Groupthink
Are we all awash in a sea of mutual agreement and back-patting and groupthink here? Is all this discussion of lame defenses of religion just another smelly little orthodoxy*? Do we agree with each other too much, with the result that we are smug and arrogant, as the beleaguered minority that doesn’t agree with us says? My colleague probably thinks so, even though he’s just as critical of religion as I am. He thinks blogs tend to foster groupthink; he’s just written a very good column on the subject for TPM. He also thinks a lot of other skeptical things about blogs, which is tiresome of him. No doubt he thinks I’m being very pompous, vain, boring, etc, as some commenters do.
Well, maybe so, maybe I am. But if what I’m saying, and if what other skeptical commenters are saying, about religion is nonsense and self-satisfied arrogant drivel – fine: convince us. Talk us out of it. Make a case. Give an argument. By all means. I just haven’t seen any that convince me yet.
What I have seen is some more material for the Rhetoric Guide. For instance: the easy equation of failing to agree with, failing to be convinced by, a dissenting opinion, with arrogance and smugness. But not all failure to assent to dissenting opinions is arrogance or smugness, is it. One can’t agree with any and every opinion that’s offered, can one, not without risking total incoherence and getting everything wrong most of the time. As so often, there is a conflation, an elision, a running together going on here, a non sequitur. You disagree with me therefore you are being arrogant and smug and obstinate and you’re not listening. But that ‘therefore’ is bogus. One can continue to hold an opinion despite proffered dissenting opinions, without necessarily being arrogant and smug. The one does not entail the other. Surely all sorts of alternative explanations are obvious: the evidence is not there, the arguments are not well-founded, the basic commitments of the two parties are different, and so on. And then, a further possibility is that we are indeed being arrogant and smug, engaging in an orgy of mutual congratulation, and still are right, or still have a better case, or still have better arguments. Or not. But the mere failure to be convinced by opponents, by itself, does not equal arrogance.
And one thing that’s a bit disingenuous about the charge is that there is no shortage of arrogance and smugness on the Hooray for religion side. At least that’s my view – in all its arrogance and smugness. That’s part of the point of this whole discussion – that many of the commonly-heard defenses of religion, defenses that come even from atheists like Gould, in fact have a good deal of arrogance and smugness to them, such as the idea that religion has a monopoly or even a special expertise in morality for example. That’s one reason I want to deconstruct them. (The main reason is just that I think they’re wrong.)
Don’t get me wrong – I certainly don’t think I’m doing any original philosophy or anything like that here. I ain’t qualified to do that. I’m just trying to take a look at some familiar public rhetoric on the subject of religion, and say what’s wrong with it. Anyone can do that. A cat may look at a king, and we citizens and consumers of mass media are allowed to offer our opinions on various subjects. That’s something I for one (differing with my esteemed colleague on this matter) think blogs can be good for.
But I don’t refuse to be convinced. Only I have to be convinced.
*One of our more vituperative critics accused me of setting up a smelly little orthodoxy a couple of weeks ago, which was odd, because in the context the phrase meant the exact opposite of what Orwell meant by it: the context was the argument over the hijab, and surely, surely, among the bien-pensants (that’s French for ‘smelly little orthodoxy’) in the Anglophone world the smelly little orthodoxy is emphatically against the hijab, not for it. It’s smelly and orthodox precisely for the extent to which one is forbidden to say anything at all in favour of the ban, and to which one is called rude names and made mock of for daring to do so. What could be more smellily orthodox than that I really don’t know.
But, of course, it is possible for groupthink to occur, and for its outcome to be correct conclusions, decisions, etc.
People can get things:
(a) right for the wrong reasons;
(b) right for the right reasons, but counterfactually, had they been the wrong reasons, they would have come to the wrong conclusion because of the same group dynamic which existed when they came to the right conclusion (and where a different group dynamic would have led them to challenge wrong reasons had they been wrong);
[That was a hard sentence!]
Dang, that was a hard sentence, it’s taken me three hours to figure it out!
True, true. And I think I indicated as much in the Comment. I did say perhaps we are being arrogant and smug but still are right, or have better arguments, or perhaps not. I only said we weren’t necessarily wrong because of the groupthink.
I did it without the a and b, though, so I probably got a piece wrong. You have to have a PhD to know how to do it with a and b.
[That was a silly sentence!]
Vain possibly. Boring not at all, pomposity not in evidence.
