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Questioning Winston Wu's 30 arguments

Ricardo said:
Skepticism as inertia
Modern science is based on skepticism. On the one hand, science must always be open to new ideas (strange as they may seem) as long as they are supported by scientific evidence, but must do so in a way that they are always properly scrutinized to ensure that their implications are true. and results. Whenever a new hypothesis is formulated or a new claim is made, the entire scientific community mobilizes itself to prove its theoretical and practical viability. As on any other plane, the more unusual new ideas and inventions are, the more resistance they tend to face during their scrutiny through the scientific method. A consequence of this is that several scientists throughout history, when presenting their ideas, were initially greeted with allegations of fraud by colleagues who did not wish or were unable to accept something that would require a change in their established views. For example, Michael Faraday was called a charlatan by his contemporaries when he said he could generate an electric current simply by moving a magnet through a coil of wire.
In January 1905, more than a year after Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight at Kitty Hawk (December 17, 1903), Scientific American magazine published an article ridiculing the Wright flight. With astonishing authority, the magazine cited as its main reason for questioning the Wrights that the American press had failed to cover the flight. Others joining the skeptical movement were the New York Herald, the United States Army, and numerous American scientists. Only when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered public attempts at Fort Mayers in 1908 after Alberto Santos Dumont's 14-bis flight on an improved aircraft did the Wright brothers substantiate their claims and compelled even the most zealous skeptics to accept the reality of flying machines heavier than air. In fact, the Wright brothers were successful in public demonstrations of their machine flight five years before the historic flight [lacks sources]. In this context, although the Wright brothers' flight, while not shutting down the skeptics, was perhaps the first where a heavier-than-air ship took off after Otto Lilienthal's pioneering flights. However, the first flight of a machine capable of flying entirely on its own, without the aid of catapults, is however correctly credited to Santos Dumont, who is duly registered and documented .Most modern revolutionary inventions, such as the tunneling current microscope, which was invented in 1981, still find intense skepticism and even ridicule when first announced. As a physicist, Max Planck noted in his 1936 book The Philosophy of Physics: "a major scientific breakthrough rarely makes its way by gradually winning and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that 'Saul' becomes'. What really happens is that your opponents die gradually and the growing generation is familiar with the idea from the beginning. "https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceticismo
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yeah, so all legitimate psychics need to do is prove their abilities the way Faraday and the wright brothers did. People have been claiming mystical abilities for far longer than people have been flying or generating electricity, but yet today people live with flight and electricity as part of everyday life powering major governments and industry. Psychic powers are not. Your own argument proves that if psychic powers existed we would be exploiting them in the mainstream, like we do for every other useful thing we discover.
 
Ricardo said:
Skepticism as inertia
Modern science is based on skepticism. On the one hand, science must always be open to new ideas (strange as they may seem) as long as they are supported by scientific evidence, but must do so in a way that they are always properly scrutinized to ensure that their implications are true. and results. Whenever a new hypothesis is formulated or a new claim is made, the entire scientific community mobilizes itself to prove its theoretical and practical viability. As on any other plane, the more unusual new ideas and inventions are, the more resistance they tend to face during their scrutiny through the scientific method. A consequence of this is that several scientists throughout history, when presenting their ideas, were initially greeted with allegations of fraud by colleagues who did not wish or were unable to accept something that would require a change in their established views. For example, Michael Faraday was called a charlatan by his contemporaries when he said he could generate an electric current simply by moving a magnet through a coil of wire.
In January 1905, more than a year after Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight at Kitty Hawk (December 17, 1903), Scientific American magazine published an article ridiculing the Wright flight. With astonishing authority, the magazine cited as its main reason for questioning the Wrights that the American press had failed to cover the flight. Others joining the skeptical movement were the New York Herald, the United States Army, and numerous American scientists. Only when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered public attempts at Fort Mayers in 1908 after Alberto Santos Dumont's 14-bis flight on an improved aircraft did the Wright brothers substantiate their claims and compelled even the most zealous skeptics to accept the reality of flying machines heavier than air. In fact, the Wright brothers were successful in public demonstrations of their machine flight five years before the historic flight [lacks sources]. In this context, although the Wright brothers' flight, while not shutting down the skeptics, was perhaps the first where a heavier-than-air ship took off after Otto Lilienthal's pioneering flights. However, the first flight of a machine capable of flying entirely on its own, without the aid of catapults, is however correctly credited to Santos Dumont, who is duly registered and documented .Most modern revolutionary inventions, such as the tunneling current microscope, which was invented in 1981, still find intense skepticism and even ridicule when first announced. As a physicist, Max Planck noted in his 1936 book The Philosophy of Physics: "a major scientific breakthrough rarely makes its way by gradually winning and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that 'Saul' becomes'. What really happens is that your opponents die gradually and the growing generation is familiar with the idea from the beginning. "https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceticismo
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“Put up or shut up,” is the operative dictum and the bottom line is that claims of psychic abilities have failed to “put up.” The problem is, they have never “shut up.”

