zurew

The general reply to the phil of science issues is that but "science works though" - look (insert a bunch of examples). Yep, thats true but that often times doesn't really engage with the criticism that is made. Its a strawman, because the criticism isn't about denying the validity of certain lower level equations that are necessary for us to build certain techs , the criticism often times aimed at more abstract level problems and equations and formulas. You can send a rocket to the moon using newtonian physics and you can do the same even if you accept general relativity. You accepting the validity of general relativity wont undermine you from sending rockets to the moon, but it will give you a more precise understanding of other things. So the point is - multiple different kind of theories are comaptible with "science working".

You are engaging in a hardcore fanboying of RFK without actually checking out what evidence he provides for his claims and without evaluating how many right or wrong claims he makes. The reason why you are doing that is because you like his anti-establishment approach. But you know that you can maintain your anti-establishment stance, without any need for endorsing all the wrong and retarded RFK claims, right? Making a systemic change in the health department and destroying bad incentive structures is compatible with you acknowledgeing that RFK jr either makes a bunch of claims that he cant subtantiate or at worst he is outright wrong on a big set of things including vaccines, seed oil, AIDS, antidepressants,fluoride and the list goes on and on.

She did elaborate a little bit on it, but I think that it is a dishonest portray of science from her part. She shouldn't have characterized the method the way she did, but again, her point still stands (that she has an issue with that method and not just with the mischaracterized version of it) and there was no specific response addressing the effectiveness of that specific method (other than bringing up higgs boson as an achievement for the last 50 years and then talking about achievements that are not foundations of physics related but sub discipline related) There is no engagement with the boogeyman - which is that there is probably a big need for phil of science debates and talks. (and probably this is not just related to physics)

What ? If you reread what I wrote you can see that I say "She brought up specifically the method she has an issue with, which is guessing math" -I didn't say there that he said it. Never said anywhere the he said that guessing math is a great strategy. What I said was, that he didn't demostrate that the current methods that are used are effective or helpful for making progress on the foundations of phyiscs (which was one of her contention and that is one point that he didn't address). With respect to the comment about 'scientific methodology can't be debated '- yes thats what the implication is, because he frames it as science denialism. Really? I wonder whether I included that in my previous post (that you replied to ) or not Maybe next time read my post more carefully before you try to defend Dave with this level of passion.

He did engage with some things, but he also spent a lot of time on speculating about her motivations. No, motivations are not always relevant and this is obvious. In the context of a debate - if I say X is true, its irrelevant why I say it, whats relevant is whether X is actually true or not. You can speculate endlessly why I hold my positon, but that doesn't engage with whether my postion is true or not. I watched the video and Dave didn't engage with some of her points. So for example, she made a criticsm about theory making and that there hasn't been any progress on that in the last 50 years . Dave didnt directly address this, he pivoted to talk about sub-disciplines , and then he brought up one valid point about Higgs boson. Yes, it can be said that finding the Higgs boson was an achieviement when it comes the foundations of physics, however this doesn't reply to whether the methods that are used in physics and in theory making are effective or good or not. She brought up specifically the method that she has an issue with which is "guessing math". Where you come up with something and then after that you start to search for it (and not inversely) . She tried to point to how absurd it would be if the same principle would be used in any other field . For instance - " Biologists inventing new species and then making expeditions to find them. Chemists inventing a hidden dark sector of the periodic table. Neurologists arguing it’d be pretty if synaptic connections followed the E8 root diagram and then putting people into MRI machines to search for it." - Now Dave did respond to that point with "Physicist work within models to predict with firm empirical basis what particles ought to exist should the Standard Model be accurate." - which is a fair reply , however 1) I don't know whether that can be said in all cases 2) That doesn't reply to the fact that she has an issue with this method - which would be a philosophy of science disussion around what kind of methods should be accepted in science, and more specifically what kind of methods should be accepted in physics and used by physicist for research and for theory crafting. The idea or the implication that there is no room for philosophy of science talk in any scientific field is ridiculous. I think thats not enough evidence. I think it can be perfectly explained by the bad experience she had with academia in general. I would be surprised if she would have such a good opinion about academia after the experience she had with it. I also disagree with framing it as science denialism. Its not science denialism, its supposed to be a philosophy of science (and more specifically philosophy of physics) critique.

And - there are instances when its appropriate and there are other instances where its completely irrelevant and its just a red herring. In a fucking debate - spending 50%+ of your time on speculating about why your debate opponent hold his/her views rather than addressing the positon is problematic. Even if you can address their position I don't know whats the relevance of speculating about their motivations. In politics though thats not the case - in politics there are many cases where figuring out motivations behind actions can be incredibly relevant and important. He doesn't establishes that she is grifting , but he certainly speculates a lot about it. He didn't provide a single argument in his video that would provide a symmetry breaker between the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says and thats why she say the things she says' vs the hypothesis of 'she is exclusively doing it for the views and she is dishonest about her real position'. What was one piece of evidence that he provided in his video that is incompatible with the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says' ?

what does that mean?

Dave spends a lot of time on talking about rhetoric and on psychoanalysing the other person and on speculating about motivations. His video on formspaces is exceptionally bad and full of rhetoric rather than engaging with the substance. Do you have an argument for this?

