Presented for your amusement as the Cancun climate conference* gets underway (and read the rest for even more hilarity):
To prove that climate scientists have been wrong about their predictions, Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) enlisted Edward Wegman, a statistician at George Mason University, to write a report evaluating studies of man-made global warming. The Wegman Report, released in 2006, has been much-touted by climate skeptics in the years since. But it now looks like large parts of the report used information that was plagiarized, pulled from Wikipedia, or taken out of context—and it appears that Barton's office may have been feeding Wegman's team the information to include in the report. […] Studies of the 91-page text "found repeated instances of passages lifted word for word and what appear to be thinly disguised paraphrases," the piece notes.
Much of the reportedly plagiarized text came from a book written by [Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts], who has asked George Mason University to investigate the matter. Analyses of the text show that some phrases were largely reproduced, and at some points tweaked in order to change the meaning. This was revealed in a lengthy report from retired computer scientist John Mashey of California, who concluded that 35 of the report's 91 pages "are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning."
In their defense I'm sure it would have been a little awkward to credit User:JSchmoe1982 in the footnotes. In any case, I'm glad to see that climate change "skeptics" are maintaining their usual high standards of integrity, honesty, and scientific rigor.
* (Given what will no doubt be achieved in Mexico, maybe we should call it the Cantcun climate conference. Ha ha ha ha! No, you're right, that's idiotic.)
The Distant Ocean 
Despite this hubbub, Prof Wegman should have a tenured position at Harvard waiting for him.
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Can you do us all a huge favor and stop dignifying these kooks with the term “climate change skeptics?”
Stop me if I’m wrong, but the term “skeptic” normally applies to someone who’s a rational and free thinker, and who questions ideas such as the existence of God and other paranormal phenomena — not the human role in climate change or global warming which is backed up by several decades of peer-reviewed science.
These idiots are trying to dignify themselves by calling themselves “skeptics” in an attempt to align themselves with rational freethinkers. Stop helping them.
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FWIW, John’s use of the word “skeptic” is completely in line with the dictionary: “one who doubts claims that are purportedly factual.”
IMO defining “skeptic” to mean “rational freethinker” is kind of like defining “Christian” to be “good person.” (In other words, it’s offensive.) So far as I know, “Skeptic” only means “rational freethinker” because the Skepticism Movement (as represented by magazines like Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer) has hijacked the term in an attempt at self-aggrandizement.
I think it’s a good idea for everyone who strives to be a rational freethinker to object heartily to the characterization of people like James Randi, Michael Shermer, etc. as “Skeptics.” They’re in a business, and that business is in peddling the fantasy that all it takes to be a “rational freethinker” is to not believe in Bigfoot. Meanwhile, many of the Skeptics’ most prominent claims- like Randi’s Million-Dollar Challenge- can’t survive even casual scrutiny.
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Nice one, Sam.
Mike: Can you do us all a huge favor and stop dignifying these kooks with the term “climate change skeptics?”
That’s not what I wrote — the bullshit quotes you omitted there weren’t either unintentional or extraneous. I only deploy them very rarely because they’re sorely overused in (bad) political commentary, but in the case of these yutzes they’re definitely appropriate.
(There are some genuine global warming skeptics, but they’d barely fill up a Yugo.)
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Meta –
Why the attack on Randi et al? I don’t get it. What specifically about the challenge (which has ended incidentally… because in multiple decades no one came close to winning it, mostly because 99%+ of the entrants would back out of double blind testing; Randi is putting the money into some other ) doesn’t stand up to scrutiny? Unless you have some bombshell proof you’d like to share with us, I think your claim itself is what won’t stand up to scrutiny.
I never followed the magazines too closely, but Randi’s website over the years has attacked any number of evils and rip-offs, including those markers that are supposedly finding counterfeit bills (they can’t) and polygraph machines (useless gadgets abused by police, prosecutors, and talk show hosts). He attacks “psychics” and religious fanatics that do real harm and has provided a platform for anti-creationists/ actual scientists. They’ve been attacking the sellers of useless wands sold by dousers to this and other governments that supposedly sense plastic explosives (they can’t).
He’s been making fools out of snake oil salesmen like Uri Geller for decades. He’s an illusionist who uses the tricks of the trade to expose charlatans and bigots, and has carried on the work of Harry Houdini and Carl Sagan. Most recently, at an advanced age, he came out as gay which he’s apparently been keeping secret in part because he didn’t want the religious nuts to have that to ‘discredit’ him when he’s come to bat for concepts like evolution.
