Why I am no longer a skeptic | Hacker News Reader

Why I am no longer a skeptic

plover.net

50 pointsAlex391721 comments

Don't miss out on his enemies list at the end, including Randall Munroe.

Short version: There are issues with the skeptical movement. I don't want to self identify with, nor associate with them. Scientists are well respected and have huge political clout, so there is no point in actively defending science.

What a tool.

His main issue with Randall Munroe seems to be that by drawing smart, capable female characters; Randall is opressing innocent female stick-figures, by coercing them into his own ideal. I guess he should also be tried for war crimes, after all the stick figures he's killed off. (Yes, you can twist words till the make all sorts of stupid conclusions. I guess the OP has already made that point, though).

I think his criticism is that all of XKCD's female characters fit the archetype of what TV Tropes calls the Manic Pixie Dream Girl:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGi...

This isn't female empowerment, it's just a masturbatory trope that's being (allegedly) used as a shortcut to doing actual storytelling or character development.

I don't really take any position on his use of female characters. But I will say that the whole "Science: It works, bitches" tagline that Randall has popularized is perhaps the ultimate example of the intellectual laziness and lack of curiosity that currently characterize the self-proclaimed skeptic community. This is exactly what he's talking about when he talks about how skeptics uncritically embrace logical positivism despite the fact that it's been completely rejected by the philosophical community.

That might say a little about Randall and maybe his readership, but I don't see how it's a real problem. Some women may feel pressured to raise their arms in the air, and act enthusiastic. It's not a repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment. It's not even 30 seconds of prime time TV. And Randall has done a lot of notionally feminist cartoons. I'm sure a hardline feminist can pick holes in his work, but I still think he's going to shift most of his readers towards a more feminist viewpoint; especially the sad cases who think that women can't do math.

Feminists seem to think that because sexism has caused a lot of bad things (women barred from universities, few female CEOs, etc); anything that can be accused of being remotely sexist is an objectively bad thing. That's just braindead. Once you put things in perspective, I think xkcd is OK.

Science does work. It doesn't work for everything. If you can point me in the direction of a philosophical framework that you think has a remote chance of getting me the right answer faster, please do. I'm curious, most skeptics are - it's just that we've been let down by some shady operators (i.e. pretty much anyone claiming that they can teach you how to think) and don't want to get taken in again.

I'm not saying the skeptics community doesn't have some sweaty, closed-minded geeks who like nothing better than sneering and intellectual mud-wrestling. I don't hang out on skeptic forums, so I wouldn't really know. I suppose he's just mentioning them as an ad hominem attack on logical positivism, to gives some weight to the rest of the post.

The fact that science often 'works' in no way makes the assumptions of scientism correct. In terms of modern philosophical frameworks, I think the best answer right now is probably some version of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmodernism

From one of the linked papers, by Mike Cole, the guy who seems to be cited the most:

>> My argument is not that capitalism cannot in theory be made more democratic or humane.

This is an incredibly revealing statement.

I'm a big fan of Steve Keen, an Australian economist who won some award for predicting the GFC (http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/). He's a huge critic of mainstream neo-liberal economists, claiming they use bad mathematics to prove theorems that don't work in theory (once you correct the mathematical errors) or practice (if you look at the data). He also has a chapter in his book on why Marx was wrong, but I'm not up to it yet.

While agree with some of the points of Transmodernism, it seems to be more of a destination than a way of travelling. The only concrete methodology seems to be a deep suspicion against The Man (or neo-liberal agenda, as it's called now).

The IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve, and so on aren't bad because they want to be. They are bad because they are following theoretically and empirically flawed theories. They aren't propped up by governments because doing so helps keep the elite in power, governments actually believe that there's no real alternative. The problem is, academic economists (and worse, government onces) like to be safe and conservative. Non-mainstream economists are simply frozen out of the dialogue, like positivists are in post-modern academic societies. Which is quite a problem, when economists are dealing with billions of dollars, and millions of lives.

"The only concrete methodology seems to be a deep suspicion against The Man"

It's more like taking the best of different ideas and different cultures throughout history, and discarding the flawed parts. E.g. it favors the market economies, but is against an economy comprised entirely of one giant unregulated market. It makes use of the scientific method, but isn't based on scientism. It supports mainstream medical research, but doesn't presuppose that double blind clinical trials of molecular entities conducted using the medical model are the only way of demonstrating efficacy, etc.

