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David Lucifer
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Edge Question 2008
« on: 2008-01-04 23:18:48 »
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The Edge Annual Question — 2008

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"

(Please consider answering for yourself before reading the responses on the Edge site)
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Blunderov
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #1 on: 2008-01-08 01:55:36 »
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[Blunderov] This is a complete 180 degree swing for me; I would not permit any depictions of violence on public TV or radio broadcasts.


"Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures."
Plato
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #2 on: 2008-01-08 06:38:02 »
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[[ author reputation (1.66) beneath threshold (3)... display message ]]

« Last Edit: 2008-01-08 06:44:23 by Mo » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #3 on: 2008-01-08 23:03:37 »
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so many..i am a completely different person than i was a decade ago..when i was first introduced to cov.

but more recently and relevant to cov,

1. i dont think religion as a cohesive social glue is not all that bad. religious fundamentalism, perhaps.

2. i am hoping reincarnation is true.

3. i dont think science has all the answers.


p.s: to Mo,

"and what rought beast, it's hour come round at last,
slouches towards bethlehem to be born?"     

- second coming, w.b.yeats
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Blunderov
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #4 on: 2008-01-09 06:02:31 »
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Quote from: Mermaid on 2008-01-08 23:03:37   

<snip>
3. i dont think science has all the answers.
</snip>

[Blunderov] I suppose science will just have to wait until philosophers have finished compiling the list of all the questions. It may take a while.




How shall we live? Science, it is true, cannot answer this sort of question. It can give us a fair idea of the raw materials with which we're dealing though. This is "a good thing" IMO.

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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #5 on: 2008-01-19 16:16:06 »
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i was thinking of less abstract issues..to take a page out of my recent experiences, homeopathy. it is not 'scientific' because even homeopaths cannot explain how and why it works...yet, i like to think of it as a 'precise science'...but if we cant explain it, is it still 'science'? recently, dawkins railed against it in the channel4 program...but looking deeper into it, i am completely gobsmacked by how effective, prompt and gentle it can be compared to modern medicine.
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #6 on: 2008-01-20 03:41:28 »
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"homeopathy. it is not 'scientific'" ... "dawkins railed against it in the channel4 program"

Confusion arises because the term "Homeopathy" means different things to different people. Technically homeopathy means using drugs intended to provoke the same symptoms as the patient is displaying but through using drugs so dilute that there is a strong likelihood that the "tinctures contain no hint of the supposed active ingredients. Lincoln referred to this In the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate as "He [Douglas] has at last invented this sort of do-nothing Sovereignty – that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of "Sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"

In this sense "homeopathy" is total nonsense and deserves to be laughed at.

Yet some practicing homeopaths today are really herbalists who use drugs in concentrations that are meaningful and may even recommend or offer alleopathic medications when this seems indicated. Their primary failure is not so much in the treatment they offer (although it clearly is not scientific in the sense that it is neither consistent nor peer reviewed), but for continuing to call themselves homeopaths.

In this sense the label "homeopathy" is total nonsense and the people using it deserve to be laughed at.

In both senses, Dawkins was right.

Next time somebody tells you that natural cures are better, consider that natural just means inconsistent and impure. The actual active ingredients in many commercial drugs are the same as those in "natural" medications. The key difference is that the concentrations are predetermined so that you know how much you are getting, and the number of contaminants are reduced.

None of this is to say that some practitioners may not be competent. Just that there is no reliable way to tell which are and which are not. Which might explain why Americans currently spend some three times more per year on hokum nostrums and quackery as they do on actual medicine - and also why their lifespan data is as poor as it is.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #7 on: 2008-01-20 04:48:36 »
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"homeopathy. it is not 'scientific'"

[Blunderov] When my late wife was in the terminal phase of her breast caancer she resorted to homeopathy, something she had believed in all her life.

Her homeopath told her that she did not have cancer at all and put her on a dietary regime which she frantically complied with almost to the day of her death.

Perhaps, to be charitable, this was simply an attempt to manage the psychology of the situation but the homeopath gave every impression of believing her assertion. It did nothing for my psychology  can tell you, but then I was not the dying patient. The fact of the matter was that there was no hope at all anymore when the homeopath intervened and no physical harm was done.

This might not have been true in the case of someone else however.

If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, perhaps it really is a quack?
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #8 on: 2008-01-20 13:26:44 »
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i think there is a difference between homeopathy and what is practiced by homeopaths. and then there are homeopaths and 'homeopaths'.

the first thing that impressed me about homeopathy is how this person i was speaking to said that it doesnt cure everything("yes, surgery is sometimes preferred."..."no, there is no cure for masterbation..its not a disease"..."). he also indicated diplomatically that allopathic diagnostic modes are far superior to homeopathic case taking because the latter is essentially is centuries old.

however, the lengthy case taking involved in homeopathy is said to be more theraputic than the 15 mts HMO visit at most clinics/hospitals. yet..i have witnessed personally how homeopathy works brilliantly with animals and it seems to work well with small children too. so, it is not entirely fair to lump everything together as a placebo effect. 

