Abstract. This very long argument arbitrarily divided in 6 parts, aims to defeat the claims of rationality and scientificity of so-called "scientific skepticism", with their arguments (a priori and a posteriori) for naturalism.
(The irrationality of arguments of academic philosophers on the same side, and the positive evidence for supernaturalism, are the objects of different texts).
It may look very surprising
for a web site dedicated to rationally criticizing diverse
religions and spiritual teachings, to list skepticism among the cults to be criticized, as,
isn't it a core function of skepticism to rationally criticize religions and cults ? Some
clarifications of vocabulary are needed. Let us start with these.
As any label, "skeptic" is a label in need of a definition ; a definition must come from somewhere, and it can be debatable why to choose a definition, or source of definition, against others. I see 3 main possible sources of definitions for a label qualifying people (I hope to not forget other notable ones...) :
Perhaps surprisingly, these may widely diverge from each other.
Such a divergence clearly appears in the case of "Christianity": many members
of some branch of Christianity only regard as Christians the members of the same
branch, or may even claim their own branch to be full of "not true Christians" while
only God would know who are the true ones. They may define Christianity as
"not a religion but a relationship with God", and define "Christians" as people who
"have Jesus in their heart", "gave their life to God" or "follow God's will", which not
only does not qualify all self-called "Christians" but according to some may even
qualify people who don't label themselves Christians. They may believe this to be
correlated to the membership of their own branch of Christianity, based on their
faith that God would lead to this branch anyone giving Him their life with a sincere
heart; and that any choice of leaving this branch must necessarily be based on
either some stupid mistake or some sin of rebellion against God - ignoring that (as
actually happened to me), it is on the contrary an excess of dedication which may
lead to a greater justified disappointment and from there a rejection of the ideology.
Similarly for the label "spiritual" as I already
discussed elsewhere (as what I reject in "spirituality" is the objective characteristics
of many people giving themselves this label, very different from how they
would define themselves...).
Now the point is that this divergence is also big in the case of "skepticism" : while its definition by proponents appears as being all about applying reasonable doubts and thinking rationally, it does not correlate well with the actual behavior of people claiming themselves of this label. So, when self-called "skeptics" think of their group as better doubting and more rational than the rest, this is just a belief... and it isn't actually rational. Just being obsessed about rationality is not actually making them more rational. Likewise, the famous apparent pleonasm of "Scientific skepticism", like other pleonasms such as "Democratic Republic" is only there to hide, in naive eyes, how much the real practice done under its name is devoid of what it claims to be all about.
Some people may like to cope with this divergence by calling "pseudoskeptics" those self-called skeptics whose thinking is not properly rational, as opposed to "true skeptics" who genuinely apply the theoretically good principles of skepticism, that is science and rationality according to their own definitions. But I don't see the point, just like I don't see the point of calling "true Christians" those people who truly follow God's will as opposed to pseudo-Christians who follow a flawed man-made version of Christianity, just because I consider all Christianity to be flawed and man-made, and that the true will of God has nothing to do with driving people to Christian faith, but rather to just abandon us to experiment our own will without guidance (more comments in Part 2). Similarly I don't see the point of trying to distinguish "true skeptics" from "pseudoskeptics" as
A trend among skeptics is to be quite obsessed (make a fuss) about the thinking
ways of people who don't think like them, which they see as irrational. Of course they
sometimes properly point out irrational people, but... it is a natural illusion of perspective
to generally see oneself as more rational than others, and that one's own opinions are
better justified that those of others which are mere beliefs. So, just their honest impression
of being more rational than others and that people with different opinions than their own
are just "believers", does not always make these true. They go deal with these "irrational" others
by either attacking, sealioning (ref in French)
or anyhow investigating them (things which may somehow be normal or understandable
but...), but fail to see their own flaws or do they ? Of course they may insist that they are
pretty much aware of their own fallibility, risks of illusions and biases, but that the point of
skepticism is precisely, being aware of these, to work on methodically escaping such traps
better than others do... or so they think. Really ?
