In various threads there have been various discussions about what materialism is, and isn’t, and various definitions have been proposed and cited. In this thread I want to ask a different question, addressed specifically to those who regard “materialism” as a bad thing. William, for instance, has said that “materialism” was “disproven” in the 18th century, yet laments
the spread of an 18th century myth in our public school system and in our culture at large.
So here is my question: if you are against something called “materialism” and see it as a bad thing (for whatever reason), what is your definition of the “materialism” you are against?
Military uses of psi, oh my. I’m sure there are declassified military documents showing the usefulness of psi. I’d bet my title to the golden gate bridge.
EL said:
You mean, besides the tens of millions of people that use intentionality/affirmation
practices to affect the physical world? Besides the billions that pray to change the physical world? Besides all the people that go to psychics and mediums and remote viewers and faith healers, or are themselves such practitioners? Hmmm. How widespread must “widespread” be in order to be considered “widespread”?
I stand up and argue the points I am actually arguing, not the ones you incorrectly infer I am making.
IMO, the bias has been clearly demonstrated.
It’s certainly useful to the frauds and quacks who collect the rent.
None of those things actually happen, however earnestly those involved think it does.
Otherwise no child would ever die of cancer.
OMagain,
I have repeated (most often, for keith’s sake) reiterated that I make arguments about logic, not about claims about “what is real”. I have reiterated that I make no claims about what is real, or what the “truth” is about reality or the universe – nor do I care about such things.
Why? Because he takes things out of context like you are doing. Nowhere in any of that do I ever claim that psi is real. I have claimed that I experience what can best, IMO, be called psi effects – but I’ve also admitted all of that might just be a delusion of some sort. I don’t care if it is or not. I have repeatedly made this distinction about the nature of my arguments; they are not claims about reality. I’m pointing out scientific research that purports to contraindicate materialist and anti-psi claims. I’m pointing out the logical errors and conceptual mistakes of materialists when they characterize that researach, including the “bad materialism” that I began this discussion with.
I’m not championing any research or evidence as being factual indicators of what is real; I’m using that research and evidence to make a point about the problems inherent in materialist thought. The point I’m making here is not that “psi is real”, but rather how “bad materialism” interprets, categorizes, and characterizes all evidence perceived to be contradictory to the metaphysics.
Even when an anomalous effect in favor of the psi hypothesis is found, it must undoubtedly be something else. Rhetoric is used. Papers are dismissed. Unsupportable negative claims are made. The possibility of flawed protocol artifacts becomes the likely reason for the anomalous outcome. The very idea is ridiculed. The other guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Let’s take something the other guy said 5 years ago and juxtapose it against what he said today for a gotcha point against him! Let’s recharacterize other things he’s said (even though he has consistently and repeatedly provided the same disclaimers over and over) as if he’s being inconsistent.
As I said, my actual point is being clearly demonstrated by what is going on here.
Untrue. I don’t have any stake in psi being true or false. It would be great if it was true!
So therefore you must be in error at some point in your chain of logic as to why I reject the claim it is real.
Links were provided, and readers can judge for themselves.
Why do theist scientists also reject psi?
The reverse is true, William. Psi proponents are expert goal-post movers, as I pointed out in the paper you recently cited.
Psychics have certainly on occasions been consulted by law enforcement, but the use is not widespread, as I said, because the evidence is that it merely wastes police time and causes undue distress. You may recall that Sylvia Browne assured Amanda Berry’s family that she was dead. Amanda never saw her mother again, whose health was arguably affected by that utterly wrong “information”, and died before Amanda escaped from Ariel Castro’s basement.
And that is not an isolated example. Of course people will cling to hope, and people will try anything to solve horrible crimes. But if they worked, I would expect all police departments to pay high salaries to people with the psi skills to solve difficult cases. And they don’t.
When a scientist points out flaws in that research, why don’t you listen?
Which is as clear a demonstration of confirmation bias as anything in psi research.
See? Two can play at that game.
OMagain said:
Clear-cut case of bad materialism. How the heck can you possibly know that “none of those things actually happen”? You cannot know this. You can only derive that conclusion from a biase metaphysical certainty- clearly demonstrating my point.
I’d like to know that too.
Or statistics. Which you ignore.
They have recently started showing a “psychic detective” show in the UK. I did some research on the psychic and found tale after tale of deliberate fraud, dishonestly, lies and so on.
Yet if you were to just watch the show you’d think she was the bee’s knees at psi stuff. And that’s what William is presenting – just one side of the argument. Flip over the coin and things rapidly change.
You forgot the statistics again.
EL said:
Isn’t it against the rules to imply that the other person isn’t being sincere? I’m not playing a game here, EL. I’m quite sincere.
No child would die of cancer. Prayer does not work.
We would have no need of medicine if prayer worked. We do, it does not.
That might be true, but pointing out your confirmation bias is simply noting a fact.
OMagain,
Does the existence of fraudulent medical or other scientific research mean that all scientific and medical research is fraudulent? Of course there are fraudulent faith healers and psychics and fraudulent psi researchers. There’s fraud in every human endeavor.
I have no need for confirmation bias because my beliefs don’t require confirmation.
All psi is fraud or self deception. All of it.
Just give us one tiny wafer thin counterexample.
No. But consider that in relation to all the studies that show psi is not real – are they all frauds?
There has never been a faith healer or physic that has been shown not to be a fraud.
Feel free to point out the exception to that rule.
