Formscapes vs. Professor Dave drama

[undeather]

About one month ago, the youtuber Formscapes posted a video called "How science became unscientific" - which is a critique of the scientific process, the philosophy of science, dogmatic tendencies & corruption. As a scientist myself, I found the video interesting but lacking in many important nuances and in general, a prettty fallacious misrepresentation of the topic as a whole. Anyway, some days ago, the science youtuber & debunker Professor Dave responded to his video in a 1 hour long takedown of Formscapes arguments.  Dave makes some very good points but also lacks awareness (due to being hardstuck in stage orange) about some of the true shortcommings of this process we call science. 

That said, I think it's a pretty neat case study in scientific epistemology.

 

 

Edited January 31 by undeather

[lostingenosmaze]

Professor Dave's still yet to debunk Leo's 9-hour thesis on science, really shows his Stage Orange picking easy cherries for clicks 

Edited January 31 by lostingenosmaze

[Leo Gura]

Ironically, Dave is the prime example of science as dogma.

Science doesn't have to be dogma, but when a mind as arrogant as Dave's gets ahold of it, dogma it becomes.

Dave's buffoonery makes science look stupid.

Edited January 31 by Leo Gura

[undeather]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Ironically, Dave is the prime example of science as dogma.

Science doesn't have to be dogma, but when a mind as arrogant as Dave's gets ahold of it, dogma it becomes.

Dave's buffoonery makes science look stupid.

I find myself between both perspectives.
On the one hand, I do get Daves dismissive nature considering the broad abuse of  science in virtually all fields of human endeavour. I mean, if we just take the medical field for example: the amount of charaltans, heterodox sensemakers and health gurus poisoning the well and deluding the public is simply outrageous. Sophists are great at using scientific termonology and cherrypicked "data" to prove a certain point, which in the context of the broader scientific literature is just fallaciously wrong and harmful. Covid-19 was a prime example of this dynamic. Most individuals have no clue what they are talking about - and they usually are not aware that what they actually posess is spoonfed superficial knowledge masquerading as legit scientific inquiry. This whole schtick of "doing your own reserach" is a symptom of this disease. People have no idea what it actually means to do research in order to get to what's true - it's a painstaking, time consuming & above all mentally challenging process. Watching some youtube videos or reading a pop-science book is not doing research - that's gathering information and taking what someone else thinks to be true as truth. People are run by their cognitive biases which lead them down a pre-baked heuristic and a good amount of  rationalization after the fact.

The problem is that Dave throws the baby out with the bathwater. He doesn't see that hypothesis generation in science generally underlies a certain degree of epistemological conditoning. The scientist and the science done stand in a reciprocal relationship with each other. How scientific data is getting interpreted underlies the cognitive architecture of the person doing it. It's clear to see that for a person like Dave, certain topics are basically off limit - for ontological reaseons. He of course would never agree with that statement (he would say:"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"), but it's a cognitive bias nontheless. It's a fact that there are incredibly well designed and highly statistically significant results int he field of parapsychology, which are getting ignored by the greater public. Mostly materialistic-fundamental reasons. The same goes for the reincarnation literature. Or the healing literature. Or the NDE-literature. Or the UFO-phenomenon. etc... - what I am trying to say, there is a there "there" which can not be explained by the usual suspects like bad experimental design or flawed statistical analysis. But we live a world where even discussing those sorts of things leads you towards mockery and malice by peers and people like Dave. He is what being narrow minded archetypically looks like - and behaving like a derogatory asshole surely doesn't help solving this issues either. I mean, just take a look at his videos about religion - it's literally the most mundane, Dawkin-esque nonsense you can listen to. He would not get very far with this kind of reasoning against a philosopher who has thought about it for a while. I think we need to find a place between the two extremes - where fringe topics can be explored without this baggage - but with a rigorous scientific framework to get to what's actually true. We also need to recognize where science ultimately fails truth-acquisition - like in the study of consciousness (propably) and GOD.

That said, science works really works in most areas of life - especially the hard sciences like physics & chemistry! The way forward includes broader education in science and also philsophy. Topics like climate change and collective actions against it are only malleable through the workings of an adquate scientific understanding. Becoming a wiser species entails a greater understanding of both, the relative (what science teaches us about) and absolute (spiritualty) domain of reality. Ciriticism of science should be precise and logically consistent. Thats it!

