

Why I am no longer a skeptic - zephyrfalcon
http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html

======
lmm
>rom his writings, I gather that Dawkins would be content to live in a world
where gentle Anglican vicars presided over their bored, civilised
congregations in England's vales and hills, while the British Empire did its
dirty work elsewhere, in places like Kenya, India, and West Cork. He saves his
real ire for the creeds of the unruly natives — all those nasty Muslims and
Catholics and tribalists who don't know their place.

Islam gets called out more often _because it does more damage_. Most of the
English CofE faithful, I suspect, don't actually believe in their religion;
they attend the services and get on with their lives. They're not preaching
the evils of condoms or calling for the lynching of those who criticised them
or, yes it has to be said, undertaking terrorism in the name of their
religion.

>This is not the place to describe the many problems and hypocrisies of
neoliberalism. Suffice it to say that I do not believe that liberal democracy,
which condemns the majority of the world's population to varying degrees of
slavery, is a perfect system. I do not believe that the metaphors of liberal
democracy allow us a perfect view of reality. And therefore I do not believe
in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge. It might be
the best we've got, but when it comes to human advancement — including the
advance of science itself — other sources of knowledge can be just as useful,
and often more important.

Simply untrue. Indeed the scientific method may be only the best we've got
rather than perfect, but that still makes it the best we've got. "other
sources of knowledge" - like what, mysticism? are _less useful_.

>What's more, skeptics never acknowledge that racial science was defeated by
political ideology, and not by science itself. In fact, there was nothing that
could have defeated it within the empirical framework of racial scientists.
Their racist experiments confirmed their racist hypotheses based on their
racist observations. But while the science supported them, politics, in the
aftermath of World War 2 and the Holocaust, did not. After 1945, racial
science became politically unacceptable in western liberal democracies, and
remains so in spite of the various attempts to revive it. It was not disproved
by the scientific method; instead, the political ideologies behind racial
science were discarded, and replaced by new ones that did not accommodate it.

Which is a bad thing, because it makes it very hard to be confident we know
the truth about racial matters. Racist "science" is unscientific, but so too
is politically correct "science"; which is more harmful is indeed a matter of
politics, because both are simply expressions of politics. Neither is founded
in science or skepticism.

>Cheating people out of their money is one thing, but cheating them out of
their lives is quite another. To read some skeptic takes on alternative
medicine, you'd think only heart disease rivalled it as a killer. It's true
that alternative medicine is not going to cure anyone of serious illness, but
it's also generally true that the terminally ill only turn to it when real
medicine has given up hope on them.

Generally, but not exclusively. People really do die because they looked to
"alternative medicine" rather than medicine; the fact that most people who use
"alternative medicine" don't does not really excuse this.

~~~
lutusp
> Islam gets called out more often _because it does more damage_.

This is shortsighted. I personally think all religious belief is harmful, but
in the sweep of history, Islam has a record of much more tolerance than
Christianity, to name just one other religion.

Over long periods of time, Islamic cities and countries were much more
tolerant of other religions than Christian cities and countries. Christianity
has, and deserves, a reputation for being utterly intolerant of other
religions.

This is not to excuse the excesses of Islam, when and where they took place,
and I personally think the world would be a better place without religion. But
it's simply inaccurate to describe Islam as doing more damage from a
historical perspective.

I speak as someone who tried to open a Planned Parenthood clinic in a rural
area (where it was really needed), was threatened with death more often than I
care to remember, and who saw clinics and doctor's offices set on fire with
depressing regularity. But this can't compare to the Inquisition, a time when
Christianity displayed its true colors.

~~~
berntb
Dawkins' main problem with your criticism of Christianity would probably be
that it is too short...

As other comments have noted, he has criticized Christianity more than Islam.

For a less well known counter example, this is from a not so extreme Muslim
country (a few friends are from Bangladesh, so I read up a bit).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Banglade...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Bangladesh%29)

>> It is officially estimated that about 75% of all Hindu lands in Bangladesh
have been seized by using this act

Edit: I have to ask -- why do left wing people have much less problems with
the quite common Muslim antisemitism, than with Nazi antisemitism? Most of the
arguments (except for the religious ones) and sources were copied from the
nazis. It is even written in official(!) media in the Muslim world.

~~~
icebraining
_I have to ask -- why do left wing people have much less problems with the
quite common Muslim antisemitism, than with Nazi antisemitism?_

Israel, and more specifically the Israel-Paletine conflict. The Left tend to
side with the people they perceive as weak in a conflict, and while during
Nazi rule they were persecuted and killed by the millions, they're now the
more powerful side. Being close allies with the US doesn't help.

This is, at least, what I see from knowing well a bunch of Southern European
left-wing people, from social-democracts to communists.