The main developments of this exposition on skepticism started in January
2020 (and then continued in April) a while after a long private correspondence
with a skeptic (a quite notable one : author of a science popularization YouTube
channel, each video with over 10k views) : while aware of my better knowledge
of theoretical physics (in which he once asked me for help and I gave my
assistance), in quite many messages we criticized each other for being "outside
science"... so it gave me the chance to see better how skeptics (at least this
one) think, and how they may fail to understand how non-skeptics think and
what we may have against skeptics. Rather than spending more time
somewhat wastefully trying to explain stuff privately to someone
who so persistently asks for explanations but with such difficulties to understand or
accept them, now that I (hopefully) clearly see the nature of the misunderstandings,
here is my public work to provide in clear the needed explanations of what I have
against skepticism and how I see skeptics as opposed to truly rational people.
Developing lots of trivial explanations about the workings of mental sanity I did not
previously expect to have to explain but which I now see needed,
as I see skeptics may terribly fail to see them. Without claim of exhaustivity.
While I see no more point for private debate, skeptics are invited to reply publicly
and officially if they dare (thus facing the risk of further ridicule).
So, this exposition can be seen as my open reply to his insisting requests to explain
what my position was, as he complained that I seemed unclear in the basis of my positions
while he was searching for a way to attack my rationality.
Rejecting both most spiritualities and skepticism, the position I
then consider myself in (while quite close to scientism which is usually
confused with skepticism...) I will rather describe as some kind
of middle ground between those different extremes, and, I will
simply call it mental sanity having much in common with
the default positions of many people not caring for nor making a
fuss about their positions...
At the same time, for those who care about the truth in detail (and I understand
there is no need for all people to care), I also describe my way as rationalist,
on the side of science and its methods. Unfortunately, the community of
paranormal believers (if we may call it so, i.e. the "public" outside the
community of researchers in parapsychology) in average, did not much care or
want to manage distinguishing themselves from irrationalists and crackpots;
some still mistake skepticism with mainstream science, and assume that in order to oppose
their skeptical adversaries, they would have to oppose the scientific community
too, by promoting diverse ideas or "research works" aside mainstream science.
These adversaries of mainstream science, can be religions or paranoid
cranks with their conspiracy theories accusing scientists to be
dogmatic, close-minded and to censor new (crackpot) ideas.
What they didn't notice is that by developing such alliances, they are just
ridiculing their points in the eyes of both scientists and many reasonable people
(just like skeptics are discrediting the scientific method in the eyes of any witness
of paranormal phenomena). Here
is a long explanation that I wrote about how a pro-paranormal
site, which claims to be scientific, fails to stand rationality
standards, and thus discredits itself in the eyes of scientists.
Ironically, in this intermediate position I am relatively less critical against these
different extremes than they are critical to each other, and yet I hardly have any
friend and got a reputation of being an extremely insulting person, as I am not
hiding my divergences with each, and each extreme has a tendency to confuse
my positions with those of opposite extremes...
Of course this sketch of description
does not suffice, much more similarities are needed to show how objectively similar are
these supposedly opposite extremes as opposed to mental sanity. I once wrote in French a
long list of such similarities and will give some more examples below.
Let us start with a little general description of the working of mental sanity as
I see it, and the risks to diverge from it.
Everyone comes to the world with some natural thinking abilities, which may
vary between people, but may be metaphorically described as some kind of
primordial soup of multiple understanding abilities without any a priori distinction
of its ingredients. Goals of life are also diverse, so these abilities can be used
and developed in multiple ways for multiple purposes, with either success or failure.
The proper understanding of complex facts may require multiple understanding
abilities. A too big focus on some pieces of understanding, or skills, at the expense
of other pieces which would also be needed to complete the understanding of a
given topic, may leave someone unable to properly understand it. People who
focus on some pieces may be in strong disagreement with others who focus on
other pieces, each having their part of truths and good reasons for mocking
their opponents who are lacking these. And yet they may be all wrong for the
same reason that they all have incomplete understanding of the topic.
Now different people may take as mission to develop their abilities in different
ways, focusing on some specific abilities relevant to respective goals, among the
multiple possibilities of development. Aspects of understanding which were only
latent or in trace amount in the soup become singled out and grow in importance
in its composition. As according to Plato's philosophy, learning
is remembering. For understanding to grow, we have to each
time focus on something.
