Scientists' interest in the paranormal

[brimstoneSalad]

I think that actually makes my assumption more valid. If by necessity, the equipment to measure quantum phenomena actually changes it's behavior (or more accurately, the "things" we use to passively observe actually are not that passive, thereby altering the "observation" ), then it would be just as likely that equipment to measure paranormal phenomena would do the same.

It's not just equipment, it's anything that can "observe" them.
Whether it's a ghost-meter, or a "psychic" who can see it. The point is it has to do with the measurement, not the mind.

This is why we don't see a lot of macro-scale quantum phenomena around us; these systems practically get broken down through interactions.

Double slit is a rare example, but in either case there IS something to observe. If ghosts or something behaved the same way, we could observe them in the same way of double slit; the photons are still real, and they manifest as a phenomenon whether we measure them or not, it's just the probability distribution that's disturbed.

If you are unfamiliar with how flies reproduce, it would "make sense" that maggots spontaneously appear in decomposing meat.

But this doesn't make sense; you'd need a sensible theory for how this happens.
Even something like "rain comes from clouds" doesn't really make sense UNTIL you understand the physics of it. Then it becomes sensible, otherwise it's just an assumption or matter-of-fact thing that has no sense to it.

But if you were to learn additional information, a thinking person would agree "Oh, well that supersedes my previous assumption."

That would mean a contradiction, and make it implausible.
Sense requires something more than lacking immediate contradiction; it needs understanding on a deeper level of the mechanisms.

[NonZeroSum]

APV just promoted Sheldrake's ideas like Morphic Resonance

I'll just plug another Russell Brand reference, but he recently on his podcast had the scientist Rupert Sheldrake talk, I don't know if you've ever heard about him, but he talks about, he's you know like a scientist, he went to like Harvard and Oxford and all this impressive stuff, but and he talks about like basically the whole like a lot of the science community has really just like shut him out now and he's considered the most controversial scientist in the world. But he has done all these experiments on the fact that on this idea of morphic resonance and that there's actual but that everything in nature has a memory and so that you know trees communicate with each other and animals communicate with each other and there are actually experiments that show that if rats in a certain part of the world learn to do something over time like rats in a completely different part of the world will also get better at doing that one thing like a eternal like consciousness and like memory that we all actually have access to she was saying you know when I discovered all this stuff when I realized this made sense for how like leaves learn to grow and how you know like nature works in all these cool ways and I decided to really study and I went to India like a bunch of scientists there we're like oh yeah thank you mm-hmm dude like everyone knows this here you know and how yeah obviously these are ideas that are talked about in just a lot of other places,

I want to post the podcast to my channel because there's generally good stuff there, last episode was on:

4. White Nationalism, Anti-Semitism and the Vegan Movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmovIA_cS-E

But if you want to comment a good rebuttal to the Sheldrake stuff, would be good to see:

3: The Law of Attraction, Spirituality and Anti-Capitalism @50:30
https://youtu.be/0PJxmHKP-qE?t=50m30s

3. The Law of Attraction, Spirituality and Anti-Capitalism
http://veganvanguardpodcast.com/2017/12/20/3-the-law-of-attraction-spirituality-and-anti-capitalism/#czr-comments-title

Sheldrake seems to be promoting pseudoscience, lending credence New Agey stuff of which ‘The Secret’ is one of the biggest popular successes. Spirituality can be great, but once it clashes with scientific consensus and empirical reasoning, not so much. Also, some of the discussion ran a bit too close to the no-true-scotsman/X line for my comfort, but that’s a nitpick. Otherwise, I really enjoy and appreciate your podcasts and hope you will continue to explore these interesting topics.

Hi Jen,
Thanks for the input. Glad you like the show despite not fully being sold on this topic. Happy holidays!

@50:30 I was just going to link these and say take Sheldrake comments with a huge dose of salt:

Rupert Sheldrake - RationalWiki
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

Morphic Resonance Debunked - Argument from Ignorance: Rupert Sheldrake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-GlHIh6gYk

[brimstoneSalad]

APV just promoted Sheldrake's ideas like Morphic Resonance

I think she's too far gone into the pseudoscience stuff.
It's either best to talk with her directly about your concerns with her promoting that stuff, and if she's reasonable maybe she'll stop... or think seriously about not promoting her anymore. Of course she has a few good things, but it's dangerous to have people referred to her stuff when it's such a toss-up.