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People can also get things sort of right for sort of the right reasons, in fact the full spectrum pertains – muddling through, muddling to a dead-end, muddling toward who-knows-what.
People are often, maybe mostly, out in sort-of land. In my experience.
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The utility of all this can’t be judged by its immediate effect on the participants, or by its virtual non-existence in the larger, public, sphere.
My own struggle is as much with the temptation toward self-indulgence and solipsistic confirmation as it is with the larger profundities. And in that a critical intelligent response is a great aid.
Yes, you did say something along those lines!
The other issue is that there is something a bit disturbing about what I call, in occasional moments of self-importance, the ‘tyranny of truth’. I think if everybody came to the conclusion that religion was bunk, then I’d be forced to espouse a religious line.
Part of what makes Fashionable Nonsense irritating is that it is espoused by people who are absolutely certain of their own moral and veridical superiority. I’m not suggesting that there is anything like this going on here, but blogging… well, it does have a tendency to take itself very seriously.
If you read the postings on Twisted Sticks, for example, you are very quickly forced to the conclusion that you’re not dealing with people who have many self-esteem problems (though, by and large, they ought to have them!).
[I had to get some kind of ad hominem in there at the end!]
Moments of self-importance? You? Never!
Hmm. That’s an interesting idea. But…Susan Haack, for instance, points out (in something I’ve been wanting to quote but I don’t have the book with me, so it will have to wait) that in fact it is religion that traffics in certainty and science that doesn’t. In religion commitment no matter what is a virtue, in science it isn’t.
Which indicates a whole other area I want to talk about (she said vainly, pompously and self-importantly) eventually, which will perhaps mollify Marijo a little: about the benign or helpful aspects of religion. One of them is an idea about loyalty.
Well, I don’t know – it seems to me there’s some tentativity (now there’s a pretty word) at Twisted Sticks on occasion. Not enough when I disagree with something of course, but anyway sometimes.
But if you’re right (and isn’t there something about the cosmos that makes that an Absolute Necessity?) then the taking self seriously is something to watch for, certainly.
Thanks, msg! That’s a pretty generous estimate.
I’m in sort-of land on so many things. But perhaps not on absolutely all of them. Perhaps it’s the basic commitment thing – one of mine may be that reason is preferable to unreason. Adorno can glare all he likes, but that’s what I think. I think.
“In religion commitment no matter what is a virtue, in science it isn’t.”
I think Haack is oversimplifying. Try persuading a scientist that the fact that the Earth is round is just a provisional truth; or the fact that water boils at 100C is true, but maybe will be revised at some point in the future (where the world, in and of itself, stays the same). They won’t be impressed.
The thought, of course, is that as science becomes more and more explanatorily powerful there will be less and less room for dissent. Part of me finds that an attractive proposition, but part of me not. Hence the ‘tyranny of truth’ thing.
“it seems to me there’s some tentativity”
Yes, but I have a desire to see meta-tentativity. That is, a tentativeness about their whole enterprise. People might have some humility about the views that they hold, but I’ve not seen much in the way of humility about the idea that ventures such as Crooked Nonsense are, when all is said and done, a good thing.
“and isn’t there something about the cosmos that makes that an Absolute Necessity”
I think it’s only a contingent necessity (it could have been otherwise, but actually isn’t!).
Hmm. I’m not sure that contradicts Haack’s point. Surely the reason scientists wouldn’t be impressed with your two examples is that there is so much evidence for the standard view. But wouldn’t they agree that if new evidence came in, then they would in fact revise their views? Couldn’t one (not I, because I don’t know, but one) think of myriad examples where the evidence is sparser and hence uncertainty is much greater? Wouldn’t you have an easier time with examples like that?
Ah. Meta-tentativity. Right. Um – uh oh…
I think I know what you mean about the tyranny of truth thing. It may be sort of the epistemic version of what I was getting at about perfection in a Cafe essay awhile ago. All questions answered unequivocally does sound very dreary and also confining. But there are many escape hatches – fiction, fantasy, speculation (multiple universes, etc), plus the fuzzier bits of psychology, sociology, history, etc.
It’s an interesting idea though…
Why do you denigrate Charles Windsor because he calls for use of alternative treatment? Advocacy of such medicine can indeed partake of group-think, but so can opposition to it.
“But wouldn’t they agree that if new evidence came in, then they would in fact revise their views?”
