My article debunking 30 skeptical arguments against the paranormal

[WWu777]

Dear all,
I was wondering if you've all read my article debunking 30 common skeptical arguments against paranormal phenomena. It has been widely passed around in parapsychology circles, and considered the most extensive critique of the tactics of organized pseudo-skepticism. Here is the link.

http://www.victorzammit.com/skeptics/winston.html

Regards,
Winston

 

[charley_bigtime]

Just a quickie as I'm flying to the US in 5 hours for a vacation/hol.

1) First of all, just because something hasn't been proven and established in mainstream science doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't true.

Correct. This is how genuine Skeptics should view most claims. All we ask for is conclusive and tested proof/evidence. Then we'll believe. Can't put it any simpler than that.

I'll leave the rest to everybody else.

Have a nice weekend.

 

[wert]

This again?

It's been extensively responded to.

It's crap.

 

[Toastrider]

Strawman arguments all over the place.

Yuck.

--Toasty

 

[LFTKBS]

"If by hard evidence they mean something solid and tangible, then it would not be possible to obtain this from certain things like UFO’s, ghosts, spirits, or ESP. since they are intangible in nature and possibly involve other dimensions we don’t fully understand yet (could also be the case with UFO’s). By this standard, we have no tangible evidence for stars, galaxies, black holes, or nebulas that are light years away either, although we can observe them."

Congratulations; you're an idiot.

 

[Zep]

Yes, Winston, we have. And if you recall, you were given the rounds of the kitchen about it a few years ago when it was solidly and thoroughly debunked. Here you go, read it yourself. And the final comments sum it up neatly:

In this article, in all cases, Mr. Wu failed to support his conclusions with valid arguments. He failed to adequately define terms and he consistently resorted to numerous logical fallacies, particularly that of Argument from Ignorance. The arguments he claimed to have been advanced by skeptics remain valid, such as they are stated. Mr. Wu has not established any veracity to his claims regarding "paranormal" phenomena.

Overall, Mr. Wu's article is a grand Appeal to Authority, ad hominem, and Argument from Ignorance. Skeptical viewpoints have never been safer.

Also, can we suggest that you quietly disassociate yourself from Victor Zammit at the earliest opportunity. The guy is a laughing-stock around these parts.

 

[WWu777]

You must have very low lame standards or be extremely closed minded if you think Sandoval's rebuttal to my article means anything. All he did was play semantics with me. He didn't address the crux of any of my arguments. He played a game of philosophical skepticism, by using labels to try to refute my points. It didn't work, not to intelligent people looking for the truth. But if it's enough for you to guys to consider my points debunks, then you guys are definitely not intellectuals or truth-seekers.

Any reasonable person who looked at his rebuttal could tell it was inadequate.

But anyway, I'm glad you guys knew about the existence of my article.

Regards,
Winston

 

[Zep]

You must have very low lame standards or be extremely closed minded if you think Sandoval's rebuttal to my article means anything. All he did was play semantics with me. He didn't address the crux of any of my arguments. He played a game of philosophical skepticism, by using labels to try to refute my points. It didn't work, not to intelligent people looking for the truth. But if it's enough for you to guys to consider my points debunks, then you guys are definitely not intellectuals or truth-seekers.

Any reasonable person who looked at his rebuttal could tell it was inadequate.

But anyway, I'm glad you guys knew about the existence of my article.

Regards,
Winston

Actually, he did an excellent job, and I guess you are just angry that he did. ALL your points were addressed - thoroughly and completely.

However, if you have to resort to name-calling yourself (see above) then it shows what a paucity of argument you have. Because if your arguments are simply more of the "Nyah nyah ni nyah nyah, I'm right and you're wrong, so THERE!" then as a "scientifically supportable thesis", that is certainly going to be impressive here, isn't it!

NOT.

Wake up to yourself.

 

[wert]

Any reasonable person who looked at his rebuttal could tell it was inadequate.[/B]

Whatever gets you through the night I suppose....

 

[mstricky]

Welcome to the forum WWu777, the other posters seem to have lost their manners.
I found the article to be fascinating and I shall have a good read at it later when I have more time.

 

[Zep]

Welcome to the forum WWu777, the other posters seem to have lost their manners.
I found the article to be fascinating and I shall have a good read at it later when I have more time.

And having read it myself more than one years ago, I suggest you use your time for something more productive: wash your hair, sort the sock drawer, comb the cat, something like that.

 

[Quasi]

Argument 2: Wrong, aircraft have lots of evidence, for example, airports, used parts, and people who maintain and fly them. Also, elecromagnetic phenomena, such as UV light leaves sunburns on bathers in the summer. There is no place on earth devoid of these phenomena where people live, so the example here is just stupid.
A lot of these arguments appears to be that anecdotal evidence is the pillar of paranormal beliefs. OK, fair enough, ever heard of a bald faced lie? How do paranormal folks deal with this if it is the very support for paranormal claims? Is John Edwards really psychic? I guess the television folks dont think so as his show is no longer being recorded. Is Uri Gellar or any other of those 1970s phoneys real? How about Ganzfield? Four vague pictures, known beforehand by the sitters, subjectively interpreted by the recorder. Not too impressive. Why not a thousand pictures not known? Because it totally utterly failed. It is fine to say that there is some low quality evidence of what is conventionally called paranormal phenomena, but no repeatable evidence. Paranormalists rely on the silly belief that no one lies or misremembers things. Just look at either Clinton or Bush, and I have just deystroyed this illusion, Bill did cum on Monicas dress, and embryos are not deystroyed in stem cell research.
The descent of american culture into the paranormal is disturbing at best, extremely dangerous at worst. This kind of rubbish is unfortunately how many people think. I am glad to be out of the country for a while.

