Please tell me why I'm wrong.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Yes. I am somewhat diappointed. I thought a person with a skeptical blog and podcast would be more thorough in responding to people giving counterarguments and people showing problems with the basic premises.

Well, give the chap a chance. I expect he's busy blogging and broadcasting, but he may come back to the subject later.

 

[Ladewig]

Well, give the chap a chance. I expect he's busy blogging and broadcasting, but he may come back to the subject later.

Fair enough. It is just that usually in that type a situation, a poster offers a brief comment along the lines of "I am very busy right now, but I will address those issues in a week or so."

Still, patience is a virtue. There have been times I have been remiss in responding to questions raised in a thread I started, so I will stand and wait.

 

[RandFan]

For me it is more of a price decision. Selling tea leaf readings for $5 each is probably harmless fun. Selling tea leaf readings for $500 each is fraud in my book. What the professional ADCers do is definitely fraud.

Yeah, I agree. If the person keeps it inexpensive and is willing to offer a refund I don't have much of a problem with it. I'd like to know what price Brian wants to charge and if he would offer a refund?

 

[RandFan]

Well, give the chap a chance. I expect he's busy blogging and broadcasting, but he may come back to the subject later.

I hope so. I think the subject worthy of discussion.

 

[Pragmatist]

I think some important points are being missed in this thread. Let me introduce some axioms:

1. Stupidity spreads.

2. The consequences of a deception may extend beyond the person immediately targetted.

I can give an example from my own experience of two people I knew. The first was a healthy woman with hypochondriac tendencies. She went to see a homeopath for one of her many "ailments" and came away with a "cure". No harm was done to her, there was nothing wrong with her, the "cure" did nothing and she only ended up a few $ poorer. One might even argue argue that she benefitted from the deception because she felt better and was convinced she was "cured". The second person, also a woman, was a friend of the first. She suddenly started getting various medical symptoms - many of which were superficially similar to the ones that the first woman claimed she had had. On telling the first person about this, she, (the first person) strongly recommended homeopathy as a "cure". She was extremely persuasive because she had been "cured" and on that basis knew that homeopathy was the cure for her friend. As a result of woman #1's absolute certainty, woman #2 sought no medical advice and took homeopathic medicines for several months. When the symptoms got worse, woman #1 persuaded her to stick with the homeopathy because "it needed time". Until the day that woman #2 collapsed into a diabetic coma with severe pancreatitis.

Woman #2 finally got proper medical treatment at a hospital. But by that time her pancreas was very badly damaged, she never fully recovered - right up to the day she died approx 3 years later.

The homeopath deceived woman #1. It was a harmless deception. Woman #1 wasn't sick. But as a consequence of reinforcing woman #1's belief in something utterly ridiculous, woman #2 didn't get proper medical attention in time and ultimately died as a result. Is the homeopath responsible for woman #2's suffering and and death? In my book, yes, he is.

You could argue that woman #2 should bear some of the responsibility because she didn't seek proper medical advice. Maybe so. But the problem is, she didn't know how bad her condition was because she was influenced by the beliefs of woman #1 - whose beliefs in turn were influenced by the homeopath. Belief and trust are powerful things and can be instilled by peer pressure.

It may be harmless if one person believes that they can read the future with tea leaves or by reading palms. But it rarely stops there. Belief in one crazy idea usually leads to belief in another - and the believers don't just believe, they proselytize their silly ideas. Sooner or later someone gets hurt by it. A person who refuses to believe they need medical attention because some idiot told them they have a "long life line" and will live to be 90 in a palm reading. A psychotic who kill his neighbour because the tea leaves told him that the neighbour was going to kill him in the future. A person who takes an overdose of dangerous drugs because they believe a psychadelic experience will give them "magic powers"...and so on... If someone had initially told someone else that you can't divine real information from palms, tea leaves and dangerous drugs, then maybe those ideas wouldn't have been instilled or reinforced in the people who ultimately suffered the consequences.

The possibilities are endless. And yes, it is a slippery slope argument, but a nonetheless valid one.

So in summary, no, it is not "harmless" or "victimless" to encourage and propagate false beliefs. It is stupid, dangerous and downright irresponsible, and not just a matter of ethics.

 

[Canadian Malcontent]

Lying is wrong.

P.S. Taking advantage of peoples ignorance ( selling them tea leaf reading, psychic crap, homeopathy, or whatever) is no different than mugging them, taking their property by force.
If you decieve a person to take their money you are no different than someone who just takes it. And you deserve to be locked up just like the mugger. I consider it to be armed robbery because you are using a contrivance as a weapon.