If I were god-king Randi would get six genius grants, two Nobels and a knighthood. In a world filled with superstition he’s been swimming upstream trying to stem the tide.
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The reason no one has “come close to winning it” is because the challenge was a sham from the get-go. One obvious problem- out of many- is that out of one side of his mouth Randi would state that the challenge was open to claimants of “any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever.” Then the Skeptics would go around claiming that the paranormal had been proven not to exist, because the challenge was open to everyone and no one had ever passed it. But meanwhile out of the other side of his mouth Randi redefined “paranormal” to exclude a wide swath of phenomena that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to face. If you get to pick-and-choose which phenomena are open to the test, it’s a lot easier to win every time. But it’s dishonest to claim that your grab-bag has somehow categorically disproven a wide swath of unrelated phenomena.
You want paranormal? Fine. Coelacanths. Where’s my million dollars?
Cryptozoology doesn’t count? I need something that can’t be explained by science? Fine. Ball lightning. Where’s my million dollars?
Oh, but I forgot. Ball lightning isn’t “paranormal.” Or at least, not anymore. What’s the difference between a paranormal phenomenon and a merely inexplicable one? Simple: Randi’s confidence in being able to win the challenge.
Radiation was, at one time, a paranormal phenomenon. Suppose that shortly before radioactivity were discovered you had told Randi that you had a magic rock that pours out seemingly inexhaustible energy. Oh, but wait- it gets better. How does this magic rock work? Because Newton is totally wrong. The fundamental processes of physics are dominated by randomness. The constituents of matter do not have a well-defined position, momentum, energy, etc. Would you classify that as “paranormal”? Would Randi have taken it seriously, or would he have mocked it? I’ve been told by Skeptics that radioactivity isn’t paranormal. Why not? Because it’s proven to exist. That’s the ticket, you see. You can’t win Randi’s challenge because you can only win if you have proof, but the existence of proof renders the phenomenon non-paranormal by definition.
Your praise from Randi rests on the fact that he’s fought for a bunch of causes you like. You don’t like lie detectors, Randi fights against them, and you’re happy. There’s a place for that, but don’t call it skepticism. There’s a place for delicious pasta, but don’t call it vector calculus. They’re two different things. Randi is a propagandist. Skeptics like the laundry list of causes he propagandizes for. He gets people to believe the things Skeptics want them to believe.
I want people to think critically. Randi doesn’t teach them that. He claims to teach them to think critically, but then he bamboozles them. And then he points to the bamboozle and says, “This is what critical thinking looks like.” So he’s mis-educating people in a very dangerous way.
Here’s some material from my blog on the pseudo-Skeptics:
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2006/06/skepticism-whats-difference.html
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-real-million-dollar-challege-looks.html
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2007/03/my-million-dollar-challenge.html
There’s a lot more there, too, if you care to look around. Since this is a politics blog, let me make a political point. Skeptical Inquirer isn’t a serious magazine. It’s a rag. They’re in it for the money. They don’t even pay their authors.
Why do I say that? Because in the run-up to the Iraq war, they never critiqued Bush’s WMD claims. Neither did Skeptic.
Ah, but they’re the Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Skeptic is a “scientific journal.” That’s how they justify not paying their authors. (And if you’ve ever read a real scientific journal, you’ll immediately appreciate what a joke that claim is.) So it’s not in their purview to cover political issues, unless there’s a scientific angle, like global warming.
Why, then, do they spend so much time on the JFK assassination?
Simple. Their target audience needs to be milked of their money. If you critique GWB, you might alienate readers. If you critique Bigfoot and JFK conspiracy theories, they’ll come back for more. That’s how “paranormal” and “skepticism” are defined: what will the audience pay to hear? The audience doesn’t necessarily want to hear about WMD’s. They don’t want to deal with difficult issues. They want to congratulate themselves on how smart they are. So, talk about JFK and tell them how smart they are.
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“The reason no one has “come close to winning it” is because the challenge was a sham from the get-go”
That’s a rather spurious claim in and of itself.
The fact that you could type that much and not have one sentence of it support your thesis sentence leads me to believe that you might think the challenge was a “sham” because you didn’t understand it.
“You can’t win Randi’s challenge because you can only win if you have proof, but the existence of proof renders the phenomenon non-paranormal by definition.”