~~~
berntb
Are you really claiming that left wing idealists accept racist hate propaganda
-- as long as it is from a billion of people that seems "weaker" than five
millions of people?

(I am not arguing, I have no better explanation for this craziness myself.)

~~~
lmm
The biggest problem with leftist thought is its tendency to degenerate into
paternalism. It's easy to see the antisemitism of a largely poor, uneducated
group as "not their own fault"; they're a product of their upbringing and
environment. To criticize them for being antisemitic is as unfair and
pointless as to criticize a savage for, well, savagery. Under this worldview,
what these antisemitic poor people need is love, education and a chance to
better themselves; give them this, and the antisemitism would probably wither
away (except for a few truly bad individuals, who it would then be perfectly
legitimate to criticize).

By contrast the Nazis had no such excuse; the Germans were quite possibly the
best-educated and most advanced nation in the world. Not to mention the way
they put their antisemitism into practice.

(speaking as a leftist myself)

~~~
berntb
Oh my god. :-) Off the top of my head...

1\. As far as I can tell, this antisemitism thing is mainly from dictators
that need an external enemy to hate. (A universal phenomenon in those
countries -- and yes, using external enemies is not unique to dictators.) Just
see how Iran motivates anything with attacks against Israel. _The left wingers
must KNOW what they are supporting!_

2\. Isn't it racism to accept so low standards for [mainly ethnic] groups and
assume them to be unable to be responsible for their actions?!

3\. This tolerance (of e.g. antisemitism) goes for Muslims living in Western
Europe too, which hardly have these excuses. So it isn't coherent.

4\. Why do the left accept the arguments and world view (re Israel), when they
at the same time argues it comes from a bunch of illiterates that aren't
responsible for their actions/opinions?

5\. Should people with low education get lower punishments for crimes? Should
they get no punishment if they can't read and don't understand the law?

6\. Afaik, e.g. Iran has a quite large part educated of their population.
[Also, that was a high culture _thousands_ of years before my ancestors had
writing.]

Etc, etc, etc.

(Still not arguing, fascinated. I have no clue what the Hell political
believers on all sides are smoking -- I just want to live in a country without
any of them.)

~~~
lmm
>As far as I can tell, this antisemitism thing is mainly from dictators that
need an external enemy to hate. (A universal phenomenon in those countries --
and yes, using external enemies is not unique to dictators.) Just see how Iran
motivates anything with attacks against Israel.

Dictators do use it, but it works because the population supports it. The
people really do hate Israel and the Jews.

>2\. Isn't it racism to accept so low standards for [mainly ethnic] groups and
assume them to be unable to be responsible for their actions?!

Eh. Maybe. I suspect those who were bothered by this would argue that it's not
about race, it's about socioeconomic status. That those of lower socioeconomic
status need/deserve help that the rest of us don't is pretty much the core
thesis of the left.

>3\. This tolerance (of e.g. antisemitism) goes for Muslims living in Western
Europe too, which hardly have these excuses.

Even in western europe, you're largely talking about a ghettoized underclass.
There's not a lot of tolerance of antisemitism from e.g. serious academics
(muslim or otherwise). The nouveau riche sometimes get away with it, but again
they're being looked on with pity by the left, and it's assumed they got those
attitudes in their early days.

>4\. Why do the left accept the arguments and world view (re Israel), when
they at the same time argues it comes from a bunch of illiterates that aren't
responsible for their actions/opinions?

I don't think you see leftists following the same Jewish conspiracy theories
as Iranian peasants. Many on the left do believe Israel shouldn't exist in its
current form, simply because we don't think it was right for the UN to
arbitrarily confiscate the land of a bunch of (largely) innocent Palestinians.

>5\. Should people with low education get lower punishments for crimes? Should
they get no punishment if they can't read and don't understand the law?

Speaking for myself, yes that should be taken into account. If you're asking
about the orthodoxy, I think the left would object to the notion that the
justice system should have anything to do with punishment; its goals should be
the prevention of crime, which is served a little bit by deterrence, and much
more by reform. If you're thinking about it in terms of preventing re-
offending, an uneducated person probably needs to take more time before
they're ready to re-enter society. Not that the current prison system is good
at helping with that.

>6\. Afaik, e.g. Iran has a quite large part educated of their population.

Not really AIUI. There's small a university-educated middle class in the
capital, from whom we hear a disproportionate amount in the media because
they're the ones who speak English. And these people are quite possibly less
anti-semitic than the general population. Certainly the left would expect them
to be.

