prescience: piles of random woo science: linear woo woo trains
unity: fractal woos within woos = WOO ! Rich On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Arlo Barnes <[email protected]> wrote: > Unfortunately I think I am coming into this a bit too late to read through > the whole thread and respond, but I would like to present a couple of > related topics and see what people think. > > The first is in response to 'would I like people to burst my > placebo/nocebo bubble?': the latest issue of Science magazine has an > article on recommendations by the American College of Medicine of whether > people should be told without being asked that they have alleles that > indicate an elevated risk of disease when looking at genes related to > common diseases (mostly cancers and tissue defects) as a course of a > full-genome analysis for another disease/syndrome/disorder (pointing out > that people may already be in an emotionally fragile state from said > disease). Link > here<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1507.full?sid=7561e634-f578-431a-8299-e86ef03891f4> > . > > Secondly, I agree that how likable a belief is relies not on how close to > reality it is (although that helps) but how 'humble' it is, how willing to > admit that it could be wrong (put another way, beliefs that come with an > accurate measure of where they came from and therefore how widely they can > be applied). So there is likable woo (cold fusion or the new cold fusion, > LENR; based on my [admittedly minor] perusing of websites and documents the > proponents seem to welcome outside experimentation/verification, and > open-source device plans. That doesn't mean the device works as advertised, > though) and dislikable woo (iridology?) with chemtrails in between (while > it seems very paranoid, I wouldn't put it past refineries that produce jet > fuel to get rid of waste chemicals through their product; and although > neither that nor any other intentional human activity [unless we can count > GHG emissions as intentional just through negligence now?] has effectively > controlled the weather, it is not for lack of trying. Contemporary benign > activities like silver iodide cloud seeding, speak to this) along with > homeopathy (my school tutor keeps recommending this method, whatever that > means in practice, and I just politely change the subject; While I don't > understand the fractionation thing, the idea that it contains the cause of > what it is treating gets some mental preparation from the idea of vaccines). > <May be unrelated: the discovery of the sodium layer, and the > ICE<http://photovalet.com/181459>[Ionosphere Communication Experiment] > Station Otto [Not to be confused with > Ice Station Zebra], outside Vaughn, NM.> > Similarly, there is likable and dislikable skepticism. I think the best > part of science is the experimentation itself rather than the results per > se (although obviously the fruitful part for society is the resulting tech > or best practices); perhaps this is related to Feynman's pleasure of > finding things out (I believe it was that book in which he stirs a pot of > jello that he is holding out a window to see if it will congeal faster in > the cold, or the one in which he and a classmate realise they have > different ways of counting, one auditory, one visual). When this turns into > ridiculing people, however justified, it becomes just no fun anymore. > > -Arlo James Barnes > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