Edited January 31 by undeather

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, undeather said:

Sophists are great at using scientific termonology and cherrypicked "data" to prove a certain point

As does Dave.

Every criticism of pseudoscience applies to science itself. It takes astounding bias not to recognize that.

Edited January 31 by Leo Gura

[Rafael Thundercat]

In was drinking in the waters of Formscapes these days, combining with reading a book of Thomas S.Kuhn called ", Incommensurability in Science and reflecting in two concepts of Rudolf Steiner " Ahriman spirit" and "Luciferian spirit" the first is a tendency to materialism,physical explanations and the second is the sort of vibe you get in a hippie community where everything is spiritual and there is no grounding, is all about estatic and satisfaction of senses. The Christ or Christ-Consciouness is the balance way or the middle path where you can connect science and the ordinary life. 

For me is always a question of not going to extremes. Our nature have a sort of duality, one part connected with primitive animality and the other connected with cosmos,stars etc.. Infinity..

Some say that this duality is because we have Alien DNA, Annunakis,Nephilins gave us our physical body using the Apes from.this earth to geneticaly creating us as slaves for gold mining and our essence came from more advanced beings of ligth. So this would be the reason we have tendencies of colonialism,domination, slave others and war, and our angelic tendencies come from dimentions higher than our materiality. Well, unless one have direct exeperiences of this is useless to carry this stuff, but the questions still keep in my mind " Why there are very ancient abandoned mines around the world? Why Apes had suddenly a desire to dig for minerals like gold,copper,iron etc.. and how came they know how to combine this metals? 

There is some bit of truth in all this Gilgamesh Epic and old Myths? We think was ways of explaning natural phenomena. But what if this shit was actually historical descriptions? 

We are vla very strange kind of Ape anyway. 

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Every criticism of pseudoscience applies to science itself. It takes astounding bias not to recognize that.

This is not true and very easy to refute. For example, one criticism of pseudoscience is the lack of rigor and bad/loose inference making. That obviously doesn't apply to all sciences.

Edited January 31 by zurew

[undeather]

35 minutes ago, zurew said:

This is not true and very easy to refute. For example, one criticism of pseudoscience is the lack of rigor and bad/loose inference making. That obviously doesn't apply to all sciences.

Indeed! I mean it's in the etymolgy of the word - the prefix "pseudo" defines what comes after by saying it's not genuine or spurious.
The word doesn't make sense without the concept (science) it is refering to - therefore it cant be prone to the same criticism. 
Pseudoscience is an aberration of the scientific method through epistemiological inconsiderations (like the ones you mentioned)

That said, there are various critiques of the scientific method as a whole! (Read Paul Feyerabend for example)

 

Edited January 31 by undeather

[Leo Gura]

On 1/31/2024 at 5:06 AM, zurew said:

This is not true and very easy to refute. For example, one criticism of pseudoscience is the lack of rigor and bad/loose inference making. That obviously doesn't apply to all sciences.

Then how come something like 50% of scientific studies fail to replicate? Lack of rigor within science.

And the problem with this notion of "rigor" is that it's very much subjective and biased. I could argue that ignoring evidence of the paranormal is lack of rigor on the part of materialists like Dave.

The problem is that Dave claims to be rigorous but he isn't. If he was truly rigorous he would not be a materialist.

Science defines rigor in a circular manner as whatever aligns with its dogmas.

Edited February 2 by Leo Gura

[trenton]

@Leo Gura I wanted to tell you that your series on deconstructing science is one of your best series. Good work on that.

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Then how come something like 50% of scientific studies fail to replicate? Lack of rigor within science.

Even if that is true, you said "all science" - physics is as rigorous as it gets.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

And the problem with this notion of "rigor" is that it's very much subjective and biased.

You throw around the word 'bias' a lot, but being biased can lead you to better quality of evidence depeding on how you define it.  If you are open to any kind of methodology being used and you want to have completely lack of bias - that case you, you shouldn't differentiate in any way between what methdology is used when gathering evidence to anything (because the time you use any kind of differentiation, well you are biased towards something). But I think such a stance will be ridicolous, especially once we take a look at the evidence hierarchy and why it is conducted the way it is.