~~~
berntb
A few days too late, sigh. If I had time then, I would have written this...

I really think the hypothesis "We hate everything the US do and all their
close friends" fits better as an explanation for the left's double standards.
(Even without considering the venom against equally uneducated right wing
extremist idiots.)

Disclaimer -- I only know Sweden well, but similar positions are seen also in
English.

Here the media are very left leaning and tend to straight out censor pro-
Israeli news and negative information about Palestinians.

Swedish media never mentioned e.g. Pallywood and the same goes for news about
torture between Palestinian groups. UN's Ban's recent Iran criticism in
Teheran was mangled in the translation(!) -- that is quite typical.

And so on.

It is just hard to not see my local left wingers as propagandists in this
question. Often even filled with hate.

(Swedish media is why I follow this subject, I grew up believing them -- and
I'm totally disgusted by now. The Mid East is a good test of Swedish media.)

>>I think the left would object to the notion that the justice system should
have anything to do with punishment; its goals should be the prevention of
crime, which is served a little bit by deterrence, and much more by reform.

I know all about this -- Sweden. These are the questions that are never
answered:

The left seriously argue against both the existence of game theory and the
existence of uncurable psychopaths?

Is the left really aware of that many crime victims gets their lives
destroyed?

~~~
lmm
>I really think the hypothesis "We hate everything the US do and all their
close friends" fits better as an explanation for the left's double standards.

Shrug. It's possible. Obviously as someone who takes quite a lot of the
leftist view I don't like that explanation.

>The left seriously argue against both the existence of game theory

Interestingly criminals tend not to take a rational approach to evaluating the
risk of punishment (or else, their utility function is rather skewed). There's
a wealth of evidence that longer prison sentences don't deter crime any more
than short ones, and while the threat of prison has some deterrent effect,
it's less efficient overall than e.g. community service (which has far better
reoffending rates)

>and the existence of uncurable psychopaths?

While such people exist, a) they make up a tiny proportion of the current
prison population b) prison, and "punishment" in general, is not really an
appropriate way to deal with them. Some people genuinely do need to be kept
out of society, but we can deal with those cases as a medical matter rather
than crime and punishment.

>Is the left really aware of that many crime victims gets their lives
destroyed?

You'll find a lot less sympathy for violent criminals than property crimes.
Certainly the leftist position would be that, considering their overall life,
a typical burglar is more in need of help from society than their typical
victim, but I don't think that's so unreasonable. Certainly going by the
obvious financial measure it's true.

~~~
berntb
Thanks for the answer.

You have nothing to add re Israel's existence?

As I wrote: Why no indignation AT ALL over the coldly planned destruction of
Palestinian lives in the camps of Libanon, Syria, etc?! All other cases in WW
I/II have been laid behind them by the victims, but this.

To the other arguments might be added that more Jews had to flee in the Middle
East (including the West Bank 1948) than Palestinians 1948. Ethnic cleansing
-- because of their religion, not in the middle of a dirty civil war...

Those Jews got most assets stolen, including multiple times larger area than
Israel itself. Why is there no indignation at all?!

I could probably add more. But the previous two which the left _ignores_ are
at least as bad as anything Israel has done, even with the left's description
of Israel.

I can't use any milder description than "disgusting double standards",
especially if you add the non-criticism of state supported nazi hate
propaganda...

Re crime:

>>There's a wealth of evidence that longer prison sentences don't deter crime
any more than short ones

I've heard that sentence length is irrelevant since I started school, but...
It seems just too close to other lies they fed us in Swedish school.

1\. Is that measured for first time criminals only? It is a big step to risk
jail.

2\. To simplify, there are two types of criminals. The first are the idiots
that drink beer on a Saturday and get in a knife fight and the second type
consider and weigh for/against like any other entrepeneur. How is the sentence
length sensitivity if you ignore things like drunks that knife each others?

3\. Sentences have influence. A proof: If there was a death sentence for e.g.
jay walking, not even _I_ would do it (sober, see 2.). But -- I wouldn't
jaywalk even if it was just one year in jail. In that way, there is no
influence by sentence length -- is that how the claim is measured?

4\. But certainly, psychopaths are not that influenced by punishment...

>>[psychopaths are a tiny part of the prison population and can be handled as
a separate case]

Do you have a reference for the claim?

