The trolls continue to bombard my piece on Quantum Jumping, and I do love addressing their asinine arguments even though I end up repeating myself a lot. And because the comments section of this one article would make for great source material for a game of Name That Logical Fallacy, I like to share it.
This time I’m responding to only one troll called Dstar, who posted several comments. To be fair, Dstar showed some fleeting moments of actual critical thinking and even agrees with some of what I said. The main reason I’m putting him in the category of troll is because, like so many trolls that come to pick a fight, Dstar’s main point of criticism has far less to do with the actual substance of my article and more to do with my having the audacity to suggest that reality itself is objective and that some ideas are simply wrong and even possibly fundamentally impossible. It’s basic New Age, post-modern anti-confrontationalism that boils down to nobody has a right to state that any idea, no matter how silly, is fairly definitively not true. This sort of extreme “anything is possible” ideology just really pisses me off.
But anyway, enjoy.
Dstar comment 1:
I would also like to hear your thoughts on what you believe to be “literal reality” as you have previously menitoned……..
I’m not sure of the context in which I may have used that term but I’ll take a stab at it. Scientific claims require falsifiability. And if one is going to sell a service that they claim is scientific in nature, they better be prepared to point to legitimate, peer-reviewed studies published in reputable journals that demonstrate the phenomena has survived proper testing. Science is a method of observation for determining how the world actually works. It’s not perfect but it’s the best method we have. And if we discover a new, better method, that will become part of science too. But if one makes extraordinary scientific claims without going through the scientific process of determining if they’re actually true and having those claims vetted by other scientists in appropriate fields, then that’s a problem. One ought to have an actual good reason to believe something is true beyond merely wanting to believe it is true. In other words, one’s level of belief in a claim ought to be proportional to the amount of evidence for that claim. If it isn’t, one does not have a good reason to believe said belief is true until such time as it can be properly demonstrated to be true, and the default position is not believe it. I hope that clarifies my position and the position of science.
Dstar comment 2:
I would like you to ask yourself two questions
What do you know?
What do you not know?
I believe, Sir, you are living out your ego/left brain and are overlooking true being.
Enjoyed comments made by Jay and restless [authors note: these two were among the worst trolls on the page]
And I believe you’re desperate to cling to comforting nonsense no matter what and will seek out any excuse to attack the character of people who disagree with you rather than consider the possibility that maybe you’re wrong.
You don’t seem to have any reasonable mechanism on which to apply critical analysis to your beliefs or test their validity, and you seem to prefer it that way I surmise because if a belief is unfalsifiable, you think you never have to ever face admitting you’re wrong. Tell me. Can anything convince you that you’re wrong? What would do so?
Dstar comment 3:
I was aiming to hihglight [sic] that: What cannot proved to be Real/True/Scientific fact, to me, also means some of the previously discussed, could be in the realm of possibility. I would like to stay open minded…
This is why I wanted to ask you, what do you actually know, and what is out there to find out. I would like to think that there is more to discover than the knowledge we hold to date, especially if you look at our current limited undertsanding of the reality we are supposedly living out.
Finally, I try not to think in terms of – true or false – right or wrong – beauty and ugliness
The above distinctions could be considered subjective and I feel that in this division we are creating the problematic world we live in. Division is destruction?
If we continue to build mental boundaries and erect mental fences around, what most consider to be outlandish beliefs, we can only play to the arhictecture we have built. And whether you believe in quantum jumping or not, this acrchitecture is starting to “stink”, but what did we expect?
I’m pretty sure we can rule out Santa Claus, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. While one ought to be open-minded to alternative hypotheses, that doesn’t mean one should treat absolutely every unfalsifiable claim they’re presented with as if it’s a perfectly legitimate and respectable possibility. Beliefs ought to be proportional to the evidence and the degree of likeliness considered. The burden of proof is always on the claimant; that’s just a basic rule of logic. For instance, as I’ve said before on this forum, if I said I went to Starbucks yesterday, I might be lying or confusing one day with another, but you have no reason to doubt that claim because it’s rather unremarkable. Whereas if I said I was abducted by space aliens yesterday and they let me fly their ship around the Earth, given the extraordinary nature of the claim, you’d have good reason to suspect that I was either lying or delusional. At that point, it would be quite reasonable for you to demand evidence. And if instead, I came up with a host of excuses, while that wouldn’t prove my experience didn’t happen, you’d have good reason to not believe it. And the responsibility would not be yours to prove it didn’t happen but rather it’d be on me to prove I did fly an alien ship.
This is ESPECIALLY important when charging people for a service. Caveat emptor, my ass. You commit fraud by selling a service you can’t provide, you’re going down. It’s that simple.
And as far as QJ goes, it’s about as likely as monkeys flying out of my butt. But again, I’m completely open-minded to look at compelling evidence under proper controlled conditions that might change my mind. Now I’ve told you what would change my mind; so to such an open-minded person as yourself, what would change yours?
You might not like to think in terms of true or false, right or wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that reality is not subjective and that some ideas are in fact false and wrong. For instance, if I claimed the moon was made out of cheese, I would be dead fuckin’ wrong regardless of how you or I feel about it.
Dstar comment 4:
And I wanted to point out that my first comments were not intended as a dig at your character. Maybe I should have asked you whether you believe – yourself and your beliefs are trapped in a reality of YOUR own creation?
I agree with some of your reply to “what is literal reality”
very much so regarding this looking like a scam. If you have this knowledge, why make a quick buck from it, surely you would aim to openly share this knowledge to those who would like to listen and be open.
You also have to consider that education and science have also been heavily manipulated over time. What you (us/humans) are taught to be scientific fact, may not be due to the control on educational and religous systems on a truly global scale.
The only person you can implictily trust is yourself and your inner intuition. I will keep to this
No, myself and my beliefs are trapped in reality period. Now we can certainly have fun with thought experiments about how we might all be living in the Matrix and that the rules governing our observable reality are just the rules of the game in a grand simulation, but while that could all be hypothetically true, it gets us nowhere. And if you want to believe that, be my guest and hop out the nearest 30-story window or slice open your eye with a razor because it’s all the same anyway.
Whether entirely “real” (whatever that means) or if we’re just living inside a giant video game, the only rational approach is to learn the rules through observation as well as trial by error. That’s what science is, using the best tools at our disposal for figuring out how the world works. And this method has clear practical applications that have made our existence better in every measurable way. It’s this method of science that has allowed us to split the atom, develop life-saving vaccines, defy gravity with airplanes, and walk on the moon. So what has the we’re all living in a simulation hypothesis given us? Nothing. Nothing at all. But again, any time you want to hop out that window, feel free. After all, if we can’t rely on our own perspective to guide our behavior, suicide might be the only true way to win the game. Could be. Though I doubt it.
- Insane Troll Logic (skepacabra.wordpress.com)
- Insane Troll Logic 5.15.11 (skepacabra.wordpress.com)
2. Anti-vaxxers forcefully remove peaceful protester from their convention – Ken Reibel and Jamie Bernstein were both ejected from the anti-vaccine “Autism One” conference by 3 security guards and 4 police officers. Their crime: being recognized as dissenters of the movement’s ideology. This speaks volumes about the intellectual integrity of their movement. If anti-vaxxers attended TAM or NECSS, no one would kick them out unless they were actually disrupting the conference.
3. Catholic adoption agency shuts down rather than let gays adopt – Finally, a charity that has its priorities in place. Better a child grow up in an institution than risk that child being infected by evil, gay cooties. Good thinking there, Catholic Charities of Rockford! You guys are a class act all the way!
Posted by Michael Rosch 
Skepacabra 