The official NMA board
General Category => Everything Else => Topic started by: cthulhu on August 12, 2019, 11:56:31 AM
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I know swearwords are not welcomed here, but this has nothing to do with a simple, swearing denial-attitude.
I found this programme and the website and i found it a very necessary subject and was very glad that something like this does exist.
This is about competence in reading media, tools and skills you nowadays must have to read the information surrounding you and not fall for plain Bullshit, that seems to be everywhere.
I find the use of the word "bullshit" here in this context so very appropriate and see it as a real scientific expression.
I have to think about my son, he is 17, and what and how he learns in school and how fast the society around us has changed regarding the level of information/misinformation/pure propaganda on all levels and the all-time ready mobile device and the dopamine-addicted use of it, a constant distractor and bullshit feeder. I was schocked when he told me he didn't know who Julian Assange was!
But to be aware of the bullshit around you you have to learn to detect and call it like it is, but what if even your teacher isn't aware of such bullshit and is forcing it into the pupils.
Here is a quote from the website to give you an idea, but you should visit the website and go through all of it and watch their very informative and also funny lectures on video.
https://callingbullshit.org/ (https://callingbullshit.org/)
"The world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit.
We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument.
What do we mean, exactly, by bullshit and calling bullshit? As a first approximation:
Bullshit involves language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.
Calling bullshit is a performative utterance, a speech act in which one publicly repudiates something objectionable. The scope of targets is broader than bullshit alone. You can call bullshit on bullshit, but you can also call bullshit on lies, treachery, trickery, or injustice.
In this course we will teach you how to spot the former and effectively perform the latter.
While bullshit may reach its apogee in the political domain, this is not a course on political bullshit. Instead, we will focus on bullshit that comes clad in the trappings of scholarly discourse. Traditionally, such highbrow nonsense has come couched in big words and fancy rhetoric, but more and more we see it presented instead in the guise of big data and fancy algorithms — and these quantitative, statistical, and computational forms of bullshit are those that we will be addressing in the present course.
Of course an advertisement is trying to sell you something, but do you know whether the TED talk you watched last night is also bullshit — and if so, can you explain why? Can you see the problem with the latest New York Times or Washington Post article fawning over some startup's big data analytics? Can you tell when a clinical trial reported in the New England Journal or JAMA is trustworthy, and when it is just a veiled press release for some big pharma company?
Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences.
Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West
Seattle, WA.
On the website they also have interactive courses you can take, like spotting if the picture is a photorealistic-cgi or a real photo of a person.
I thought i would get very easy into it, but my fault quote was more than 50%. This was really an eye-opener.
You can try it here:
http://whichfaceisreal.com/ (http://whichfaceisreal.com/)
But there is so much more to it, i will go through the whole programme.
This should be a duty to have in schools everywhere.
What do you think?
Do you also feel sourrounded by Bullshit and think that humanity is getting dumber and dumber every day? (Like in the movie Idiocrasy...)
And i just have to think about that maybe one could connect Watch and Learn to this whole topic...?
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What exactly is bullshit anyway?
Surprising as it may seem, there has been considerable scholarly discussion about this exact question. Unsurprisingly given that scholars like to discuss it, opinions differ.
As a first approximation, we subscribe to the following definition:
Bullshit is language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.
It's an open question whether the term bullshit also refers to false claims that arise from innocent mistakes. Whether or not that usage is appropriate, we feel that the verb phrase calling bullshit definitely applies to falsehoods irrespective of the intentions of the author or speaker. Some of the examples treated in our case studies fall into this domain. Even if not bullshit sensu stricto, we can nonetheless call bullshit on them.
In this course, we focus on bullshit as it often appears in the natural and social sciences: in the form of misleading models and data that drive erroneous conclusions.
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Head = spinning a bit. I'll be back to you on this one. ;)
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Yes, please do. I don't know why your head is spinning though. Must have something to do with a bullshit overdose ;-)
I'm really like 'i have no idea' when it comes to the face-recognition test. I tried to apply the cues they gave and was looking for the markers, but mostly i had to go for the: "this one looks so fake-so it has to be real" descision, trying to compare the pictures psychologically like: "they put these two together to fool me, so the obvious fake one has to be the real one" but that should not be the case. And it is just not working for me.
