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Woo Argument Flowcharts

CLD said:
Branching off "Is claimant willing to demonstrate/independently replicate/provide evidence of claim?" I'd add a box with "Claimant points to study in pseudoscientific journal".
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That is covered in the "Conduct objective test / examine evidence".
 
CFLarsen said:
CLD said:
Branching off "Is claimant willing to demonstrate/independently replicate/provide evidence of claim?" I'd add a box with "Claimant points to study in pseudoscientific journal".
Click to expand...
That is covered in the "Conduct objective test / examine evidence".
Click to expand...

In my experience, the woo argument branches here into, "But the study in the pseudoscientific journal IS objective! It was peer reviewed!"
 
I think this thread is appropriate to reproduce my table in:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90050

Mechanism|Reasoning|Example|Post hoc failure explanation|Real reason for failure
Secret Utterances|Say the right password to nature and nature will give you access to things normally impossible to do. A bit like a hacking a computer program to gain control of the outer system that can do more than the constrained environment you're in|Harry Potter's pseudo Latin phrases|Got the words wrong|No one is listening
Sacrifice|When you want something from someone else you need to trade for it; if you want something from nature you also need to trade for it.|Burning an animal in order to get favourable farming conditions|Didn't sacrifice the right thing or enough of it.|Nature isn't interested in material possession
Submission|Total and utter obedience to the whims of Nature. Bad behaviour leads to punishment. Good behaviour leads to rewards.|Popular in monotheistic religions|You or someone else was breaking the rules. Punish them to regain favour.|Nature doesn't care how you behave
 
More Bingo phrases:

- Ancient Chinese
- Meridians
- Just Know
- Feel sorry for you
- Used to be a sceptic
 
lister said:
More Bingo phrases:

- Ancient Chinese
- Meridians
- Just Know
- Feel sorry for you
- Used to be a sceptic
Click to expand...

those or good

how about "I used to be an atheist"
Dawkins is (shrill, strident, militant, arrogant)

Did somebody already say "science doesn't know everything" or "it's outside the sphere of science"?)

Starting threads with inane questions...
--posting here without seeming to have read anything here or anywhere else
calling skeptics "rude" as a group

And the grammar, spelling, and logic errors-- woo and poor writing seem linked somehow-- I can't tell if the woo are just stupider or if the stupid are just more drawn to woo or if it's a loop... The ignorant spawn more (religious memes... poor impulse control etc.)... they pass the ignorant genes and memes onto their spawn and the cycle repeats...
 
There is a missing idea from these flow charts, an examination of the underlying causes of failure to accept the evidence.

Is it a knowledge deficit? Is it a processing deficit? Is there a short in the brain's wiring system?

These flow charts are very useful, so don't get me wrong. But I'd like to see us explore a little deeper into the processes involved which leads to someone believing all scientists are either invisible, in on the scam or duped. What is it that makes a person ignore the contradictory evidence and just go on arguing the same old tired stuff? And what kind of process is going on in a brain that truly believes they have put all the pieces together when they clearly haven't?
 
skeptigirl said:
There is a missing idea from these flow charts, an examination of the underlying causes of failure to accept the evidence.

Is it a knowledge deficit? Is it a processing deficit? Is there a short in the brain's wiring system?

These flow charts are very useful, so don't get me wrong. But I'd like to see us explore a little deeper into the processes involved which leads to someone believing all scientists are either invisible, in on the scam or duped. What is it that makes a person ignore the contradictory evidence and just go on arguing the same old tired stuff? And what kind of process is going on in a brain that truly believes they have put all the pieces together when they clearly haven't?
Click to expand...

Confirmation bias.
 
Here are words for the Bingo, by no means complete. They are more or less alphabetized. 209 words.

