If I wanted to see if you could play a musical instrument, I might ask whether you played one, which one it is you play. I could then procure an instrument, give it to you and ask you to play, and within a few seconds I would have a fairly good idea of whether you could play or not. I wouldn’t need to bring along years of experience of being on the jury of New Zealand’s Got Talent. Nor would you need to be able to play the most difficult piece of music written for your instrument. And, unless you were playing something by John Cage, the evaluation of your claimed skill would be pretty straightforward. That is the essence of a qualitative test. Read more…
Tag Archives: skeptics’ dilemma
The Skeptics’ Dilemma – 4/5
Science changes people’s minds because it works. Show me some homeopathy that works, some astrology, some psychic power, and I’ll have no problem with it.
At the beginning of 2014 Nature published a paper that claimed to have simplified the process of producing stem cells to the point that only a slightly acidic solution and some pressure was necessary. Now if that worked it would have been a revolution in producing stem cells because no longer would expensive and toxic chemicals be required. It required no psychic to predict that if it worked anyone which wanted to produce stem cells would be doing so in short notice. But guess what? Do you see school biology classes happily turning out stem cells? No? Why not? Can’t remember Big Pharma stepping in and forbidding it because their expensive chemicals had become obsolete. You don’t see it because it doesn’t work. Read more…
The Skeptics’ Dilemma – 3/5
The key to an effective scientific presentation is having the audience think along with you, and that is really just the essence of interest. You need to be able to get the interest of a fair-sized audience possibly by establishing your expertise, but this initial interest is an advance payment by the audience and therefore needs to be repaid in the course of the presentation with some way of thinking about a problem that the audience is not only familiar with by the end of the lecture but are themselves also in a position to apply. Read more…
The Skeptics’ Dilemma – 2/5
When the facts alone don’t change people’s minds, and even presenting them in a favourable light is not likely to be effective, what else are we left with? We could try the following:
1) Giving people the right analogy, metaphor, figure of speech (another of Lakoff’s brain children). Read more…
The Skeptics’ Dilemma – 1/5
Skepticism and science have much in common and skepticism is really nothing more than science applied to extraordinary claims. But trying to make people change their minds about their own extraordinary beliefs is difficult. Therefore the question arises as to what we as skeptics should try to achieve.
Firstly, we can almost never win over the other side, the true believers, or even the victims. How could we? They may have a vested interest in continuing to believe, they may be making a living out of it, so it would be unreasonable to assume that they would accept the scientific method, and the results it comes to. I have heard from dowsers and homeopaths, when investigations of their crafts resulted in a negative outcome for them, that this only proved they are right, because somehow the science must have failed, and not the other way round. Read more…
Off to New Horizons
Nau mai, haere mai!
Time to start the blog up again.
Journey to Te Ika-a-Māui is the next project, a trip to the North Island of New Zealand, arriving on February 11 in the wee minutes of the morning and leaving on April 7, 2015. There is still a lot to see and do.
First and foremost on the programme are the remaining Great Walks of the North Island, the Whanganui River Journey and the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Twice on previous visits have I tried to go over the Tongariro Crossing, but to no avail. Having more time this time around and a better season for mountain climbing, this should be doable at some point. Read more…