However the same development process may either produce beneficial or unfortunate
results. It is beneficial when it completes the understanding of a field by developing
relevant pieces which where previously ignored. But it can also be unfortunate in case
it reinforces a given bias by accumulating data in support of a given idea and persisting
in ignorance of its possible challenges, producing the illusion that such challenges are
missing or not genuine while they are actually important - and other people may know
it but either have troubles to properly explain themselves or are not listened to.
This is a big obsession of skeptics : to put forward the burden of proof which, according to them, their opponents called "believers" would have as a duty on their shoulders to support their beliefs, while skeptics themselves would not have a burden of proof on their shoulders, just because... they see themselves as not believers, i.e. not making claims they would have to prove. Many times as I read posts and debates, I see people making a fuss about, and disputing, this so-called burden of proof. What the **** is this all about ? Let us start with trivialities, before pointing out how it can turn into nonsense.
Consider 2 people A and B with different convictions undertaking a discussion. At the end of the discussion, there may be or not be one, say B, who comes out with modified conviction. We may list possible cases as follows:So here actually skeptics are making a claim and wanting people to follow it but... they failed to put on themselves the burden of proof for their claim or did they ? Because... for those who did not pay attention, that claim of theirs is not a logical consequence of the above point of agreement. The possible gaps in the deduction are actually multiple, let us develop them. But first let us point out where the misunderstanding comes from.
Of course it comes from the case of Christianity, which skeptics were first obsessed
about, because of its historical importance as forming the bulk of traditional opponents
of rationalism (and Michael
Shermer, founder of the Skeptic Society, was a devout Evangelical christian before
becoming skeptic). Indeed the Christian doctrine is quite wicked away from mental sanity :
it gives the highest value to "faith", i.e. some belief without proof, claiming it to be so
valued by God and needed for the eternal salvation of our souls; and that it would be
the main divine mission of people of faith to spread this faith, i.e. make other people
also join this belief without proof, thus following the above case 3 of convincing
scenario. This of course led to multiple troubles, making people give their life to something
without proper reason, multiple people so giving their lives to different mutually incompatible
doctrines, thus by logical necessity often false but by the same move of "faith", and often so
wasting it in diverse nonsense. This provoked a genuine need for skeptical reactions.
Christianity can also be blamed for provoking skeptics dislike of the above case 2 of
convincing scenario, because of its flawed use of authority arguments, may this be the
divine or biblical authority, or of so-called "witnesses" claiming to see the hand of God
in their life, which I guess may actually be variable mixtures of real miracles (maybe from
unwise ghosts mistaken as the "holy" one) and sophisticated practices of self-delusion
(an assumed duty to see God's hand and thank Him for everything...) but anyway leads
to so unfortunate and unwise results of terrible religious indoctrination.
But from this, the error comes when confusing this particular style of religious
indoctrination with the bare claim of supernaturalism, under the same label of
"belief", as if the correlation in metaphysical positions between
religious faith and supernatural claims implied an equivalence of their epistemological
flaws. Of course this implication is pure bullshit, yet skeptics strangely keep behaving
as if it was obviously valid. Do I really need to explain what a bullshit is this ? There
even is a whole branch of Christianity, namely JW, going far in their "mission" to try
making people believe without proof yet quite Bible-based materialists in a sense,
namely that they reject any belief of an afterlife without the physical body (they insist
that our bodies must be resurrected on Earth to give us an afterlife...)...
Seriously. Of course the point is that supernaturalistic claims do
not imply either a practice nor a praise of "faith" in the
Christian sense (of belief without reason). They do not, by
themselves, imply any need to join, nor duty to spread their
recognition. Because usually, unlike the Christian doctrine, and
as confirmed by lots of NDE testimonies, supernaturalistic
positions keep regarding atheism/materialism, like most other
human errors, as genuinely okay in God's eyes and not jeopardizing
afterlife fate.
So the question is, once cleaned up of this mess from the historical heritage of religious faith, what is there left of the "burden of proof" on the shoulders of "believers" of the supernatural, which skeptics keep making a fuss about ??? Namely, while
?????????????????