The figures I've seen (easy to google, from Hare afaik) say 20% of the US
prison population, 50%(!) of all violent crime. That is hardly something
minimal to just ignore...?!

>> a typical burglar is more in need of help from society than their typical
victim

I know of a couple of females that were very, very upset over a burglary and
had e.g. nerve problems and problems sleeping home for quite a while. I slept
with a couple of knives for a couple of months.

I only know about Sweden. Afaik, there are two types of burglars:

\- Hard drug users. The logical solution is _not_ to give them short sentences
if they aren't likely to have stopped the drugs -- for their own sake.

\- International crime syndicates -- see type two above (entrepeneur).

~~~
lmm
There's certainly some element of not expecting much from poor arab states.
Yes, we do hold Israel to a higher standard than its neighbours - because it's
richer, because it's seen as an extension of the US, and because it advertises
and makes much of its status as the only democracy in the region. And there's
probably at least some element of racism, but I think it's less a case of
"it's all the jews' fault" and more "these smart white folks have a burden the
brown savages do not".

>All other cases in WW I/II have been laid behind them by the victims, but
this.

My instinct is to lay that at the feet of religion. Two violently opposed
religions claiming the same areas as important holy sites makes peace hard.

>1\. Is that measured for first time criminals only? It is a big step to risk
jail.

AIUI it's been tested across criminals in general, not just first time.

>2\. To simplify, there are two types of criminals. The first are the idiots
that drink beer on a Saturday and get in a knife fight and the second type
consider and weigh for/against like any other entrepeneur. How is the sentence
length sensitivity if you ignore things like drunks that knife each others?

The thing is, "crime doesn't pay" isn't just a slogan, it's actually true. So
the kind of smart people who evaluate the consequences usually end up
following a different career. The only place it seems to me that it might make
a difference would be the kind of grey area tax avoidance/fraud schemes, where
the person is going to argue that what they did isn't a crime at all. But I
don't think there would be much support for harsher sentencing of crimes that
were only just on the wrong side of the law.

>3\. Sentences have influence. A proof: If there was a death sentence for e.g.
jay walking, not even I would do it (sober, see 2.). But -- I wouldn't jaywalk
even if it was just one year in jail. In that way, there is no influence by
sentence length -- is that how the claim is measured?

AIUI studies mostly look at crimes for which the sentencing guidelines were
changed, or where different regions sentence differently, or statistically
compare criminals who were given different sentences for the same crime.
Obviously none of these methods are perfect.

I'll defer to you on psychopaths.

>\- Hard drug users. The logical solution is not to give them short sentences
if they aren't likely to have stopped the drugs -- for their own sake.

But prison is no good at getting them off the drugs or stopping them
reoffending, unless you're going to lock them up forever to rot; what would a
long prison sentence achieve that a short one wouldn't? Medical treatment and
community service give them a better chance than prison - though still not a
great one - at being able to reintegrate into society.

>\- International crime syndicates -- see type two above (entrepeneur).

AIUI most of the inherently illegal income for crime syndicates comes from
drugs, but it's hard to see how heavier sentencing would damage that income.
Street-level dealers are easily replaceable and it's a pretty crappy job
already, I don't think longer prison sentences would damage their recruitment.
The executives usually stand to lose all their money and lifestyle if they're
ever convicted (proceeds of crime and all that); they're banking on paying the
right bribes and/or never getting caught.

AIUI you missed a third category of burglar: the independent "professional"
who burgles because they're poor and have no skills with which to get a job.
But while these guys do a bit better than drug addicts in prison (sometimes
they're able to get some kind of qualification there - which is pretty much
the only case where spending a longer time in prison will help), community
service sentences still give them a better chance of not returning to crime.

~~~
berntb
Re Israel:

I have a hard time to take seriously excuses like "we have harder demands on
democracies" together with _no criticism of state supported Nazi race hatred_.

It is just ridiculously large double standards.

A couple of more examples:

Syria was one of the world's worst police states long before the present
turmoil -- many times worse treatment of its citizens than Israel, even with a
Palestinian description. Syria is/was a big part of the Israeli conflict, so
it is discussed when the conflict is discussed. The criticism of Syria from
the left has been almost nil.

The Swedish left wing politics have existed for a bit more than a century.
During that time, they have _never_ supported a democracy against a dictator.

As I wrote, there are many more examples of this insanity.

The _real_ reason for this lefty weirdness, is that foreign politics are
treated as arguments for internal politics.

The problem is: with incoherent arguments, conspiracy theories and disgusting
double standards -- why would anyone sane take the left seriously?

