Psi wars at TED
Another reply, April 19, again on the Huffington Post.
The latest (April 18, 2013) reaction, an excellent one, on the Huffington Post. The bottom line is that TED has made a tragic strategic mistake.
---
Brought to my attention by Craig Weiler.
"In this case, the brouhaha started when apparently skeptics by the names of Jerry Coyne and PZ Meyer tried to have a video by parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake removed from TED talks because they felt he was unscientific...."
See Craig's blog for the full story: The psi wars come to TED
Or here for the TED site discussion, which shows the furor evoked by TED's censorship.
Or here for a discussion about this topic on the Daily Grail.
Or here for a "big picture" opinion by Craig Weiler.
This episode is just another shameful example of the psi taboo at work. It is promulgated by small-minded, loud-mouthed "skeptics" who intimidate editors with bullying tactics.
And now this, which is a predictable next step on the part of TED:
Some view this affair as a clash between those who hold a materialist worldview vs. some other (non-materialist?) worldview. My own opinion is that the research I do on psi phenomena is orthogonal to such ideologies. That's because the very meaning of "material" has changed so much over the past few centuries, and indeed even recently with the discovery of dark matter and energy, that to try to draw a strong distinction between material vs. non-material worldviews doesn't make sense. E.g., I am completely comfortable with the idea that one day psi will be discovered to be a property of matter. It would just be a more comprehensive understanding of matter than the one we have today.
TED's silent revolution. New commentary on the TED censorship.
(Updated 4-19-13)
Or here for the TED site discussion, which shows the furor evoked by TED's censorship.
Or here for a discussion about this topic on the Daily Grail.
Or here for a "big picture" opinion by Craig Weiler.
This episode is just another shameful example of the psi taboo at work. It is promulgated by small-minded, loud-mouthed "skeptics" who intimidate editors with bullying tactics.
And now this, which is a predictable next step on the part of TED:
TED Not Satisfied With Current Censorship: TEDxWestHollywood is Taken Down
Some view this affair as a clash between those who hold a materialist worldview vs. some other (non-materialist?) worldview. My own opinion is that the research I do on psi phenomena is orthogonal to such ideologies. That's because the very meaning of "material" has changed so much over the past few centuries, and indeed even recently with the discovery of dark matter and energy, that to try to draw a strong distinction between material vs. non-material worldviews doesn't make sense. E.g., I am completely comfortable with the idea that one day psi will be discovered to be a property of matter. It would just be a more comprehensive understanding of matter than the one we have today.
TED's silent revolution. New commentary on the TED censorship.
(Updated 4-19-13)
Comments
Quite frankly I find this completely absurd and will be boycotting future TED talks until these videos are back up. There is a lot of support for Hancock and Sheldrake in the comments. While I don't agree with everything they say and I understand that there is a criteria for standards to be met in these talks, I don't see how either speaker failed to meet those standards. What puzzles me even more is that they have talks by Billy Graham and Rick Warren up... why not delete those videos or indeed, any video promoting religious ideas while we're at it? I'm really disappointed.
Perhaps this kind of campaign should be called a "TEDscare" from now on. It joins the category of unreliable due to the kind of ideological bending that Myers' has bragged about inciting his fan boys to "edit" Wikipedia to their liking.
My answer is because traditional religion and scientism always seem to go hand in hand. They BOTH in their own way de-grade the natural world, and the body, and sensuality, and also psychedelic substances. And of course this includes anomalies. The former would demonize and the latter reduce.
I have lately been trying to discuss a deeper understanding of reality at The Shroomery forums where you will get moderators and members there who are of the same mindset as the TED skeptics. The latest comedy is they keep wanting 'evidence' to back up my claim that consciousness is more than chemical reductionism and neurotransmitters. I try and show them a video about a woman's NDE which as doctors in the video claim is remarkable in that it happened in near laboratory conditions. These people REFUSE to even watch the video, because it betrays real 'proper discussion' and they quote Latin at me. You just have to laugh LOL
I went back to look at what they said about Sheldrake and am pretty sure neither of them have read any of his research they are allegedly commenting on. I'll bet neither of them could answer questions about it cold, even after making vicious attacks on it.
George Hansen appears to be right.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325111154.htm
If you do an update, please note that "declaring yourself a "Skeptic" means you never have to correct yourself even when you've made an ass of yourself."
http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-speed-of-light.html
I would like to ask him about Clarus.com where he appears as a "Research Advisor".
I finally had a chance to read it. It's written from the same mind-set as those who feel compelled to defend TED from what they regard as pseudoscience. This is clear in Carroll's case from an opening comment just before the review itself. He writes, "Actually, I [Carroll] am hoping that this review will discourage some readers from pursuing a career in this barren field." I.e., he wants to restrict what others wish to learn, based on his (faulty) understanding.
The review goes downhill from there.
At first I thought I might respond point-by-point to his critique, until it became obvious that that would be a waste of time.
A key point of my books is that through considering the preponderance of evidence for psi via the technique of meta-analysis, we would find that what used to be vague has become crystal clear. More data and ways of analyzing those data have sharpened what we can say about psi to the point where even skeptics like Richard Wiseman (as noted in this blog) have conceded that if psi were a more conventional topic then the existing data would have proved (his word) that it exists.
I tried to provide enough information about simple statistics and meta-analysis to let a naive reader appreciate my arguments, and based on an enormous amount of feedback I believe I succeeded with most readers.
But not with Carroll. He clearly doesn't get it. Nor is there any evidence that he read my list of footnotes, many of which I added specifically to address the kinds of questions that I know skeptics are fond of asking.
Enough said about Carroll's critique.
I've run into many closed minded skeptics myself who keep ranting that precognitive dreaming breaks all the known laws of physics and there is no possible mechanism for it.
I think the mechanism is just being overlooked. Did anyone notice that there is a difference in the speed of waking brainwaves and the speed of the brainwaves in the stages of sleep just prior to dreaming? If motion slows down time, there is every possibility that this situation would put a dreamer in a later spacetime than one's waking self where future thoughts encoded in brainwaves could provide the stimulation for precognitive dreaming.
We can't stop discussing this.
errrrr
Here's a proposed model that uses standard physics and biology to model precognitive dreaming. Do I know this happens? No, but the claim that it can't be modeled it so not true.
http://youtu.be/y4QzDIMs1QQ
www.weirddreams.org
The pseudo-skeptics are actually powerless. Spending time reacting to them is not necessary. In the US we have National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine which provides government funding for research in alternative medicine. The pseudo-skeptics did not want this to happen and they did everything they could to stop it. Everything they could do was in fact nothing. It exposed them as impotent. Parapsychologists and others should not wast time reacting to pseudo-skeptics nor should they let the pseudo-skeptics set their agenda.
Instead of constantly responding to pseudo-skeptics the parapsychological community should spend their time and effort lobbying congress for research funds. The current budgetary environment is not encouraging but money could be reallocated to parapsychology from other areas.
What could be more important to humanity than the huge gaps in our understanding of consciousness? What could be more important to science than the fact that it has huge gaps revealed by the facts of psi? Making the argument that parapsychology is more deserving of research funds than other branches of science should be very easy to do.