Seriously: In the name of what, according to skeptics, should
believers care about the "lack of proof" which they
(skeptics) are feeling and complaining about in the face of
supernatural reports and testimonies ? Actually different cases
need to be distinguished, with a burden of proof being applicable
to some cases but not to others.
A question is : if evidence for miracles is what skeptics are demanding, then why are they just trying to blame witnesses for this lack but at the same time refusing to financially support scientific research in this field ??? The question of afterlife is, in principle, much more interesting for so many people (with many people on both sides of the controversy, each convinced to have some evidence on their side), than the quest for the Higgs boson, and is no less accessible to scientific inquiry. Seriously, the last findings on particle physics, can only interest specialists, while all the popularization works about it that "gets the public interested" is a mere casting of shadows in Plato's cave, i.e. a senseless vanity, a way of lying to people by pretending to explain them things as if they had a chance to grasp from there something about how the universe works, when they really don't. Keeping an amount of resources for parapsychology so ridiculously smaller than the one for particle physics, doesn't make any sense, rationally speaking.
So skeptics have a tendency to forget that the question of the burden of proof is not just a question of logic and science, but it also has a political dimension (which can itself be rationally approached) about the fair ways to share burdens in general. Now not only do they make political mistakes in trying to put burdens of proof where, politically speaking, they are not due, but they also strangely forget to criticize other unsubstantiated claims for which, again politically, a burden of proof should be due, because of how dangerous they may be. They terribly forget to put this burden on some claims just because these claims are neither supernaturalistic nor extraordinary looking, as if it mattered.
They fail to put burdens of proofs over the claims that current educational
institutions are doing well the job they are supposed to be doing, that is to organize
life and learning as good as possible and at least better than if they didn't exist, and
that generally young people, and particularly all young geniuses, "need" to dedicate
their life to follow these institutions until they graduate in order to get a good life.
Actually these are very dangerous
claims, because a number of people are actually driven to suicide, not
because they would have troubles making their life good (as they never even
had the chance to start trying to make their own life), but because the only "life"
they had the chance to know due to all the pressure by the believers of those
claims was the academic one, and they found this academic life (the only seemingly
possible "life" under those pressures) to be not worth living.
Trying to figure out why skeptics don't put a burden of proof on
this... something is, such questioning would logically make
enemies a kind of people which skeptics really don't want to have
as enemies...
Also, they like to put burdens of proof on the
supernatural which they can call "extraordinary claims" and of a
kind that begs for a proof, as they are existential positions (the
existence of supernatural phenomena) while naturalism being
phrased as a non-existence of supernatural phenomenon is not of a
kind expectable to produce some specific evidence, allowing
skeptics to keep practicing their skepticism by the method they are good
at : passively claiming that nothing exists, laughing at their
opponents and the job is done. But the claim that academia does
its job right does not look extraordinary but looks like a default
position, so that to express a criticism would require some data
which unfortunately isn't going to fall already cooked from the
sky into your mouth, you would need to undertake something... too
exhausting a perspective for skeptics.
I reported another
example
of pseudo-science which skeptics failed to criticize. And
there are the dangerous claims
of psychiatry, which skeptics also failed to criticize.
So, here is the main point : it is that I do not have a burden of proof on my shoulders, for the following valid reasons.
A first reason is very general : there is generally no reason to expect of any big topic
such as this, that it should be possible to close it by any fully self-contained argument of
reasonable size. Even while this exposition is a big one, such a size would be far from
sufficient for closed arguments to be possible. Then, anyway, such written expositions
should not be expected to contain the full understanding and basis to be convinced what
the truth is. The more complete expectable source of understanding and basis of evidence
is rather that of real life, and everyone's own path of research, in which nobody can much do
for anybody else.
Then, also generally, truth seeking is not only a matter of proof, which implicitly assumes
that the proposition in need of proof or refutation is clear, but also a matter of explaining what
are the propositions, i.e. what are the candidate positions which any argument can then be
considered to support or oppose.
