Is there ANY point arguing with believers?

(I'm posting in good faith, assuming someone might be convinced of logical arguments, if not Ian)

While I don't agree with Ian's hypothesis, I think a lot of people are misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) what he is saying.

There are no fake fulgrams that I am aware of. If there were real fulgrams, and fulgrams could somehow make money off of people, the likelihood of fake fulgrams would increase.

However, as has been pointed out, all that has to exist is the idea that there could possibly be such a thing as a fulgram, and then people might pretend to be fulgrams in order to make money.

I'm willing to entertain the possibility that a world with real psychics will have more fake psychics than a world without real psychics. Having only one world in my dataset, and not a single verified psychic, I can't even begin to posit what the relationship might be, though. Likewise, I don't see how the reverse relationship is necessarilly true, especially with the counterexamples of superheroes and Santa Claus.

There are some ways to look into it, though. Do other things that we know to be real relate to the number of fakers of that type? For example, I have never heard of a single fake teacher, but there are clearly real teachers. There are a small number of fake police officers. Does this relate to the number of real police officers? Can we find data of known fakers, and find a correlation to statistics of the number of real people with that profession? If anyone is swayed by Ian's arguments, I recommend testing the idea out on some other professions.
 
Ian said:
As I have made clear it would be astonishing if they did make such claims. First of all ESP doesn't exist in such a Universe. Secondly all change in the Universe comes through impact of bodies. So not only would they have to radically misinterpret an experience, they would have to misinterpret it despite their common sense assumptions about how the world must operate.
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What's so astonishing? The idea that information cannot travel faster than light is embedded in our modern culture. Many people have at least a vague idea about this limitation. Does it stop people, intelligent people, from believing that Star Trek or ESP can travel faster than light? No. People have active imaginations.

People believe mainly because of their own experiences of ESP and other peoples they know who have experienced ESP.
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I doubt it.

Huh?? People who subscribed to the mechanistic philosophy couldn't believe in telepathy or precognition! At least not without being flagrantly inconsistent!
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Ooh, yes, we never see anyone being inconsistent in their beliefs. Anyway, what about all the other people, the ones who have no idea what the limitations of a mechanistic universe are? They would be just like the people in our universe who have no idea about its limitations, such as the speed of light and huge interstellar distances.

You appear to be saying that people with accurate knowledge of their universe, who do not let their imaginations get away from them, would not believe in something like ESP if their universe didn't allow it. I'm not sure I agree, buts let's say I do. I suggest that this is true in our universe, too. You just don't happen to be one of those people.

Of course I invite you to prove me wrong. Name some of these people in the 17th century who subscribed to the mechanical philosophy but also believed in telepathy and precognition.
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I'll grant you that mechanical philosophers, as a whole, did not believe in action at a distance. In fact, that was probably the reason they subscribed to mechanical philosophy: They wanted to reject action at a distance. This says nothing about what the general populace believed and how that might affect their beliefs in telepathy.

~~ Paul
 
Jon said:
There are some ways to look into it, though. Do other things that we know to be real relate to the number of fakers of that type? For example, I have never heard of a single fake teacher, but there are clearly real teachers. There are a small number of fake police officers. Does this relate to the number of real police officers? Can we find data of known fakers, and find a correlation to statistics of the number of real people with that profession? If anyone is swayed by Ian's arguments, I recommend testing the idea out on some other professions.
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And what about things we know to be purely "fake," yet people believe there are "genuine" ones? Crop circles come to mind. So you need to contemplate not only the ratio of real police offers to fake ones, but the fact that the ratio of real crop circles to fake ones is 0.

The mathematics of the probability of unproven phenomena: Hard.

~~ Paul
 
Interesting Ian said:
Of course I invite you to prove me wrong. Name some of these people in the 17th century who subscribed to the mechanical philosophy but also believed in telepathy and precognition.
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Newton was a great believer in precognition in the form of prophecy.
 