i have been reading hahnemann's organon and kent's repertory and margaret tyler. honestly, i dont understand a lot of it, but i cannot deny that i have seen it work when everything else has failed. but there are indeed limits to homeopathy and it does provide(if diagnosed properly)relief to all kinds of symptoms. for example, a friend's sister is undergoing treatment for hodgkins..while she is certainly not under homeopathy treatment for hodgkins itself, there is some relief from the side effects of radiation because of homeopathic intervention.

i understand quackery. remember..in india, the govt recognises eight different schools of medicine including homeopathy, unani, siddha, ayurveda, allopathy and three more i cannot recall. i have seen all kinds of charlatans and then again if a school of thought is vulnerable to exploitation, does it make it any less credible? in france and england too, homeopathy is widespread and is not particularly exploited by quacks for cash...perhaps because most practicing homeopaths are also required to be medical doctors to practice in their healthcare system.

i suppose my point is that if homeopathy and its method cannot be explained in scientific terms, it probably means that it is not 'science'. and if some homeopaths are quacks, is homeopathy quackery? i am not just a believer now..i am a convert....it took me a lot of time, questions and thought before i decided to embrace homeopathy as something credible. i suppose i have to thank dawkins too...altho' i am sure he didnt intend to create homeopathy fans.
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Walter Watts
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #9 on: 2008-01-21 00:18:01 »
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[Walter]

I thought by now (2008) surely the internet would have increased critical thinking in the world.

Maybe it has, but it sometimes gets drowned out by the sheer quantity of inane social chatter going on.

Sometimes I miss the peace and quiet of the library.


Walter

PS--In fact, file this response to the Edge Question 2008 under inane social chatter.

jeeeeeeeeeezus.

Can't win for losing.
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Blunderov
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #10 on: 2008-01-21 03:15:18 »
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Quote from: Mermaid on 2008-01-20 13:26:44   

<snip>i understand quackery. </snip>

[Blunderov] Fair enough. There are quacks in every profession.

My own view is that when homeopathy is succesful it is mostly due to some species of  placebo effect. There doesn't seem to be any evidence to suggest what else it could be.

What always most impressed me about my late wife's consultations with homeopaths was their lengthiness, at least a couple of hours, usually. This has always seemes to me to be more consistent with psychotherapy than chemistry.

Of course not everybody agrees with me and I certainly don't know everything about the world.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/water3.php

The Strangeness of Water & Homeopathic ‘Memory’

is something which has caused a "stir" in certain circles.

My own view is that this all probably yet more quantum flapdoodle but there is perhaps at least the basis for some science here; some prospect of falsifiability.

Best Regards
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #11 on: 2008-01-21 12:00:13 »
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yes..the homeopathic water 'memory' is confounding...i truly do not understand. i am not even going to attempt to explain or justify the so-called theories as to why and how homeopathy works.

but this i know...it works. i do not want to go into the details of it...but it is true too that it doesnt work all the time. but i doubt if it is because the right remedies are all simply due to the placebo effect. when an angry bump or bruise, swollen, painful and throbbing, disappears in a matter of hours with a few doses of arnica...you'd know that it works. when hypothyroidism is reversed by a constitutional remedy and an unexpected attack of asthma is arrested with a single dose of ars.alb, you know its not a placebo effect. when an injured animal that had fallen on its back and ends up with a broken spine...heals quickly with hypericum and proof of it is in the xrays, you got to wonder if animals understand 'placebo effect'. when a cat with lungfuls of phlegm and unable to get rid of it...and has been placed in an oxygen chamber and given steroids..expels it without difficulty with only three doses of antimonium tarticum, it makes me wonder why i should doubt homeopathy because there is no scientific explanation as to how it actually works.

it is unfortunate when certain homeopaths promise cures when there are none...but that isnt my point.

i guess thats my point...what exactly is 'science' and what is 'not science'. and why should we discard all that is in the somewhat murky space between 'science' and 'not science'...the unexplained and the undiscovered? and if the lack of explanations make them 'unscientific', so what? i am beginning to wonder if we have all been misunderstanding the meaning of 'science'. it is perhaps a method or the understanding of a process and not just a label. we have to look behind the label and see how it applies to our lives rather than congratulating ourselves about being 'scientific'..what does it mean anyways anymore? while the means to an end is worthy of scrutiny and education, isnt the actual end and getting there more relevant? with human misery, disease and poverty and overpowering grief all around, i am willing to place my trust in  something that i cannot understand or explain if i can attain the ends i seek. is it a bargain? perhaps? but i think i am reconsidering my priorities. i can always try and study homeopathy...to figure out how and why it works. it will be an ongoing, background exercise...but why should that stop me from applying it to bring relief to someone's physical grief in the urgent present(with some caution, of course) because it has been deemed 'unscientific' due of a lack of understanding or insight or current knowledge. does that make sense, B?
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #12 on: 2008-01-21 13:25:40 »
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Re:Edge Question 2008
« Reply #13 on: 2008-01-23 12:46:25 »
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Quote from: Mermaid on 2008-01-21 12:00:13   
<snip>does that make sense, B?</snip>

[Blunderov] Yes, actually. Seems empirical enough.

(My own particular brand of skepticism consists of ensuring as far as possible that the illusion (whichever one it happens to be at the time) is complete. One cannot reasonably ask much more of reality than that it seems to me?)

Best regards.

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