The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Forum

Apple products have always been about the "it just works" principle of software design.

Quote from: jt512 on September 22, 2023, 01:34:36 AM

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 21, 2023, 10:42:02 PM

Quote from: jt512 on September 21, 2023, 10:33:57 PMI merely pointed out that you made a statement that implies that you consider both the Ganzfeld work and Bem's ESP experiments to be science.

Oh, that's your whole argument? Okay then.

I think the Ganzfeld experiments are science. They were a concerted and deliberate attempt to examine a perceived phenomenon, which unfortunately suffered from some methodological flaws that made the conclusions unreliable. Bem's research on precognition, on the other hand, is just barely science and only by a generous definition.

FWIW, IMO, they are both pseudoscience.

Okay. There's room for disagreement in the Demarcation Problem.

Quote from: CarbShark on September 22, 2023, 02:03:24 AM

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 21, 2023, 09:36:46 PMI never made it through the whole series of Game of Thrones, mostly because of the violence. I have a low tolerance for violence and splattergore, which is why as a rule I do not watch horror. GoT has a lot of very graphic violence.

I was all in for Team Arya from her first scene.

What kind of monster wouldn't be?

Quote from: jt512 on September 22, 2023, 02:41:07 AM

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 21, 2023, 07:49:18 PM

Quote from: CarbShark on September 21, 2023, 10:34:51 AMAnecdotally, I noticed that after I lost most of my excess fat, and a good number of pounds, I began sleeping better and woke earlier in the day. It could simply be that for many, like me, disrupted sleep is an obesity symptom which made morning exercise less likely for the obese.

It's also true that people have a tendency to sleep less, and wake earlier, as they age. Once you hit about 40, most peoples' sleep cycles tend to gradually move earlier.

Mine have gone in the reverse direction, FWIW.

It is merely a trend, after all. If there's one thing I've learned after looking into the science of chronotypy, it's that different people are different.

Quote from: jt512 on September 21, 2023, 10:33:57 PMI merely pointed out that you made a statement that implies that you consider both the Ganzfeld work and Bem's ESP experiments to be science.

Oh, that's your whole argument? Okay then.

I think the Ganzfeld experiments are science. They were a concerted and deliberate attempt to examine a perceived phenomenon, which unfortunately suffered from some methodological flaws that made the conclusions unreliable. Bem's research on precognition, on the other hand, is just barely science and only by a generous definition.

Quote from: puddingface on September 21, 2023, 09:48:31 PM

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 21, 2023, 08:12:58 PM

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 21, 2023, 03:04:30 PMI happened to mention to my paddling buddy that I really wanted to see the Musk-Zuckerberg cage match, and that I'd pay good money to watch it. Turns out my buddy (who has Joe Rogan programmed into his car radio and thinks doctors just want to keep us all sick so they can sell us pills -- even though doctors don't sell pills!) likes Musk. He'd like to see Musk kick Zuckerberg's ass, but knows that's not likely to be the outcome, since Z apparently practices martial arts.

Zuck does practice martial arts, regularly, and is routinely seen and photographed doing physical outdoor activities like wakeboarding. Guy is ripped. Elon, on the other hand, may have taken a judo class or two twenty years ago. Zuck would wipe the floor with him, and both of them know it. Which is why the match was never going to happen.

Countetpoint: zuck has infinite dollars and can dick around with activities, training with joe rogan or whatever & "get ripped" and get photographed all the while. Musk is 100 lbs heavier, and doesn't appear completely gelatinous so might have equal strength just from being bigger. They decided not to fight because they knew it would be a complete travesty and make them both look like pathetic soyboys(tm)

Zuck was DTF (Down To Fight). He was totally for it. Elon made the suggestion in the offhanded word-spewing way he always does, and wasn't about to follow through.

And I disagree with the statement that Elon "doesn't appear completely gelatinous".

Quote from: jt512 on September 21, 2023, 09:27:59 PMBut you can make the exact same statements about conventional experimental psychology (which has a huge reproducibility problem) including the part about practitioners in the field not acknowledging the flaws in their body of work. There is no more evidence for vast swaths of conventional experimental psychology than there is for ESP (arguably, there is less evidence—after all, the Ganzfeld studies consistently reproduce the same finding, and Bem published 9 successful replications of the same result). So, the challenging question of why we consider one field science and the other pseudoscience remains.

Yes, I agree that a lot of what has been considered pretty reliable psychology research in the past has been recently revealed to be quite problematic (eg. the WEIRD problem) and needs to be re-evaluated.

Quote from: jt512 on September 21, 2023, 09:27:59 PM

QuoteDaryl Bem's results on precognition, however, border on outright pseudoscience.

That's an interesting statement. So you think that Bem's work is worse than the Ganzfeld, and Bem only borders on pseudoscience. That implies that you think both are science. You've demonstrated my point: demarcation is not straightforward.

If your argument is that demarcation is not straightforward, I agree. Absolutley. If your argument is that Bem's precog results are due to good science methodology, then I have to dispute that.