Interesting Ian said:
Huh?? People who subscribed to the mechanistic philosophy couldn't believe in telepathy or precognition!
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If the medium is fraudulent, then they probably don't believe in ESP, but they can still fake it. Would phlogiston be a good medium for reaction at a distance? edit: no, it wouldn't. I meant the ether, but then I don't know if that was a theory current in the 17th C.

And I found this article, about the effect of 17th science and the supernatural.

http://www.skeptic.com/01.4.olson-witches.html
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Anyway, what about all the other people, the ones who have no idea what the limitations of a mechanistic universe are? They would be just like the people in our universe who have no idea about its limitations, such as the speed of light and huge interstellar distances.
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I just wanted to second this point, which I think is the deathblow to Interesting Ian's Interesting Analogy.

Ian, for this reason (as well as the several others mentioned), your Universe A would only work if you had all the people in it know its exact nature; a condition which would add too much artificiality into an already over-contrived example, and which would undermine its applicability to the topic under discussion.

Do you still think the existence of fraudulent psychics are evidence for the existence of genuine ones? I can't imagine how you can. But then I guess your inevitable response will underline the point made in the very first post, in one of those examples of a cosmic irony it's difficult not to ascribe to a cheeky monkey god of some kind.
 
Splossy said:
Is there any point to trying to convince people to think critically? Is it genetic or something?! Has anyone successfully changed a mind?
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I did, once. But it took years of arguing about it. And it wasn't anything as faithfully clung to as a woo-woo belief. Just that the lottery isn't a good bet. But it absolutely amazed me at the illogic in his arguments.

And he is an otherwise critical thinker.

As Penn & Teller say, "Everybody's got a gris-gris".
 
mayday said:
I guess about as much as point as arguing with nonbelievers.
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There's one critical difference in arguing with a skeptic MayDay, at least a skeptic changes his or her mind if the evidence is sufficient. Whereas a believer will believe no matter what.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there ANY point arguing with believers?

Interesting Ian said:
You've completely misunderstood my argument. I'm arguing that the existence of fraudulent psychics makes the existence of genuine psychics more likely.
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Or it just means they're all fraudulent.
 
Yeah_Right said:
There's one critical difference in arguing with a skeptic MayDay, at least a skeptic changes his or her mind if the evidence is sufficient. Whereas a believer will believe no matter what.
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What a load of . . . .
 
Yeah_Right said:
There's one critical difference in arguing with a skeptic MayDay, at least a skeptic changes his or her mind if the evidence is sufficient. Whereas a believer will believe no matter what.
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In my experience precisely the opposite is the case. There's no one more dogmatic than a skeptic.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there ANY point arguing with believers?

Yeah_Right said:
I didn't believe in reincarnation in a past life either..
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Which just goes to show that stupidity can be incorrigible.
 
Whether or not one believes in reincarnation is a matter of intelligence? Well, we knew it doesn't have anything to do with evidence, but I'm surprised about the intelligence part.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Whether or not one believes in reincarnation is a matter of intelligence? Well, we knew it doesn't have anything to do with evidence, but I'm surprised about the intelligence part.

~~ Paul
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No, continuingly disbelieving something in the face of the truth.
 
Interesting Ian said:
No, continuingly disbelieving something in the face of the truth.
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Ian, it could very well be truth. However, with no evidence, there's not much reason to believe it.

You are, of course, welcome to give evidence of reincarnation. It was one of my all-time favorite beliefs when I was a Pagan. I'd love a reason to believe in it again.
 
Interesting Ian said:
In my experience precisely the opposite is the case. There's no one more dogmatic than a skeptic.
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:rolleyes:

To be a skeptic one needs to doubt the outcome of something, or the reasons that something "is" or "works" or whatever.

Now, if someone doubts about ESP (anomalous perception, yeah right) is because he/she have not found any compelling evidence to start to believe.

But dont preach that if this individual finds compelling evidence he/she would not change! Being skeptical is about doubt not about beliefs, for crying out loud.

You, on the other hand, will continue to believe in your beloved ESP even when there is not A SINGLE hard evidence to confirm it. You are the only dogmatic here.
 
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