That’s flat out 100% not true. You’re making the same accusations as the ‘psychic’ snake oil salesmen and the lunatic preachers.
A douser for example would merely need to find water in a double blind test through dousing with statistically greater success than randomly guessing where water was, not through explaining how dousing works. And dousers almost always would back out of a double blind test when requested, claiming that the “negative vibes” or some such garbage of a controlled environment would throw off the process. An ESP claimant would merely have to have success in a double blind test for that, not explain how ESP works. When confronted with a controlled environment these people would also back out, making absurd excuses that no one who believed they had real powers and not some parlor trick would make.
Very obviously things we know exist and which conform to known laws of science are by definition not paranormal. You don’t get a million dollars for knowing about radiation now when people didn’t in 1865. You would get a million for proving you could lift a hunk of uranium ore with telekinesis.
Many real scientists and statisticians have been involved for years in the design of these tests and I’d be very surprised if you have equal or better scientific background than those consultants. Do you have any idea how many serious scientists are active on Randi’s site?
Heavens forbid a magazine make money! You want them to lose money? You only buy books from publishers and subscribe to publications that lose money, do you?
Mock all you like, “lie detectors” and “counterfeit markers” and creationism and psychics who speak to your dead relatives are all scammers who do massive societal harm. What links them isn’t some idiotic notion that it’s a collection of things I don’t happen to like, what links them is that they are anti-science, and ultimately anti-human.
What’s your ax to grind on this? You religious/spiritual/”psychic” yourself..?
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QuizmasterChris, all you’ve done is reiterate your original flawed claim (which is largely a repeat of the propaganda surrounding Randi’s claim,) and have not addressed any of my actual points.
Again:
Randi claimed that the test was open to all paranormal claims. This is a critical feature of the challenge. Whenever I talk to Skeptics about the paranormal, they tell me that ALL paranormal claims are false, because Randi’s challenge is open to ALL paranormal claims, period, full stop.
I argued that this is a flat-out lie. Randi has clearly gerrymandered the test so that the word “paranormal” only applies to claims he’s willing to test. (My proof? Just read Randi’s own rules, as cited on my blog.) And this makes a lot of sense. The word “paranormal” is, as Randi admits, hard to define. If “paranormal” isn’t a well-defined category, then obviously it’s dangerous to bet a million dollars on a categorical claim that all paranormal phenomena are false. By its very nature, Randi can’t make an honest challenge of the sort he purports to describe. (There are other problems, too. For example, Skeptics tend to argue that even a well-constructed, non-gerrymandered bet would leave the million dollars safe, because they’re betting against phenomena that they know do not exist. But they aren’t really. They’re betting on Randi’s skill at detecting fraud. If a fraud slipped past Randi, it would be disastrous, so there’s extra incentive for Randi to rig the test to eliminate claimants early in the process.)
Your response is that I have “not one sentence” to support my thesis. (This despite the fact that Randi’s own rules prove that he is lying!) Your proof is to say that Randi’s test is legitimate, because all someone has to do is prove one of Randi’s cherry-picked topics within the gerrymander. Ergo, it isn’t gerrymandered in the first place.
It’s really striking, the degree to which you’re avoiding my argument. I ask why radiation would not have counted as a paranormal claim back when it was first discovered. I also point out that ball lightning cannot currently be explained by science, and appears to blatantly violate the known laws of physics. Rather than answer that, you just declare that NOW radiation doesn’t count as paranormal, and instead I would have to perform a very specific task (telekinesis) within Randi’s gerrymander. You decline to address ball lightning at all, and clearly you can’t address it, because it blows the Skeptical arguments out of the water. By any reasonable standard, ball lightning is a proven paranormal phenomenon, and thus the paranormal is real, and Randi has to cough up the money. Instead, you’ve just retreated further into Randi’s gerrymander, where it’s safe. (This kind of safety is, after all, the entire point of Randi’s gerrymander in the first place.) In fact, the gerrymander has been implicit in your argument from the start. You state that 99% of claimants chicken out before double-blind testing. Well, of course they do. Randi carefully screens entrants so that they are only allowed to enter the contest- and thus be counted as failures- if he’s confident there is a 99% chance they will chicken out.