Yes, in principle, but in reality they would think this impossible (unless the world changes its nature).
Many religious people would also agree that their beliefs are provisional in this kind of way (i.e., if evidence came in which showed that they were wrong; e.g., a second coming where Jesus announces that it was all a joke the first time around). They too would think it impossible. It might be tempting to argue that religion is different because of the faith thing – and, of course, that’s true. But for many people faith doesn’t mean that you believe regardless of evidence (for or against), it means that you believe in the absence of evidence. So, for example, Plantinga says something like it would be necessary to give up faith given the presence of “defeaters”. So there can be a kind of provisionality to religious beliefs.
“think of myriad examples where the evidence is sparser and hence uncertainty is much greater?”
Absolutely. But science is young. Will this be the case in a thousand years?
“But there are many escape hatches”
But, in a way, they’re not escape hatches, in that they don’t make truth claims. Is a world where there are no conflicting truth claims a world we want to live in? That’s the central question, I think.
Um…water doesn’t always boil at 100C does it? Like up a mountain, doesn’t it depend on pressure?
Tangentially, I’ve noticed a tendency in philosophersand others to confuse verbalisability, conceivability, logical possibility, physical possibility and likelyhood when using terms like ‘possible’ in arguing with scientists – just like a philosopher would not be very impressed when you pointed out that it is possible by one of the slippery terms above that all the laws of logic were wrong and all their arguments meaningless nor is a scientist very impressed when a philosopher starts saying that it is possible that the Earth isn’t round (or roughly spherical even) – because teh conditions under which this might be true are pretty irrelevant for teh scientist because either the terms like Earth and round would have been redefined out of all recognition (say if our geometry became all screwed up making round mean something else mathematically) or by some silly divine fiat where almost everything we do and have done in science conveniently turns out to have been wrong due to some very special coincidence…the difference is that you might argue that questions of this sort might be considered the domain of the philosopher but he won’t be using any of these arguments in conducting his everyday life – and everyday life is, to some extent, the realm of the scientist…
I really think you are talking at cross purposes with a scientist if you try and get him to agree that it is possible that some widely held scientific truth could turn out to be false…because you are positing a philosophical question and he is taking it as a scientific one – just like, for all intents and purposes, the sun IS going to rise tomorrow however much you argue about it…!
“I really think you are talking at cross purposes with a scientist if you try and get him to agree that it is possible that some widely held scientific truth could turn out to be false…”
No, this just isn’t true. Or rather it isn’t necessarily true. Of course, there are arguments about logical possibilities (possible worlds, etc.), but the kind of provisionality we’re talking about here is just the old fashioned empirical kind that new facts might come to light. Science is *methodologically* provisional in this sense.
“water doesn’t always boil at 100C does it?”
I think that’s not the point!
I don’t know, I think some of the escape hatches are real escape hatches – that they can make at least the kind of truth claim that goes: since we don’t know and never will know, there could be all sorts of real possibilities. That’s what I mean about the speculative part. Just given the nature of the universe – surely there’s quite a lot of breathing room for alternative truth claims? We all know the drill: billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars: who knows how many planets, with who knows how many with life, intelligent life, civilization(s), etc. And what if the universe is just one atom in another universe; and all the rest of it. Or entities that would be perfectly obvious to creatures with another sense that we just don’t happen to have.
It seems to me there are quite a lot of genuine escape hatches without having to resort to religion – religion in the usual sense: God, holy books, rules made by nomadic sheep-herders many centuries ago, etc.
I suppose I’m talking about possibilities rather than truth claims – but then if truth is tyrannical, possibilities are better anyway, aren’t they? Are truth claims really an escape hatch from the tyranny of truth, even if they are competing ones?
I think I’m more optimistic (or pessimistic!) than you about what science will achieve in the next millennia.
My hunch, assuming we survive in some form, is that we will probably know everything there is to know about the fundamental laws of nature; that we’ll understand consciousness; that we’ll have huge predictive capabilities; etc.
I’m not sure we’d be satisfied, psychologically speaking, with the kind of open cosmological possibilities that you’re talking about. If indeed they are still open (for example, it is possible that we’ll come to understand that the chance of life emerging was overwhelmingly unlikely)…
“Are truth claims really an escape hatch from the tyranny of truth”
Yes, if the tyranny of truth is simply the process which sees a convergence of belief amongst people because of the fact that doubt is disappearing from the world.
