So what makes me bad?

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83801 wrote:

Rich are you talking about the same article as the rest of us here in Realityland?

Absolutely. The problem here is that the author is trying to affect change in people's attitude without a shred of evidence or any kind of proof that he can change people's attitude. It is simply an exercise in writing. I would rather read a good poem.

Rich

@richrf,

richrf;83802 wrote:

Absolutely. The problem here is that the author is trying to affect change in people's attitude without a shred of evidence or any kind of proof that he can change people's attitude. It is simply an exercise in writing. I would rather read a good poem.

Rich

of course he doesn't know whether he can change people's attitudes rich

many people are stupid and/or willfully ignorant and he probably already knows his message will fall on many deaf ears

but it's reaching more people I think ... more and more people esp. in the West are realizing that the bulls***-free life is better for them

you just don't understand how devoted the enemies of bulls*** are do you rich

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83804 wrote:

of course he doesn't know whether he can change people's attitudes

OK. Without the proof, I am not interested in the article. Come back when he has some proof.

Rich

@richrf,

richrf;83806 wrote:

OK. Without the proof, I am not interested in the article. Come back when he has some proof.

Rich

do you think you have proof you can change rational people's minds about pretentious utter shite rich

if not why do you post here

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83808 wrote:

do you think you have proof you can change rational people's minds about pretentious utter shite rich

if not why do you post here

Until you have the proof that you can change my mind, I will not discuss any of your assumptions with you. You have to prove it, not I. I have Free Will to make this choice.

Rich

@richrf,

richrf;83810 wrote:

Stop trying to change anyone's mind until you have proof that you can do so!

no u

richrf;83810 wrote:

Please, you are wasting my time and everyone else's. Go to your lab, and try to figure out how to change the mind of a computer.

Well the brain is a computer

And I've changed people's minds before

I've had my mind changed by others too

Remember I used to believe shite like you do rich

It's never too late

richrf;83810 wrote:

This is totally ridiculous! I have no idea why I am wasting my time talking about this. Drives me crazy when someone thinks that they can change someone else's mind without a shred of evidence or proof that this is possible.

People never change each other's minds?

That's news to me

richrf;83810 wrote:

Gosh, I had better lie down and meditate so that I can calm myself down.

Hare hare, hare hare

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83812 wrote:

And I've changed people's minds before

Prove it! You are just making all kinds of claims and expect me to believe it without a single shred of evidence or proof. Prove that you can change my mind. Prove that you can change anyone else's mind. Prove that there is a mind to change. And while you are at it, you can write to that author and tell him that he is wasting my time until he has some proof that his article has any affect on anyone.

This should keep you busy for a while. A mathematical proof would be ideal.

Rich

@richrf,

richrf;83815 wrote:

Prove it!

well I remember convincing someone that Jews aren't all evil

I guess that's proof

richrf;83815 wrote:

You are just making all kinds of claims and expect me to believe it without a single shred of evidence or proof.

no I support all my claims with empirical evidence rich

richrf;83815 wrote:

Prove that you can change my mind.

apparently I can't

using an ice pick doesn't count right

richrf;83815 wrote:

Prove that you can change anyone else's mind.

I just did

richrf;83815 wrote:

Prove that there is a mind to change.

huh

richrf;83815 wrote:

And while you are at it, you can write to that author and tell him that he is wasting my time until he has some proof that his article has any affect on anyone.

well idk the number of atheists in America is rising, I think people like him are starting to have a profound effect

richrf;83815 wrote:

This should keep you busy for a while. A mathematical proof would be ideal

please don't tell me I'm going to have to explain the distinctions between inductive and deductive reasoning

---------- Post added 08-17-2009 at 03:16 PM ----------

wait nvm here's my proof

$http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/8/a/d8a5160ddc4fbe545ef4aadcda3d5c71.png$

that proves everything I was saying earlier

@richrf,

richrf;83806 wrote:

OK. Without the proof, I am not interested in the article. Come back when he has some proof.

Rich

I keep reading and rereading the article trying to find what the author is trying to prove. I don't see that he is trying to prove anything, rather he is simply offering a methodology of thought by which any (including one's own) beliefs can be tested without succumbing to blind faith.

---------- Post added 08-17-2009 at 03:53 PM ----------

This is also an excellent book:
The Demon-Haunted World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And, on the extreme other end of the spectrum, this book is just plain hilarious:
Amazon.com: Iron Body Ninja: The Secrets of Superior Strength (9780806519104): Ashida Kim: Books

The heck of it is, I have both of these books in my library . . .

Go figure.

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;83846 wrote:

I keep reading and rereading the article trying to find what the author is trying to prove. I don't see that he is trying to prove anything, rather he is simply offering a methodology of thought by which any (including one's own) beliefs can be tested without succumbing to blind faith.

Fine. Then let him prove that his article has any chance of convincing anyone of anything. If he can't, then I hope he found his own article amusing.

And if he is especially ambitious, he can try to prove that is advice is worthwhile to follow.

What I am looking for is proof. Plain and simple.

Rich

@ltdaleadergt,

kind of like your posts here rich

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83876 wrote:

kind of like your posts here rich

I don't have to prove anything. That silly little article has to prove itself. It made the claims, not me. Read the article. It is all in black and white, what the author needs to do to back up all of the claims he is making - and he making plenty. The bottom line is that the article makes a ton of assumptions without one iota of proof.