I cannot decide between a fake cgi picture, radomly generated and a picture of a real human person! :o
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I would worry that the person trying to (pompously) "educate" us as to how to spot "bullshit" is ALWAYS pushing some sort of political agenda. People are not cattle, most people already have a bullshit detector.
So I would be concerned, especially as most educational establishments have some sort of political bias that this is another way to indoctrinate, quite the opposite of what they promise!
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I can understand what you are saying there Idopas, but in this case i find the teachers and their program really helpful and useful.
So one example:
Bar chart axes should include zero
We begin with a well-known issue: drawing bar charts with a measurement (dependent variable) axis that does not go to zero. The bar chart was created by the German economic development agency GTAI, and comes from a webpage about the German labor market. In the accompanying text, the agency boasts that German workers are more motivated and work more hours than do workers in other EU nations.
(https://i.postimg.cc/PqPRBS3q/GTAI-average-hours.gif)
It looks like Germany has a big edge over other nations such as Sweden, let alone France, right? No. The size of this gap is an illusion. The graph is misleading because the horizontal axis representing working hours does not go to zero, but rather cuts off at 36. Below, we've redrawn the graph with an axis going all the way to zero. Now the differences between countries seem negligible.
(https://i.postimg.cc/Xvmz39mk/GTAI-redrawn.png)
This one example shows that this information provided "Bar chart axes should include zero" helps you to see, that the chart above is used in a manipulating way. And that's the whole point.
Your statement i find a bit general. it is a good one to consider, but also the course of the teachers there can give you tools to read graphs with knowledge about graphs and their misuse.
So if an introcdinating person with a political agenda gives you a tool to spot tricks of persueing a political agenda and indoctrination, than i find it a good thing.
Does that make sense to you?
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I would worry that the person trying to (pompously) "educate" us as to how to spot "bullshit" is ALWAYS pushing some sort of political agenda. People are not cattle, most people already have a bullshit detector.
So I would be concerned, especially as most educational establishments have some sort of political bias that this is another way to indoctrinate, quite the opposite of what they promise!
They're probably somewhat left leaning, as you insinuate. But a lot of their stuff is actually pretty useful. My concern is more so that they are overly optimistic regarding the length people are willing to go to to detect deliberate misinformation. I think the real issue is not that people are easily fooled but that they are too willing to believe information that confirms their opinions. The rest just gets filtered out.
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Very good observation and point there Johnz. That's why i find this programm so important, because it is for students and so part of their education and they will have to go all the lenghts. I think this kind of lecture should be part of normal education in schools.
My concern is that a new kind of generation has arisen that has forgotten how to think for themselves, and is a product of a society who is polluted by advertising, commercials and the neo-liberal doktrin which leads to a anti-social behaviour and way of thinking (the "market" has become a "being" and it is said to regulate everything, but this is just a smokescreen and has become almost a religion, because of course it is people who act and who are responsible for things happeneing, not the market) and these people are now in the places in the society which influence the other parts like teachers, journalists, officials and they re-produce a surface based, market compliant way of thinking, where no alternatives are allowed, a very indoctrinated, capitalist neo-liberal way of thinking and interpreting data.
It is no longer two different opinions exchanging their viewpoints in interest to find a common way but immediately they are totally antagonized and fight themselves. Everything has become more complex but at the same time everything has become so fast that most people feel they have no time to dig deeper into subjects.
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I would worry that the person trying to (pompously) "educate" us as to how to spot "bullshit" is ALWAYS pushing some sort of political agenda. People are not cattle, most people already have a bullshit detector.
So I would be concerned, especially as most educational establishments have some sort of political bias that this is another way to indoctrinate, quite the opposite of what they promise!
They're probably somewhat left leaning, as you insinuate. But a lot of their stuff is actually pretty useful. My concern is more so that they are overly optimistic regarding the length people are willing to go to to detect deliberate misinformation. I think the real issue is not that people are easily fooled but that they are too willing to believe information that confirms their opinions. The rest just gets filtered out.
Quite agree. There is a phrase for it: "Confirmation Bias".
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I can understand what you are saying there Idopas, but in this case i find the teachers and their program really helpful and useful.
Does that make sense to you?