 

[apoger]

>He didn't address the crux of any of my arguments.


I'm stunned that you have the courage to admit association with that article after the legendary debunking it received. Your connection to reality must be tenuous at best.

 

[MRC_Hans]

W Wu:
This is the "snow them under" tactics. You present a big load of arguments, then when some people have waded through them and start to respond, you can pick and choose which arguments among many you want to address. I'm willing to assume you do not do this on purpose, that you just want to make as convincing a case as you can.

However, I for one won't partake in such a debate. I suggest you choose one argument and present it, then we can discuss that.

This takes much longer, but makes ofr a constructive debate.

Hans

 

[WWu777]

You guys are still missing the point. Sandoval did not show in ANY way that my arguments conflicted with REALITY. All he did was show that they were incompatible with philosophical skepticism, which is often not reality. I, on the other hand, showed defects about how philosophical skepticism and pseudo skeptics contradict reality. That's the bottom line. I'm about reality here, while you guys and Sandoval are about pseudo philosophy and semantics.

Real life examples are all over my articles. But I won't play any pissing contests with you closed minded folks.

Oh and FYI, anecdotal evidence, even if it's all there is, IS EVIDENCE, regardless of what you think. You guys can sit there and yell "anecdotal evidence and testimonies are invalid" and repeat that all you want, but denying reality like that doesn't help you learn anything, and it doesn't change reality either. It's just you playing games in your mind.

I never claimed that people don't lie or that anecdotes are infallible. NO ONE claims such things. But anecdotal evidence is not zero evidence. See my section in the article about anecdotal evidence. Most things I hear tend to check out, anyway. It all depends on many factors.

Finally, you guys constantly use double standards when you accept anecdotal evidence that debunks. How very selective. Fortunately, people can point it out.

See Drasdin's Zen and the Art of Debunkery, here at this link:

http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/pathskep.html

It describes perfectly the kind of tactics you people use.

Winston

 

[geni]

Oh and FYI, anecdotal evidence, even if it's all there is, IS EVIDENCE, regardless of what you think. You guys can sit there and yell "anecdotal evidence and testimonies are invalid" and repeat that all you want, but denying reality like that doesn't help you learn anything, and it doesn't change reality either. It's just you playing games in your mind.

But in the case of homeopathy I have evidence that is far better than anicdotal that it does not work.

 

[mstricky]

wow you've sure got the tic-tics angry now, just as it describes in your article. or is it just anecdotal that they get angry. Zep mind your own business I washed my socks hours ago. Now go and do something useful yourself instead of living on here.

 

[geni]

Remember that you can easily appear to refute anyone's
claims by building "straw men" to demolish. One way to do this is to misquote them while preserving that convincing grain of truth; for example, by acting as if they have intended the extreme of any position they've taken. Another effective strategy with a long
history of success is simply to misreplicate their experiments--or
to avoid replicating them at all on grounds that to do so would be
ridiculous or fruitless. To make the whole process even easier,
respond not to their actual claims but to their claims as reported by the media, or as propagated in popular myth.

Funny I keep running to these debating tatics. From belivers.

Now have you finished building your strawman or not?

 

[MRC_Hans]

OK; I see you picked your weapon:

*snip*

Oh and FYI, anecdotal evidence, even if it's all there is, IS EVIDENCE, regardless of what you think. You guys can sit there and yell "anecdotal evidence and testimonies are invalid" and repeat that all you want, but denying reality like that doesn't help you learn anything, and it doesn't change reality either. It's just you playing games in your mind.

I never claimed that people don't lie or that anecdotes are infallible. NO ONE claims such things. But anecdotal evidence is not zero evidence. See my section in the article about anecdotal evidence. Most things I hear tend to check out, anyway. It all depends on many factors.

*snip*
Winston

OK, I have seen some skeptics summarily write off anecdotical evidence, and I agree that this is not fair. Anecdoticals are not entirely worthless, but there are some problems with them, most importantly (of course assuming they are true):

1) They are simply observations. Therefore they cannot be used to conclude about causative connections. All they can do is show that a certain observation was made.

2) They are never representative. Anecdotes are incidences that somehow stuck in the mind of people, there could be any number of cases contradicting them that were not remembered.

Hans

 

[athon]

It is interesting how the same sticking points always surface -
*what constitutes evidence
*labels and definitions
*philosophies

These three things are like the residue that can be boiled out of any skeptic vs. believer argument, and rarely can these be further broken down to mutual agreement.

Anecdotes are a great place to start in science. An observation made by one or more people can be a flag that says 'look closer'. Like a blip on a graph, it highlights a possible phenomena. Note possible ! It is not proof, it is not evidence. It is merely a light in the distance that draws our attention.

Good science then looks at the most appropriate rationalization given the current knowledge. If this rationalization can be used to interpret other phenomena, it becomes elevated in terms of being a useful theory. Believers in speculative theories don't grasp this - they continue to use the same old arguments, appealing to authority, using ignorance of the unknown as their main support.

WWu, most people here are not grumpy old men who have a grudge against the world and snort derisively at any unusual hypothesis. However, we are people who understand the minor points of science, and know the difference between speculation and robust theories.

If you hang around here, sort the chaff from the wheat, you'll get a feel for what I mean.

Athon