Peterson, Priestcraft, Profits and the Paranormal

[Physics Guy]

Smith’s response is self-damning. Just think.

Firstly, suppose there’s something wonderful that almost everyone thinks is a myth or a scam, but you’re hoping to get thousands dollars from training people in this wonderful thing. Now consider two alternative versions of this scenario.

In Scenario A, you have a really strong argument, or strong evidence, that the wonderful thing is not a myth or a scam, but quite real. In Scenario B, you have no such grounds for belief in the wonderful thing, just wishful thinking and a desire to get rich, or at least be important.

Now, secondly: in each Scenario, A and B, skeptics challenge your claims and repeat the common belief that the wonderful thing is a scam or a myth. You offer a public response to the challenge. Again there are two possible versions of your response.

In Response 1, you immediately present a strong argument or hard evidence for your claims, so that the skeptics will be at least impressed, or even convinced, and people will flock to your training. In Response 2, you complain that the skeptics are begging the question, and promise a thorough rebuttal in future.

Which Response, 1 or 2, is more likely to occur in Scenario A? In Scenario B?

[Doctor Scratch]

Conveniently, the Afore banned/censored Mom's Spaghetti, and yet that was the main person that Smith was responding to.

[drumdude]

Conveniently, the Afore banned/censored Mom's Spaghetti, and yet that was the main person that Smith was responding to.

The answers to his questions are so important that DCP would prefer them to remain as obscure as possible. The master of copy paste can’t even be bothered to copy paste them into his blog entries.

[Marcus]

Conveniently, the Afore banned/censored Mom's Spaghetti, and yet that was the main person that Smith was responding to.

The answers to his questions are so important that DCP would prefer them to remain as obscure as possible. The master of copy paste can’t even be bothered to copy paste them into his blog entries.

I read through that thread again, and saw that occasionally DCP quoted pieces of MS's posts that he had removed, apparently thinking he could make MS look bad with a partial quote.

His failures at this backhanded tactic are pretty funny--here's a great one:

DanielPeterson >> Moms Spaghetti
a month ago edited

MS: "what science views as modern-day snake oil"

You might be well advised, at this point, to avoid question-begging and to note that science is not a person with a single opinion. It would be prudent to refer, rather, to something like "the consensus of contemporary scientists" -- keeping the fact in mind that the vast majority of geochemists, field botanists, entomologists, oceanographers, and paleontologists have probably never given the subject even five seconds of serious attention...

Maybe there's a reason for that lack of serious attention...

I agree, drumdude, you'd think he would collect all the substantive answers Rviewer has given so far. The problem of course is that he's given no substantive answers.

[Doctor Scratch]

Incidentally, for the record: Some on the Peterson Obsession Board are accusing me of deleting posts from Mom's Spaghetti (a.k.a. Mom Spaghetti, Dad's Lasagna, etc., etc) in order to conceal the mighty power of his arguments, etc.

To the best of my recollection, I have never deleted any post from Mom's Spaghetti (a.k.a. Mom Spaghetti, Dad's Lasagna, etc., etc). Not even a single time.

What has happened, I believe, is that, since he's been shadow banned for obnoxious misbehavior on several occasions, he has sometimes forgotten and has used a shadow-banned address. Which still allows me to see and to reply to what he has written, even if others can't. A few times, I've responded to those comments, forgetting that he's shadow-banned and that nobody but Y'r Obd't Servant can see the entirety of what he had posted.

If he would surrender the personal hostility and talk substance, he would likely survive here. (Axel Being Civil has done quite well on this blog because, although he doesn't share my beliefs or those of most posters, he's clearly sincere and substantive and, well, civil.) But Mom's Spaghetti (a.k.a. Mom Spaghetti, Dad's Lasagna, etc., etc) has sent me some pretty nasty notes after his various instances of being shown the door, and I'm much less inclined to cut him slack than I once was.

"some pretty nasty notes" which no one (except the Afore) can see. So I guess we have to take his word for it? It's remarkable how intolerant they are over there--how unable they are to absorb even pretty gentle criticism. As for Axel Being Civil--my goodness, the poor guy has to bend over backwards, constantly reassuring the faithful that he's extra-super-nice, and doesn't think anything even remotely bad or negative about any of their fragile beliefs.

Well, in any case, now that Dad's Lasagna has also been banned, it seems unlikely that any actually challenges will be posed to Smith. (Unless, perhaps, Grandma's Ravioli, or Auntie's Amatriciana, or Cousin's Garlic Bread is waiting in the wings?)

And it's kind of interesting. Rodney Meldrum led tours to the Heartland and opposed the LGT and was attacked mercilessly for it, including a lengthy hit piece published on the Interpreter blog, where he was called a "charlatan." And yet here is the Afore, rolling out the red carpet for this remote viewing guy. I can't help but wonder if a large donation was made to Interpreter, thus explaining the uncharacteristic hospitality.