I feel like there is a good deal to be said against skepticism as defined by the author of this article. However the tone of this post borders strongly on the political and seems to be little more than a diatribe; we see Dawkins is highlighted with a quotation attacking a fellow skeptic. This section is a poorly constructed ad hominem[1] attack. If we want to criticize skepticism we don't need to rely on such easy targets and certainly can in fact actually focus on skepticism as an ideology rather than skepticism as a set of people who are self-proclaimed practitioners of it.

As such I've flagged this submission because I don't really think this kind of thing has a place on HN; we aren't here to discuss political or sociopolitical ideologies, this is intrinsically off-topic for this community. Sure, it may be interesting, and I have to admit I side with the author, but nonetheless, this is at best a rant littered with logical fallacies and is only loosely tied to the discussions of startups and hacking.

That's my two cents.

[1] "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass."

Addendum: let's keep politics (yes, socio-political and ideological discourse in general is meant to be included when I say "politics") off of HN, please. :)

He then goes on to say: "To their credit, many big-name skeptics (including PZ Myers and Phil Plait) called Dawkins out on his obvious sexism; but to my knowledge — and correct me if I'm wrong — not one of them has said a word about his Islamophobia. It seems as though this racist trash is as accepted within the skeptic community as it evidently is within the common rooms of Oxbridge."

Even disregarding the caricaturization of Islam, the Dawkins quote is the worst kind of dismissive, sarcastic non-answer that should, rightly, be criticized.

At any rate, TFA has now been removed from the front page of HN, and I can't help feeling that it's due to the fact that the HN overwhelmingly disagrees with the author and not because the post is poorly written or thought out.

If it has no place on HN, let the voting take care of that. It appears this link has vanished off the front page, though it is doing quite well in terms of score. Probably because it was flagged. That's not how open dialogue works.

This section is a poorly constructed ad hominem[1] attack. If we want to criticize skepticism

But that's the point! It's supposed to be an ad hominem attack. The author, in this essay, is not attacking skepticism, but the Skeptic Community. The author is saying that they do not want to be in the Skeptic Community because of X, Y, Z. And if you're attacking the Skeptic Community then, of course you should use ad hominem attacks, and talk about what certain people said.

If you want to talk about how Skepticism is bad, then you should talk about Skepticism, not the Skeptic Community. If you want to talk about how the Skeptic Community is bad, then you should talk about the Skeptic Community, not Skepticism.

he does talk a lot about the flaws with skepticism itself, but I agree that this is primarily an attack on the skeptic community.

That's only the first couple sections of the essay, the rest of it is largely about epistemology. If anything he doesn't go far enough in the latter half, e.g. there is a compelling argument to be made that western medicine is basically a cult with a lot in common with scientology:

http://www.erowid.org/library/review/review.php?p=269

Not that there isn't anything good about pharmacology, it's probably the best system we have for certain kinds of research, but at the same time these self-proclaimed skeptics have basically teamed up with big pharma to defend the worst parts of it. I think the fact that there are so many skeptics lining up to defend the epistemological one-truth world that big pharma has bought and paid for is pretty disgusting.

> Too often, the skeptic nerd who tries to display his women-friendly credentials ends up revealing himself only as a sexist creep. He's all in favour of women, as long as they satisfy his own ideals of what a woman should be.

Wait... let's flip the script here a little bit.

If some man only likes and approves of other men that fit his ideals, is he being sexist? What does sex even have to do with this?

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I think this only furthers the author's point about skepticism-as-an-identity. When you apply the term "real skeptic," you necessarily invoke some form dogma about what skepticism is.

This can be avoided by not treating skepticism as an identity, but rather a name for a collection of tools. Like the OC said, it's being skeptical about things rather than being a skeptic.

Why spend all that time defining who you aren't? Put that same energy into creating something of worth!

I think attitude presented by this guy is nailed here:

http://xkcd.com/774/

> I still have no faith in anything supernatural, mystical, psychical or spiritual. I still regard the scientific method as the best way to model reality, and reason as the best way to uncover truth.

... then you're still a skeptic.

You're missing the distinction he is drawing between belief and identity. He is specifically saying that, despite his beliefs lining up with those espoused by most self-professed skeptics, he no longer identifies as one himself, because he finds problems with using it as an identity.

I get his distinction, I simply deny that the problems he cites are any part of being a skeptic.

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