I never made it through the whole series of Game of Thrones, mostly because of the violence. I have a low tolerance for violence and splattergore, which is why as a rule I do not watch horror. GoT has a lot of very graphic violence.

But it's a genuinely good show, and so I have settled in to do a full rewatch. When I know what to expect I can deal with it a little better, which is the point of Content Warnings (aka CW - once greatly abused as "trigger warnings") - they allow you to know what to expect and not be suddenly blindsided.

I'm a little more than halfway through Series 3 right now, and coming up on the episode "Rains of Castamere", which (this is not a spoiler) contains one of the most shockingly horrific depictions of violence I have ever seen on TV. This scene has been haunting me ever since I saw it on first broadcast, and quite frankly I'm dreading seeing it again. But hopefully doing so will allow me to move on from the lasting horror, and from there to the end of the series should be smooth sailing.

Oh wait...

Quote from: gmalivuk on September 21, 2023, 08:24:53 PMAre they flaws that cannot be found in other studies that are accepted as solid scientific research? Because that would actually address the point.

They are kind of unique to the sort of research that is being done, and mostly have to do with the possibility of priming the subject or allowing them other methods of learning the target image. As such they do not really apply to other fields of study, though other studies of ESP also suffer from the same kinds of flaws. The Ganzfeld experiments control for these factors better, but still not to the point where they can be fully ruled out.

Like I said, The Ganzfeld experiments are the best evidence for ESP, but they are still not reliable enough to conclude that ESP exists, which I believe JT acknowledges.

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 21, 2023, 10:07:46 AM

Quote from: bachfiend on September 20, 2023, 11:17:59 PM... Chess is not a sport.  It's a game, which many people take very seriously.

Agreed.

(But some folks here seem to think it's a "sport" because there's competition, and there are winners and losers.)

As I said before, I think it's both. It's a game when played casually between friends, but it is also an organised sport.

Here's another possible factor of demarcation: Professionals do not play games. If there are people playing it professionally, then when they're doing so, it's a sport.

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 21, 2023, 03:04:30 PMI happened to mention to my paddling buddy that I really wanted to see the Musk-Zuckerberg cage match, and that I'd pay good money to watch it. Turns out my buddy (who has Joe Rogan programmed into his car radio and thinks doctors just want to keep us all sick so they can sell us pills -- even though doctors don't sell pills!) likes Musk. He'd like to see Musk kick Zuckerberg's ass, but knows that's not likely to be the outcome, since Z apparently practices martial arts.

Zuck does practice martial arts, regularly, and is routinely seen and photographed doing physical outdoor activities like wakeboarding. Guy is ripped. Elon, on the other hand, may have taken a judo class or two twenty years ago. Zuck would wipe the floor with him, and both of them know it. Which is why the match was never going to happen.

Quote from: gmalivuk on September 21, 2023, 08:11:04 AMHere's another point where an ounce of consideration for what your words mean would help you.

If you define "reliable" as "doesn't confirm results I believe are false", then that's circular and unscientific. If you define it agnostic to the results, based only on things like the methodology, then JT is saying there have been ESP studies just as reliable as accepted psychological studies.

By "reliable" I mean well-designed and well-executed science the results of which can be relied upon to be most likely true, subject to verification. What I said first was quicker.

Quote from: gmalivuk on September 21, 2023, 08:11:04 AMI don't know whether that's true but at least I understand that's what he's saying. He's not claiming these studies have reliably illuminated reality, because he believes ESP is physically impossible. He's saying if a particular standard of reliability allows for such obviously bogus results, then other studies held to the same standards shouldn't be trusted as much as they are.

The Ganzfeld experiments have been probably the most well-designed scientific studies of the phenomenon of ESP to date, but they are still not without their methodological flaws. Proponents of ESP, however, choose not to acknowledge these flaws, and recognise them as the best evidence in favour of ESP that science has come up with. Which, in fact, they are - all the other studies have been worse. But they are still not conclusive.

Daryl Bem's results on precognition, however, border on outright pseudoscience.

This topic has been moved to Politics.

https://sguforums.org/index.php?topic=55179.0

Quote from: CarbShark on September 21, 2023, 10:34:51 AMAnecdotally, I noticed that after I lost most of my excess fat, and a good number of pounds, I began sleeping better and woke earlier in the day. It could simply be that for many, like me, disrupted sleep is an obesity symptom which made morning exercise less likely for the obese.

It's also true that people have a tendency to sleep less, and wake earlier, as they age. Once you hit about 40, most peoples' sleep cycles tend to gradually move earlier.

Quote from: jt512 on September 21, 2023, 12:09:30 AM

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 20, 2023, 11:54:28 PMPersonally I found this years list to be a little less inspiring than it has been previously. I mean you can't go past the 2019 prize for Biology, the discovery that that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches. Or the 2016 economics prize, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.

Re-animating dead spiders was pretty good.

If you're into that sort of thing. 

I prefer my spider friends very much alive, thank you.