Rich

@richrf,

richrf;83815 wrote:

Prove it! You are just making all kinds of claims and expect me to believe it without a single shred of evidence or proof. Prove that you can change my mind. Prove that you can change anyone else's mind. Prove that there is a mind to change. And while you are at it, you can write to that author and tell him that he is wasting my time until he has some proof that his article has any affect on anyone.

Rich

The proof is within your post. You seem moderately outraged by the author's article. Are you not therefore affected?

---------- Post added 08-17-2009 at 05:25 PM ----------

richrf;83879 wrote:

I don't have to prove anything. That silly little article has to prove itself. It made the claims, not me. Read the article. It is all in black and white, what the author needs to do to back up all of the claims he is making - and he making plenty. The bottom line is that the article makes a ton of assumptions without one iota of proof.

Rich

Please list what claims you believe the author is making. That would help me understand where you are coming from better.

@ltdaleadergt,

you're forgetting what rich's idea of "evidence" is

if you can make a diagram like this one you're gold:

http://www.namaste.it/kundalini/chakras.gif

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;83880 wrote:

The proof is within your post.

What proof? He is just pontificating about his own biased beliefs. One sentence after another telling people how they should think. I think he should worry more about how he thinks and less about how others think.

Rich

@ltdaleadergt,

You really don't like it when people criticize others' beliefs

Except when you're doing the criticism

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;83894 wrote:

You really don't like it when people criticize others' beliefs

Except when you're doing the criticism

I don't mind it at all.

Rich

@ltdaleadergt,

guide to criticism etiquette:

fairly mild criticism of fantasy beliefs that can and do get people ripped off, injured, or killed: flat-out wrong

grossly exaggerating the arrogance of a skeptical writer: A-OK

@richrf,

richrf;83892 wrote:

What proof? He is just pontificating about his own biased beliefs. One sentence after another telling people how they should think. I think he should worry more about how he thinks and less about how others think.

Rich

I'm having a hard time understanding your vitriolic response to this article. The points of the "Field Guide to Critical Thinking" seem, to me at least, to be a quite straightforward approach to protecting oneself from nonsense using a few simple criteria which I will list in bold, and follow with my own comments in italics:

Falsifiability
It must be possible to conceive of evidence that would prove the claim false.
This reminds me of what someone once said about various conspiracies; that the lack of evidence is proof that there must be a coverup.

Logic
Any argument offered as evidence in support of any claim must be sound.
I fail to understand how this could be a problem for you. Would you promote a practice such as acupuncture if you did not believe it was logically sound? Or would you promote it just because a lot of other people do it so it must be okay?

Comprehensiveness
The evidence offered in support of any claim must be exhaustive -- that is all of the available evidence must be considered.
Are you old enough to remember when they used to advertise cigarettes on TV? Remember when there weren't warnings on tobacco? Remember when, long ago, they used to even go so far as to say smoking might even be good for you? Remember Fen-Phen? How about Ephedra?

Honesty
The evidence offered in support of any claim must be evaluated without self-deception.
Okay. I can see why this might be a tough one for some people. Nothing is more painful than the realization that everything you ever believed in might be wrong. Surely you can't have a problem with someone requiring honesty in a claim.

Replicability
If the evidence for any claim is based upon an experimental result, or if the evidence offered in support of any claim could logically be explained as coincidental, then it is necessary for the evidence to be repeated in subsequent experiments or trials.
Clearly you can't have a problem with this, as one of the cornerstones for your belief in Traditional Chinese Medicine is that it has been used for thousands of years. Why do you have a problem with the author of this article requiring it?

Sufficiency
The evidence offered in support of any claim must be adequate to establish the truth of that claim, with these stipulations:
1. the burden of proof for any claim rests on the claimant,
2. extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and
3. evidence based upon authority and/or testimony is always inadequate for any paranormal claim
Again, these don't seem like really outrageous things to ask of someone who is making a claim. A fun thing to do sometimes when you are examining a paranormal claim or some form of holistic medicine is to ask yourself "if this was a used car rather than a belief system this person or organization was selling . . . would I buy it?"

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your reasoned response,
Tock

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;83950 wrote:

I'm having a hard time understanding your vitriolic response to this article. The points of the "Field Guide to Critical Thinking" seem, to me at least, to be a quite straightforward approach to protecting oneself from nonsense using a few simple criteria which I will list in bold, and follow with my own comments in italics:

The lists are just a set of beliefs. No different than any other set of beliefs. There is no proof that any of these beliefs provide any benefit, and therefore, by the author's own guidelines, should be treated with skepticism.

It is fine for him to have these beliefs. It is also fine that he try to convince others. But they are just a set of unproven beliefs, which by his own measurement, one should be skeptical about. That is also fine with me. So basically, one should be skeptical about the skeptic and what the skeptic is proposing. Beautiful symmetry.

I congratulate him though in implicitly confirming that people have Free Will and have the choice of whether to believe something (be skeptical) or not. For without this implicit assumption (unproven of course), the article is without purpose. However, this implicit assumption is unproven and I do not know why the author would make this unproven assumption.

What goes around comes around.

Rich

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