Aviation? The world depends on it.

Telekinesis? Not so much...
 
Ricardo, you seem to have stumbled on a VERY old website by Winston Wu. It's dated 2011 last revision, which is quite old now.

It has a foreword by one Victor Zammit. Zammit wrote a book called "A Lawyer Presents Proof of the Afterlife", in which he applies the legal definition of "proof" to science. I've researched Zammit (long ago) and he was a crackpot at the best of times. He went a bit unhinged when his beloved mother died, which is not unreasonable. But then he began desperately trying to find a way to communicate with her in the afterlife. In his delerium, he thought he had the answer. And Zammit was a very obstinate man, so he would brook no negatives to his "findings".

So much so that he launched a Challenge to Skeptics which was where I first encountered about him. It was $250,000 for anyone who could completely debunk his thesis scientifically. Of course, he was the only judge in this contest...you can guess how "scientific" that was. But nevertheless a number of applicants did try, and each of them comprehensively dismantled all his claims, in public, and claimed the prize money Zammit had on the table. Naturally, Zammit said they did no such thing and continued to claim he was right. It was clear that he had zero idea of science, scientific levels of proof, and logic. He was, in short, insane.

Zammit then went on to team up with Winston Wu, another nutcase from somewhere on the US west coast. The foreword in Wu's "proof" is the result of that collaboration. Last I heard of Wu (second-hand so I don't know if it was true) was he got ripped off by some Russian con-artists who said they were going to help him with his psychic research. Or something like that. This was at least 15 years ago and I never heard of Winston after that.

Meanwhile, Victor Zammit has since died. You would have thought that his proof would have led to mainstream psychic communication. But unsurprisingly nobody has heard a word from him from beyond the grave. But being skeptics, we wait with bated breath just in case.

Of course, you may already know a lot more about this...if you happen to be Winston Wu yourself...
 
rjh01 said:
I also give you an entire thread discussing this subject from 2004 The Wisdom of Woo WU

NB: He visited our forum and was banned. But all records of this have been lost. Evidence: See the opening sentence of my link.
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Nope. He went under the handle WWu777 and his crapposts are still there including his 30 objections from 2004. Somehow, he has failed to progress in 15 years.
 
And of course there’s Winston’s USENET adventures which involved forcing himself on a woman, and then trying to use spells to force her to return to him.

Ick.
 
kookbreaker said:
And of course there’s Winston’s USENET adventures which involved forcing himself on a woman, and then trying to use spells to force her to return to him.

Ick.
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Gosh, that brings back some ancient memories now!

I now recall there was something about Winston going to Russia to meet a Russian bride, then getting dumped along with all his money, and wanting to use spells to get her back. Even Victor Zammit who was his friend told him to leave her alone because he was being very stupid (and witchcraft was pseudo-skeptic nonsense!). And Victor was only bouncing along the surface of reality at the best of times then.

Remember this because I was trying to work on Zammit's challenge at the same time (which became pointless rapidly). And Wu kept cropping up with this nonsense in Victor's conversations.
 
Ricardo said:
Skepticism as inertia
Modern science is based on skepticism.
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No, science is NOT based of skepticism. It's based on investigation and experimentation and observation. From there questions are formed and answered, and those answers lead to more questions.


On the one hand, science must always be open to new ideas (strange as they may seem) as long as they are supported by scientific evidence, but must do so in a way that they are always properly scrutinized to ensure that their implications are true. and results.
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And it is open to new ideas.

Whenever a new hypothesis is formulated or a new claim is made, the entire scientific community mobilizes itself to prove its theoretical and practical viability.
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You mean the relative scientific communities "mobilize. Geologists don't get excited about quantum mechanics, and biologists don't get excited about Geology.


As on any other plane, the more unusual new ideas and inventions are, the more resistance they tend to face during their scrutiny through the scientific method. A consequence of this is that several scientists throughout history, when presenting their ideas, were initially greeted with allegations of fraud by colleagues who did not wish or were unable to accept something that would require a change in their established views. For example, Michael Faraday was called a charlatan by his contemporaries when he said he could generate an electric current simply by moving a magnet through a coil of wire.
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You left out the part where Faraday DID THE WORK AND STUCK TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO PROVE HIS WORK.


In January 1905, more than a year after Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight at Kitty Hawk (December 17, 1903), Scientific American magazine published an article ridiculing the Wright flight. With astonishing authority, the magazine cited as its main reason for questioning the Wrights that the American press had failed to cover the flight. Others joining the skeptical movement were the New York Herald, the United States Army, and numerous American scientists
Click to expand...

The Wright Bros. were not scientists. They built bicycles. Also - they made an airplane that flew...you know...took off...flew around...and landed without killing the pilot.