I mean, if we're honest Corey McCarthy has quite a few good things too (his videos on diet myths are honesty great). But we wouldn't want to refer to that stuff due to the minority of bad content that's really bad.
At least not without some serious disclaimers.

Sheldrake seems to be promoting pseudoscience, lending credence New Agey stuff of which ‘The Secret’ is one of the biggest popular successes. Spirituality can be great, but once it clashes with scientific consensus and empirical reasoning, not so much. Also, some of the discussion ran a bit too close to the no-true-scotsman/X line for my comfort, but that’s a nitpick. Otherwise, I really enjoy and appreciate your podcasts and hope you will continue to explore these interesting topics.

Hi Jen,
Thanks for the input. Glad you like the show despite not fully being sold on this topic. Happy holidays!

It sounds like she's not listening to people at all. That's a really bad sign.

@50:30 I was just going to link these and say take Sheldrake comments with a huge dose of salt:

Rupert Sheldrake - RationalWiki
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

Morphic Resonance Debunked - Argument from Ignorance: Rupert Sheldrake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-GlHIh6gYk

It may be good to link them in her comments section, but if you're re-posting the content I don't think dropping a couple links to things that 99% of people won't click on or watch/read is adequate.
It's like re-posting something from McCarthy which included good diet advice and then some of his white nationalist pseudoscience... and then dropping a link somewhere to a source debunking it that virtually nobody will click.

I would do these things if re-posting it:

1. Remove the sections where she talks about that, and edit it just down to the good stuff.
2. Add a disclaimer in at the beginning and end of the good stuff video saying she promotes a lot of pseudoscience, so she's not generally a trustworthy source, BUT that this discussion was good so for people to consider that on its own, and that some irresponsible pseudoscience promotion was edited out of the video. Then add a link to another video where you:

3. Splice her pseudoscience promotion comments together with clips from videos debunking it, and quotes (read aloud) from rationalwiki etc. with more comments explaining the problem and the purpose of this video.

I think that would be the responsible way to re-post things like this, and I think that's the approach I'd take with McCarthy's stuff if he posted something really good I wanted to mirror. Ultimately, it might not be worth the effort, but I think if you promote somebody who promotes bad ideas, in the very least it's necessary to also promote some serious criticism of them to balance that out.

[brimstoneSalad]

I would also add that what APV is doing is probably more damaging than what McCarthy is doing. While McCarthy is certainly less sympathetic and his beliefs transparently revolting, alt-med actively harms a lot more people than white nationalism, which is a dying ideology (and represents racism in its death throes) and has no hope of ever being taken seriously or gaining real traction among the general population.
People killed by white nationalist terrorism is almost nothing compared to alt-med (something that DOES have traction in both major political parties):
http://whatstheharm.net/alternativemedicine.html
This estimates over 300 thousand dead globally in that time frame, which is more than for terrorism of all types globally:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/202871/number-of-fatalities-by-terrorist-attacks-worldwide/
In developed countries where alt-right terrorism is prominent, it's much less than that; just barely higher than Islamic terrorism and the scourge of shark attacks.

We need to remember how harmful this kind of pseudoscience is, and keep it in perspective.
It may be less scary to us who would never buy into it because irrational people "choose" to believe it, practice it, and effectively kill themselves, where a terrorist or a shark could come out of nowhere and kill you no matter how rational you are, but the harm footprint is what matters whether it's an outside force attacking innocent people, or a cognitive malignancy that destroys them from the inside out.

[NonZeroSum]

Ochay I will have a think about it, I planned to message her anyways about the freeganism video. Do you remember any other videos where she talks alt-medicine that I can mention to her? I know she's taken down old raw diet vids. The context was she thought her viewers might take her for a hard-line atheist after law of attraction critique video, but she's some kind of spiritualist deist.

[DarlBundren]

Can you link me to the video, Nonzero? Youtube says her latest video was on "The non-profit industrial complex" (apparently against Singer and EA).

[NonZeroSum]

Can you link me to the video, Nonzero?

No worries, it's a podcast between her and Mexie that comes out every two weeks, which I mirror on my channel:

3: The Law of Attraction, Spirituality and Anti-Capitalism @50:30
https://youtu.be/0PJxmHKP-qE?t=50m30s

3. The Law of Attraction, Spirituality and Anti-Capitalism
http://veganvanguardpodcast.com/2017/12/20/3-the-law-of-attraction-spirituality-and-anti-capitalism/#czr-comments-title