Overdoing it on the astrology skepticism

[Wonderer]

I think astrology is a bunch of baloney. That's my opinion and it's okay to express my opinion on this forum. But if I was pretending to write an encyclopedia, I would try to treat astrology with some semblance of impartiality. Not so the Wikipediots.

The eclipse last week brought attention to the retrograde motion of five planets: Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (yeah, I know, Pluto is a planetoid or a dwarf planet or whatever). Astrologers think that retrogrades during an eclipse have significance for our personal lives:

Mercury goes retrograde at least four times a year, but what makes this retrograde cycle significant is that it occurs right between the two Eclipses.

Having Mercury retrograde during Eclipse season is definitely a cautionary tale to slow down and not be in a hurry to act. It also means that more information is likely to be revealed when Mercury goes direct again.

Mercury goes retrograde from the 12th to the 5th of September through the sign of Virgo and Leo. During this period, it is likely that communication in your relationships are going to be a theme, particularly your relationships with a romantic partner, your children and authority figures.

Mercury rules over communication, so issues in this area are always going to be a theme when it goes retrograde, but with the added energy from the Eclipses, it seems that endings or even new beginnings with relationships are likely to be possible.

http://foreverconscious.com/intuitive-a ... ugust-2017

Anyone who did halfway well in astronomy class knows that it is because of our geocentric perspective that the planets sometimes look like they're moving backwards before moving forward again. If we could observe the planets right from the Sun, we'd never see them go retrograde. Or if we could observe Earth from Mars, I'm pretty sure we'd see the Earth go retrograde sometimes.

Last week, I don't quite remember how, I thought I was going to the Wikipedia article on retrograde motion (T-H-L), but instead landed on apparent retrograde motion (T-H-L). I thought they were overdoing it on the astrology skepticism.

As I look at the articles again today, it seems almost reasonable:

This article is about the apparent motion of planets as observed from a particular vantage point. For retrograde motions of celestial bodies relative to a gravitationally central object, see Retrograde and prograde motion (T-H-L).

This article is about retrograde motions of celestial bodies relative to a gravitationally central object. For the apparent motion as seen from a particular vantage point, see Apparent retrograde motion (T-H-L).

Maybe the Wikipediots aren't being dull, humorless pedants, maybe they're just trying to inform you about potentially ambiguous terminology.

Still, astrologers have reason to feel Wikipedia is very unfair to them. I was reading a page on astrologer.com and found it to express many sentiments that have also been expressed here on Wikipediocracy:

Wikipedia is a utopian ideal - founded on a belief that the world can collaborate to create an Encyclopedia. ... Articles appear to be refreshingly free of agenda, advertising and sales pitches.

Unfortunately, this authoritative neutrality is often a facade. It is no secret that many agents and PR agencies use Wikipedia to promote pages associated with their clients. ...

However, anyone interested in pages on what Wikipedia term 'fringe' topics: those relating to astrology, the paranormal, metaphysics, faith/spirituality or alternative medicine or on atheism or scepticism ... will find editing is a closed shop controlled by a small group of editors. They are supported by at least two editors working full-time patrolling, editing and deleting these pages while claiming to be scientists. Under the cloak of anonymity, they each make up to ten thousand edits per year to ensure that scientism prevails, bad science is white-washed and inconvenient evidence is suppressed. Editors who challenge them are ridiculed, intimidated and pushed into being banned in a mock trial. ...

I can't answer for the personal views of all these editors, but based on past experience as a Wikipedia editor, from debates on-line, from email exchanges and from sceptical groups and publications, a stereotype emerges. Most refer to themselves as 'rational sceptics' or rationalists. However, I have not found that they are particularly rational or interested in evidence or practice critical thinking in the manner of genuine sceptics. Most are atheists if not militant atheists. Most ... are not scientists and do not follow the scientific spirit of open enquiry as science is, to them, a fixed fundamental belief system. Their avid faith in science as the only source of truth is known as scientism. So anything that cannot be accounted for within the limitations of current scientific knowledge is illusory and deserves zero tolerance. ...

What I do know about is astrology (having been a professional astrologer for over 30 years) and it is clear that [Wikipedia editor Susan] Gerbic has had an impact on the main astrology page. Her third edit under the name Sgerbic (T-C-L) 29 April 2010 was to insert a quote by CSICOP/CSI fellow, Neil de Grasse Tyson onto the astrology page that starts with the erroneous claim that "astrology was discredited 600 years ago." This criticsm is an example of a classic misunderstanding often made by astronomers who may be light on their history (also made by Steven Hawking) that astrology fails to work under the Copernican System. Perhaps they are unware [sic] that Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler were astrologers and like all subsequent astrologers encountered no problem with geocentric celestial maps. These type of inconvenient truths are overlooked by sceptical magazines.

http://www.astrologer.com/tests/wp.htm

I reiterate that I think astrology is baloney. But I also think that Wikipedia's treatment of pseudosciences like astrology shows a spectacular failure of Wikipedia's purported "neutral point of view."

[Midsize Jake]

Maybe the Wikipediots aren't being dull, humorless pedants, maybe they're just trying to inform you about potentially ambiguous terminology.

