All posts tagged: Pseudoscience

The Apparent Mental Causation of Science and Pseudoscience

The Apparent Mental Causation of Science and Pseudoscience

Published by Sam Flores

In his lecture “On Freedom,” famous Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski said: You can, and even, I think, should, believe in the freedom of choice and the creation of new ones; freedom is our elementary experience, the experience of everyone—it is so elementary that it cannot be broken down into parts that can be analyzed separately, which is why freedom may seem to be an unprovable reality. … We are truly the perpetrators of actions, not just the tools of various forces that clash in the world, although, of course, we are subject to the laws of nature. … This freedom is therefore given to people together with their humanity, it is the foundation of this humanity, it creates man as something distinguished in being itself. (Kołakowski 2003) His words reflect the attitude of our civilization toward the issue of freedom of choice fairly well. We perceive it as the foundation of humanity, at the same time treating it as the foundation of social life. Without a belief in freedom of choice, the concept of responsibility …

The Nature of Pseudoscience, How to Fight It, and Why It Matters

The Nature of Pseudoscience, How to Fight It, and Why It Matters

Published by Sam Flores

Being a skeptic can be hard on one’s soul. That’s always been true, ever since the invention of skepticism as a philosophy of life back in the times of Pyrrho of Elis (365–275 BCE) (Bett 2019). It’s hard not just because it requires rigorous intellectual self-discipline but because—let’s face it—much of the world ain’t skeptical at all. Indeed, skeptics such as Socrates of Athens (470–399 BCE) have historically been deemed dangerous enough to occasionally be condemned to death on charge of “corrupting the youth,” that is, teaching critical thinking. If you, like me, have ever felt a bit dispirited and perhaps even overwhelmed by the burden of skepticism, cheer up. Here comes my pep talk. Of sorts. Let’s start with the basics if you don’t mind. Skeptics have a bad reputation, rooted in the dictionary definition of the word: “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions.” But that’s not really what the word originally meant. The English term comes from the Greek skeptikos (pl. skeptikoi), meaning “inquirer” (which is why the ongoing joke …

The United States of Pseudoscience

The United States of Pseudoscience

Published by Sam Flores

In the thick of the 1979 New York City winter, Isaac Asimov sat at his typewriter to reflect on what he considered America’s “cult of ignorance.” In the “My Turn” section of Newsweek, where Asimov eventually published the essay, he was credited as a biochemistry professor at Boston University School of Medicine, though the title was honorary by that point; he’d been a full-time writer for years, and with more than 200 books to his name, I imagine the words flowed from his mind like an open faucet. When the essay appeared on January 21, 1980, the world learned what one of its sharpest minds thought about America’s “growing strain of anti-intellectualism.” Asimov predicted, with eerie precision, how “expertise” would become shorthand for “elitism” and distilled democracy’s epistemic failure into what would become one of our most-quoted idioms: “My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge” (Asimov 1980). In the nearly five decades since, the internet and social media have allowed the subjects of Asimov’s fears to multiply and speciate; misinformation has become the …

Wikipedia Qualifies Its “Pseudoscience” Label re Design in Nature

Wikipedia Qualifies Its “Pseudoscience” Label re Design in Nature

Published by Jenni Sidey

All encyclopedias have their biases but Wikipedia, consulted by many millions who deserve better — some of whom should know better — is surely legendary. Here’s a traditional Wikipedia entry on the intelligent design controversy, first paragraph: Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.[n 1] Whoa. Lots of name-calling; little engagement with evidence. Design of the universe can’t be the only topic on which Wikipedia has proudly paraded such bias. Yet the free online encyclopedia remains a key source for shaping public opinion in the way the …