Note the failure of logic here. In order to prove that a phenomenon is paranormal, I implicitly must prove a negative. There are plenty of phenomena that science cannot explain. But, simply demonstrating that those phenomena are real, and that science cannot explain them, does not suffice. Are you saying that I must also declare that they will never be explained by science? Because if so, it’s logically impossible to win the challenge, even if dowsing is real. I cannot prove a negative regarding the future course of science. Or is this just a question of timing- do I need to claim Randi’s money before science has explained the phenomenon? Once the phenomenon is explained, would I have to give the money back? How does this work, exactly?
As for my “ax to grind,” my ax is that I support critical thinking. Look at how easily we can turn it around: you aren’t rational, you just have an ax to grind because you’re an atheist. See? That’s why ad hominems don’t count as a real argument. And part of my problem with the Skepticism movement is that its adherents always, without fail, make these kind of ad hominem attacks on me. If Skepticism were really teaching critical thinking, then one would hope that at least some Skeptics would understand that the ad hominem argument is a fallacy, and that it’s outright embarassing to use ad hominems against proponents of critical thinking who happen to be critical of the Skepticism movement. My experience has generally been that Skeptics are markedly less rational than non-Skeptic proponents of critical thinking are. And if you look at the Skepticism movement, at its heroes and publications, it’s easy to see why.
Please, QuizmasterChris, if you’re going to claim to be representing Skepticism here, then actually address my arguments. You can start as follows:
1. Define “paranormal.”
2. Drop the ad hominems.
3. Drop the strawman arguments. I never said that the mere fact that Skeptic Magazine makes a profit should be held against them. I said that they have sacrificed principles for profit. Remember, strawman arguments are consistent neither with critical thinking, nor with respectful dialogue.
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On reflection, I’d like to retract my accusation of strawman arguments. A “strawman argument” is technically a deliberate misrepresentation, and I don’t think the misrepresentation was deliberate.
I’d like to clarify our positions here, Quizmaster.
It seems to me that you are clearly claiming that Randi’s work is laudable, because he attacks things that you believe deserve to be attacked.
But there’s a critical distinction to be made here: do you believe that in doing so, Randi is promoting critical thinking?
My contention is that while Randi’s opponents are reprehensible, he is not promoting critical thinking. He is propagandizing. Nonetheless, he claims- like all the Skepticism movement- to be promoting critical thinking. In my experience, this creates a dangerous confusion in the minds of “Skeptics” between propaganda and critical thinking.
Also, do you believe that it is possible for someone to attack Randi and the Skepticism Movement out of a commitment to true critical thinking? Or can such attacks only be motivated by false beliefs in the “paranormal,” religion, etc.? (This is an important question to ask, because many Skeptics explicitly equate Skepticism with critical thinking. You yourself have done so, Quizmaster. This is a key part of the propaganda system of Skepticism, because all attacks on Skepticism are automatically declared invalid in the mind of the Skeptic. Fundagelical Christianity does the same thing: when I was in high school, the fundagelicals explicitly taught us, “If anyone ever tells you that our teachings are wrong, remember that they’re actively working with Satan.”)
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“It seems to me that you are clearly claiming that Randi’s work is laudable, because he attacks things that you believe deserve to be attacked.”
The problem with that being what exactly..?
“Look at how easily we can turn it around: you aren’t rational, you just have an ax to grind because you’re an atheist. See? That’s why ad hominems don’t count as a real argument.”
No, I don’t “see” because the religious are making a positive claim for which there is not proof – hence our use of the word “faith” – whereas an atheist is basing an opinion in lack of evidence to the contrary. There are any number of things I don’t believe in which can’t be proven to exist just by claiming I have an ax to grind.
Randi’s challenge has always clearly been for people to prove exactly what THEY claim they could do. Once agreement on that was reached (“I can douse for water”, “I can use psychic powers to ‘see’ cards in the next room”), arrangements would be made for double blind testing of that claim. It is always the claimants who were claiming they could do things beyond the explanation of science, which is quite a different category than the fact that ball lightning exists. When confronted with any form of double blind testing performed by scientists hired by JREF to design something to prove just that these abilities exist – not even explain how they might work – the claimants would always turn tail and run. It’d have been an easy million dollar payday for anyone who wasn’t a scammer.
It occurs to me that Randi has also been a leader in the fight against homeopathy and other quackery (“psychic surgery” etc), and that this is valuable work in a superstitious world. I wonder what form of quackery Randi has exposed that is your personal belief which has led you to these groundless attacks on JREF’s process and integrity.
Re: “Also, do you believe that it is possible for someone to attack Randi and the Skepticism Movement out of a commitment to true critical thinking?”