I seriously don't believe you consider so gigantic double standards as
rational -- the modern difference is that they aren't for nobles/kings now...

Why do _you_ try to defend double standards of a factor of (at least!)
thousands? Do you have no intellectual integrity? Do you identify with the
position, like football fans?

Re prison:

We have too different societal systems and prison implementations.

To a Swede, the US 19th century prison system looks both counterproductive and
like a crime against humanity.

Sure -- you can make a good argument that a country with 30 times the Swedish
population is impossible to control and manage; the problem size increases
with the square of the population, or something.

Also, Sweden didn't have "real" criminal subcultures and organised crime
syndicates until quite recently. And still don't have desperate people, except
for drug users. An influencing factor might be that the police isn't
functioning well (compared to most of the rest of Europe) and punishments are
short, so crime-as-profession might be a better deal in Sweden.

But in general, if you make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary
proofs. To argue against mathematics (in this case, game theory and
evolutionary biology) is an extraordinary claim.

Sure, humans have culture -- which is updated when the environment is updated.
There is an obvious lag of at least decades, before the cultures change.

And it is easy to make proof of concept examples of punishments influencing
crime (e.g. see previous re prison/death for jaywalking).

~~~
lmm
>But in general, if you make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary
proofs. To argue against mathematics (in this case, game theory and
evolutionary biology) is an extraordinary claim.

To argue that humans (and criminals in particular) behave rationally is a far
more extraordinary claim. I believe in using evidence over theory (much like
in medicine - see the use of blood-thinning drugs after heart attacks) - and
the (admittedly imperfect) evidence we have is that prison sentences are
ineffective in preventing future crime.

~~~
berntb
I see you gave up defending thousands of times less criticism of brutal
dictators and nazi racist hatred propaganda. (See previous examples if you
want to touch that.)

There are afaik papers that discuss different evolutionary strategies for
animals of different social status in groups. In some level, behaviour with so
big influences on fitness generally makes sense in game theory.

It would be interesting to see support for the claims about sentence length
not influencing behaviour? I've only heard claims, bever seen a good overview
of the research. (As I wrote above, not or drunk idiots getting into fights.)

------
coolestuk
The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else
can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of
hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he
works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is
particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses
the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who
suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee.

Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM.
Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that
there may be as many as 100,000 victims.
[http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-
mut...](http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mutilation-
might-be-illegal-but-it-still-takes-place-in-the-uk/)

Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or
two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell.

When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere
news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an
array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in
not bringing prosecutions.

It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has
barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of
stories in the last decade is no more than 20.

When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is
racist to get involved.

So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems
to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.

~~~
LaGrange
"Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade
or two."

No they didn't. It's a common subject in blogs, forums and such less-visible
mediums. But if you think it's easy to get into the media with that, you're
wrong -- you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons -- even
I, if faced with a mainstream article that focuses on FGM, would grow
suspicious, since when the media cares about women this much?

~~~
lloeki
Imagine an ad. A woman buys a car, comes back home, shows it to her husband,
which takes them for a ride. The woman says: "Hey, isn't that nice for the
price tag?". The guy thinks a bit, then at the first turn, violently drops the
woman out of the car, and says, grinning ear to ear while he thoroughly enjoys
the moment: "Now, that's _perfect_ ".

This ad would not stand a single second before a horde of people would yell at
how sexist this is and the media would bathe in the scandal.

Yet it's been a few years the exact opposite ad[0] airs in France, daily.
That's not the only one, there are a shitload of ads that market men as
inherently stupid and worthless fools (at best), yet the CSA[1] regularly bans
content that would be subject to doubtful interpretations of women status. It
turns out in some cases that animals just seem to deserve better protection
than men.

I'm not _quite_ sure the solution to sexism is glorifying women while
vilifying men (which just reads like _more_ sexism — i.e differentiating
statuses between genders — either way). We are different in a few ways for
sure, just _not_ better or worse, but can't we just all finally see each other
as, you know, human beings, and respect each other as such?