You my friend belong in prison. Try your bs there.

 

[Ladewig]

Brian doesn't seem too interested in defending his argument beyond a few sound bites.

Well, give the chap a chance. I expect he's busy blogging and broadcasting, but he may come back to the subject later.

Hmm. The access log shows that Brian Dunning hasn't been back to the JREF board since November 19. He is still updating his blog on a regular basis.

I do wish he would come back and discuss the matter.

 

[DeviousB]

Lying is wrong.

Why? And how would you back up such a moral absolute anyway.

If you decieve a person to take their money you are no different than someone who just takes it. And you deserve to be locked up just like the mugger. I consider it to be armed robbery because you are using a contrivance as a weapon.

Would that include advertising? If the soap manufacturers really had been rolling-out new products that wash whiter every few months since the 50s we'd all be walking around with welding masks on by now to protect our eyesight. So how much can someone bend the truth before you'd roll out the oubliette?

[Just for the sake of argument.]

 

[Beerina]

Wouldn't taking advantage of the credulous reduce the overall 'fitness' of the meme, hence benefitting the human race as a whole?

Yes, but that's not necessarily enough to extinquish the race, or even the credulous sub-portions of the species that carry and reproduce that meme.

The animal and insect kingdom is loaded with examples like the Cukoo that insinuate themselves as more or less parasites into the lives of other organisms -- not in the tapeworm sense, but in the "you're an idiot!" sense.

Yet these unlucky souls sometimes still reproduce, or if they don't, they don't in enough numbers (or their lucky counterparts just got lucky and aren't actually adapted to defend against it) to extinguish the behavior from the species, much less extinguish the species itself.

It's also almost impossible for one (non-sentient, i.e. hunting for survival) species to extinquish another, because when the prey population shrinks, the predators start starving, and thus the prey can rebound. Perdator-prey species relationships are not static, and do not settle down to static, a counter-intuitive result from differential equations being applied. Human stupidity memes of predator-prey in this sense may be like this. Too much, and a counter-meme starts spreading, reducing the numbers of prey (woo-marks), causing the predators (woo-snakeoil salesmen persons@$$holes) to start starving.

Round and round they'll go, up and down, in numbers as a % of the population. But never die out.

 

[Beerina]

This depends on your social philosophy. Do you believe consenting adults should be free to engage in whatever victimless acts they choose

Your activities are not victimless. Fraud is not a victimless crime. And ethically, even if you have a little "for entertainment purposes only" sign in the corner, you're still being unethical if you know 99% of your customers come in believing it's true.

or do you believe the government should babysit and decide what's best for people?

I support freedom to do whatever stupid things you like. But not to harm others by fraudulently gaining other people's money based on lies. Not accidents, or misunderstandings, or foolishness believed in wrongly, but active likes the perptrator knows are false and knows the "mark" believes are true.

I say yes, the drug dealer should accept payment

Assuming he is selling a drug of fairly well-known and well-defined quality. That some people have called themselves a string of letters called "government", picked up weaponry, and threatened him with violence if he does this does not make it unethical.

What makes it unethical is if it's unpure, or of a non-standard strength, to what would be commonly expected by the buyer.

Personally I'd find it unethical to sell drugs to an addict, harming them, but I'd rather it not be illegal than to grant the government the power to make it illegal.

I'd rather this be legal and regulated so people aren't getting shot in alleys, but I believe that people should be free to engage in whatever victimless activities they want, be it sex, drugs, or psychic services.

No I don't do any drugs except alcohol.

Sex and drugs are consenting activities. Psychic services (portrayed as real rather than entertainment) are not, because they are fraud.

Should Sylvia Browne be able to tell a customer she has a secret financial investment, only $1000 to buy in, when in fact she just plans to pocket it and spend it on Hardees Thickburgers and Burger King Triple Whoppers with Cheese? If not, why not? How does it differ from telling someone you're giving them a psychic reading, with the apparently legitimate expectation they'd have that it's real and reliable?

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Hmm. The access log shows that Brian Dunning hasn't been back to the JREF board since November 19. He is still updating his blog on a regular basis.

I do wish he would come back and discuss the matter.

Well, I now think that you and RandFan got it right and I got it wrong. If bd isn't coming back after 11 days, he probably isn't coming back at all.

Mind you, I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

 

[Ladewig]

Why? And how would you back up such a moral absolute anyway.

One could use rationality to back up the moral absolute that lying to obtain money is wrong. Kant's Categorical Imperative does just that.