On the subject of groupthink, I found reading this Orson Scott Card article interesting, insofar as it gives a pretty reasonable (and very long) argument for a position opposite to mine:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html
This isn’t explicitly about religion, but I believe the Christian subtext is hard to miss. This is the “If it feels good, do it” attack on the “anti-family” values of an “elite” liberal class. Although he uses evolutionary themes in his argument, I expect that he would say that his values are ultimately grounded in a religious tradition which has proven itself by maintaining civilization for centuries. Note that I do not agree with his arguments; I do believe that knowing the strong arguments on the side of the opposition is important in preventing the mutual-admiration-society blogging that Strangroom warns against, however.
On the other hand perhaps I’m more pessimistic than you about whether we will survive. The convergence of religious fundamentalism and nuclear weapons makes me doubt it more than I did in the days of the mere clash of Capitalism & Communism.
Well, granted, about the psychological satisfaction – but then I’ve never denied (I don’t think I have) that religion satisfies a lot of psychological needs. But I was thinking of the tyranny of truth as more of a cognitive need.
Anyway people are so perverse, obstinate, bloody-minded, etc – just like you, opting to defend religion if it actually did disappear. Doubt wouldn’t really disappear from any world humans live in, no matter how much evidence piled up. At least half of us would just shrug and laugh and say ‘I don’t care, I still don’t believe it!’
Thanks for the link, Marijo. I agree about the strong arguments of the opposition. As I think I said about the Twisty Sticks discussion of this, it actually does surprise me that so many of the arguments are so unstrong – I really did think people would do better than that.
“Try persuading a scientist that the fact that the Earth is round is just a provisional truth; or the fact that water boils at 100C is true, but maybe will be revised at some point in the future (where the world, in and of itself, stays the same). They won’t be impressed.”
That’s true. But mainly because the attempt at persuasion would confuse logical possibilities with views based on an empirical approach.
And wasn’t the idea that the Earth is round a provisional truth also? That was an estimate, I believe, that was corrected when it was found that the Earth is not perfectly round, but a “spheroid”, slightly bulging at the equator. This might seem like nitpicking, but it actually illustrates the willingness of scientists to take every new explanation as provisional. They often make the claim that old theories are being constantly revised and replaced by new theories with a larger explanatory power.
Yeah, I guess I understand what you are getting at with your idea about a “tyranny of truth”, but, paradoxically, there’s much more room for dissent now than, say 300 years ago. Granted, dissenting points of view are now more about details but there’s still plenty of work to be done. Perhaps the situation will be different in a few hundred years, but more and more details will no doubt emerge. It all depends on whether science explanatory power can catch up with the new questions that arise with these new discoveries.
Also some new scientific theories, particularly in the field of physics, do not currently amount to much more than speculations. Apparently scientists’ theoretical knowledge is advancing at a much faster pace than their ability to test their hypotheses (inadequate instruments, etc).So it is probably going to take a long time before science can rightly claim to know everything about fundamental laws. Not that this gets rid of the ‘tyranny of truth’ problem, which might not necessarily be a problem after all.
“but then I’ve never denied (I don’t think I have) that religion satisfies a lot of psychological needs.”
Sure, but I’m not making an argument for religion as such, I’m making an argument for disagreement. The religion thing was just an example.
Also, I’m not sure you can separate out the cognitive and the psychological. They feed into each other (as you know).
I once – by accident really – went to a meeting of skeptics. There was something a little bit distasteful about their own sense of their superiority. Anyway, it was enough to throw me into a fit of paranormal advocacy.
“At least half of us would just shrug and laugh and say ‘I don’t care, I still don’t believe it!'”
That’s a possibility, but I’m not convinced. It depends on what kind of future unfolds, but consider that there are not many people around now who would say that they don’t believe the world is round.
“But mainly because the attempt at persuasion would confuse logical possibilities with views based on an empirical approach.”
Why are people getting confused about this?
It’s got nothing to do with such confusion!
But I agree with the rest of your post, Jose! :-)
Oh, for disagreement, right.
“it was enough to throw me into a fit of paranormal advocacy.”
Exactly! Combine that kind of reaction with the fact (surely?) that even in a thousand years there will be plenty of areas where facts and evidence just aren’t decisive, in the nature of the case. All the stuff that sprouts and burgeons in the fact-value gap. I can see where there would be a tyranny of truth in some areas, but it seems terribly unlikely that there could be such a thing in all areas – doesn’t it?