The whole idea of rigor is that you want to increase the probability of a premise being true. The better quality your methodology is (the more rigorous it is) - the better you can increase that probability , the better quality evidence you can gather.

If you want to fight with the scientific community - how should better quality methodology be defined - feel free to do so. But again the whole idea is to increase the probability of a premise being true. If you have better ways to evidence gathering, then I think the scientific community will welcome you with open arms - but I suspect you don't have any such thing.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I could argue that ignoring evidence of the paranormal is lack of rigor on the part of materialists like Dave.

Well, how high the bar is set regarding quality of evidence for any specific subject is different for everyone. Maybe if you would run a consistency check on Dave, maybe you would find him being incosistent or maybe he has a higher standard before he concludes things about paranormal phenomena.

But yeah you can always disagree with anyone, that maybe their standard is way too high and because of that they rule out too many things too fast. 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Science defines rigor in a circular manner as whatever aligns with its dogmas.

Rigor has a specific definition and I don't think it is circular or question begging. Regarding the 'whatever aligns with its dogmas' - well you can try to argue why rigor is bad or why rigor is unnecessary, but I don't think you want to take such a stance.

Edited February 2 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Even if that is true, you said "all science" - physics is as rigorous as it gets.

String theory is full of BS.

There is plenty of BS in physics.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

You throw around the word 'bias' a lot

Because everything hinges on it.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

If you want to fight with the scientific community - how should better quality methodology be defined - feel free to do so.

The point is that you cannot define a method for truth because it is infinite and non-algorithmic. Good luck getting Dave to understand this.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Rigor has a specific definition

No it doesn't. And whatever definition you create will lead to falsehoods.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

and I don't think it is circular or question begging.

Yes it is.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Regarding the 'whatever aligns with its dogmas' - well you can try to argue why rigor is bad or why rigor is unnecessary, but I don't think you want to take such a stance.

Certainly rigor is problematic.

[undeather]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Then how come something like 50% of scientific studies fail to replicate? Lack of rigor within science.

50% replication rate is only true for certain study fields like psychology or social sciences.
And even then, it's usually for a subset of not optimally designed studies without preregistration and other flaws.
Better practices tend to push down the replication error below 10% or even close to zero.
The harder the science, the better the replication rate. There is no replication crisis in material chemistry.

The reality of a base-rate-fallacy in scientific hypothesis making also strongly influences what we perceive as a replication crisis.
I think Veritasium made a pretty interesting video on that whole thing:

 

3 hours ago, zurew said:

Well, how high the bar is set regarding quality of evidence for any specific subject is different for everyone. Maybe if you would run a consistency check on Dave, maybe you would find him being incosistent or maybe he has a higher standard before he concludes things about paranormal phenomena.

But yeah you can always disagree with anyone, that maybe their standard is way too high and because of that they rule out too many things too fast. 

The problem is that most "skeptics" don't even look at the paranormal literature with nearly the same amount of rigor as would with "acceptable" science. And if they do, they go in with a strong ontological bias, which they are mostly unaware of.
"Precognition can't be true because it violates the laws of science/because there is no possible mechanism" - is one of this dumb, unqualified statements you would read as response. Of course, anyone with the slightest idea of epistemology would see the absurdity of such argument.

The fact of the matter is that there are many experiments in parapsychology which would be considered "great science" if it was published in a genreally accepted field of inquiry.
 

52 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

String theory is full of BS.

There is plenty of BS in physics.

I disagree with string theory. 
I disagree with all the many worlds interpretations of QM
I disagree with pilot wave theory (Bohmian mechanics)
I disagree with hidden variables.
I disagree with Supersymmetry.
I disagree with dark matter as a building block of the universe.

While I disagree, I would never call it "BS" because theory modelling and experimentation is exactly how science progresses. 
Also one has to show some humility because those TOE-topics("TOEpics" hehe) are extremely complicated and take years to grasp deeply. You don't really understand string theory and the mathematical basis behind it - and neither do I. We have a superficial understanding of it and any string theorist/phycisist would wreck us in a debate. I don't know which model of the universe will come out as the correct one and neither do you. It doesn't really matter since conciousness/God stays untouched and primary anyway.
 

