the objective are both valid modes of knowing ourselves and knowing the world? If that’s what you’re saying, then I agree fully.

Claiming that the objective alone is valid, or that the subjective alone is valid, both positions seem equally untenable to me. (Although I don’t really have the philosophic chops to identify and break down those arguments technically in the forms that I know they’ve been made in various places -- I've read bits and pieces of those arguments, in snatches here and there.)

That’s a fascinating angle you’ve brought out here. Whatever else you may have to say about this, I’m all ears.

Incidentally : assuming I’ve not misinterpreted your post, why are you even arguing this issue? Would you say that the odd position that the objective alone is valid, and the subjective never ever valid -- not valid even when you clearly recognize that it is subjective, and do not conflate it with what is objective -- would you say that is a widely prevalent approach/idea/position? (Question, not rhetoric. I don’t know the answer.) That is, do you think that my idea (and yours, unless I am mistaken) that the subjective is also a valid mode for knowing ourselves and the world, is not a mainstream idea?




I’d asked some questions about what you’d said in your first post in this thread. We needn’t revisit all of them now, but one specific issue I’d like to go back to. You’d said in that post that personal skepticism is a very different thing from scientific skepticism. My own view was/is that the two are essentially the same thing, except that scientific skepticism is probably a broader (and more formalized) application of personal skepticism. When I’d first said that to you, I wasn’t sure if that was just my own personal (and uninformed) view : but other posters have since come out in support of this position.

Would you talk a bit more about your views on this?

 

[Chanakya]

Many posters have posted very insightful views on this thread. I’d just like to say one thing to them :

I try to limit my ‘social media’ time (including time spent on this forum) to no more than an hour or so every day (or two or three, depending on real-life engagements). I realize this is probably atypical : many posters log in here daily, and often spend far longer hours when here. Relative to that kind of presence here, my own posting here on this thread may appear sporadic. I just wanted to assure you that this is absolutely NOT due to any lack of interest in this thread on my part!

I’ve learnt a great deal from this short simple thread. All the questions I’d started out with have been answered to my satisfaction, and some interesting insights discussed that hadn’t even occurred to me, ever. So, well, thanks for posting here, and please don’t let my apparently sporadic posting put you off.

 

[Chanakya]

It is better to think of skepticism as a process, not an attribute.

I’d responded to this insightful post of yours earlier upthread.

I’m returning to this particular portion of your post in order to run something by you :

I agree that skepticism is a process not an attribute. I also agree with what some other posters have pointed out, that skepticism is ultimately subjective, in the sense that how much skepticism one is comfortable with is an individual choice. You may be comfortable trusting one particular “expert” (some particular doctor about some particular treatment, for example), while I may insist on researching in depth about this treatment before accepting it : but that does not necessarily make me a ‘better’ skeptic than you, just someone whose temperament, views, and resources available turned out different from you in this particular instance.

But then, how far would you say can this subjectivity stretch? Is there some (arbitrary?) line that limits this subjectivity?

For instance, the Pope may well claim that he’s a skeptic too. It’s just that he tends to trust the experts (the bible, church doctrine, and other churchmen who’ve instructed him in these things) in matters of religion. And what’s more he may claim that he’s personally validated as much of this as he cares to.

Logically this (hypothetical) argument makes sense. He’s simply following the process of skepticism as it subjectively appears reasonable to him. Yet I’m very sure that the Pope most certainly isn’t a skeptic. I’m not sure why not, though.



I suppose that’s two questions, two lines of thought, bundled in one, both arising from what you had to say about skepticism being a process rather than an attribute :

(1) First, is there some limit to how subjective one’s personal skepticism can be? Is there some (aribitrary?) line beyond which skepticism simply breaks down -- e.g., by choosing to trust the bible or priest as ‘experts’ in matters religious ?

(2) And two : I suppose it is possible to be wholly Woo-ridden in some areas, while remaining skeptical about other things. For instance, it is possible I suppose to have total, even fanatical, faith in the bible and church, while at the same time being robustly skeptical in all other matters. But could we properly think of such a person as a skeptic?


I understand that if we take literally your idea that skepticism is never an attribute, then the idea of using “skeptic” as identity will not arise at all. I’m asking if you think there might be limits (limits in terms of extent, as well as limits in terms of different areas) beyond which this thinking breaks down in practice, so that after a point we’re compelled to say, “No, that person is definitely NOT a skeptic.”

 

[Chanakya]

No Free Will, and Skepticism

Another poster had spoken in this thread about what I thought was our lack of free will in the context of skepticism.

Turns out I was mistaken about what they’d meant, they were only speaking in purely general terms. But I find that line of thought interesting : Would anyone else like to share their thoughts about this?

I think it’s fairly well-accepted that we don’t really have free will. But how would this impact skepticism? Is it that despite knowing there’s no free will, the skeptic nevertheless proceeds as though he does have free will? (That would mean, wouldn’t it, that the free will question is irrelevant to skepticism?) Or what?

 

[StackOverflow]

I think it’s fairly well-accepted that we don’t really have free will.

Weasel words

Let me show you free will:


You belong into a mental health institution for the rest of your miserable life. You mental state is in an even worse condition than T.J.'s.

I wrote this in full awareness of receiving a warning, a suspension or even a ban.

Now back to you, making a stupid, worthless and long winded argument about not having free will

 

[JoeMorgue]

Weasel words

Let me show you free will:


You belong into a mental health institution for the rest of your miserable life. You mental state is in an even worse condition than T.J.'s.

I wrote this in full awareness of receiving a warning, a suspension or even a ban.

Now back to you, making a stupid, worthless and long winded argument about not having free will

Dude calm down. That was not called for.

 

[Chanakya]

Weasel words

Let me show you free will:


You belong into a mental health institution for the rest of your miserable life. You mental state is in an even worse condition than T.J.'s.

I wrote this in full awareness of receiving a warning, a suspension or even a ban.

Now back to you, making a stupid, worthless and long winded argument about not having free will

You're saying you don't agree that we don't have free will?

I'm not really sure what to make of the no-free-will position myself. It's wholly counter-intuitive, of course, but I thought that is what current neuroscience research is beginning to show.

I personally hold no position on this. I haven't enough subject knowledge to.

What I was wondering is this : given/assuming no free will, how would that impact skepticism? (Of course, if you hold the position that we do have free will, and if you do not wish to engage with this even as a hypothetical, sure, that question then won't apply.)


ETA : What's with those wholly unprovoked incivilities? I'm constantly amazed at how differently people behave online than IRL. (At least I hope so. Someone behaving like this IRL is probably in need of help.) Don't worry, I haven't reported you. If that post gets AAH'd or carded, it won't be because of me. But yeah, that was definitely over the line.

 

[JoeMorgue]

"Free Will" is used in two different, very importantly distinct context.

On a broad, neurological sense of course "Free Will" doesn't exist. That's saying that the concept of cause and effect doesn't exist.

On a social level "Free Will doesn't exist!" is like solipsism and absolute pacifism, an argument which can be 100% perfectly countered by throwing a rock at the person who claims it head.