The $%*! frustration thread

[FaustWolf]

I was going to move some posts per your observation Uboa, but then ZeaLitY has some stuff not about sexism in his post too. Hrm. I'll let V deal with this one.

No harm in continuing the discussion in the Sexism thread for the time being though, and maybe quoting the posts here if needed.

And something else. There's apparently some spiritual belief out there called the "Law of Attraction" that deems if you think of something and wish for it, and keep positive thoughts that thing will come to you.

That's "wishful thinking". And it's useless.

There is only one way to guarantee that you get what you desire. Go out and get it.

I was briefly fascinated with PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab. If what they claim is true about their findings being statistically significant, their experiments suggest a slight ability of even the untrained human mind to produce simple phenomenon alteration. Not necessarily a spiritual explanation to be sure, but more of a psycho...power...thing.

Anyway, the fact that they basically got laughed off the campus of Princeton University doesn't help foster the scientific analysis of things previously thought unscientific, which I'd like to see more of. I'd also like to get a hold of their data and confirm that their results are, indeed, quantifiable, objective and statistically significant. 

[MsBlack]

To balance currently existing patriarchy and the lack of self control it tries to inculcate within men, I would certainly support all armies being composed entirely of women. If women were running all aspects of the wars in the Congo, there wouldn't be half as much rape going on there. Maybe close to none at all, especially since it's the women who would have the guns, and therefore power of physical coercion, in that case.

Reversing sexual disparities and discrimination isn't a very good solution for sexual inequality. 'Reverse sexism' is still sexism.

Anyway, the fact that they basically got laughed off the campus of Princeton University doesn't help foster the scientific analysis of things previously thought unscientific, which I'd like to see more of. I'd also like to get a hold of their data and confirm that their results are, indeed, quantifiable, objective and statistically significant. 

Superstitious 'psychic' fancies have no place in scientific analysis.

[FaustWolf]

Reversing sexual disparities and discrimination isn't a very good solution for sexual inequality. 'Reverse sexism' is still sexism.

Much agreed. However, other things held equal, I feel real-world outcomes might be more just than the current situation, where men are taught to be depraved and given power over life and death. If militaries are to be composed of men and women in equal numbers, then the society arming them needs to train them to care about  human relationships equally, because this carries over to their treatment of civilians, and through that, the course of the war.

Superstitious 'psychic' fancies have no place in scientific analysis.

I see no reason not to subject "psychic fancies" to scientific analysis. Why not disprove that which is actually false, and further scrutinize that which has not been proven false via the most objective methodology available? Science belongs squarely in the field of the paranormal; the main concern should be whether preconceived notions are swaying the scientists studying a given phenomenon.

What I'm trying to say, is, sure, we might waste resources studying ESP if it's false. But on the offchance those PEAR people come back ten years from now and take over the world with mind lasers, the skeptics who didn't want to even study this stuff will be awfully sorry.  

Alternatively, let's take the example of the "black cat crossing someone's path" superstition. If, over the course of years of objective analysis, a black cat crossing someone's path demonstrably produces bad life outcomes with statistical significance, humanity is better off for the study. If the black cat results are not statistically significant, then humanity is also better off for disproving a superstition that could have harmed productivity (via people going out of their way irrationally to avoid black cats).

[ZeaLitY]

I should probably add that yes, believing in yourself and thinking positively are important to getting something, but this "Law of Attraction" movement goes beyond that. They believe that if you visualize your goals and the objects of your desires—and don't actually work for them—they'll fall into your lap, like the perfect relationship partner or your dream job. I'm all for someone believing they can do something and struggling with everything they've got, but to simply sit in your house or your apartment and wish for things to come to you, well, that's just not going to work.

I'm learning in my feminist readings that part of the reason there's no clear leadership is that 1) feminisms get their funding from large programs and donors like the UN, and so the middle class women and elites who do this are subject to the same undue influence and control that politicians who accept lobbyist money are (this is why some feminist movements are strangely silent on abortion); 2) the UN and other higher-ups have dropped the ball lately, as there hasn't been a world conference for women's rights since the one in Beijing in 1995; and 3) the feminist movement in the US apparently discounted or didn't properly recognize other spontaneous movements in other countries soon enough, especially third world countries, leading to the academic, semantic distinction of calling the overall struggle for women's rights "feminisms" as opposed to just "feminism". Still, I would expect the oppression of half the human race to generate more buzz just on its own. I hope to learn more about this; maybe feminism does need its own Dawkins and Hitchens.

[Uboa]

I hope to learn more about this; maybe feminism does need its own Dawkins and Hitchens.

Please no.  No feminist Hitchens.

*thinks* Hypothetically, what would such a ... woman? be like?  Scary.