And if people are getting confused, that’s just more grist for my mill, it’s because we’re confusable, so the tyranny of truth just falls back, defeated by our confusability.
We’re creatures with a built-in need for ambiguity along with a built-in tendency to create it. No doubt the one entails the other. So it all works out. Ergo, a Designer did it.
Hazlitt said something like that – I think in an essay that’s very hard to find, called ‘Mind and Motivation’ or similar. I had to go to the University library to read it, in the Collected Works. He pointed out (something I’ve written several essays about; clearly it must intrigue me) our restless nature that can’t bear perfection or completion. Then he added something to the effect: yes but that’s just it: how unfortunate that we are like that, that it is our nature to prefer dissatisfaction. We could be different, we could want perfect peace and harmony and bliss for everyone always. But as it happens we’re not. Too bad.
But it would have been much harder for me to claim that the earth was not round.
I think the bottom line here is that we have different hunches about what science will achieve in the next few hundred years.
I tend to have sympathy with people who think that there’s going to be a massive increase in the rate at which our knowledge of the world increases as computers hit the point at which they become capable of self-teaching, self-programming, etc.
Also, it isn’t really about everyone agreeing about everything. It’s about there being large measures of agreement between people, so that there is a strange “otherness” about people who don’t agree – as is the case now, for example, with flat-earthers (because at this point, the people who agree no longer have to take the people who disagree seriously).
The point you make about logic is valid, of course, but I’m really talking here about truth claims about the world.
There are no ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ medicines. There are medicines that have been through the rigorus testing procedures required by drug authorities and have been proved to work and spurious mixtures of various herbs which have been through no tests at all that don’t. Our next King (!!!) does sick people no benefit at all by confusing the two. On the other hand he is a great fan of the 18th century so maybe he’ll have us all tasting our urine and worrying about black bile before long. If it wasn’t so frightening it would be laughable – or should that be the other way round?
Cheers
Well Chris, I may not agree with you about the value of a good ad hominem, but I agree with you about alternative medicine!
(Take that about the ad hominem with a grain of salt, Chris, since it comes from the guy who used to run TPM’s discussion board with [as people complained frequently] an iron fist. He deleted ad hominems ruthlessly.)
(Oh, what am I saying. Take every single thing he says with a grain of salt.)
“He deleted ad hominems ruthlessly.”
That’s because hypocrisy is one of my many admirable qualities.
Absolutely. Along with humility, tentativity (meta and otherwise), scrupulous truth-telling, etc.
Where is that salt-shaker…
Well, Chris, I’m not sure if you’ve got it right about medical treatments, though I do admit you state your case with great certainty. Which group are you in?
Seriously, why so sneering about the Prince’s call? Treatment for allergy, for instance, is often non-medical starts by removing the source of allergens? And, more broadly, what would you say about acupuncture?
It’s pretty-much now accepted by traditional western medicine as a valid form of therapy. But it is still not taught (I believe) in most western medical schools. (I don’t think that’s bias but simply institutional lag.) The Guardian article was a bit vague
I’m no great advocate of “alternative medicine” — in fact except for massage — which my MD recommends — I don’t really do any. But I know people who do and who benefit; so I am not so quick to sneer.
You might want to take a look at this article
http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/features/stories/stories03/feature_alternatives.html
about medical schools adopting the therapies you scorn with such wit.
I must say I was a bit disappointed in Ophelia’s way of characterizing Charles’ article, which if one reads it without bias or from within group-think, seems like pretty mild stuff indeed.
Ah but that was my colleague, one of the Prince’s loyal subjects, who linked to that News item. I’m ruder about our Prince Bush than he is, and he may possibly be ruder about his Prince than I am.
But massage isn’t ‘alternative’, is it? And my colleague tells me that relaxation techniques are already offered on the NHS (perhaps massage is too?) so that’s not an issue.
The article was a bit vague, but I take alternative to mean really untested treatments, and/or treatments that seem to rely on some kind of magic. Massage and meditation/relaxation techniques don’t seem at all alternative in that sense.
Ah…sorry about that OB. I thought you were the only web-ster.
Nonetheless…whomever…I thought Charles’ article rather mild. I don’t know why I feel so defensive about him as I am very much against royalty as a political institution but I like Charles and I think he by-and-large gets it right on the issues about which he speaks.