If you are trying to appeal to foundational values, then I agree (1. you probably wont be debated out of your most foundational values , those things are just a given and I dont think you can consciously change those) , but If you are not talking about that, then I disagree.

@Carl-Richard Given now that you clarified what you were trying to make an argument against I largely agree with what you are saying. I also agree that generally speaking Dave's content is a problematic type of debunking and not a good type of debunking .

Cause he is bad at it

I dont see the inherent issue with debunking. If there is an idea that you think is false then you can engage in debunking and thats probably good in a lot of circumstances. In my view, debunking entails that you arent arguing against a strawman but you are arguing against ideas that the other person actually holds (and therefore debunking in my view entails the understanding of the other side's point). Of course one can engage in arguments where you argue against a strawman - but thats not an argument against debunking, thats an argument against a specific type of debunking. With respect to the issue of making one's audience more biased - 1) I don't see how thats necessarily entailed. Also there are ways to get around this for instance - by showing the weakpoints and limitations of your own argument and by showing some ways how your argument can be undermined and what kind of assumptions its built upon 2) If you are truly right , then its probably good that you audience will try to defend something that is actually true. If you want to argue something like - the reason why its inherently bad is because it creates a bad environment (almost like claming that it is a 0 sum game , where the game is about pursuing truth) - my response to that would be that its not necessarily entailed. If you do debunking in an adverserial and smug way, then yes , that will probably foster an environment where all sides become less interested in the pursuit of truth and that can be an issue. But if you do it in a non-adverserial and non-smug way then it can be helpful and good.

That doesnt follow

Thats fair, btw feel free to ask for as many clarification as you want, I wont be bothered by it. If I say something confusing or if I formulate something in a poor way, call me out on it. Also feel free to call me out on any other bs - if I say something thats incorrect or anything like that. Yeah to be fair - I use the herustic of "whether you share the necessary amount of info to make a point, because if you do, you are probably very knowledgeable and you have a very clear understanding of the subject" - because there is certainly such a thing as oversharing and giving info that is either not relevant or not necessary to make a given point . In other words ,being highly sensitive to what is relevant to establish a point is a good indication ( in my view ) that you probably have a clear understanding of that particular thing. On the other hand - writing 2 pages long posts where you dont respond to a single thing - that can be a good indication that you either dont track where the convo is at and what you specifically need to respond to and or you share every piece of info you possibly can, in the desperate hope that there will be something in that big wall of text that will be relevant to the question you were asked.

Yep, all of those people are incredibly shameless. The thing that I hate the most is when I start arguing against a premise that isn't even real - like the Sadhguru thread that you shut down, I was baited into that as well (I should have watched the video that was shared there, but I was falsely assuming that the guy who created the thread had the capacity and the thoroughness not to create a thread based on a completely false premise) I am getting to the point where I dont want to grant any piece of info about almost anything that I havent directly 100% validated myself . Like I would rather autistically ask for a source and be annoying about it than getting baited into another debate, where the underlying premise is based on vibes rather than facts.

https://x.com/CrayonMurders/status/1858838256152170544

@zazen That can be used for a possible explanation for distrust - but there is a difference between providing an explanation for why people distrust mainstream media and institutions in general and why they are anti establishtment vs trying to claim that the reasoning that those people use is actually rational and a good position to have. There are a bunch of explanations that can be provided why people are irrational and vibe based, but that explanation doesn't change the fact that they are irrational to hold on to the postion that they have. Its like your mother lie to you about santa clause and from then on you will just assume that she will lie about everything else and you dont evaluate each claim she makes on its on merits. To justify the usage of the heruistic of "I will never trust anything my mother says , because I will just assume that she will lie" you will need to provide a much more complex reasoning. And even after that reasoning is established - the usage of a heruistic will always be epistemically conquered by the specific evaluation of the given claim your mother makes - and for that you need to actually engage with the specific data and evaluate that data on its own merits without relying on any specific kind of heruistic.

Wait are we suddenly trusting studies around vitamin pills? I thought all the studies around them were compromised and funded by the corrupt government. I thought we can and we should ditch categorically everything that comes from the establishment (since you know they lied to us in the past, why would we trust them about the pills ,bro ).

Yeah no shit - they agree with him that processed food is generally worse. All of this is comaptible with the studies (which is not the case when it comes to his other takes - where we conveniently ditch all studies and consensus - for example on seed oils) Since we are so smart and since the institutions lie all the time and since there is a conflict of interest - we should go by our genius ,infallible heruistic of - if the consensus of experts say x is true - then x must be false. If they say that processed food is bad, we should assume that processed of is actually good. The reason why they it is good is because the studies around processed food were funded by them - so we can ditch all of them without engaging with the substance. And the second reason why processed food is good is because they lied to us in the past about other things and because they were wrong about other things, so we can infer that they are wrong about this as well - and we shouldn't even bother to stop and think. The exact same logic goes for vaccines, for the evaluation of covid 19 and for any other item or drug. The other infallible and genius heruistic is to check what Rfk jr claims and just based on the fact that RFK jr says that something is true - we can for sure know without a doubt that it is true. The exact same goes for any alternative media claim. We dont need to spend time cheking out the evidence or the validity of any accusation or engage with any specific thing - we can confidently dismiss write off all institutions and all experts. That is @zazen and @Salvijus level reasoning up there. I am curious, when the 'RFK jr is always right' heruistic generates something that is mututally exclusive with the 'experts always lie' heruistic - which one do you guys end up going with?