I see nothing in what JREF does that is in opposition to critical thinking or which is somehow not a use of critical thinking. I’m not seeing any meat to your argument that you have the key to critical thinking and they don’t. Why don’t you give us a concrete example of where they have been opposed to critical thinking so that we can get some idea of where you’re coming from.
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QuizmasterChris, this argument is tiresomely like every argument I have ever had with a self-proclaimed Skeptic. If particular note is your recurrent use of ad hominem arguments. In your case:
“I wonder what form of quackery Randi has exposed that is your personal belief which has led you to these groundless attacks on JREF’s process and integrity.”
You know, when I argue with fundagelical Christians, they sometimes dodge my arguments by suggesting that I am motivated by a desire to have promiscuous sex or some such nonsense. The only surprising thing is that they don’t do it every single time, since in my experience they are explicitly taught to think that way.
But what’s really interesting is that EVERY time I criticise the Skepticism movement, WITHOUT FAIL, a Skeptic will accuse me of being secretly motivated by some crazy-whacked out belief. Every. Single. Time.
In fact, it’s so ubiquitous that I’ve talked about it more than once on my blog:
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2006/04/two-headed-cerberus-part-3-movement-vs.html
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2006/04/two-headed-cerberus-part-5.html
http://archie-archie.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-passes-for-911-skepticism.html
The Skepticism movement doesn’t really promote critical thinking. The proof? Skeptics predictably commit the ad hominem fallacy EVERY TIME I dare to criticise JREF or CSI/CSICOP. That kind of lockstep behavior is, IMO, only possible if the Skeptics have been well-trained. In fact, they must have been much, much more effectively brainwashed than the creationists are.
QuizmasterChris, you keep demanding that I present an argument, but I already have, and I’ve been very specific.
The problem is this: not only have I presented an argument, I basically presented much of it as a series of specific, bullet-point questions for you. You dodged ALL of them, without exception. It’s precisely those wall-to-wall “drops” that prove the vacuity of your argument.
Let me reiterate some key points that you have consistently failed to answer:
1. How do you define “paranormal”?
2. Do you believe that it is possible for someone to attack Randi and the Skepticism Movement, and be motivated by a commitment to true critical thinking? (You have dodged this question by answering that you yourself are not interested in attacking JREF. Sorry, that’s not the question I asked.)
3. Do you believe that attacks on homeopathy, etc. inherently constitute “promoting critical thinking”, regardless of how those attacks are conducted?
4. Are you saying that claimants to the JREF prize must prove that the phenomenon will never be explicable by science?
5. Randi claimed that the challenge was open to claims of “any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever.” But, the detailed rules specifically state that a wide range of phenomena – Bigfoot, UFO’s, etc.- are redefined as “not paranormal” for purposes of the challenge. What do you make of that? Do you feel that Randi is telling the truth when he makes the “any paranormal phenomenon” statement?
6. You state that “It is always the claimants who were claiming they could do things beyond the explanation of science, which is quite a different category than the fact that ball lightning exists.” How is it “quite a different category,” given that ball lightning is currently “beyond the explanation of science”?
Let’s add one more:
7. Do you believe that ad hominem arguments are fallacious? Or do you believe that they are valid?
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Are you really going to use your own blog posts as references?
“The Skepticism movement doesn’t really promote critical thinking. The proof? Skeptics predictably commit the ad hominem fallacy EVERY TIME I dare to criticise JREF or CSI/CSICOP.”
That’s your “proof”? Maybe skeptics resort to ad hominem attacks because you behave badly.
Can you give any example of anything procedural that JREF has done which is against critical thinking, or antithetical to critical thinking? Thus far you present none.
1) I don’t attempt to define paranormal, never have and am not interested in it. Neither is JREF so far as I’ve seen. What they ask people who claim special abilities to do is to ask what THEY claim they can do and then they’ve attempted them to allow double blind testing of same. Over 99% of these quacks through the years back out of the process at that point.
2) It is within the realm of possibility that a person could attack Randi and JREF because of some commitment to critical thinking, although why in specifics escapes me. Thus far you have advanced no argument as to why this would make any sense. How about insetad of playing The Riddler you just tell us what your beef is.
3) So is homeopathy your quack belief, then? Just out with it already. Obviously “any” attack on it does not promote critical thinking. Everything I’ve seen from JREF on the subject however does. What’s your proof of anything otherwise?