Quite all right. We speak as with one voice, in any case (except when we’re vulgarly brawling, of course). Which is why my colleague occasionally turns pale with disgust when I post something dreadful.
Have a look at the article in the Independent I’ve just linked to. The head of the NHS seems to think Charles got it pretty thoroughly wrong. And he does address acupuncture, too: says the NHS does use it.
One problem with Charles is the same as the problem with Juliet Stevenson talking about the MMR vaccine. It seems to me (and probably to my colleague) that people like royals and movie stars, who have a great deal of influence for reasons unrelated to their medical expertise, really ought to use a lot of caution when talking about such things. Precisely because people pay disproportionate attention to them, for essentially irrelevant reasons.
I’m really not asking this rhetorically. Really.
But where do you guys think all those pre-Big-Medicine medicines came from? Was it a question of – everytime somebody has a bad cough, give them a different kind of bark tea until one seems to work? The logistics of that seem staggeringly difficult for so-called primitive people to accomplish. And yet there were, in among the nonsense and placebos, highly effective “natural” medicines. How’d they get there?
I have trouble imagining a scenario that doesn’t involve inspiration and some kind of temporal feedback loop, which I’m near certain is not the case with the ladies and gentlemen hereabouts.
So where did those effective treatments originate?
I find Chris Whiley’s assertion, that
to be a little narrow.
Certainly there are, at least somewhere still, herbs and barks and roots being used to treat illness, that are in fact medically effective, yet still unknown to the pharmaceutical combines and their runners?
Or are we to believe those were not pharmacopias at all, but spurious mixtures only?
It may help to recall that less than two hundred years ago prevailing “medical” opinion had it that disease was caused in many cases by “miasma” or “spontaneous combustion”.
That the common folk, who you’d expect to be rife with ignorance and superstition in these matters, were keeping their pregnant women away from the lying-in hospitals of medically-advanced Europe, because the death rates from puerperal fever were over 70 per cent, where the death rates for homebirthing with midwives were dramatically lower.
Puerperal fever being a major cause of death in childbirth at that time, and highly communicable, by contact.
The same scorn for traditional ways was leveled at midwives then. Precisely the same scorn. And clearly, in that context, entirely unwarranted.
Testing works, no question about it. But I still don’t understand how we got this far without the laboratories and methodologies of modern science. Were we more robust? Could that be it?
And where did those medicines come from?
Good questions msg.
I would suggest, simplistically I accept, that pre-modern medicinal treatments were selected in an almost Darwinian way – if herb A worked you survived and had children who knew about herb A. If herb B didn’t you died and the people around you didn’t try it again. Just a thought.
But isn’t that irrelevant today? We have designed highly effective double-blind testing procedures which it would be foolish, if not reprehensible, not to use. The ‘medicines’ Prince Charles favours exploit a loophole to avoid those tests, and when they are tested fail miserably. Just because lots of people use them doesn’t mean they work (at least not more effectively than the ‘placebo effect’ would allow).
I admit I was surprised to read about acupuncture being an NHS treatment as it relies on completely nonsensical ideas about energy fields, etc. Anybody know why it has been accepted? But then they also talk about homeopathic medicine which I would argue is an oxymoron.
Sorry to be so cautious in my opinions…cheers.
“No, this just isn’t true. Or rather it isn’t necessarily true. Of course, there are arguments about logical possibilities (possible worlds, etc.), but the kind of provisionality we’re talking about here is just the old fashioned empirical kind that new facts might come to light. Science is *methodologically* provisional in this sense.”
But you -are- talking about logical possibility here, you really need to come up with some physically possible situation in which all the evidence we have for believing in the roundness of the Earth or boiling point of water happens to be wrong…what kinds of facts would lead us to rejecting these well established beliefs? All I can come up with are “[redefining] out of all recognition…or by some silly divine fiat where almost everything we do and have done in science conveniently turns out to have been wrong due to some very special coincidence”! No wonder the scientist isn’t convinced…
PM
But that’s exactly the point I was making.
That’s why I responded to Ophelia’s:
“But wouldn’t they agree that if new evidence came in, then they would in fact revise their views?”
with:
“Yes, in principle, but in reality they would think this impossible (unless the world changes its nature).”
As I said, I’m not talking about logical possibilities here. I’m talking about the fact that science is committed to a methodological provisionality, but when we’re talking about well-established truths, the evidence is so convincing that de facto scientists do not think that these truths are revisable.
