I'll take the probability way. I'm rather certain that our senses help us to come close to true conclusions. The black and white view does not make sense to me. Must I get it 100%? I function just fine in the 80% area.
This article explains well why I think many debunking approaches are doomed to fail. You cannot convince someone who believes in pseudoscience by throwing at them "facts and logic" because they can always ultimately escape "by induction." People who believe in pseudoscience do not have problems with logic (well, at least not all of them) but with "trusting the system." They do not trust the social workflow that produces modern science (sometimes, for good reasons). We scientists make a lot of assumptions. If I read a physics paper, I do not redo by myself every single experiment; at some point, I need to trust that the peer review of the academic community worked well enough to give me 99% certainty that a particular "fact" is actually true. At some point, to be effective, we have to make a reasonable "leap of faith."
Therefore, when some scientific debunker starts to overlook the limitations of the scientific method (and of knowledge itself) and relies too strongly on "absolute true facts," this can be really ineffective (at best) or even backfire (at worst, for example, if new evidence disproves what you said was a "fact" months before).
Thanks! No wonder the recent anti-science attacks on induction have seemed so pernicious...it's all induction all the way down! I don't have any trouble believing this. I spent years trying to prove my religion (even as a Mormon missionary), but there's always another question behind what somebody thinks the definite knowledge is. I've had the same approach to science, especially physics and neuroscience, and JUST LIKE RELIGION, people always get mad when you ask the "next question."
So...we can't get perfect knowledge, despite the fact that absolute truth may exist, so we just need to keep bouncing from approximation to (hopefully better) approximation.
Aren't almost all ideas traceable to ancient Greco-Roman writings, at least in rudimentary form? Sometimes, as with this article, the early versions are far more than rudimentary. Sometimes, as with atoms and related ideas in De Rerum Natura and other sources, the early ideas didn't really lead anywhere until they were rediscovered with the essential aid of post-enlightenment mathematics.
I'll take the probability way. I'm rather certain that our senses help us to come close to true conclusions. The black and white view does not make sense to me. Must I get it 100%? I function just fine in the 80% area.
This article explains well why I think many debunking approaches are doomed to fail. You cannot convince someone who believes in pseudoscience by throwing at them "facts and logic" because they can always ultimately escape "by induction." People who believe in pseudoscience do not have problems with logic (well, at least not all of them) but with "trusting the system." They do not trust the social workflow that produces modern science (sometimes, for good reasons). We scientists make a lot of assumptions. If I read a physics paper, I do not redo by myself every single experiment; at some point, I need to trust that the peer review of the academic community worked well enough to give me 99% certainty that a particular "fact" is actually true. At some point, to be effective, we have to make a reasonable "leap of faith."
Therefore, when some scientific debunker starts to overlook the limitations of the scientific method (and of knowledge itself) and relies too strongly on "absolute true facts," this can be really ineffective (at best) or even backfire (at worst, for example, if new evidence disproves what you said was a "fact" months before).
Thanks! No wonder the recent anti-science attacks on induction have seemed so pernicious...it's all induction all the way down! I don't have any trouble believing this. I spent years trying to prove my religion (even as a Mormon missionary), but there's always another question behind what somebody thinks the definite knowledge is. I've had the same approach to science, especially physics and neuroscience, and JUST LIKE RELIGION, people always get mad when you ask the "next question."
So...we can't get perfect knowledge, despite the fact that absolute truth may exist, so we just need to keep bouncing from approximation to (hopefully better) approximation.
Sharp analysis!
Aren't almost all ideas traceable to ancient Greco-Roman writings, at least in rudimentary form? Sometimes, as with this article, the early versions are far more than rudimentary. Sometimes, as with atoms and related ideas in De Rerum Natura and other sources, the early ideas didn't really lead anywhere until they were rediscovered with the essential aid of post-enlightenment mathematics.