52 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No it doesn't. And whatever definition you create will lead to falsehoods.

Certainly rigor is problematic.

I can't believe that you argue against the scientifc virtue of rigor.-
An increased rigor in the scientific process will get us less human bias, less replication-crisis, higher standards, more structure, better experimental design and all in all - more truth in the relative domain.

If we lack anything in science, then it's MORE rigor! 
This also includes epistemic rigor towards our preconceived notions of what's possible.

A lack of rigor in medical science led to so many unncessary atrocities and bullshit therapies. 
And it still does! 




 

Edited February 2 by undeather

[Extreme Z7]

1 hour ago, undeather said:

I can't believe that you argue against the scientifc virtue of rigor.-

Leo is arguing against the scientific virtue of scientism dogma (i.e science's precious "rigor")

1 hour ago, undeather said:

If we lack anything in science, then it's MORE rigor! 

This also includes epistemic rigor towards our preconceived notions of what's possible.

For most scientists, to question their notions of what is possible would threaten their careers. That's why most scientists don't care about real epistemic rigor.

Edited February 2 by Extreme Z7

[undeather]

7 minutes ago, Extreme Z7 said:

Leo is arguing against the scientific virtue of scientism dogma (i.e science's precious "rigor")

Scientific dogma and scientific rigor are two completely different things....
The first is about a certain kind of closed-mindedness in the context of a metaphysical/epistemological assumptions - the other is about a strict adherence/not being sloppy with the method defining the scientific process.

You can be a rigorous scientist who doesn't fall into the dogmatic traps and vice versa.

8 minutes ago, Extreme Z7 said:

For most scientists, to question their notions of what is possible would threaten their careers. That's why most scientists don't care about real epistemic rigor.

This is a half-truth. There is an overton window in science which kind of describes the range of acceptable ideas you are allowed to play around with publically wihtout bumping into scorn and derision by your peers. You can damage your reputition/career by just believing that there is something to the idea of parapsychlogical reserach and yes, thats a huge problem based on the ugly face of scientifc dogmatism. 

But, as we have seen in the history of science, if there is sufficient evidence for a certain new theory - paradigm shifts tend to happen as well! One of my favourite examples is the story of Barry Marshall. He is an australian MD who hypothesized back in the 80s that a certain strain of bacteria (H. pylori) is one of the major contributors to gastritis is humans. The theory was initially rejected by many scientists who believed that bacteria could not survive in the acidic environment of stomach acid. To prove otherwise, in 1984, Marshall conducted an experiment on himself and drank a test tube of the bacteria. Shortly thereafter, he developed severe gastritis, which he cured with antibiotics. He got the nobel prize for that. 

 I can also tell you - as a practicing scientist myself - that behind the wall of science discourse - people talk about all sorts of stuff. I have had th wildest discussions with other doctors and even phycisists about all sorts of fringe topics. There is the public persona of the scientist and the person behind it. 

[zurew]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

String theory is full of BS.

There is plenty of BS in physics.

The idea of string theory being full of bullshit is another example of lack of rigor 😂.

Show me an example where lack of rigor is more reliable for increasing a premise probability to be true than more rigor.

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Because everything hinges on it.

Yes, but your criticism is incredibly weak, because you are failing to engage with the fact of what happens if you try to reject rigor.

I already established this - saying to someone who values rigor that the bias of rigor is bad - the opposite is the case, rigor is good and everyone including yourself know this and live according to this. You have certain set of virtues that you value over others when it comes to evidence gathering and thats the exact reason why you value evidence is a hierarchical manner and you use certain methods over others to collect evidence. 

A very grounded example you can engage with is a medical example. Would you say that you value anecdotes regarding the effectiveness and safetiness of a vaccine the exact same way as you would value going through multiple meta analysis with full of randomized controlled trials?

If you would have tried to make an argument that every kind of methodology has their own value (meaning that everyone should be open to every kind of methodology), thats fine, but again, that still does not mean all of them have the same reliability with respect to them increasing a premise probability of being true.

