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Offline QED

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Scepticism vs denialism
« on: April 17, 2019, 03:02:41 AM »
Hope I’m not in danger of spamming. In the course of my evening reading I happened upon an interesting discussion contrasting scepticism and denialism, and how the two can be conflated. It also happens to feature a quote from one of my favorite books:

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.” -Pirsig

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201702/flat-earthers-belief-skepticism-and-denialism%3Famp
The fact.that it's an old equation without good.demonstration of the underlying mechamism behind it makes.it more invalid, not more valid!

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Offline markjo

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Re: Scepticism vs denialism
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2019, 08:29:42 PM »
Marcello Truzzi wrote a pretty good essay on what he referred to as pseudoskepticism as compared to true skepticism, which can be found here:
https://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/pseudo.html
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

Re: Scepticism vs denialism
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2019, 09:12:48 PM »
After a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that "nihilist denialism" doesn't exist by itself and it is just "fall on deaf ears for hidden motives". My argument starts with the definition of nihilism: "rejection of principles". But this means that I could reject nihilism itself. Somehow a nihilist should deny nihilism itself, and this paradox looks unsolvable. My second argument is that something similar happens with the definition of God, that is undefinable by definition. Thirdly, and lastly, the only approach toward dismissing the belief of god is putting the burden of proof on those who claim its existence. Same happens with the nihilistic, because saying just "no" it's not enough.

This being my argument, it's clear that people like B.o.B. or Tila Tequila just run a business and use flat earth for marketing, similarly to Mark Sargent who clearly doesn't care about flat earth. For them it is pointless to look for sophisticated Philosophy.

On the other side, Science is indeed based on principles, and even though they led us to bridges, planes, computers, etc..., there's not a real way to claim they are absolute (actually, it'd be quite worrying to do so). Here is where the real flat earthers appear. I don't consider them skeptics, rather they speak a completely different language.

EDIT: I liked the link of Marcello Truzzi, he also seem to say that "negative skeptics" are often "cheating pseudo-skeptics". Apologize for my word salad.
Quote from: Pete Svarrior
these waves of smug RE'ers are temporary. Every now and then they flood us for a year or two in response to some media attention, and eventually they peter out. In my view, it's a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".