4) I specifically typed exactly the opposite. The claimants simply had to prove that they could do what they claimed, not why. None could. Ever. Most balked at trying when their parlor tricks wouldn’t be allowed to be employed.
5) My understanding of the JREF challenge appears to be different than yours. I don’t think this is because I’ve not paid attention.
6) Very simple: we can observe ball lightning regardless of whether or not we fully understand the causes but the claimants would balk at even a display of what they claimed they could do when not being formally observed. If you can’t replicate something that’s a problem.
7) Some ad hominem arguments are perfectly valid. That’s not just my opinion; in an American court of law for example in civil cases a litigant’s prior convictions involving any form of dishonesty are admissable in the determination of likelihood that a litigant is telling the truth. Likewise it’s helpful to know if someone is, say, a virulent racist when discussing the merits of two job candidates. I can think of any number of other scenarios in which a truthful fact about a person is valid grounds for dismissing what they have to say about the same subject.
You seem to be putting an awful lot of energy into trashing JREF and Randi for someone who claims to be a mere truthseeker with no ax to grind. It so happens you’re in the same corner on this as religious charlatans, creationists, psychic frauds and industries that play off public fears. Not good voluntary company.
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QuizmasterChris, your arguments have become so irrelevant that I seriously wonder if there’s a point in responding. Is anyone willing to second his last post?
I’m just going to hit some high points, because it’s not clear to me if you have any credibility left. I don’t want to waste too much time talking to you if no one is taking you seriously anyway.
Here we go:
“Are you really going to use your own blog posts as references?”
Yes, why shouldn’t I? I made a claim about what I had said on my blog, so I naturally cited my blog as evidence. I’m sorry, but your attempts to prove yourself to be a “critical thinker” are just starting to look ludicrous.
“3) So is homeopathy your quack belief, then? Just out with it already.”
Again, you’re just grasping at straws, trying to insult me. This is an ad hominem attack. Even if I did believe in homeopathy, that would be irrelevant to whether Randi’s challenge was sound.
You, not I, brought up homeopathy. I was simply following your phrasing. And then, you decided to use that to put words in my mouth. These are simply not the actions of a critical thinker- but they are very much the actions of a Skeptic.
“5) My understanding of the JREF challenge appears to be different than yours. I don’t think this is because I’ve not paid attention.”
Here’s the direct quote from the jref website:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
“At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event”
This is a key point for essentially all the Skeptics I talk to about the challenge. They state categorically that the paranormal does not exist, because all paranormal phenomena are eligible for the challenge, and none have succeeded.
Here’s the fine print:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050223021610/http://randi.org/research/faq.html#0.
“The following things have been ruled NOT paranormal and/or NOT eligible for the Challenge in the past:
UFOs.”Bigfoot” & “Yeti” (or other legendary creatures). Anything that is likely to cause injury. “Cloud-busting”. Claims of a Religious or Spiritual nature. Exorcism and/or Demonic Possession. The Existence of Chakras. The Existence of God[5]. Reincarnation. The Existence of the Soul or “Astral Bodies”. Ouija Boards.”
I think this is the real crux of your credibility problem. You’re completely wrong on this point, precisely because you haven’t been paying attention. The key point in my argument is that “paranormal” is not as well-defined a category as Randi and his supporters make it out to be, and yet rather than address that point, you just declare over and over- and completely inaccurately- that I won’t provide specifics.
It doesn’t help that:
– you don’t know the rules of the challenge
– you don’t bother to find out
– when my argument rests on Randi’s rules, you ignore my argument, and don’t even ask me for a link to Randi’s website
and to top it all off,
– you get snotty with me about it, and declare that you know Randi’s challenge better than I do.
Why should anyone believe you, at this point? You clearly aren’t making anything resembling a serious argument. You’re just flailing around, trying to insult me, and you can’t even manage to do that convincingly.
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I think that there’s a point that really needs to be made here, to give a little perspective.
The fundagelicals tend to have a mindset that they are the island of “real Christianity.” They feel like they’re all part of the happy community of Christians, and outside that circle are all the horrible atheists and perverts, and nobody else.
What they don’t realize is that there are an awful lot of Christians who look at them and think, “What a bunch of assholes.”