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The point is that you cannot define a method for truth because it is infinite and non-algorithmic

But here you are pivoting to the Absolute domain rather than staying in the relative domain. But it seems to be the case, that even when it comes to awakening and enlightenment stuff (and again you agree with this) certain methods will have more effectiveness in general than other methods.

There is a reason why you constantly advocate for taking a dose of 5meo DMT and you are not advocating for us doing [I could insert whatever activity in the world here].

Like would you defend something silly like "guys you know, that I have said that there is no real method for truth so I would advocate for you trying out every possible thing in the world to try to awaken" (including blinking 10 thousand times a day).

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Certainly rigor is problematic.

I think you failed to demonsrate that so far.

Demonstrate with what possible truth rigor is incompatible with.

 

2 hours ago, undeather said:

The problem is that most "skeptics" don't even look at the paranormal literature with nearly the same amount of rigor as would with "acceptable" science. And if they do, they go in with a strong ontological bias, which they are mostly unaware of.
"Precognition can't be true because it violates the laws of science/because there is no possible mechanism" - is one of this dumb, unqualified statements you would read as response. Of course, anyone with the slightest idea of epistemology would see the absurdity of such argument.

Yeah I agree that they are lazy and that most of them are too philosophically illiiterate in a way , that they fail to see the set of assumptions that they build their worldview from. Most of them also fail to see that negative statements like "that doesn't exist" or "that can't be true" also requires arguments for them that they would fail to construct in the vast majority of the cases.

All I tried to say there (in the thing that you responded to) is that to accept new things (even if you are very open minded) you will still probably have some kind of standard in mind for evidence - to accept the existence of certain things.

 

Edited February 2 by zurew

[Yousif]

56 minutes ago, zurew said:

The idea of string theory being full of bullshit is another example of lack of rigor 😂.

Show me an example where lack of rigor is more reliable for increasing a premise probability to be true than more rigor.

 

When you’re trying to create or construct a system yeah being rigorous is helpful and even necessary, but you fail to understand that truth cannot be theorized or written down, it’s endless, rigor has nothing to do with truth, you could say absolute truth is the sum of all mini or relative truths, if you can’t see the big picture of the puzzle you can’t possibly know where each piece goes. 
 

Rigor is good, we like it, but at the same time it’s a human construct and has nothing to do with truth or knowing what truth is since truth lies on the side of deconstruction of theories, and science is biased against the deconstruction and for construction, but sometimes you gotta demolish the old to see the new which scientist refuse to do just like religious people.

[Leo Gura]

Rigor itself is a bias and will lead you to getting stuck.

As I said, the notion of rigor is relative and subjective. So whatever you consider rigor to be, your mind will use that to lock you into a paradigm. Rigor is not the same thing as truth. The only proper priority must be truth, not anything else. And even that is a bias. If you are not aware of these biases you will fall into self-deception. As every scientist on this planet has done.

Edited February 2 by Leo Gura

[Yousif]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

 

All I tried to say there (in the thing that you responded to) is that to accept new things (even if you are very open minded) you will still probably have some kind of standard in mind for evidence - to accept the existence of certain things.

 

Of course, how do you know what’s true and what’s not? That’s where awakening comes in, where it’s absolutely true under all conditions, it’s self evident, you might say well when science is being self evident you say oh that’s” self reference” who says you’re saying the truth? Exactly, which is why we say awakening is a subjective matter and cannot be said or proved in the current standard of proof.

 

[zurew]

53 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Rigor itself is a bias and will lead you to getting stuck.

Lack of rigor is itself a bias and will lead you to getting stuck. - its very easy to throw around sentences like that.

Leo you are not engaging seriously or addressing any of the problems being presented to you and always try to zoom out and run to the absolute to delegitimize everything that being thrown at you.

 

If you are honest, you will acknowledge that you have to choose an epistemic method to acquire truth (including relative truths and absolute truth). Now accepting that premise, you can either pretend that you are completely agnostic towards all possible epistemic processes (which you are demonstrably not) or you make an evalutaion between said epistemic processes.

Edited February 2 by zurew