So, without excluding the possibility for some readers to get convinced of something by reading this exposition, I mainly expect 2 kinds of readers
Third, if as some saying goes "what is claimed without proof can be dismissed without proof", then it is actually the skeptical ideology which deserves to be dismissed without proof for this reason. Because most of the skeptical propaganda I know of, seems to claim containing its own full rational evidence, expecting to directly convince any rational person, and claims every rational person must be necessarily a skeptic in the sense of agreeing on, say, most of the numerous articles of skeptical thought, even if one happens to not practice them in terms of activity. Or at least it needs to be clarified whether this expectation is there or not, while I never encountered any clear denial of this yet, i.e. any recognition by skeptics of the logical possibility be rational without agreeing with skepticism (except maybe, one claim that there is no unified skeptical ideology but a diversity of views of diverse skeptics, but I will explain how this raises as much problems as it solves). But this claim of rational self-evidence is not actually true : this propaganda contains many loopholes, its claimed rational validity actually depends on many hidden assumptions. Now, a main object of this exposition is to point out what those many loopholes and hidden assumptions are. As such, this work is clearly self-sufficient, while skeptics are the ones who would need to refute everything of this to justify that big claim of theirs (the claim of rational necessity of all those many points and arguments of their long ideology). Now, only once they will have closed all these loopholes, their big claim of rational necessity of their ideology can finally stop being the big lie it has always been.
The forth reason is a matter of institution and government-funded activity: the fact there already exist official, public funded courses of skepticism, at least in 2 French universities (Grenoble and Nice). Such a status should be deserved by providing objective evidence that the content of the course is not bullshit. Well I know, this lack of justification is also suffered by academic philosophy which is also government funded, but... so for this reason I also think the public funding of much of academic philosophy is undeserved and should stop. On the other hand, I have no burden of proof because nobody pays me for my work and I am not asking for such payment.
Skeptics make fuss about their practice of the Art of Doubt, how they care to
abstain from claiming certainty in lack of evidence, visibly assuming themselves
to be generally better at this art than others... seriously ? The only thing actually
clear is that they are making a louder fuss about it than others. This does not
make them better doubters than others.
Sane people can be full of doubts
about many things too. They just don't make such a fuss about it, because they
see uncertainty as something normal and simple like breathing. We need to breathe
for living, however it would be wrong to make it noisy, because breathing is just good
and normal for oneself but it is only one's own business; it is nobody else's concerns
how good we are at the art of breathing. If you don't hear someone loudly breathing,
it does not mean that he is suffocating, only that he is behaving in a civilized manner.
But skeptics commit a similar misunderstanding when they see people not making a
fuss about how doubtful they are, as if it necessarily meant that they are falling into some
trap of gullibility. Of course this may eventually happen but the generalization is wrong.
A good reason why it may be uncivilized to make a fuss about how doubtful one is,
is that cases can happen when 2 people meet, the one A happens (by any circumstance)
to clearly know something (having checked it somehow) but B happens to not have a clue,
so that A has something to say on the topic but B doesn't. The most rational behavior in
this case is for B to patiently listen to what A may have to say about the issue, so that B
has a chance to learn, which may require some time before success. If instead of behaving
in a silent and patient manner B quickly voiced his doubt, it would only result in disturbing
the explanation, wasting the time and nerves of A with B's personal problems of having
not yet completed the learning phase. So wasting A's time and nerves with B's requests
to discuss things in a way which B believes is relevant in challenge for A, but which A knows
is irrelevant for reasons which cannot be shortly explained by direct reply, would just be a
pure waste of time for both, a harm to the progress of general understanding.
Not only uncertainty can be natural, mistakes can be natural too. Often, being mistaken is not tragic, it is just life. Of course we have to distinguish cases, between heavy questions on which some investment is made, and light questions on which being mistaken just doesn't matter. To explain what I mean, consider the following fictional dialogue between a normal person N and a skeptic S:
S: Are you sure about X ?In this scenario N seems to contradict himself, but the point is that normality can follow some kind of fuzzy logic which is adequate for practice without simply fitting some strict abstract rules of logical evidence. The error of S in this fictional discussion is to over-interpret what it meant for N to be sure about something, because "certainty" does not mean the same between cases of light questions and heavy ones. It would be irrational to invest resources developing doubts and seeking strong evidence on issues where being mistaken is not likely to cause great harm anyway.
N: Yes I am sure.
