Peterson, Priestcraft, Profits and the Paranormal

[Tom]

I am reminded of these bits of “intellectual autobiography”:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... earch.html

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ience.html

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... hings.html

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... fense.html

Posted from Frisco, Utah

[drumdude]

Thanks for your response, ABC. (And for its calm, irenic, and respectful nature, which is in such stark contrast to the Peterson Obsession Board.)

It would be interesting to see a spectrum of responses from pro- and con-leaning skeptics to the matters that you raise. (I'm not interested in replies from the folks that Professor Utts calls "deniers.")

Today or tomorrow, probably, I'll offer just a bit of "intellectual autobiography" in a blog entry to indicate some of the influences that have led me to become more open, in the relatively recent past, to the possibility of the paranormal than I ever was before.

“I’m not interested in replies from deniers” is the same language that anti-vaxxers use.

I made a thread about this years ago and it hasn’t sunk into DCP’s brain. He picks and chooses which conspiracy theories to believe and which not to believe. The intellectually honest position is to reject all conspiracy theories.

Whatever personal experiences he has had with magic aren’t worth the electrons they’re transmitted through. We already know he can’t even remember what the Second Watson Letter looked like. His credibility is less than zero for anyone who isn’t already a DCP sycophant.

[I Have Questions]

Thanks for your response, ABC. (And for its calm, irenic, and respectful nature, which is in such stark contrast to the Peterson Obsession Board.)

It would be interesting to see a spectrum of responses from pro- and con-leaning skeptics to the matters that you raise. (I'm not interested in replies from the folks that Professor Utts calls "deniers.")

Today or tomorrow, probably, I'll offer just a bit of "intellectual autobiography" in a blog entry to indicate some of the influences that have led me to become more open, in the relatively recent past, to the possibility of the paranormal than I ever was before.

“I’m not interested in replies from deniers” is the same language that anti-vaxxers use.

I made a thread about this years ago and it hasn’t sunk into DCP’s brain. He picks and chooses which conspiracy theories to believe and which not to believe. The intellectually honest position is to reject all conspiracy theories.

Whatever personal experiences he has had with magic aren’t worth the electrons they’re transmitted through. We already know he can’t even remember what the Second Watson Letter looked like. His credibility is less than zero for anyone who isn’t already a DCP sycophant.

I suppose I’m left wondering why Peterson doesn’t feel satisfied with his Priesthood gifts, and the ability to have prayers answered, and the internal guiding hand of the Holy Ghost. Why does he need more?

[Physics Guy]

… the experimental design simply isn't very good.

Yes, that’s the problem. It’s not that the ideas are too unorthodox. It’s not that the proponents haven’t bowed to the authority of scientific orthodoxy. It’s that pseudoscientists are incompetent. Their results are all garbage because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Suppose I were to announce a radical new interpretation of the Quran, at odds with all previous scholarship, based on my efforts to see pictures and shapes in the squiggles of Arabic script, because I didn’t appreciate that Arabic is a language and that the squiggles are letters. Suppose further that I, as someone who did well in high-school English, described my radical new way of reading the Quran in English prose that made me sound intelligent, educated, and serious, at least to non-Arabists.

Would my elegant paragraphs entitle my book to respect? Would my many hours of effort peering at squiggles deserve scholars’ attention? Would the ingenuity of my squiggle-reading count as a significant contribution to Islamic studies?

Of course not. I might write well, I might be ingenious, and I might have done lots of hard work. None of that would change the facts that I didn’t know how to read Arabic and that the method upon which I relied to interpret the text—treating the squiggles as pictograms—was utterly worthless, no matter how persuasive my examples might seem to people who did not read Arabic. And whatever intellectual virtues my work might demonstrate would all be outweighed by my outrageous arrogance in assuming that I didn’t need to learn Arabic to read the Quran, and that my amateur peering at squiggles could deliver new truths that generations of genuine scholars had overlooked.

That’s about what pseudo-scientists do.

[drumdude]

“I’m not interested in replies from deniers” is the same language that anti-vaxxers use.

I made a thread about this years ago and it hasn’t sunk into DCP’s brain. He picks and chooses which conspiracy theories to believe and which not to believe. The intellectually honest position is to reject all conspiracy theories.

Whatever personal experiences he has had with magic aren’t worth the electrons they’re transmitted through. We already know he can’t even remember what the Second Watson Letter looked like. His credibility is less than zero for anyone who isn’t already a DCP sycophant.

I suppose I’m left wondering why Peterson doesn’t feel satisfied with his Priesthood gifts, and the ability to have prayers answered, and the internal guiding hand of the Holy Ghost. Why does he need more?

The world today is much different than the one he grew up in. When he was growing up, the vast majority of Americans went to church. Believed in God and/or Jesus. They had a strong absolute moral foundation (the benefits of which can be debated).