All that other nonsense you posted is irrelevant. The airplane was a novelty up until WWI when the armies of the world decided they could put machine guns on them, and later drop bombs from them.

Nothing you've cited as an example moves the ball forward on psychics or paranormal stuff. In fact powered flight and psychic research are about the same age, so hasn't the latter advance at all? There have been some great minds who've done real science and came up empty handed. Why is that?
 
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Axxman300 said:
No, science is NOT based of skepticism. It's based on investigation and experimentation and observation. From there questions are formed and answered, and those answers lead to more questions.




And it is open to new ideas.



You mean the relative scientific communities "mobilize. Geologists don't get excited about quantum mechanics, and biologists don't get excited about Geology.




You left out the part where Faraday DID THE WORK AND STUCK TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO PROVE HIS WORK.




The Wright Bros. were not scientists. They built bicycles. Also - they made an airplane that flew...you know...took off...flew around...and landed without killing the pilot.

All that other nonsense you posted is irrelevant. The airplane was a novelty up until WWI when the armies of the world decided they could put machine guns on them, and later drop bombs from them.

Nothing you've cited as an example moves the ball forward on psychics or paranormal stuff. In fact powered flight and psychic research are about the same age, so hasn't the latter advance at all? There have been some great minds who've done real science and came up empty handed. Why is that?
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Axxman300, are you an open-minded skeptic?
 
Ricardo said:
Axxman300, are you an open-minded skeptic?
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I. AM. A. VETERAN. GHOST. HUNTER.

I've spent 40 years in empty rooms and empty buildings in the dark looking for evidence. This has involved hours of library time looking through old records, and newspapers on microfilm. I have interviewed a couple hundred people from all walks of life.

I also have an A.A. in Marine Science which means I spent time in a college science lab doing basic experiments which reinforced the Scientific Method.

In 40 years of work I have some cool stories to tell around a campfire and five or six weird photographs. What I don't have is proof that ghosts/spirits/whatever are real. I have mountains of information about plumbing, heating, carpentry, toxic dry-wall, and bad electrical wiring. I have learned how vulnerable EVERYONE is to the power of suggestion. I have learned that you should not trust your own eyes or ears. I am a big advocate of INFRASOUND as the main cause of legitimate ghost encounters and hauntings. I also urge people to install CO2 detectors in their homes because if you are hearing voices you might have an air quality problem which can be lethal.

I have done the work and I have earned the right to say this:

Psychic Powers are crap-ola.

I have stood in rooms with people who claim psychic abilities who remained classless about the bloody suicides and murders which took place in them while later spinning fantastic yarns about things that never happened in other locations. I have seen psychics claim to speak with the dead yet cannot give me that person's address (which I had), and could not tell me what color their house was at the time of their death.

Lets talk about the real problem here. Unlike ghost hunters, psychics tend to charge for their "services", and thus need their "abilities" to be confirmed as real. This is about money, not about science. As long as psychics continue to fail basic scientific experiments they held apart as the CHARLATANS and CON-ARTISTS they really are.
 
And one other thing.

I'm pretty sure every skeptic on this board would love to have psychic abilities scientifically verified. Just as they would be stoked if someone came out of the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with a Bigfoot in a cage, and cornered the Loch Ness Monster.

They would love all of it because of the new questions each of these events would raise to be explored.

That's what science is all about.

You are the narrow minded one.
 
Evidence of psychic-phenomenon, spirits, or life after death would be the biggest news in the history of the world. Scientist would absolutely study it.
 
Wolrab said:
Evidence of psychic-phenomenon, spirits, or life after death would be the biggest news in the history of the world. Scientist would absolutely study it.
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Don't forget... slightest proof of psi and the gaming/casino industry would bust their balls investigating how to block it.
Period, no delay... here's a $20 billion fund for the project.
[emoji2]
 
Ricardo said:
Analysis of 30 site arguments http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Contents.htm
Argument # 1: It is irrational to believe anything that hasn't been proven.
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Personally, as a skeptic, I don't think I would make the above argument.

It's too binary. Too either/or. Very little in this world can be "proven" to an absolute certainty. So I don't generally use the word "prove" or "proof" regarding my own belief. There are varying levels of evidence for and against different claims, and the more compelling evidence there is to support a given proposition, the more I will tend to "believe" it. So "belief" for me is not a binary choice. There are some things I believe with a high (but rarely absolute) degree of certainty because I believe that the supporting evidence is compelling and abundant, and some things that I doubt with a similar degree of certainty because I believe that the evidence points in the other direction. And then there's things at any point in between these extremes. There may be some evidence, but not enough really compelling evidence to merit a high degree of confidence. In such cases, I neither believe fully nor disbelieve fully, but take the agnostic position and look for more evidence on either side of the question.
 
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