OB’s point that famous people ought to keep their mouths shut when they speak outside their zone of competence is good one but is sure to keep the vast majority in total silence.
But what else is new? There are even people here in the blogosphere whose confidence in their opinions is outweighed only by their ignorance of any facts.
To expect a famous person to keep silent is to expect them to give up half the fun of being famous.
True, David! But of course I don’t expect them to. I just want to say that I think they should. But do they listen to me? Not so far!
OB is famous and should keep quiet and let me talk.
–
Chris-
I find the concept of homeopathy to be the most endearingly nonsensical of any justification I’ve ever encountered. For anything. Including the excuses five year olds offered for infractions when I worked in a daycare.
But acupuncture seems to have real analgesic results.
Still no answer on the traditional trial and error, death is obviously not the operative disriminant.
Placebo effect might be better termed auto-therapeutic process.
I could probably use a little more caution in my own putting-forth, at times anway.
Cheers to you
So it seems that some people are scolding Charles simply because he was not aware that the NHS is already using alternative medicine…ah..now I understand.
I’m scolding Prince Charles because the guy is a berk.
He’s a supporter of homeopathy. That’s a sin enough that he should be forbidden from ever uttering another word in public.
He reportedly employs the services of an osteopath who detects back pain through her heels.
According to the London Times, he’s a supporter of Mosaraf Ali, a man who, according to the Times, believes that inspecting the tongue will determine whether a person is suffering from any inflammation – and who thinks that the ears are “upside down embryos”.
In 1982, he reportedly said that it was perhaps “God’s will” that “the unorthodox individual” (i.e. himself) is misunderstood and ridiculed “until his day arrives and mankind is ready to receive his message; a message which he probably finds hard to explain himself, but which he knows comes from a far deeper source than conscious thought.”
As I said, the guy is a fool.
“Why do you denigrate Charles Windsor because he calls for use of alternative treatment? Advocacy of such medicine can indeed partake of group-think, but so can opposition to it.”
Because he is not qualified to make such pronouncements. In fact it is a habit of his to spout off on things that he is not an authority on. His views get listened to just on account of his title. Why should Charles Windsor’s views of alternative treatment carry any weight at all. What knowledge does he have of physiology or medicine (or indeed architecture, or anything else he likes to rattle on about)?
“There are medicines that have been through the rigorus testing procedures required by drug authorities and have been proved to work and spurious mixtures of various herbs which have been through no tests at all that don’t.”
The above is a false dichotamy. There could be mixtures of various herbs which have been through no tests at all BUT for all that still work. n’est pas?
p.s. I am not sure that they are “spurious mixtures of herbs”. I think they really are mixtures of herbs. ;-) Doubtless, the claims made of their healing abilities, are in many cases spurious. Sorry, I could not resist that bit of pedantary.
OK..enough with Charles…the problem is the existence of the monarchy, not Charles….the issue is well-put by the new headline so temptingly put forth this morning at the front page: “Complementary Medicine Needs Proper Research”
Good & fair enough. (And do read the article.)
But is such research being done? True question.
“Meridians” have always been of interest to me…supposedly some sort of nerve endings in the feet which correspond to different internat organs. By massaging a particular “meridian” one may supposedly bring relief to a particular organ…Massage here and you help the stomach..touch there and it’s the liver. These meridians, as I have been lead to understand, are real things…not metaphors…so you can find them or not? What have we done? Pro or con?
Is there any science to it? I have been hearing it from my friends for 30 years now. And I coindemn everyone if no one has hitherto done the research to either debunk the notion or to verify it.
Let’s not talk in the abstract about this stuff, unless all we really want to do is brawl.
But the problem is also with Charles in particular. He could recognize that an accident of birth gives him an insane amount of influence, and that therefore he really ought to think twice several hundred times before he makes public pronouncements about subjects he knows nothing about. He could, but he doesn’t. His views are listened to merely because of who he is; therefore it is a very good idea to point it out when they are nonsense. As they generally are.
Meridians do not appear under anatomical dissection; when you cut open dead bodies, you don’t find them. Since nerve endings ARE found in dead bodies, whatever “meridians” might be, they’re not nerve endings.
Similarly, the physics behind the idea of “energy circulation” doesn’t work, so whatever the meridians circulate (the Chinese word is “qi,” usually translated as “energy” in this context), its not energy. In fact, about the only thing that does circulate within the body is blood, but meridians don’t appear to be blood vessels (nor does “qi” seem to be blood).