Yep I do take your point. But it isn't really "bullshit" is it. It is the fact that someone presenting something to you is often very 1-D, whereas there are many other things that can affect what is being shown to you that are often hidden, cannot be effectively included or are willfully left out. I suspect that sometimes it is done to fool the reader, many times I suspect it is not done for deception but just for convenience, simplicity or news space.
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Very good observation and point there Johnz. That's why i find this programm so important, because it is for students and so part of their education and they will have to go all the lenghts. I think this kind of lecture should be part of normal education in schools.
My concern is that a new kind of generation has arisen that has forgotten how to think for themselves, and is a product of a society who is polluted by advertising, commercials and the neo-liberal doktrin which leads to a anti-social behaviour and way of thinking (the "market" has become a "being" and it is said to regulate everything, but this is just a smokescreen and has become almost a religion, because of course it is people who act and who are responsible for things happeneing, not the market) and these people are now in the places in the society which influence the other parts like teachers, journalists, officials and they re-produce a surface based, market compliant way of thinking, where no alternatives are allowed, a very indoctrinated, capitalist neo-liberal way of thinking and interpreting data.
It is no longer two different opinions exchanging their viewpoints in interest to find a common way but immediately they are totally antagonized and fight themselves. Everything has become more complex but at the same time everything has become so fast that most people feel they have no time to dig deeper into subjects.
This is an interesting post, and does back up I think some of what I said earlier. I talked about political bias and, no offence meant, you show it well here. Blaming the fact that a generation has "forgotten to think" on capitalism. Ironically it is the left that has the most to blame for people not thinking for themselves.
Don't forget the left likes to think it gives power back to people, but that is a complete and utter delusion, bullshit if you like! :) The left is the political doctrine that governs from the centre with one creed that all must follow for the "common good", so all are "equal" with a state penalty (prison, privilege removal) for those who do not comply.
Capitalism, whether you like it or not, gives people the ability to think for themselves and it is that very fact that many do not like capitalism as it also allows people to fail which can be a problem, I get that as some people can be left behind. And I have many examples if you want me to quote them to back that up, but intelligent people like yourselves already know the examples I suspect if you care to think about it!
I can think of many pros and cons of the left and right, but accusing capitalism of people not thinking for themselves when it is a system that tacitly gives permission for people to do their own think; setting up SMEs, charities, marching to protest (which we have one every bloody week somewhere in this country) and so on, will not fly as an argument surely?
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I understand what you're saying and what i didn't mean was my use of the word capitalism vs. communism. What i meant was maybe being commercial, selling out, staying on the surface, having no time, having no connections to the past.
So what i'm critisizing is a decline in the school-system, at least i can say that for germany. My son is 17 and what and how he is learning in school nowadays is way worse than it was in my time and in my time it already was bullshit;-)
I don't know. i had problems in school, not because i didn't want to learn but because i did want to learn, go deeper, ask questions. I mean if not asking questions in school than what it is about? But school has become almost only about performance and reciting what the teacher said, and the teacher has to say what is in the curriculum.
Your points about the left, well i do get them. I kind of changed my view about that subject recently, because there are some things going on here in germany which maybe can look good on the surface, but when you dig deeper than it's bullshit. With the Fridays for Future thing going on and the Green Party rushing towards government you could say, finally! The good things come up. But here in germany it was with the socialist party and the green party who decided to go to war (Jugoslawia) for the first time after WW2 and the slogan "never ever war again" was just forgotten.
Here we now talk about more restrictions for the people to save the earth and save the climate, but no one is talking about how much the military-industrial-complex is polluting everything, and its green politicians who pose in uniforms of the army and are pro military adventures. So the left here for me has discredited itself for me very much. And many people who call themselves left are just repeating and reciting things they don't understand, but they do it because they have a bad conscience which is more forced by the left.
I just don't get it.
But i still have the feeling that we both talk about different subjects. I see this programme just as a tool, which helps to think for yourself and interpret data with your own mind.
I think you mostly refer to the tilte and the emotional aspect of the word "bullshit" as being somethimng that could hide an agenda. But what if you could detect that agenda by using the tools given by them?
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Very good observation and point there Johnz. That's why i find this programm so important, because it is for students and so part of their education and they will have to go all the lenghts. I think this kind of lecture should be part of normal education in schools.
