Qualia Soup, a rationalist and a skilled You Tube jockey

Raw_Power

Please have a look at this Youtube user account. I immediately thought of this site upon watching a couple of his clips. I am told we have tried here to publish some stuff in audiovisual fomat, but it didn't quite work out. Maybe we should contact this guy, perhaps we could profit from each other's work and experience? I am fairly hopeful that he could use some of the material here, and we could use some of his talent with the medium.

This video, for instance, looks like it was taken right out of this very blog

This video, for instance, looks like it was taken right out of this very blog

It will be a sad day when fetishization of "science" takes over this site as well.

The word "science" should be taboo. It is used both for idealized pursuit of knowledge when you want to praise it; and then for a particular set of practice of academia which pretends to be about pursuit of knowledge, but it's really the most horrible waste of brainpower in history.

What about pursuit of knowledge involves shady statistics, obsession with "statistical significance", peer review to exclude "outsiders", massive publication bias, very little reproduction of anything (some estimates say that for 95% of published results, nobody bothered even once - but if it wasn't worth reproducing, was it worth studying at all?), hiding results behind pay walls, and focus on whatever lies within established disciplines instead of what's most important?

Not surprisingly nearly none of old discoverers of knowledge like Newton, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. would be even considered "scientists" by modern criteria.

As far as I can tell the main reason people are blinded to all problems of practice of "science" is the very word "science" itself.

I don't quite get what you're implying. Because the scientific method is somewhat poorly implemented we should do.. what exactly? Be more skeptical of current/new scientific theories? Not promote science? And more importantly, what alternatives do we have for a best estimate of how certain things in the world work?

8satt16y

This claim is just bizarre to me. Downthread I read you as implying that Einstein (for example) wouldn't be considered a scientist "by modern criteria" because he opposed peer review. As I see it, anyone who'd write off someone as a non-scientist for opposing peer review has a warped idea of what a scientist is.

8Jack16y

Einstein wouldn't be considered a scientist by modern criteria? [...] Science by any other name...I think the reason science criticism is difficult and rare is that while the scientific establishment is a mess and desperately needs reform it is constantly under siege by parts of the religious establishment. Good people look at this battle, come to the defense of the lesser evil and ignore the bad in science. It starts as Contrast effect and then turns into Group-serving bias. Obviously science's enemies aren't equipped to give an accurate critique and her allies are unwilling to undermine their status by offering reasonable criticisms. It actually is a difficult double-bind but more voices that give reasoned and intelligent criticism of science would be good thing.