OMagain said:
No child would die of cancer. Medical treatment doesn’t work.
We would have no need of funeral homes if medicine worked. We do, it does not.
Another logical error: false dichotomies. Just because faith healing doesn’t have a 100% efficacy rate doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any effect, ever.
Except you seem to want support for your beliefs by coming here to test them.
You could simply walk away and believe that you’ve shown everyone here the error of their ways – why don’t you?
William seems determined to believe (yes, believe) that the reason that the people he describes pejoratively as “materialists” are opposed to “psi” because it conflicts with their worldview.
No amount of pointing out that time after time the evidence turns out to be methodologically flawed will persuaded him that the criticism is anything other than willful rejection of the conclusion.
And yet he is the one calling us “biased”.
Except it demonstrably does.
If the intent of medicine was to prolong life to infinity, you’d have a point. You don’t.
Oh? What is it’s efficacy rate then? If you don’t know, how do you know it’s not zero?
Omagain said:
You have yet to present any such study. The one you presented itself showed a significant psi result that was later explained away as possibly the result of publishing bias.
OMagain said:
You cannot support this claim. Like EL, you’re resorting to the rhetoric of unsupportable, blanket “negative” claims.
It’s not necessary to argue or provide evidence against unsupportable blanket claims.
Omagain said:
Yeah, that’s why hospitals have such a low mortality rate.
Given that evidence is irrelevant to you, why would I bother? Do you think they don’t exist?
You malign the study unfairly. What they said was this
William, do you know what a Monte Carlo simulation is? No, thought not.
I can support this claim. To wit: Name a faith healer.
Oh?
Seems like quite the blanket claim to me right there.
All they need is the faith healer you know that can cure cancer to tell them what to do?
Name him.
Again, your lack of quantitative methodological expertise is showing. We can quantify the effectiveness of treatment, even when it is not 100%.
Cancer treatments are frequently found to be effective – that’s why people undergo them.
Studies on the efficacy of prayer have famously shown that not only is it not effective, one study indicated that it could actually be harmful if the person concerned knows they are being prayed for. I suspect that, like the psi studies, that was not a replicable result, however.
So, your claim is:
Sounds like a blanket claim to me. Unsupported at that.
I then said:
And you responded:
So let’s put that against something else you just said:
So it’s one rule for faith healing and another for evidence based medicine. What was that you were saying about bias again?
OMagain said:
Yeah, I come here for support for my beliefs!
And miss this entertaining show? Oh, pshaw.
It’s not “rhetoric”, William. You seem unable to understand the nature of a “negative claim”. It’s not even that, in this case, you even disagree with it. You certainly haven’t made the positive case.
What is rhetoric, however, is describing your opponent as “scrambling” for an argument, rather than actually addressing that argument.
OMagain,
I guess you didn’t realize I was turning around your own false-dichotomy bad logic about faith healing so you could see it could be equally badly applied to medicine.
You do know that publishing bias can be measured, right? Yes? And that when someone says that a result is “possibly the result of publishing bias” they mean that they have detected bias of a magnitude that could indeed explain the result?
And that therefore there is a perfectly viable alternative explanation?
EL said:
Well, it’s a good thing rhetoric isn’t against the rules, then.
But for some reason your implication that I’m “playing a game” hasn’t been removed to guano? That post really doesn’t do much other than make a negative implication about my sincerity, EL. Tsk, tsk.
Yeah, I guess when I used your own words against you that burned.
William,
Do you or don’t you know what a Monte Carlo simulation is?
EL said:
For the metaphysically-committed materialist, there’s always a “perfectly viable alternative explanation” when it comes to psi. ALWAYS!!11!!1
Who would those people be then?
Given your views it’s understandable why you can’t understand that some people are only convinced by evidence that rises above the noise floor.
William, as the positive effects of prayer and other “psi” phenomena you insist on have been at the very least hard to detect (as compared with, e.g., the effects of antibiotics or blood pressure medicine or aspirin or rotator cuff surgery), will you at least admit that, if these effects nevertheless exist they are likely to be teensy-weensy? Otherwise the very cheap and easy experiments one would need to detect them would have confirmed their presence zillions of times.
But, OTOH, at least any such effects are also extremely cheap. No need for insurance coverage, etc.
When others have to go 5 years in the past and quote mine in order to characterize me negatively and for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual argument, I love it. It demonstrates the very point I’m making: that you are emtionally, ideologically committed to a metaphysical view and you’ll do anything to support/protect it.
Demonstrate it was a quote mine. So far you have not.
Except I’m not and you have demonstrated no such thing. I’m simply showing you have a double standard when it comes to evidence.
And there he goes again.
Why do you always (ALWAYS!!11!!1) allege bias, and never even attempt to address the methodology?
It’s like you can’t even see that part of my posts.
Do you know what a funnel plot is?
Which are quote mines and why:
You forgot to mention there you disagreed with Rhine.
You forgot to mention there you did not think psi is real.
You forgot to add a disclaimer there that what those people were reporting you disagreed was real.
William J. Murray
You forgot to mention you were not convinced by that demonstration.
It does, I’m afraid, William. But for you to make the accusation is the very height of hypocrisy.
I could move all your posts to guano, and my last. Or leave them.
I’ll leave them, I think.
What else is someone who does not value evidence doing when they are arguing over evidence? It’s by definition a game!
What I want to know is: why is there a correlation between accusing others of being Bad Materialists and being crap at statistics?
Dr. Dr. Dembski I am looking at you.