• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    No, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant to a conversation about invisible beings. I suppose you suspect that information beyond your ability to sense is impossible, your love of science and rationality has twisted into science fundamentalism.

    You remind me of myself in my youth. Humility certainly gets easier with age. I recommend dialing back the antagonism a bit, I warn you that in 10, 15 years you’re going to look back and cringe.

    If you’re anything like I was, that warning won’t make a difference though. It’s strange being on the other side. I wish it could be otherwise, but it’s unlikely. I suppose if there were a way to effectively communicate this, then I could’ve been spared a great deal of bitterness when I was younger. Alas.

    • Richard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Wow you’re so weird. Saying something like “science fundamentalism” already proves that you’re an absolute nut job

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I’m weird. I spent my early teens as a zombie-preoccupied militant atheist, aggressively touting the superiority of science, fostered by an overly literal prescriptivist perspective on religion, following forum users from thread to thread to call them nut jobs and dunk on their “irrational” beliefs. That kind of youth turns you into a weirdo, sorry.

        Science fundamentalism, related to but distinct from scientism, is the belief that present popular consensus is infallible, discarding the essential epistemological uncertainty which tempers the scientific method. It’s, ironically, unscientific in that it confuses “contemporary models” with “absolute truth”, and thereby stifles the presentation and testing of new hypotheses. It declares any idea outside the purview of those models to be “supernatural” and thus wrong. It uses words like “proves”, which is an illogical concept outside of pure mathematics.

        It forgets the history of science, the many once sacrosanct models like the aether and phlogiston (or half a dozen models of the atom) that were once considered absolute truth by the scientific minds of their day. It forgets the derision that models like germ theory and quantum mechanics faced in the scientific community at their inception. It’s the misguided conclusion that our present body of scientific knowledge has miraculously divested itself of all errors and blind spots.

        This conclusion has been repeated for centuries, yet the science fundamentalist believes that we’re different now, we really know everything this time, and we could not possibly accept models that science teachers 100 years from now will humorously allude to in their introductory classes.

        Science is a tool. It is extremely useful, the best tool we have for creating experimentally consistent models of the world. Those models can be shown to be incomplete. Phenomena can be measured which require them to be rewritten. It has happened many, many times before. There’s no rational reason to believe it will never happen again.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      I suppose

      Difference between me and you. I know, you suppose. Nice attempt at strawmannning by the way. Ding ding ding logixal fallacy ding ding ding

      information beyond your ability to sense is impossible,

      Nope. I hold no such belief. I have consistently mentioned in this thread the nature of the lack of evidence and you have attempted that to get me to lower my standards instead of presenting it.

      your love of science and rationality has twisted into science fundamentalism.

      I have been called much worse by much better.

      You remind me of myself in my youth. Humility certainly gets easier with age. I recommend dialing back the antagonism a bit, I warn you that in 10, 15 years you’re going to look back and cringe.

      Ok Grandpa thanks for the fucking life advice

      f you’re anything like I was, that warning won’t make a difference though. It’s strange being on the other side. I wish it could be otherwise, but it’s unlikely. I suppose if there were a way to effectively communicate this, then I could’ve been spared a great deal of bitterness when I was younger. Alas.

      Wouldn’t worry about it. I know myself pretty decently and doubt I will ever fall to mystical wishful thinking. But hey I could get dementia one day in which case you can explain to mentally crippled me all about your shadow people. While I sit there and think it is 1998.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          Certainty is irrational.

          Are you certain of that? If so it is irrational. Are you not certain of that? That means you can’t assert it.

          Any attempt to claim that knowledge doesn’t exist or that reason isn’t rational is always doomed to failure.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              I don’t click random links. If you got an argument go ahead and make it. You shouldn’t need someone to do your thinking for you even if you believe knowledge is impossible.

              • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                10 months ago

                I don’t have the time or energy to explain the fundamentals of science to you. Karl Popper did so extensively already.

                Ultimately, your behavior and beliefs are your business. I was just trying to offer some insight from the perspective of someone who used to have the same beliefs and behavior. Like I said, I don’t particularly expect you to listen. I wouldn’t have.

                  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    10 months ago

                    Like I said, your behavior is your business. Refusing to benefit from the experience of others is a lonely and stunted existence, but the only one who can choose to change your behavior is you. I hope your teenage years aren’t as bitter as mine were.