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oCt-xb_ecg>

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_sup%C3%A9rieur_de_l%27a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_sup%C3%A9rieur_de_l%27audiovisuel)

~~~
fistofjohnwayne
When will people stand up for white men :c

------
spauka
That was certainly an interesting if not completely ridiculous read... The
author seems to spend most of his time generalizing and erroneously
misinterpreting the view points of those he perceives as skeptics (the most
heinous of which include his characterization of skeptics as people who "hate
and fear" philosophy, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever
heard).

He seems to have misguided views on everything from modern medicines use of
the placebo, to the development of fields such as computation linguistics and
medical science. Here's the deal, if the author can demonstrably prove that
people who use homeopathy know that it is just a placebo, then they can go for
it. But they don't. If the author can show that there exist better methods for
researching language, then go for it, but he doesn't. In fact, as someone who
is interested in the field and friends with many computational linguists, let
me tell you they are trying to look for better models to deal with the
uncertainty inherent in NLP, and I'm not even sure where his statement that
computational linguists fear pragmatics comes from. That is complete crap.

Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true. I.E.
yes, the atheist community on reddit can have misguided views, and yes people
like Hitchens and Dawkins and the like are subject to their own personal
biases, but both those people and indeed most of these communities are acutely
aware of this fact and spend a lot of time trying to come to terms with it
(look at the recent furor about whether the glorification of people posting
snarky remarks made to "fundies" on reddit constituted a positive step). His
rant against the skeptic conspiracy against feminism is also something which I
found incomprehensible, and as far as I can tell completely untrue.

I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince
yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while
pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories
and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and
oversimplifications.

P.S. I did enjoy the bit about the skeptics movement being a neoliberal
conspiracy.

~~~
irahul
> Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true.

> I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince
> yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while
> pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories
> and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and
> oversimplifications.

Personally I found it extremely painful to read. This article is like a small
piece of chocolate hidden inside shit ton of dog shit. That small piece of
chocolate is totally negated by heaps of dog shit. You just keep reading in
the hope that the hidden chocolate would be worth it, but you find out what
you believed to be chocolate was few crystals of household sugar, and you
ploughed through dog shit for nothing. Also, this experience left a bad taste
in your mouth.

~~~
batista
> _Personally I found it extremely painful to read. This article is like a
> small piece of chocolate hidden inside shit ton of dog shit. That small
> piece of chocolate is totally negated by heaps of dog shit. You just keep
> reading in the hope that the hidden chocolate would be worth it, but you
> find out what you believed to be chocolate was few crystals of household
> sugar, and you ploughed through dog shit for nothing. Also, this experience
> left a bad taste in your mouth._

Notice how you didn't manage to come up with one iota of actual criticism on
specific points?

~~~
irahul
> Notice how you didn't manage to come up

I would replace that "didn't manage to come up" with "didn't come up" -
trolls, feeding etc. The whole article is full of straw-man and false
generalizations. If you got anything out of it, superb. I didn't; and I simply
stated that. I don't see why I am obliged to write a full rebuttal.

~~~
koide
You aren't obliged, but it would be nice to read some explicit
counterarguments and some strawmen exposed.

Given your strong opinions about the piece, at least rebutting the worst part
of the article should be easy and not take much effort. It would also make the
thread more interesting.

------
stcredzero
_> Online forums, whatever their subject, can be forbidding places for the
newcomer; over time, most of them tend to become dominated by small groups of
snotty know-it-alls_

Human interaction is woven out of several different materials. One of these is
social dominance. It's even more fundamental to our psychology than sex.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/actors-see-status.html>

Unfortunately, while it's widely recognized in much of the civilized world
that letting our sexual impulses run unfiltered in the professional context is
detrimental to a relaxed workplace where people feel free to interact openly,
most people seem to deny the existence of our need to seek and test social
dominance. This often leads to the pollution of communication and debate.

There is nothing wrong with sexuality in the workplace, so long as it's
discrete and consensual. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with dominance
behavior in forums, so long as it serves substantive debate. When dominance
takes a back-seat to the love of knowledge, things are okay. When it's the
other way around: considered harmful. (I suppose Galileo had some experience
with this.)

 _> The truth is, I became a skeptic for aesthetic reasons, and the truth is,
its aesthetics now repel me. I increasingly find the core skeptical output
monotonous and repetitive: there are only so many times you can debunk the
same old junk, and I've had it up to here with science fanboyism. And when
skeptics talk about subjects outside their domain of expertise, I'm struck by
how irrelevant their comments are, and how ugly, shrill and trivial._

I've noticed that techies often create mini "crapsack worlds" in forums and in
games. (And I'm not referring to colorful backstories for a game, but in the
actual social dynamics between players or commenters.) Much of it can be
characterized as "immaturity." However, that label alone isn't so helpful.
It's better to ask: what makes a society or a place wonderful? What best
encourages a high signal to noise ratio?

------
lutusp
This issue is much easier to resolve than by way of the thousands of words the
article's author used.

What a layman calls "skepticism", a scientist called the "null hypothesis."
The null hypothesis says that an idea with no supporting evidence is assumed
to be false. So in science, and to a skeptic, until there's evidence, there's
no justification for taking an idea seriously.

To someone not trained in science (the "sheep"), an idea is true until there's
contrary evidence. To a scientist (the "goat") by contrast, an idea is false
util there's supporting evidence.

A sheep believes in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and UFO visitations only
because these ideas haven't been disproven, but _they cannot be disproven_ \--
that would require proof of a negative, an impossible evidentiary burden. This
explains most of the really weird things people believe.

The remedy is skepticism, a healthy intellectual posture that awaits evidence.
That's why I'm still a skeptic.