My concern is that a new kind of generation has arisen that has forgotten how to think for themselves, and is a product of a society who is polluted by advertising, commercials and the neo-liberal doktrin which leads to a anti-social behaviour and way of thinking (the "market" has become a "being" and it is said to regulate everything, but this is just a smokescreen and has become almost a religion, because of course it is people who act and who are responsible for things happeneing, not the market) and these people are now in the places in the society which influence the other parts like teachers, journalists, officials and they re-produce a surface based, market compliant way of thinking, where no alternatives are allowed, a very indoctrinated, capitalist neo-liberal way of thinking and interpreting data.
It is no longer two different opinions exchanging their viewpoints in interest to find a common way but immediately they are totally antagonized and fight themselves. Everything has become more complex but at the same time everything has become so fast that most people feel they have no time to dig deeper into subjects.
As a scientist (possibly the most despised life-form after Christians in these parts) I mostly despair these days when I see how information is exchanged. Rational analytical thinking has gone out of the window and truth is nice if it backs up your agenda, otherwise it is disposable. Science itself (or more so the way that it's communicated) is partly to blame for this but that is another topic. altogether.
So, yes I think that sites like this one are very important. I know that many people no longer feel that 'bullshit' matters much anymore (because everything is bullshit anyway...) but that is a very dangerous road to go down and it will come to bit us in the arse.
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Science itself (or more so the way that it's communicated) is partly to blame for this but that is another topic. altogether.
Very good thought again and i would like to discuss that here. I think it fits very good here and i will come back to that later, i am only with my mobile for some days to come and writing wirh it is kind of frustrating.
until then i want to throw in some good lyrics about that matter:
system of a down - science
Making two possibilities a reality,
Predicting the future of things we all know,
Fighting off the diseased programming
Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries
Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth
Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
Spirit-moves-through-all-things
Spirit-moves-through-all-things
Spirit-moves-through-all-things,
Spirit-moves-through-all-things
Spirit-moves-through-all-things…
what you think abou that?
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Science itself (or more so the way that it's communicated) is partly to blame for this but that is another topic. altogether.
Very good thought again and i would like to discuss that here. I think it fits very good here and i will come back to that later, i am only with my mobile for some days to come and writing wirh it is kind of frustrating.
until then i want to throw in some good lyrics about that matter:
system of a down - science
I could write a lot about this. That song is a very good example of what I mean. What I get from it is that science may have the answers but what good does that do if people just believe what they feel is right anyway (based on easily manipulated feelings/opinions/faith/spirit whatever you want to call it). That’s probably not how it’s meant but the result is the same.
Science is a method of answering questions by trying to remove your own feelings and preconceptions and let the facts speak for themselves. It's actually very humble because it’s honest about its short comings, it's happy to admit failure and it appreciates criticism. All because these are factors that improve the actual science.
A good way to look at science is to use the western legal system as an analogy. You have an accused (your hypothesis), your evidence (data) and your peer reviewers (judge, jury and attorneys). You present your data to the best of your ability and interpret it based on current knowledge. Since you know that you don’t know everything you team up with other experts that can provide valuable input. You then let your fiercest opponents rip it to shreds and start again until you can present the best possible results. As in law, these results are not always clear cut and are open to interpretation and therefore misjudgment. Just as the public often don’t understand the crucial difference between ‘not proven guilty’ and ‘innocent’, they also don’t understand the difference between ‘the results show no…’ and ‘there is no…’. This is where science communication often falls short. Summarising complex subjects into 30 second titbits of information that can give a clear yes or no answer is a huge part of the problem. So, yes, law and science often get it wrong but on balance it is the most objective method to base these decisions on. And what would the alternative be? Somebody judging you because their opinion/feeling tells them you’re guilty/wrong? There is a lot of that happening in the world right now and it’s not going to get less anytime soon.