The fact that you started with "rfk is a lawyer he knows how to evaluate evidence" tells me everything I need to know about your fallacious reasoning . Being a lawyer has literally nothing to do with gaining the necessary skills to evaluate evidence for health related stuff or to make a prescription what people need to do to become healthy or to make presriptions how to eradicate a given illness. Do you think If I am a successful lawyer that its entailed that I am a successful doctor as well and a successful researcher as well and suddenly I am qualified to prescribe what you should eat, what medicine you should take ? You can put beliefs in ""- but I checked out multiple claims that he made and some of them were so wrong that you could debunk them with 5 seconds of research. Some of the links that he cites doesn't conclude what he concludes from them or they are not nowhere near as strongly backed up as he think and he ignores all evidence and meta-analysis that goes against his narrative. The guy has 0 clue wtf he is talking about when it comes to vaccines, covid and health. No, he is certainly not the best qualified person to make a change.

I don't think I disregard the unconscious as gibberish or mere noise, but I might be, im not sure. But to be honest, I dont see the relevance of this ,unless the main goal is to do a psychoanalysis on myself or on the interlocutor.I dont have a convo or a debate because I have the goal of psychoanalysing myself or the other person. Hopefully during a debate we dont suddenly pivot to psychoanalysis and completely ditch the content of the given argument. Also,my issue with that reply is that we essentially end up denying that there is such a thing as gibberish. Because the reply of "you disregard the unconscious as gibberish" could be given in all cases (even in the cases, when somone is genuinely conceptually confused - and I think there are clear cases of that). Also when I say "gibberish" I specifically refer to the semantic level/layer and not to something deeper than that. Communication is obviously much more than just semantics and I can imagine there are a bunch of cases where when the unconscious tries to communicate, we shouldn't only analyze the semantic layer (because on that level it might actually be gibberish) , but we need to take a much broader context in for it to make sense (like body language, past interactions and so much more). But to be clear, I don't know shit about psychoanalysis and about the unconscious.

That sounds good on paper, but I am not sure if there is a specific plan how to do it and I am not sure if RFK jr and Trump even has a clear concept what "uncompromised evidence-based research" even means. How do RFK jr knows what good evidence even is or what amount of evidence should be generated for a given drug? Just on its face, without me digging into it, I can see issues with the clearing up of the conflict of interest - where clearing up can entail cutting off big sponsors and suddenly you lose a big chunk of money that was avalaible in the past for research and for testing drugs. I am also not sure what substance can RFK jr who has a bunch of false beliefs about medical stuff can contribute to the 'how' with respect to the reversing the trends of the chronic disease epidemic.

I think you misinterpreted again. When it comes to thinkers and not just random forum users my general heruistic is not to assume that they are gibberating , but that I am lacking knowledge or something and thats why I dont understand what they are saying (and to be fair I always give the benefit of the doubt to all forum users). I tried to imply that you delivered substance in your post and not that you were just gibberating (most people just gibberate though, i would be surprised if you would disagree with that). I have read enough of your posts to assume that the thing that you say is not gibberish and if I dont understand something, im gonna assume there is something to be understood there, and I just need to read more and think more. Although I still think that you could 10x your game if your would learn prop logic and if you could lay down some of your arguments in syllogisms, where you make it extremely clear what kind of inferences you are making. Gaining the ability to walk people through your reasoning in a very precise way is a very good skill and it indicates that your thinking is very clear about a given subject. "you might be on the spectrum" I am probably the among the very few on this forum who go out my way to make sure I understand what the other person is saying, before I try to attack the postion the other person might not even hold . Its insane to me how most conversations go down here - people just assume that they share the exact same semantics, but in most cases they dont, and because they probably talk past each other - its not even clear whether there is a disagreement there in most cases . And to be clear, I do have an appreciation for poetry . I also have no issue conceding that there are scenarios where its better or its even neccesary to convey a concept or an idea using poetry or using art or using a longer form of writing than using propositions. I do think though , that when it comes to reasoning its much better to show the inferences in a very clear way, rather than using very abstract stuff that can be interpreted in a lot of ways. I also think non-propositional things can be meaningful and there is a clear difference in a lot of cases between non-propositional things and between gibberish.

Day 3 I very much prefer this (where I am bombed with either jargon or with a ton of references that I am not familiar with) over trying to make sense of gibberish, because in former there are ways to make sense of it (if we bother to learn and read) , but in the latter - its just a waste of time and there is nothing of substance there (its either about language games or its the case of being conceptually confused).

@Razard86 Can you lay down your semantics? Like do you have concise definitions for the terms that you use? Like are you sure that you use terms like Absolute, and Total and some other terms the exact same way as some other people use here?