Useful physiological effects of accupuncture have been found, but the underlying theory seems to be a load of tosh wherever it touches existing biology, anatomy, and physiology. This, in a nutshell, is one of the major problems with most “alternative medicines”; the theoretical basis is sufficiently false (and the practitioners sufficiently deluded) as to provide a serious barrier to identifying useful *attributes* of what can otherwise be quite harmful practices.
David
You should have a look at James Randi’s web site. He keeps track of the research into things like homeopathy (none of it shows demonstrable effects, by the way).
http://www.randi.org
Interesting about the meridians and Randi. Thanks.
As to the self-imposed modesty which should surround famous people, of course Ophelia is correct. As usual.
As usual? Don’t you mean as always?
Who says blogs need more metatentativity?!
I meant “as usual” in the sense that any other opinion would be shallow, vapid and flawed. Isn’t that correct, OB?
Well of course I knew that, David, but thought I would nail it down just that bit more, in case anyone understood ‘as usual’ in a different sense.
Retroreciprocity.
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The Amazing Randi does a tremendous service debunking the hundredth monkey and the pyramid scams and all. But the dynamic is unbelievably skewed toward the rationalist. You have the academic/research hammer smashing down on the anvil of sceptic rigor, with little mice of new-age alternativeness scuttling desperately around between blows.
Or like that.
There’s an arrogance there I’ll never side with for all my respect and admiration. And scorn. I hate scorn. scorn is the hallmark of cowardice.
It leads to wussy epithets like “berk”.
One presumes a truncated “Berkenstock”? Sandals that are consummately comfortable by-the-by. And possessed of far more longevity than $100 “running” shoes.
Speaking as someone who attended oven-side at the birth of the very idea of “granola”, let me say unequivocally and with a great deal of vehemence, it was us who transformed the nutritional face of the world.
Against mammoth resistance and scorn.
And your children, if any, are lots the better for it.
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The errors of Big Medicine, and its a-historical arrogance, spawn an atmosphere that encourages magical thinking and the visceral rejection of scientific rationalism. When your parents are full of patronizing condecension about something, and later proven wrong…
Whereas humility in the face of egregious nonsense is more endearing. Not that I’d know, myself, first-hand.
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Sort of tangentially but I don’t really think so, Dennett’s thing with consciousness? That it’s not really a fixed location in the physical brain?
There’s something in that that’s going to profoundly alter all our little paradigms one of these days.
And “qi” or “meridians” or some other form of dimly grasped “energy-field” thingie could well be closer to the mark than they now seem.
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Snarking Bunny Prince Charlie seems awful damn easy considering how vulnerable he is. He should shut up?
And Schwarzennegger should run for president maybe?
And when “egregious nonsense” kills people through ignorance, one is supposed to simply smile in “humility”?
Everything one spends on “alternative medicines” is, by definition, not being spent on traditional medicines that have been proven effective. Are you willing to tell a widow that her husband died due to lack of defibrillation equipment (which we know works) because you spent the money on herbal supplements and homeopathic solutions? What are you going to say to the parents whose child died because you hired an acupuncturist instead of a surgeon to treat the child’s ruptured appendix?
Will you tell THEM that “your children … are lots the better for it”?
“The Amazing Randi does a tremendous service debunking the hundredth monkey and the pyramid scams and all. But the dynamic is unbelievably skewed toward the rationalist. You have the academic/research hammer smashing down on the anvil of sceptic rigor, with little mice of new-age alternativeness scuttling desperately around between blows.”
Huh? The alternative medicine industry has freight cars full of money at its disposal, and support from influential congressman. James Randi is a guy dependent upon his own money, donations from his supporters, and the limited budget of Skeptic Magazine to get his ideas heard. The total amount of money to which he has access would be a rounding error in the annual profits of the alternative medicine industry, not to mentions the buttloads of money earned by New Age books, Deepak Chopra videos, etc. So who really wields the hammer here?
The New Age/alternative medicine industry is not an assortment of poor, mistreated outcasts shoved around by powerful scientists. They are a league of plutocrats, loudmouths, media pundits and garden-variety bullies who monopolize the overwleming majority of public debate on these issues. And you’re criticizing one of the few people who confronts them for using the puny resources at his disposal to educate people.
Phil