S: Do you have any evidence to support this position ?
N: Sorry I have no time for you about this.
S: How sure are you more precisely in % ?
N: Let us say I am 99% sure.
S: Okay, for you I found a way to make a 10 against 1 bet on this, so you can commit $10k that you would lose if X turns out to be false but you would win $1k if it turns out to be true. Are you ready for this bet ?
N: Sorry I wouldn't go that far.
S: But under your claim of 99% certainty you must logically consider this commitment as advantageous.
But it is easy to see, looking at this implicit assumption, that it is likely to be hugely mistaken in two ways.
While the obsession of tracking and defeating biases in oneself and others may sometimes succeed, this activity may as well fail and result in the opposite effect instead, in the following two ways:
Translation:
"There is a part of creativity that is quite difficult, it is the moment when you actually have to find smart comparisons. Do not hesitate to mark a silence, think, say let me think, and it comes very quickly because if you are really aware of the pillar you will very quickly find a comparison. For example Uncle Hubert with his scientifically proven homeopathy, if I know he is not antivax, I would tell him what do you think of people who say of vaccines causing autism, that it is scientifically proven ? We are in a comparison of the pillars.Then, what else ? A short list of such other factors is given in the last section. For now even more briefly, just to indicate that such other factors exist, let us name
Consider the danger of believing things in lack of formal, objective evidence. But now consider to set aside the harmless cases among these, where mistake would not cause direct harm, however scary and hard it is for skeptics to ignore these, to focus our fears on the more dangerous cases of beliefs which lead to concrete actions with possibly heavy consequences.
Now look at the principles of Democracy: to let the political power be decided by the
majority, more precisely through voting ballots cast by ordinary people about topics or
candidates who they don't really know as it is often not their main field of interest or expertise,
and... just their opinions, their choice of candidate they think best, without any duty to provide
any formal evidence !!!! and doing that in secret, to not even be personally accountable and
bear the bad marks which skeptics would be eager to distribute for the irrationality of the so
expressed opinions !!! But why aren't skeptics mad at this system ????
One big reason why they don't criticize democracy on these grounds, of course, is that
democracy is the accepted standard, while skeptics normally side with accepted standards
to focus their attacks on whatever looks fringe or weak. Another one is, as the famous saying
goes, democracy is the worst system except all others, so to dislike it one would need to figure
out something else and more precisely something better, but skeptics do not normally take on
as their job to innovate, as their job is just to criticize any strange or different views away from
usual standards.
Moreover any attempt to criticize the lack of evidence to prefer a
candidate (in case of representative democracy) or a decision (in
case of direct democracy) would beg for finding any method to make
or check such evidence. But there is no chance, at least at first
sight, to find such a solution. And even if there was... it could
not satisfy skeptics either. Because they would automatically
criticize it. Because not only they want objective evidence, they
also want to be themselves the authorities who can decide which
stuff succeeds to be an objective evidence. And as long as we are
just vainly discussing the supernatural, it is easy for them to
keep the role of ultimate judges of objectivity : forever focusing on the one
same yes/no question of the existence of the supernatural (and some long
established scientific facts away from political or other hot questions), helps them
avoid serious controversies in their ranks, so they can simply comfortably claim
being the universal centers of objectivity, ignoring any view which differs from
theirs. But as soon as serious stuff would be undertaken in terms
of making some kind of objective system to answer new questions,
they might lose their personal control over the definition and content of what "objectivity"
means... what a frightening perspective.
An alternative to democracy one can think of would be libertarianism, that lets
everyone just victim of his own mistakes instead of being victim of the mistakes of
others. But, at least that particular skeptic I was corresponding with, definitely disliked
libertarianism, as he appeared much more on the far left of the political spectrum
(generally, not just for environmental concerns). He visibly wasn't fond of the idea
of autonomy of the individual, to which he preferred much more that of mutual control.