He's dying for something to reverse the trend. He wants people to think belief is reasonable. He wants people to sit in the pews every Sunday. He wants churches to be growing in power and wealth.

This, the near death experience thing, the water dowsing thing, all of it are things he's desperately trying to hang his hat on. Joseph Smith marrying a 14 year old might be too much for many, but if he can get his foot in the door with some spooky NDEs, then maybe he can slow the cascade of agnosticism and atheism in modern society.

Can't you all just stop being so gosh darned materialistic and give him a little bit of ground on all this spooky woo-woo stuff??

[I Have Questions]

I suppose I’m left wondering why Peterson doesn’t feel satisfied with his Priesthood gifts, and the ability to have prayers answered, and the internal guiding hand of the Holy Ghost. Why does he need more?

The world today is much different than the one he grew up in. When he was growing up, the vast majority of Americans went to church. Believed in God and/or Jesus. They had a strong absolute moral foundation (the benefits of which can be debated).

He's dying for something to reverse the trend. He wants people to think belief is reasonable. He wants people to sit in the pews every Sunday. He wants churches to be growing in power and wealth.

This, the near death experience thing, the water dowsing thing, all of it are things he's desperately trying to hang his hat on. Joseph Smith marrying a 14 year old might be too much for many, but if he can get his foot in the door with some spooky NDEs, then maybe he can slow the cascade of agnosticism and atheism in modern society.

Can't you all just stop being so gosh darned materialistic and give him a little bit of ground on all this spooky woo-woo stuff??

His Church already has spooky woo-woo. Personal revelation, a Prophet who is also a seer and a revelator. He has an ability to heal the sick just by using some special oil and saying a prayer. He can get guidance about the future via confirmatory special in-body sensations. Etc.

Why isn’t that sufficient? Why does he need to go chasing after other stuff? I’d speculate that he doesn’t really believe in the LDS powers, that he doesn’t believe they work the way they are claimed to work, at least for him. He’s after something else because what he’s got access to currently isn’t satisfying.

[Doctor Scratch]

The main criticism I would level at the Afore over his obsession with the paranormal is that it all seems aimed at attacking critics. He doesn’t seem to be interested in NDEs or remote viewing because it draws people closer to Christ, or because it affirms the truthfulness of Mormonism. He keeps going back to it because it’s part of this never ending war with critics: “See?? See? *I* am open minded and they’re not!”

The stuff he gravitates towards is predictably “safe”. It’s not like he’s talking about research into tarot cards or ouija boards or anything that could be construed as “Satanic.” But—weirdly (or predictably?)—he also never plugs fringe health ideas, such as red light therapy or cold plunges. And why not? Too lazy to look at the research?

I think that, ultimately, it just reflects priorities: this isn’t someone who cares about making a net positive impact, or about improving health or wellbeing, or about keeping an truly open mind (because if that was the case, he’d be down for living a year as an apostate). It really is just this dumb, petty, trying to score points.

[I Have Questions]

Here’s what a foundation dedicated to testing paranormal claims has found about remote viewing…

Remote Viewing
This phenomenon first became a celebrated subject after parapsychologists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ published a scientific paper which reported on experiments in which a remote location had been chosen, an experimenter visited there, and a subject recorded his or her psychic impressions of the spot. Their results seemed to prove that a “remote sensing” faculty did exist.

Subsequently, properly controlled tests were done by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence that had been present in the tests. These new tests produced negative results. The data of Puthoff and Targ were reexamined by the other researchers, and it was found that their students were able to solve the locations without use of any psychic powers, using only the clues that had inadvertently been included in the Puthoff and Targ transcripts.

Paul H. Smith is conning a living using the same principle that drove Bernie Madoff - some people will believe anything.

Please do not fall for Paul H. Smith’s scam.

[Physics Guy]

The mere fact that this Smith guy is offering expensive courses is an immediate red flag. If his remote viewing works well enough for him to be charging that much money to teach how to do it, why isn’t he making millions per week viewing things remotely for customers? He shouldn’t have time to teach courses.

[Chap]

The mere fact that this Smith guy is offering expensive courses is an immediate red flag. If his remote viewing works well enough for him to be charging that much money to teach how to do it, why isn’t he making millions per week viewing things remotely for customers? He shouldn’t have time to teach courses.

Er. yes.

As someone has already pointed out on this or another thread, if all these paranormal powers could actually be of any practical use, billions of dollars would be poured into researching and developing them so that the world's big companies could put them to profitable use.

That fact is screamingly obvious, but all the same there are still quite a few people who desperately want to believe that this stuff really can work, and so they eagerly join in enriching the shysters who falsely claim that they can teach you how it's done.

It's just plain sad.