[drumdude]

If only scientists would give water dowsing, NDEs, remote viewing, and Nephites archeology more than 5 seconds of thought, they could be as enlightened as Daniel C. Peterson.

Just like Becoming Brigham the problem is not the substance. It’s the lack of time to examine the evidence and come to the same level of credulity that Dan expects of his audience. We need to spread the word so more people can accept these bizarre conspiracy theories.

[malkie]

As I read the curriculum it seems that these are all physical in-class lectures, right?

I can see how this might be necessary for Basic Controlled Remote Viewing , and perhaps Intermediate Controlled Remote Viewing. But for Advanced Controlled Remote Viewing might one not hope for some other means of presentation?

How about Zoom, or Google Meet, or --- help me out here folks --- I'm trying not to name the obvious medium for advanced RV students

[Physics Guy]

Calling somebody wrong is not presenting an argument to show they are wrong, but neither is it question-begging. Begging a question is presenting an argument whose premise is tantamount to its conclusion. If people say you are wrong, you can ask them to prove it, but you can’t accuse them of begging the question until they do present an argument to prove you are wrong, and it turns out to be based on simply assuming that you are wrong.

“Science” has more than one meaning. It’s a set of many different activities conducted by many scientists of varying competence, but the word can also refer to the impersonal body of conclusions about the world that scientists have collectively reached. That set of theories and observations is in fact a coherent whole, because scientists swarm all over it like ants checking for inconsistencies everywhere, even if no individual scientist ever thinks about all of it.

It is perfectly correct to say that Science, in that second sense, regards remote viewing as utterly bogus. Only ignoramuses and hucksters try to make out that remote viewing is still up for debate as an unsettled question or an open possibility. It is not, and taking remote viewing remotely seriously does not encourage respect for one’s judgement on subjects like the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

[Gadianton]

Apologists lean on social theories of science namely Kuhn in order to avoid "truth" either for Mormonism to be right automatically or for science to be wrong, but these theories don't help and probably make it worse. Just like, as was mentioned, Wittgenstein's private language targets and obliterates Boyd Kkk Packer's taste of salt as a secret and sacred experience for just him, it also marginalizes -- as a feature -- fringe science. If Kuhn is right, then this Smith guy is rightfully laughed out of the room and he and Dan and all these other people are the butt of jokes and totally dismissed by the institutions because science is the institution. If you want remote viewing "proven", you'll either need to find a way to break through the laughter or wait for anomalies to build up in institutional models such that an alternative reimagining of the facts is needed and this new reimagining somehow relies on remote viewing. The only way to win with Kuhn is for the Church's hedge fund to gain so much wealth that it privatizes the entire field of Egyptology and from there, financially takes over the world in similar fashion (as their tax loopholes will never be closed). They can be right with Kuhn by becoming the institution, but until then, they will only be laughed out of the journals as they currently are. Scourged and with fingers pointing at them.

[Physics Guy]

"Paranormal" stuff like remote viewing is an interesting case of how science works. The reasons why this stuff is rejected by Science as a coherent body of knowledge are usually physics, which tells us that there is no possible mechanism for remote viewing, but the people who can properly test paranormal hypotheses are usually not physicists.

Physicists are mostly not trained or experienced in testing such complicated things as human subjects. A highly qualified physicist who tries to conduct experiments on remote viewing is likely to take for granted that everything is as easy to control as electrons are, and so make howling errors in experimental design that would be laughed out of an undergraduate course in experimental psychology. By no means whatever are experimental claims made by physicists about paranormal phenomena to be taken more seriously because physics is some kind of gold standard for science. On the contrary, any experiments with human subjects that have been conducted by physical scientists should be ignored unless experienced experimental psychologists were also closely involved.

In fact, since the prevalence of fraud in paranormal claims is acknowledged even by paranormal proponents, we should really ignore any studies of paranormal phenomena that were not also designed and conducted in close cooperation with professional illusionists, who are experts with more experience than most psychologists in understanding deception. In particular, a form of stage magic with a long history involves obtaining information that appears to be inaccessible. The methods by which these tricks are done are usually disgustingly banal, once revealed, but they work as magic because they are very hard for most people to notice or guess.

By no means whatever does this criterion of involving illusionists amount to prejudging the paranormal. It is no more a question-begging prejudice to insist that an experiment on remote viewing include an illusionist than it is to insist that an experiment on atomic excitations include a well tuned laser. There is no scientific game rule which says that all you have to do is make perfunctory efforts at following some kind of official procedure and then your results have to be accorded the respect which is due to Science. The only scientific game rule is that you have to look as closely and work as carefully as possible. If there is a step you could take in your experiment which might reveal otherwise undetected errors, then you must take that step. If you don't, then you are not properly trying to find out the truth, but are instead deliberately turning a blind eye to problems, in an effort to protect a preferred conclusion.