If I had to infer from his general attitude the link (continuity) between his skepticism
and his far-leftism, I'd say these are both kinds of intellectual populism and simplicism,
between the "for dummies" version of science he is following (where dummies deserve
the right to be right just if they apply the right method) and siding "for workers" against
intellectuals ; a trend to believe in "objectivity" meaning that everyone should
understand and conclude the same, assuming all to have the same background and
competence, i.e. all have or should be given the same information, and all have the
same intelligence ; thus denialism towards the diversity of natural intelligence which
lets some people more competent than others just because they happen to be diverse
rather than this being administrated. So these are both kinds of bureaucracies where,
by lack of clues how to deal with real stuff, it suffices to proclaim our dream goals as
universal declarations and laws - expecting every other good person to agree with
the same statements.
Indeed the type ESTJ which best represents the kind of skepticism analyzed in
this exposition, happens to be the type of
executives and
supervisors.
That is, people who don't value freedom but need to rule the world.
To illustrate this trend towards expected unanimity of people and acceptance of mutual control, here is a quote from one of his replies - which came after quite many other messages where I lengthily explained my epistemological libertarianism until he starts to understand what I am talking about:
"You are introverted and you have your own method ok, you do not care to convince others. You just want a version of the truth that suits you. Okay let's admit. But in this case I don't really understand your incomprehension from my point of view. I mean. Imagine there is a guy, let's call him Charlie, who came to see me, describing to me the method which is yours: based on intuition, on nothing measurable, on testimonies themselves subjective and subjectively selected, emphasizing the personal and relatively incommunicable nature of its conclusions, not specifically seeking to question its merits, etc. So if this charlie came to see me this way, would you consider me sane to trust him?"
First mistake is to describe this as the method which is mine, as if he knew what
each method is and could tell if they are the same or not, while all he can actually
tell is that these are not his favorite expected methods which he is comfortable to
decipher, and he has no clue which methods these are, just stuff different from his
and that we did not or could not bother to explain to him until he understands... so that
these are things not directly verifiable in his eyes. Quite distorted is his way of summing
up stuff as if it had all biases just because it did not fit his conception of objectivity...
Second, is his nonsensical use of the phrase "to trust him"
which lacks a definitional context as earlier explained : to trust
for what, i.e. as an accepted basis for which kind of involvement
?
Third, well.... he is expecting me to specify how I would judge him... on
the basis of this ridiculously unspecific description about how in such
scenario he might have formed an opinion about Charlie... so, regardless
of any details about the way, which he does not care to specify here, in
which Charlie would have expressed his own incomplete testimony with what
kind of refusal/inability/unavailability/impossibility to more
fully explain how he had reached his own conclusions....
What a fanaticism of mutual misjudgement is this. No wonder how such people can be
at odds with libertarianism worse than with democracy. So, maybe without telling it loud,
they rather dream of a world shaped as a kind of dictatorship of proletariat, where some
underclass of skeptics would be dictating their decisions, or rather decisions to block
decisions by some rule of social
paralysis, over anybody who might claim to know better but could not
"prove" it satisfactorily in skeptics eyes.
After so discussing about burdens (to which we'll come back later), let us switch to the other side of the phrase "burden of proof" : what is a proof ? Here again, multiple disagreements can be found. Let us review some of them.
What an oxymoron is this sacred phrase in the mouth of skeptics.
As if science and rationality were synonymous with "The Method".
Such a conception of science is so offset.
The fact of how far such phrasing is from genuine science, is well illustrated by Feynman's metaphor of the centipede. In other words, science has not one method, but hundreds of methods, which may be well or not well applied, but its process is anyway sometimes too complicated for the question of specifying which method is this, to be of any relevance. Exaggerating but to make it clear, skepticism is to science what the skill of counting by one's fingers is to mathematics. It is just a "for dummies" version of science, it may have its role (indeed, there also exist dummies in need of skeptics methods and teachings as crutches to fill some gaps in their natural reasoning abilities) but very far from a proper exposition of what science really is.
Someone whose understanding of mathematics would be reduced to the skill of
counting by one's fingers, may come to heavily complain of the people who claim
to know more math, that he could not check their conclusions by watching their fingers
demonstrating these (even after asking them to provide this kind of proof), so that to him
they look the same as those not knowing at all how to count. Surprised and dubious
to the claim that a difference would still exist, he demands the reality of this difference
to be demonstrated by giving a method to effectively, objectively distinguish between
people who cannot count by their fingers and people who do not need to use their fingers
for doing math. To distinguish between those having no method, and those having
hundreds of them. Verifiable difference, i.e. that can be found just by checking the use of
fingers.