Acupuncture, Ad-Hominem, Activ-On, alchemy, allopathic, alternative, ancient Chinese, angel, Armageddon, artificial, astral, astrology, aura, automatic writing, banshee, Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Big Meany, BigPharma, brains in vats, bunyip, chakra, channeling, charms, chimera, chiropractic, chemicals, chi, clairaudience, clairvoyance, Clever Hans, close minded, cold reading, complementary, conjecture, conspiracy, crop circles, crystal, crystal ball, cynic, darwinist, debunk, demonology, devil, dilution, disprove, divination, dowsing, Eastern, ectoplasm, educated, energy, EMF, ESP, ether, exorcism, exaggerate, facts, faith, fairies, fanciful, Fascists, flat Earth, free energy, frequency, Galileo, ghost, government, graphology, healing, holistic, homeopathy, hormones, horoscope, hypnosis, Illuminati, imbalance, infinite, inner knowingness, intelligent design, intuition, invisible, just know, karma, law of attraction, levitation, life force, loch Ness, magic, magnetic, make money, manifest, materialism, medium, mentalist, meridians, miraculous, monster, natural, negative vibes, new age, numerology, occult, organic, Ouija board, out of body, paradigm, paranoia, paranormal, parapsychology, parsimony, pendulum, perpetual motion, persecution, phrenology, pink invisible unicorn, poltergeist, prayer, premonition, pseudoscience, psi, psychic, psychic surgery, psychography, psychometry, qi, quack, qualia, quantum, read my book, reincarnation, remote viewing, Reptilians, research, resonance, Roswell, séance, secret revealed, shaman, shill, sorcery, soul, spirit, spiritual, spoon bending, straw man, supernatural, synergistic, Tarot, tea leaf reading, telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, testimonials, toxins, trance, truth, UFO, vampire, vibrations, vital, voodoo, witch, Wellness, Western, worldview, woo, Yeti, zodiac, zombie, 30C
 
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Normal Dude-- how did you amass that list... hey, are you the Skepdic's dictionary's Bob Carroll?

Great list. Bob Carroll is cool-- rumpology... I learned about rumpology from Bob Carroll at TAM5.
 
I took the terms already batted around in here, added some of my own, then went to the JREF encyclopedia and started going down the list. :P

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo_(US)),

A standard bingo card is 5x5 with the middle being a freebie. Thus 24 words per card.

Also, the numbers 1-75 are used. So that means we only have to pick that many words/terms out of the list above.

I will mess around with Excel and see if I can get it to automatically make randomized bingo cards.

Alas, I am not Bob Carroll. He has got a really nice site going. My name is Chris Nelson.
 
Normal Dude said:
I took the terms already batted around in here, added some of my own, then went to the JREF encyclopedia and started going down the list. :P

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo_(US)),

A standard bingo card is 5x5 with the middle being a freebie. Thus 24 words per card.

Also, the numbers 1-75 are used. So that means we only have to pick that many words/terms out of the list above.

I will mess around with Excel and see if I can get it to automatically make randomized bingo cards.

Alas, I am not Bob Carroll. He has got a really nice site going. My name is Chris Nelson.
Click to expand...

Wow. We are not worthy.

Great minds here on planet JREF. CLD is playing... but I don't know how he's crossing off his answers...
 
Normal Dude said:
I took the terms already batted around in here, added some of my own, then went to the JREF encyclopedia and started going down the list. :P

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo_(US)),

A standard bingo card is 5x5 with the middle being a freebie. Thus 24 words per card.

Also, the numbers 1-75 are used. So that means we only have to pick that many words/terms out of the list above.

I will mess around with Excel and see if I can get it to automatically make randomized bingo cards.

Alas, I am not Bob Carroll. He has got a really nice site going. My name is Chris Nelson.
Click to expand...

Excellent! Lots of fun and possibilities in the idea. :)

One suggestion: Add "matrix" to the list of words?
 
articulett said:
Confirmation bias.
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With that in mind, does having the logical response to the woo positions have any effect?

In other words, should be be dealing just with the logical response or is there something else we can do to address confirmation bias?
 
articulett said:
Great minds here on planet JREF. CLD is playing... but I don't know how he's crossing off his answers...
Click to expand...

Photoshop.

Surely someone ought to be able to cobble together a FLASH version of a woo bingo card that allows you to mark your "hits" and then copy a link to your marked-up card.

There should be prizes for getting a BINGO too.

*I was real close to getting BINGO with plumjam but my card had too many homeopathy and herbal medicine terms on it that never were used in that discussion. So I suggest either increasing the number of terms or creating a truly random mix.
 
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