The whole polarisation of science vs. art/spirituality is really a non-entity. They are not mutually exclusive. Science follows an urge for knowledge and truth just like art does but on a different level. I know there are many science sceptics around here (lead by our own JS. Ha!). I find that whenever I have the science debate it usually ends in the same arguments, most of which boil down to ‘why bother with science when you can just use common sense’. Sadly, nothing is less common than common sense and you quickly end up with a bunch of, often completely contradictory, opinions. The other argument is usually something like animal testing or the nuclear bomb. Truly despicable things, no doubt, but it’s a bit like saying I don’t like art because of Justin Bieber. Science needs to be responsible (just like art does) but beyond that it needs no justification beyond your desire to practice it (just like art doesn’t). And if you think your art has no impact or fulfils no need, why bother? I often feel that science is really just a great misunderstood artform. I went to school in England and Germany and have never been taught the philosophy of science. Sure, I was taught scientific subjects, but they were always presented as facts that needed to be learned. The notion that science is a living, breathing, ever-changing and exciting method to find the best possible truth for a particular question at a particular time and the beauty and satisfaction of searching for and finding logic is rarely taught it seems.
Ok, so I did write a lot about this… 😊
PS. If you have the time and inclination, read The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.
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Wow, a very good read, thx for that elaborate post. Would love to comment on it and i will, but that has to be later.
Now i only copy and paste, my approach would be the kind of Rupert Sheldrake's works:
The Science Delusion (Science Set Free) (2012)
The Science Delusion, published in the US as Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery, summarises much of Sheldrake's previous work and encapsulates it into a broader critique of philosophical materialism, with the title apparently mimicking that of The God Delusion by one of his critics, Richard Dawkins.[77]
In the book Sheldrake proposes a number of questions as the theme of each chapter which seek to elaborate on his central premise that science is predicated on the belief that the nature of reality is fully understood, with only minor details needing to be filled in. This "delusion" is what Sheldrake argues has turned science into a series of dogmas grounded in philosophical materialism rather than an open-minded approach to investigating phenomena. He argues that there are many powerful taboos that circumscribe what scientists can legitimately direct their attention towards.[78]:6–12 The mainstream view of modern science is that it proceeds by methodological naturalism and does not require philosophical materialism.[79]
Sheldrake questions conservation of energy; he calls it a "standard scientific dogma,"[78]:337 says that perpetual motion devices and inedia should be investigated as possible phenomena,[78]:72–73 and has stated that "the evidence for energy conservation in living organisms is weak."[78]:83 He argues in favour of alternative medicine and psychic phenomena, saying that their recognition as being legitimate is impeded by a "scientific priesthood" with an "authoritarian mentality."[78]:327 Citing his earlier "psychic staring effect" experiments and other reasons, he stated that minds are not confined to brains and remarks that "liberating minds from confinement in heads is like being released from prison."[78]:229 He suggests that DNA is insufficient to explain inheritance, and that inheritance of form and behaviour is mediated through morphic resonance.[78]:157–186 He also promotes morphic resonance in broader fashion as an explanation for other phenomena such as memory.[78]:187–211
Reviews were mixed. Philosopher Mary Midgley writing in The Guardian welcomed it as "a new mind-body paradigm" to address "the unlucky fact that our current form of mechanistic materialism rests on muddled, outdated notions of matter."[80] She also stated that Sheldrake's "analogy between natural regularities and habit" could be found in the writings of C S Peirce, Nietzsche, William James and AN Whitehead.[80] In another review, Deepak Chopra commended Sheldrake for wanting "to end the breach between science and religion."[30] Philosopher Martin Cohen in The Times Higher Educational Supplement wrote that "Sheldrake pokes enough holes in such certainties [of orthodox science] to make this work a valuable contribution, not only to philosophical debates but also to scientific ones, too," although Cohen noted that Sheldrake "goes a bit too far here and there."[81]
Bryan Appleyard writing in The Sunday Times commented that Sheldrake was "at his most incisive" when making a "broad critique of contemporary science" and "scientism," but on Sheldrake's "own scientific theories" Appleyard noted that "morphic resonance is widely derided and narrowly supported. Most of the experimental evidence is contested, though Sheldrake argues there are 'statistically significant' results." Appleyard called it "highly speculative" and was unsure "whether it makes sense or not."[82]
Other reviews were less favourable. New Scientist's deputy editor Graham Lawton characterised Science Set Free as "woolly credulousness" and chided Sheldrake for "uncritically embracing all kinds of fringe ideas."[83] A review in Philosophy Now called the book "disturbingly eccentric," combining "a disorderly collage of scientific fact and opinion with an intrusive yet disjunctive metaphysical programme."[84]
My base science criticism is that i feel it has become kind of a fortress which shields itself from falsification when paradigms are challenged. And then one scientist calls another scientist unscientific.