Sorry, there is no such method I can offer. There can even be continuous
progress from having no reliable method to having hundreds of them without passing by
any step of focus on specific ones which skeptics can identify. And that is not my problem.
Checking the composition of the Skeptics Society, few scientists can
be found. Michael Shermer first studied Christian theology before switching to
psychology with its rudimentary use of statistics, journalism, competitive cycling
and the exploration of diverse popular strange health practices around it.
Among other members of the editorial board, the main skills there are also
journalism and psychology, education, anthropology; then also some biology,
geology, paleontology.... just 3 appear as physicists, and still without so much
focus on theoretical physics, much more on scientific popularization writing (the
art of depriving the findings of modern science from the understanding of their
mathematical core) and other stuff. No mathematician.
The one who paid the most attention to the implications of theoretical physics
seems to be John Gribbin: he wrote a book on quantum physics and its
paradoxes "In search of Schrodinger's cat" in 1984. The philosophical
stuff there can be summed up as follows (for those who know stuff already) : he claims
there are only 2 interpretations
of quantum theory : Copenhagen and many-worlds ; and his preference
goes for many-worlds.
So they seem to reduce science to the main thing they know about it, because
it happens to be the main method used in psychology and debunking of alternative
healing practices : producing and analyzing statistics from double-blind randomized testing.
That is the one little bit of math which can be easy and useful to apply by
non-mathematicians, and more generally by almost anyone without any special
skill of any kind, to make some discoveries just by the brute force of repetitively
trying something. All right that is better than nothing, yet that would have been
far from enough to end up to modern science as we know it. Of course many
sciences make use of many different methods : astronomy, paleontology,
mathematics... use so many other methods than that one.
This caricatural view of science and its methods as childishly simplistic
ways of trying to analyze life and the universe and forcefully expecting them to fit into
some simple laws and explanations, is an ironical common mistake between skeptics
and religious people, as opposed to genuine scientists.
Actually, if I committed in my youth the mistake of turning my back away from scientific
and rational ways of thinking seen as hopelessly stupid ones, in favor of a seemingly
wiser religious irrationalism, it was in large part the fault of skeptics with their caricatural
views of science which they undertook to promote (and how I read them in scientific
popularization magazines so stupidly dismissing the significance of NDE testimonies as
evidence of afterlife...). While rationality is normally indeed the right self-sufficient root
of all credibility, how ironical it is to see it discredited by clumsy defenders trying to
promote it as a religion, by irrational methods. So, their campaigns trying to promote
the values of "science" and "reason" as they conceive these, are so self-defeating, as
any ideology such as rationalism suffers so much more of being terribly promoted than
of being strongly opposed... a quite irrational enterprise I must say.
The other thing that disgusted me of scientists was how they
appeared as the evil governors over the hell of academia. An
important aspect of this even parallels the nonsense of skepticism
: the obligation put on students to exclusively follow the
official method to resolve problems. Actually some math problems
may be resolved in different ways, and creative geniuses are
especially eager to find different ways, but teachers cannot
always follow the imagination of students who found different
methods than the expected ones. And they don't like that, because
they need to give marks to judge their students in an "objective"
manner, and the only possible "objective" way to give marks is
according to whether the student complied to the expected method.
So, school is the kingdom of "The Method", and that is a killer of
the minds of future scientists, not a support for them. And young
geniuses are compelled to follow, not because it makes any sense,
but because it is supposed to be the only way to get the freedom to
live with the freedom of thought they need, and/or (?) to be
accepted by that very class of official scientists to join their ranks, a
supposed position of power that would finally allow one to have a
say in this dictatorship... among the peer dictators who were
supposedly able to reform things but never did it... that is the
default view that I was forced to follow with not even a right to
disagree.
But all that flawed system is very similar to skepticism itself,
as skeptics cannot stop figuring themselves as the ruling
professors and the rest of the world as their students under a
permanent obligation to justify their beliefs in skeptics eyes by
providing "objective evidence" in conformity with "The Method".