~~~
praptak
The author is still a skeptic in the sense you described (first paragraph.) He
just rejects the identification with the social group.

~~~
dalke
It's as boring as saying "I love science fiction but I'm not a member of SF
fandom."

------
Tichy
Weird rambling. From his style of argumentation ("other skeptics are sexist
and Star Trek fans") he probably wasn't a very good skeptic anyway.

~~~
btilly
Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also
happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON _ever_?

But if it helps you avoid cognitive dissonance to conclude that he has no
clue, that's your choice.

~~~
Tichy
I mostly read his paragraph on sexism, which frankly struck me as very silly.
What has other skeptics being sexist to do with him being a skeptic? And what
has Star Trek being sexist to do with skeptics? The logic was just very bad,
so he didn't convince me as a skeptic. I assumed being a skeptic would involve
being rational.

His ratings in an community unknown to me don't impress me at all. I mean it
is cool, but I still look at what he says with skepticism. The world is full
of famous people who are wrong.

~~~
btilly
If you read it again, you'll see that he did not attempt to lay out his
section on sexism as a rational argument, but merely as a series of
observations. The Star Trek reference was an analogy to what he observes among
skeptics.

I think that this is appropriate. If you've thought about sexism, and have
observed skeptic communities, then you'll have no trouble recognizing the
validity of his observations based on your own. If you have not observed
skeptic communities, then you can either take his word for it, or else go out
and do your own first hand observations. And finally if you've never actually
thought much about sexism, well, how could he reasonably begin to explain?

In short, either you get it and further explanation is superfluous, or else
you don't and his attempting to enlighten you would take him seriously off
course. Either way there is no point in having him try to present an airtight
logical argument.

~~~
Tichy
What on earth is a skeptic community? I thought being a skeptic simply means
not taking things at face value. Why do I have to be lumped in with random
people from the internet just because I like to think about things?

Can we say that HN is a skeptic community, for example? Would you say HN is
very sexist? Or do only "skeptic communities" that are actually sexist count?

------
rjd
Well its the difference between being skeptical about things, and being a
skeptic. One is a gut feeling you shouldn't accept things, and the other is a
mind state/religion. With one you can accept you where wrong, with the other
you just change topics and begin the next assault why something is wrong.

I find most people who proclaim to be 'a skeptic' quite intolerable after a
short period because they are always trying to find new ways to laud mistakes
over people, always putting people down, and more often than not lifting
themselves above others through humiliation. More or less just intellectual
bullying, often without realizing it.

------
xaa
The author attacks skeptics' obsession with quantifiable knowledge at several
points in the essay (e.g., the comp ling section), without providing an
alternative.

We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable -- "soft" sciences. They
don't work very well.

~~~
noibl
> We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable

But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare-
quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for
certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't
need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational
linguistics though.

~~~
xaa
I hope I'm not misstating the author's position. In my reading, he goes well
beyond pointing out that some fields, such as linguistics or medicine, have
made stronger cases than their data can support.

He actually says "I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as
a source of knowledge", and later, that [in order to successfully advance a
particular scientific field] we need to "admit the presence and value of non-
scientific knowledge". The nature of this non-scientific knowledge is not
entirely clear from the essay but seems to be some mixture of culture and
common sense.

He throws out several such claims without addressing the problems that come
along with accepting non-quantifiable or non-scientific knowledge into a
traditionally scientific discipline. For example, if you make a hypothesis
that is not quantifiable, how can you determine the degree to which your data
supports it?

~~~
noibl
Fair enough. I was just pointing out your use of the word ["sciences"] to
describe the same thing as the author's "non-scientific knowledge". Whatever
form this knowledge is supposed to take, "science" as a term for it is
explicitly rejected.