[MsBlack]

Much agreed. However, other things held equal, I feel real-world outcomes might be more just than the current situation, where men are taught to be depraved and given power over life and death. If militaries are to be composed of men and women in equal numbers, then the society arming them needs to train them to care about  human relationships equally, because this carries over to their treatment of civilians, and through that, the course of the war.

Looking back, maybe I misunderstood. I'd thought you meant that you'd support forcefully making armies all-female, as opposed to going along with it if it somehow happened to be so. I'm not sure what you meant now.

I see no reason not to subject "psychic fancies" to scientific analysis.

I said 'fancies' specifically because these aren't scientific analyses. These people were trying to find statistical rarities to support fanciful ideas. They weren't observing and trying to explain statistical abnormalities using what they knew; they were trying to find evidence of superstitions.

Why not disprove that which is actually false, and further scrutinize that which has not been proven false via the most objective methodology available?

These kinds of ideas have consistently failed to consistently hold up in objective testing. If that's not enough, add that the only reason they're tested and considered at all is their legacy from more superstitious pasts. It's equally likely at this point that goblins exist, but, curiously, I've yet to hear of 'scientists' trying to prove their existence. That's because there's no historical precedent; that's the only reason you're susceptible to 'ESP'--it could just as easily have been goblins if things had been slightly different.

Science belongs squarely in the field of the paranormal; the main concern should be whether preconceived notions are swaying the scientists studying a given phenomenon.

To the contrary, the whole point of the paranormal is that it's outside of the truly explainable and describable, making it outside of the scope of science. If it could be covered by science like anything else, it wouldn't be paranormal, would it?

What I'm trying to say, is, sure, we might waste resources studying ESP if it's false.

Pretty small if.

But on the offchance those PEAR people come back ten years from now and take over the world with mind lasers, the skeptics who didn't want to even study this stuff will be awfully sorry.  

Same for my goblins?

Alternatively, let's take the example of the "black cat crossing someone's path" superstition. If, over the course of years of objective analysis, a black cat crossing someone's path demonstrably produces bad life outcomes with statistical significance, humanity is better off for the study. If the black cat results are not statistically significant, then humanity is also better off for disproving a superstition that could have harmed productivity (via people going out of their way irrationally to avoid black cats).

Come off it. What's with this sudden nonsense from you? Black cats harbingers of doom? For real? Goblins too then, yes?

[FaustWolf]

Come off it. What's with this sudden nonsense from you? Black cats harbingers of doom? For real? Goblins too then, yes?

True, I went out on a limb with the black cat example, but we appear to have slightly different notions of what "nonsense" is. It may be a result of acculturation by the first statistics book I was exposed to in college -- it started out with an example of subjecting superstitious beliefs regarding sun spots, moon cycles, or something like that to statistical analysis and disproving it. I was struck by that example, and from that point on I've believed that it's better to rely on objective, quantifiable analysis -- especially statistics -- than preconceived notions of any kind.

I've probably also been acculturated this way due to my exposure to Carl Sagan:

Sagan nominated three areas within paranormal research that he considered to have sufficient experimental support, albeit dubious, to warrant serious study. These related to thoughts barely affecting random number generators (psychokinesis); projection of images from one person to another (telepathy); and young children sometimes reporting verifiable details of previous lives (reincarnation research). He was at pains to point out that he was not convinced by the validity of these contentions, merely that they might be true.[36]

What interests me about PEAR is precisely that they're trying to back up their argument with statistical significance. I do agree with you that the PEAR scientists are motivated to prove their claim, and their results may be polluted by that wish. That is why I expressed a personal desire to double check their data. It's fortunate that you and I are able to double-check these claims with tools readily available to us; we are not so fortunate in the case of the legendary quark, which we (I assume you do too) believe in due to our trust in the scientific authorities who claim their existence and have written extensively on the subject.

That's angle I'm approaching this from, anyway.


If you don't mind Z, drop the occasional note on what you're learning about feminism, because I'm sure it interests a lot of Compendiumites and viewers. I can't help but suggest that the lack of a Women's Rights conference so far this decade corresponds with George W. Bush's presidency. It should be a priority of the Obama administration to take leadership on this and push another one through, because there are obviously a ton of issues related to the subject that have cropped up or continued since 1995.

[Truthordeal]

Actually, on the matter of ESP-*runs to get his Psych textbook*

But in all fairness, there have been some reliable observations of UFOs and some scientifically sound evidence for telepathy(source). Readint the scientific literature on these two topics, one has little choice but to conclude that some of these experiences have some validity. Remember, open skepticism is the hallmark of science. If there is scientifically sound evidence for something-even if it is difficult to explain-and it can be replicated, then we have to accept it.

Haha, just got done reading/studying that chapter. Hooray for college!

And for Youth! But that's unrelated.

[MsBlack]

Sounds like a pretty worrying book. =P (Oh, another post. Make that pretty damn worrying books.)