In my opinion scientist have to incorporate in their techniques of collecting data, the human factor of conscience, which will influence data as its collected.
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This is a difficult subject to discuss without writing A LOT ;D
I think the principles of many things are being questioned these days under the guise of free thought, freedom of speech, religious freedom etc. While that sounds great, you don't need to dig very deep to see that these movements rarely come from a position of openness or inclusiveness. Like democracy, science is under threat and while many people see that as a good thing I am not sure they really understand what science actually does for them and, more importantly, they don't fully grasp the implications of the alternatives.
As we say in Germany: Wenn es dem Esel zu wohl ist, geht er auf's Eis tanzen (When the donkey has it too good, he goes dancing on the ice).
I don't think this has ever been more true.
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I think i see it the same way, science is threatened, but as you said before its also kind of an self inflicted inhouse-problem.
Think about White Coats...
In the book by Sheldrake, he describes the shift from the early science being more holistic to a pure matrialistic way of, and i think this is now "des pudels kern", interpreting the data.
Science tries to collect data that is detached from interpretation, but on one level to me its clear, that there is no such thing. Every person is interpreting data personally and every person has their own personal moral compass to do so. So there has to be a frame, a paradigme on which you have to comply to, to be able to cross check the data and interpret it. And sometimes new discoverys call for a paradigme shift, but then the human factor comes in place and these shifts are not easily coming for many.
And then we have a capitalist, neo-liberal organized society in which money seems to be always the main point and i "believe" that many so called scientific outputs are mainly advertisements for some agenda behind it.
An interesting example is the fact, that a sugar cartell managed to distort perception of the public away from the poisonous effects of our proceeded food, which contains way to much sugar, with a "scientific" campaign that forced the public to think about fat as a big unhealthy problem, just to bury the discussion about sugar.
I will search for examples, i don't have the facts at the moment. But i saw a good documentary about it.
I think i could say it like that, that i have nothing against real science but agsinst the corrupt part of it.
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...and corrupt science uses bullshit-tactics ;)
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It's actually quite difficult for science to be corrupt (for several reasons). The problem is more so that what you hear in the news is often a poor reflection of the actual science. Sensationalist claims get you noticed (they also get you ripped to shreds in the science world but you don't hear about that and the damage is already done anyway).
Good science communication is an important skill that far too few people practice (both, scientists and the media). In most cases it's actually really difficult for scientists to give the public the black and white answers that they want. It does take some basic understanding of science to spot bullshit and that is my biggest criticism of science. It doesn't try hard enough to engage people. Scientists are often far too caught up in their own world to have an appreciation of the doubts and fears of the rest of the world. It's more ignorance than arrogance.
The other problem is that science gives you credibility which is a form of power. As such, it is just as susceptible to attracting sociopaths and narcissists as any other field that rewards people with too much attention such as artists and politicians. The best scientists are often the ones that nobody knows.
And all the best science is useless if people don't accept it. As somebody who works in marine conservation I am in a perpetual state of despair. And I do a lot of thinking about what science can do to help. This statement really resonates with me because it hits the nail on the head:
“I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
—James Gustave Speth, US advisor on climate change
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..damn, in the train writing, lost connection and everything is gone..
will only repeat one question until i get back my pc and can write without swearing constantly to my fckn mobile keyboard
What do you think about medicine and the placebo effekt, scientifically speaking?
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What do you think about medicine and the placebo effekt, scientifically speaking?
The placebo effect is super interesting and I've done a bit of reading on it. From what I understand it's strongest on pain management and certain mental conditions such as some forms of depression. You may have heard of the knee surgery study where people who had placebo surgery (so no surgery at all) did just as well as those who had the actual surgery in terms of pain relief. It even works when you are told that you're getting a placebo (but not quite as well).
You can check it out here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020712075415.htm
There is a whole research field dedicated to the placebo effect. This article sums up the scientific perspective quite well:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect
Basically, giving yourself attention in a positive, caring way is good thing. I guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out but most of us are probably guilty of neglecting our own real needs to often.