On a more substantive point: You acknowledge the difficulties faced by "soft
sciences". Does that mean you accept that there are whole categories of real-
world phenomena of which it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to
systematise whatever "knowledge" we do have? I don't think that position is
incompatible with respect for science.

~~~
xaa
Yes, of course non- or soft-scientific phenomena exist. But until a soft
science finds some way to quantify its data, it makes little or no progress.

Take psychology as an example. The history of psychology until c. 1950
consists of different gurus with different opinions, and since few theories
offered testable predictions, no one could be proven* wrong. Psychology has
since learned to do controlled experiments and has been more successful.
Computational neuroscience and cognitive science are more successful still.
Literary criticism, OTOH, is still caught in this trap.

Ultimately, my issue with the author is that he strongly channels Thomas Kuhn.
Yes, the political and social contexts of science are important. But they are
nowhere near as important as the actual data and arguments made within the
scientific framework.

* With all due qualifications about the impossibility of true falsification

------
dbcooper
Why on earth am I seeing this nonsense on Hacker News? Is there a shortage of
new languages or something. ;-)

~~~
CamperBob2
Perhaps because relatively few users have enough karma to downvote a story.
I've never been clear on how much karma it takes to do that, actually -- does
anyone know?

------
wisty
Alright, so some skeptics can be pricks. Self-declared skeptics are mostly
reformed Calvinists ... what do you expect?

------
chalst
I'm in some sympathy with the OP's idea that skepticism can be a shield
against criticism of one's own prejudices, but when calling out the prejudices
of particular skeptics, he seems to rely a great deal on extrapolation.

The OP's abandonment of skepticism does not seem to have turned him into a
nice guy.

------
cellularmitosis
In the "sexist bastards" section, his train of thought appears to be implying
something like: Randall Monroe expressing a sexual preference for nerdy girls
in his web comic is not much different than forcing a woman to wear a burka.

Did I read that correctly?

------
tokenadult
Previous discussion, from a submission by Alex3917 319 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120721>

------
calibraxis
How do people (who basically agree with this article) evaluate the rationality
movement?

My limited experiences reading mostly lesswrong.com lead me to think they
avoid many of these problems. I have no idea whether they actively try to
counter institutional sexism, Islamophobia, neoliberalism, etc; but at least
I've seen little-to-nothing so far which actively reinforces these problems
either. (But I'm not deeply acquainted with them.) Strikes me as a very
healthy alternative to these skepticists in the article. Focusses a lot on
introspection and effective action, rather than attacking others.

~~~
lmm
Not my experience at all. lesswrong as a community is rife with sexism, and
takes a very strongly neoliberal position on ethical questions. I'm not sure
about Islam specifically (if anything there seems to be a lot more hate for
Christianity, largely from posters who have had unpleasant personal
experiences with it), but there's quite a lot of angrily (as opposed to
rationally) anti-religious sentiment there too. I mostly avoid that community
these days.

------
Tycho
_Christopher Hitchens, for all his thuggery_

What thuggery was this??

------
recoiledsnake
I stopped reading here:

>Science has a high media profile and a powerful lobby group: in the midst of
a global recession and sweeping government cuts, science funding has generally
held up or even increased

Perhaps science funding has held up because science was fricking responsible
for the economy booming for the last 500 fricking years? E.g. The Internet
that he posted his blog on.

Maybe it just might help the economy come out of recession? Science works
because it delivers and the funding is there because people know that.

~~~
noibl
> I stopped reading here

Which the rest of your comment proves. Thanks for that.

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) Burying the lede has its risks. If you don't want to lose your
readers, don't waste their time.

~~~
noibl
Presumably, the commenter I replied to was able to read this part, since it
comes just before the line they quoted:

 _In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital,
and this is widely recognised_

So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried.

Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment
on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging
others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just
wilfully spreading ignorance.

------
berntb
As far as I can tell about the blog comment: Some left wing guy do personal
attacks.

The post was from 2011 -- I thought most left wing people had stopped claiming
evolutionary psychology was like frenology from racist right wingers?
Especially after this:

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-
revis...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revisited/)

Edit: Please don't start post rebuttals to HN from the other end of the
political scale, or something. Idealism is better kept off HN.

Edit 2: Clarity.

------
raverbashing
I wholeheartedly agree

The "skeptics" seem to have one objective: offend anyone who has any form of
religion.

Or take the Lance Armstrong case, some "skeptics" were saying if you believe
he doped you are "anti-science" because his exams never came back positive.

What a bunch of idiots. Modern tests detected evidence of blood manipulation.

So in a sense "skeptics" are just like the religious anti-scientific crowd,
but saying "blah blah science" instead of "blah blah religion". But guess
what, they don't know enough about science to say that.

