{"quotes":[{"text":"Racism watching is a puzzle solving activity and often involves debunking pseudo-science. The investigator must try to figure out what makes people believe in weird ideas. As Stieg said in an interview, ‘Fifty years later, people still believe in this; the whole Neo-Nazi movement. There is absolutely no sense in this. They do it contrary to everything science tells us. Contrary to human goodness or altruism, contrary to rational thinking. And this is fascinating, why?","author":"Eric Bronson","tags":["neonazis","pseudoscience","racism","rationalism","stieg-larson","sven-ove-hansson","the-millennium-trilogy"],"id":3457,"author_id":"Eric+Bronson"},{"text":"The theories of the social sciences do not consist of “laws” in the sense of empirical rules about the behavior of objects definable in physical terms. All that the theory of the social sciences attempts is to provide a technique of reasoning which assists us in connecting individual facts, but which, like logic or mathematics, is not about the facts. It can, therefore, and this is the second point, never be verified or falsified by reference to facts.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics","empiricism","falsification","libertarianism","pseudoscience","reality","science"],"id":20507,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"Will those insights be tested, or simply used to justify the status quo and reinforce prejudices? When I consider the sloppy and self-serving ways that companies use data, I'm often reminded of phrenology, a pseudoscience that was briefly the rage in the nineteenth century. Phrenologists would run their fingers over the patient's skull, probing for bumps and indentations. Each one, they thought, was linked to personality traits that existed in twenty-seven regions of the brain. Usually the conclusion of the phrenologist jibed with the observations he made. If the patient was morbidly anxious or suffering from alcoholism, the skull probe would usually find bumps and dips that correlated with that observation - which, in turn, bolstered faith in the science of phrenology. Phrenology was a model that relied on pseudoscientific nonsense to make authoritative pronouncements, and for decades it went untested. Big Data can fall into the same trap. Models like the ones that red-lighted Kyle Behm and black-balled foreign medical students and St. George's can lock people out, even when the 'science' inside them is little more than a bundle of untested assumptions.","author":"Cathy O'Neil","tags":["big-data","fairness","feedback-loop","phrenology","pseudoscience","science"],"id":47348,"author_id":"Cathy+O%27Neil"},{"text":"Creationists have also changed their name ... To intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life—yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammurabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.","author":"Michael Shermer","tags":["code-of-hammurabi","creation-myths","creationists","evolution","first-amendment","god-did-it","goddidit","hammurabi","intelligent-design","irreducible-complexity","jargon","myths","native-american","origin-of-life","pseudoscience","school","science","separation-of-church-and-state","sophistry","superstition","ten-commandments"],"id":95495,"author_id":"Michael+Shermer"},{"text":"It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptancebetokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires.","author":"Carl Sagan","tags":["evolution","human-evolution","pseudoscience","science"],"id":111337,"author_id":"Carl+Sagan"},{"text":"If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an ‘oomph,’ this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, ‘Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.","author":"Richard Feynman","tags":["evidence","explainability","imagination","pseudoscience","rationalization","rigor","science","scrutiny","theory"],"id":114130,"author_id":"Richard+Feynman"},{"text":"It is all about the trade of ignorance. And India is such a bronze-age nation that is filled with these trades (astrology, palm reading, vastushashtra and others).","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["astrology","beainy","belief","fear","hocus-focus","horoscope","human-society","ignorance","india","indian-culture","mysticism","neuropsychology","prejudice","prejudices","pseudoscience","psychic","psychology","rational-thinking","reasoning","science","science-of-mind","social-progress","social-psychology","superstition","superstitions","truth","weakness","wise-sayings","words-of-wisdom"],"id":120226,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"All that happens in the human brain is but the result of electro-chemical reactions. Be it of love, hate, of pleasure, of suffering, of imagination, or all other states of mind, sentiment or sickness; the process depends in every case on the chemical reactions produced in the interior of the brain, and the resulting electrical impulses or messages, be they visual, auditory, based on memory, or an interpretation of new events based on elements that one has in the memory.","author":"Raël","tags":["brain","chemistry","pseudoscience","rael","religion","science"],"id":169222,"author_id":"Ra%C3%ABl"},{"text":"I am a cuddly atheist... I am against creationism being taught in schools because there is empirical evidence that it is a silly notion... I am passionately concerned about the rise in pseudo-science; in beliefs in alternative medicine; in creationism. The idea that somehow it is based on logic, on rational arguments, but it's not. It doesn't stand up to empirical evidence.In the same way in medicine, alternative medicines like homeopathy or new age therapies – reiki healing – a lot of people buy into it and it grates against my rationalist view of the world. There is no evidence for it. It is deceitful. It is insidious. I feel passionately about living in a society with a rationalist view of the world.I will be vocal on issues where religion impacts on people's lives in a way that I don't agree with – if, for instance, in faith schools some of the teaching of religion suggests the children might have homophobic views or views that are intolerant towards other belief systems...I am totally against, for example, bishops in the House of Lords. Why should someone of a particular religious faith have some preferential treatment over anyone else? This notion that the Church of England is the official religion of the country is utterly outmoded now.","author":"Jim Al-Khalili","tags":["alternative-medicine","argument","atheism","beliefs","bishops","church-of-england","creationism","deceit","empirical","england","evidence","faith-schools","homeopathy","homophobic","house-of-lords","logic","medicine","pseudoscience","reason","reiki","reiki-healing","school"],"id":171832,"author_id":"Jim+Al-Khalili"},{"text":"Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.","author":"Ludwig von Mises","tags":["economics","empiricism","falsification","libertarianism","pseudoscience","reality","science"],"id":177197,"author_id":"Ludwig+von+Mises"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":27,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}