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I read about a case in which a patient who was treated with a heavy medication, but was unknowingly in the placebo control group, tried to kill himself with an overdose. He got into panic and called the ambulance and they found him almost dying, with severe symptoms showing of poisoning. in the hospital they found out, that the pills he had taken were placebos.
So we have a well known scientific fact, the placebo effect, but the implications of it are not being transfered to science itself. I think the placebo shows that mind is over matter. So the constitution of the mindset is influencing, well: everything. The perception and also the body itself. So the person which thinks that it is poisoned is in such a mindset, that the thought of poisoning manifests in the body and other persons who encounter that person, will see the effects of that thinking and so a false reality (the person is not poisoned) becomes a reality.
I think that modern science has failed yet to overcome several dogmas that are present. In the wonderful book The Science Delusion (Science Set Free) which i wrote abvout already, the author writes about ten dogmas modern science has. he says:
Here are ten central doctrines, that most white coats (well, i translated that loosely here;-) adopt unaudited:
1. Everything is of mechanical nature. Dogs for example are not living organisms with their own objectives, but only complex mechanisms. Humans are also Machines, as Richard Dawkins‘ said in a living expression even „lumbering Robots“ Their brains are like gentically programmed computers.
2. Matter has basically no awareness. It has no inwardness, no subjectivity, no „opinion“. Also human awareness is pure illusion played by materialistic events in the brain.
3. The entirety of all matter and energy is always the same (the big bang, with that all matter and energy suddenly appeared, being the only exception)
4. The laws of nature are once and for all set. They are today, as they were from the beginning, and as they will be forever.
5. Nature has no purpose, evolution is without direction or objective.
6. Biological inheritance is exclusively of material nature, mediated by the genetic material, the DNA, and other material structures.
7. The mind, our thinking and feeling, is in the brain and is nothing more than brain activity. If we look at a tree, the picture we see is not out there where it seems to be, but it is inside, in the brain.
8. Memory is stored as material traces in the brain and will be erased with death.
9. Unexplainable phenomena like telepathie are pure imagination.
10. Mechanical medicine is the only effective medicine.
What i so like about that book, is that the author then writes:
Everyone of these ten doctrines, in terms of a radical skepticism, i want to turn into a question.
New horizons open up when a questionless accepted assumption is no longer seen as a self-evident truth, but is made to an approach of exploratory questioning. So the assumption that nature is machine like or mechanic turns into the question: "is nature mechanic?" Or the assumption matter has no awareness turns into the question: "is matter without awareness?"
I think those questions that arise, were always there and that should undeline my thoughts, that science has taken a direction over many decades, in which those question haven't been transfered into science to let science be transfomed as a whole.
Back to the placebo, i just found this, very much the direction i was trying to express:
Implications of the Placebo Effect
https://scienceterms.net/psychology/placebo-effect/ (https://scienceterms.net/psychology/placebo-effect/)
Many researchers have asserted that the placebo effect is entirely psychological. Put another way, this means that it only effects our perceptions and has no real effect on physiology. Kaptchuk has said,
Placebos may make you feel better, but they will not cure you. They have been shown to be most effective for conditions like pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea.
However, recent studies have shown that this is not true. The placebo effect can measurably influence blood test results, heart rate, and blood pressure. The implications of this are profound. They point to psychological effects that can produce tangible physiological changes within the body. In fact, if these results are explored more fully and harnessed, they could literally change the face of medicine.
[..]
When we take the implications of the placebo effect to their logical conclusion, some really interesting things come to light. For the last hundred years or more, the dominant paradigm has been one of scientific materialism. An unspoken assumption in this paradigm is the presence and unerring truth of the objective world. Subjective factors were seen as errors, artifacts which must be factored out in order to get a clear view of the “true” effects of a drug or an experiment. However, it may be that this assumption has been unwarranted.
[..]
We once thought that personal factors were just noise in experimental results. If the current studies on the placebo effect are accurate, then it means that they are so much more than that. It means that subjective, internal factors have a definitive influence upon external events. The division between the objective and subjective is blurred. We must come to accept that psychological events shape objective reality. What we believe makes things happen, at least within our body.
I do think that science needs spirituality again.
That scientists have to become more spiritual themselves to produce better science.
I think that a shaman is also a scientist.