The usefulness of ideas like lunar orbit comes from their ability to explain past, present and future minimalistically; they illuminate the past, help understand the present and have predictive power. Investigation of 'paranormal' conjectures like ESP invariably doesn't explain at all, but just tries to prove the existence of some phenomena. They don't deserve scientific treatment because they're not scientific hypotheses, nor are they even close to coming from a scientific method. Orbital moon cycle explanations don't necessitate breaking logic or violating fundamental physical laws; 'the paranormal' does. It's fair enough to be open-minded, but there really are good reasons for the scientific community supporting theories like orbital cycles but not wild 'supernatural' conjectures.

(On top of that, even if moon cycles were somehow unreasonable hypotheses, that would say nothing of the validity of superstitious conjectures.)

Edit: I'd add that telepathy and the rest of the 'supernatural' are such fundamental breaches of physics as we know it that such phenomena would necessitate a reappraisal of physics and all of science from the fundamental level up. A couple of studies (which might not even be valid) showing a correlation is to be expected statistically, and isn't strong enough evidence for a claim as extraordinary as one that would uproot all understanding of the cosmos.

In all honesty, the mentioned parts of the textbooks sound like bullshit if you're both representing them correctly: A statistics book undermining astrophysics and a psychology textbook supporting telepathy? Lame.

[ZeaLitY]

If you don't mind Z, drop the occasional note on what you're learning about feminism, because I'm sure it interests a lot of Compendiumites and viewers. I can't help but suggest that the lack of a Women's Rights conference so far this decade corresponds with George W. Bush's presidency. It should be a priority of the Obama administration to take leadership on this and push another one through, because there are obviously a ton of issues related to the subject that have cropped up or continued since 1995.

I will. A couple quotable factoids about the United States:

• The US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. This puts the US in league with Somalia, Iran, Nauru, Palau, Sudan, Tonga, and the Vatican.
• Rwanda has proportionately more women in its legislature than the US.

I'm sure I'll have more. And yeah, though the Conference is a UN activity, George W. Bush's administration probably kneecapped planning for the fifth by not taking a more active role, just as the Bush administration bucked many other progressive UN resolutions. I've heard that planning for the fifth has centered around New York City as the site.

[Temporal Knight]

New York? That's a little different, methinks. Of course, I'm not surprised either. Especially with all of the different kinds of things going on in the US today.

[alfadorredux]

Edit: I'd add that telepathy and the rest of the 'supernatural' are such fundamental breaches of physics as we know it that such phenomena would necessitate a reappraisal of physics and all of science from the fundamental level up.

Why do you consider this a bad thing? The Theory of Relativity forced a similar reappraisal in its time--in fact, I would say that such reappraisal is sometimes necessary for expanding the state of human knowledge. It's what experimental science is for.

(Side note: No, I don't believe in telepathy or any of the rest of it...but I do believe that conducting scientific experiments regarding such matters should--indeed, must--be allowed. Call it freedom of speech writ small.)

[MsBlack]

Why do you consider this a bad thing? The Theory of Relativity forced a similar reappraisal in its time--in fact, I would say that such reappraisal is sometimes necessary for expanding the state of human knowledge. It's what experimental science is for.

Relativity explains and is a validly reached hypothesis. Besides that, the new ideas it lead to dealt with the extreme (e.g. extremely small, extremely fast); classical mechanics' explanations remained useful and explanatory (and still do), it was just that the scope was reduced. Classical mechanics was superseded by a better explanation. Telepathy and the like are neither better explanations nor can they generalise our existing observations and explanations.

Really, these examples you're giving me are distractions, because even if you were right that lunar orbits, relativity and telepathy were equally valid, that would say nothing of their absolute validity, but only of their relative validity.

Additionally, you're trying to find some inconsistency in my attribution of validity and yet none of you seems to have explained why my goblins shouldn't be acceptable. The only reason any of you gives any credence to ESP is because our culture has made it one of the superstitions of the day. That is, you're trying to be 'objective' and impartial but you're only considering these things because of custom and biases (and textbooks that put the 'spu' in 'spurious'). I'll even go one better and add explanation: My goblins are the cause of turbulence. Turbulence is so chaotic because it depends on the whims of my microscopic goblins. That's at least an equally valid crackpot idea as ESP, right?

[Truthordeal]

Turbulence is so chaotic because it depends on the whims of my microscopic goblins. That's at least an equally valid crackpot idea as ESP, right?

No, its not, because as my psych book pointed out, there has been some scientifically sound evidence of ESP and telepathy. Moreover, it has been replicated in controlled environments.

Goblins haven't been. When you do managed to get some evidence behind it and have it published, let us know.

[MsBlack]

No, its not, because as my psych book pointed out, there has been some scientifically sound evidence of ESP and telepathy. Moreover, it has been replicated in controlled environments.

Woah! Stop the presses!

'It's scientific because my psych textbook said it was.'