Skepticism is the same way. The Skeptics think that they are the entire community of critical thinkers. (In Skeptical Inquirer they sometimes make this point very explicitly. QuizmasterChris has done so here, too.) And they think that outside their little circle is nobody but the awful people who believe weird things. So any time someone criticises Skepticism, the Skeptics start launching ad hominems, accusing their critics of harboring secret beliefs in homeopathy, or whatever. Because that’s their worldview. It’s Us vs. Them, Skeptics vs. True Believers. So if anyone doesn’t like James Randi, they must be some kind of nut.
And what a lot of Skeptics fail to realize is that MOST critical thinkers are looking at them and thinking, “God, what a bunch of assholes.” They say things like, “Randi and Geller richly deserve each other.” They say, “I don’t believe in Bigfoot or any of that crap either, but I’m not a shithead about it.”
And then the Skeptics say, “No, you liar- you secretly believe in Bigfoot. If you don’t believe in Bigfoot, then why do you think I’m an asshole? Hm? HMMM? Out with it. Confess! I’ve got you dead to rights, worm. Only a lunatic like yourself could possibly believe that I’m an asshole.”
And then all the critical thinkers roll their eyes and think, “What an asshole.”
I wish it were possible to get it through to the Skeptics that not all critical thinkers ally themselves with the Skepticism movement. I wish they could see that most of the people who reject Bigfoot, psi, etc. think that people like James Randi and Penn & Teller are assholes.
But it hasn’t happened yet, and I start to lose hope that it ever will.
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Metafalcon, I’ve talked to you before about keeping disagreements civil and I pointed out to you later that that’s non-negotiable on my site. If you can’t make your arguments while also following that advice, you’re going to have to make them somewhere other than here.
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Do you feel that QuizmasterChris was civil?
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“QuizmasterChris, your arguments have become so irrelevant that I seriously wonder if there’s a point in responding.”
Then don’t. Don’t type this and then write a pamphlet-long screed about why I’m a bad person. People OBVIOUSLY make ad hominem attacks on you because you are unhinged and angry, and because you have a particularly thin skin and are hypercritical of people who have spent their lives trying to make society more decent.
All of that typing and after my asking specifically TWICE you have yet to give ANY example of where JREF has done something procedure-related which can be said to be an attack on critical thinking. I assume you hold a big bag of nothing when you can’t produce anything out of it.
If you were using critical thinking skills at all you would realize that Randi et al could have really cleaned up using all of the “psychic” scams they know how to pull on a gullible public. Randi did very well as a professional illusionist through the years and he decided to go the direction of exposing people he thought did harm to others by preying on their superstitions and fears. Admirable work to those of us without quack beliefs ourselves.
Where did I describe myself with any label at all?
Where did I state that skeptics are “the entire community of critical thinkers”? “QuizmasterChris has done so here, too” Did I? Where? Show us specifically.
You’re making up strawman arguments because your own are wholly lacking merit.
Very obviously the challenge was not open to people who would scrawl on a piece of paper that their little toddler was so darn cute that s/he could only be a gift from God, thus God exists, thus you owe me a million bucks. The challlenge was open to things which would be TESTABLE and could be PROVEN through observation. The challenge was for the claimant to produce WHAT THE CLAIMANT CLAIMED THEY COULD DO in a controlled environment. Not only could none ever do that, but well over 99% would balk at the serious attempt once it was clear that any chicanery was to be accounted for.
Randi is in the same camp as the great Carl Sagan and both believe(d) (as I do) that there likely are other civilizations in the universe, but that there isn’t as yet proof we’ve had contact. That’s a pretty good reason why UFOs would not be ‘paranormal’, aside from there being no way of proving or disproving that you’ve spotted one.
A belief in homeopathy would be plenty reason all by itself to wholly discredit everything that you have to say about JREF, in the same sense that being a fundi Christian creationist would discredit anything you have to say about evolution. That’s some ad hominem I can live with. Conversely you’ve decided that anyone who likes JREF is an “asshole.” (I don’t for one second think you’re in the majority on this by the way.)
This all leads me to believe that you have some beef with JREF based in their trashing of some pet belief of yours. Nothing else other than maybe mental illness would explain your rotten posting behavior.
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Metafalcon, “non-negotiable” meant we’re not going to negotiate. I’ve talked to you about this multiple times, and you can either respect that or find somewhere else to argue.
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You want paranormal? Fine. Coelacanths. Where’s my million dollars?
“1952 fishermen receiving reward from Colonial Official at Domoni, Comoros.”
Back then it was going for £100, though. In the ’90s you could have got a million rupiahs for one caught in Indonesia. Protip: it helps if you can actually produce the fish.
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