Well, there's no reason why it can't be both. Indeed, it's usually both...

Still, astrologers have reason to feel Wikipedia is very unfair to them.

Probably, but at the risk of seeming to defend the WP folks too strongly, this is probably one of those topic areas where the pseudoscience people (in this case, professional and semi-professional astrologers) have a fair amount of money, and there's also plenty of money to be earned from believers, so there's a lot at stake in their online activity - and for that reason, they really work hard at it. So, because of the Google Effect, Wikipedia has an unusually attractive Astrology infobox, for example, and a nice template or two, many lovely zodiac images, and literally every article about a specific zodiac sign (such as, I dunno, Pisces) is lengthy, well-written, and contains almost no hard-science contrarianism whatsoever. The same is true for the Astrological sign (T-H-L) article.

So what I suspect has happened here is that the increasingly-scarce "Defender of the Wiki" types have drawn a red line on what they see as the "main" Astrology (T-H-L) article, and this is where they insist on pointing out astrology's complete lack of scientific validity - if they tried to do this on all the related articles, they'd be doing nothing else, it would be a full-time job. Ultimately this creates a kind of de facto deadlock situation between proponents and opponents, but every once in a while someone will come along who doesn't know about the de facto deadlock and says "why can't we get rid of the skepticism in the main article too?" or "why can't we point out that astrology is BS in all the related articles?" and that just starts the ball rolling all over again.

Again, this would not be a good way to run an actual encyclopedia, but of course if you're running a website and your goal is to get lots of web traffic and user-churn, it's just dandy.

[Wonderer]

So what I suspect has happened here is that the increasingly-scarce "Defender of the Wiki" types have drawn a red line on what they see as the "main" Astrology (T-H-L) article, and this is where they insist on pointing out astrology's complete lack of scientific validity - if they tried to do this on all the related articles, they'd be doing nothing else, it would be a full-time job. Ultimately this creates a kind of de facto deadlock situation between proponents and opponents, but every once in a while someone will come along who doesn't know about the de facto deadlock and says "why can't we get rid of the skepticism in the main article too?" or "why can't we point out that astrology is BS in all the related articles?" and that just starts the ball rolling all over again.

A very sober and impartial assessment of the situation.

If Wikipedia had a bona fide editor in chief, he or she wouldn't decide the issue to everyone's satisfaction, but at least there would be a central authority to actually decide things like this and provide a consistent tone the other editors can actually strive for.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I find it rather depressing how quickly and how easily these ultra-rationalists become self-satisfied bullies. They behave as if they genuinely believed that there was such a thing as ultimate truth, that early 21st century science possessed in full measure, and that they themselves had privileged and complete access to that truth. This entitlement leads to them denigrating all others as irrational, ignorant or just evil. If they were a little more experienced they might hark back to a time, well within living memory, when, for example, climatologists were confidently predicting a new Ice Age, doctors were treating homosexuality as a disease which could be cured with hormones and promoting smoking as a cure for sore throats, DDT would wipe out malaria, dark matter was a mistake by Einstein, and so on. They might take account of the fact that physics has had no agreed and mathematically consistent axiomatic basis for about 150 years. They might want to know that we have only the most incomplete understanding of the processes of epigenetics and morphogenesis, and of the basis of consciousness. What is happening here is that people of rather limited life achievements latch on to a somewhat over-simplified version of some scientific notion and use their limited understanding to bludgeon anyone who wants to take even the most nuanced stance. None of the science really matters -- it's a licence for inadequate people to bully others and they take full advantage of it.

Astrology makes some testable predictions, mostly turning out to be false. One of the testable predictions, that your date of birth is correlated with your character and skills, appears to have some modest degree of support. Whether that is due to the position of the stars and planets at the time of birth, or the effects of nutrition just before and after birth, or age on entering the school system, are questions which can be asked and possibly even answered. It does nobody any good to suppress those questions on the grounds that Babylonian astronomers did not understand the motion of the planets the same way that we do -- after all, neither did Newton.

[Poetlister]

Should astrology be presented as something sensible or rational? Anyone with the slightest knowledge of th esubject knows that it's tosh. If saying that is a violation of WP:NPOV, so much the worse for WP:NPOV.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

As was said above, in an encyclopaedia, the tone would be decided and set by an editor, or editorial board, whom we might hope to be sensible adults. Instead the decisions are taken by bullies who do it for a primary motive which is not to impart knowledge but to hurt people.

In answer to your specific question, I would expect a grown-up editor to set a tone that included, as a fact, that there is no one thing called astrology but a complex of beliefs; millions of people believe in astrology, and it has a long and complex history of belief; that it is a lucrative industry; that it has an intellectual basis directly inconsistent with modern astronomy and indirectly with much of modern science; that it almost always fails to make predictions which are both testable and true. I think that just saying it's tosh, or alternatively bosh, or possibly even pish-tush, fails to convey the same breadth and depth of information.

[Poetlister]

In answer to your specific question, I would expect a grown-up editor to set a tone that included, as a fact, that there is no one thing called astrology but a complex of beliefs; millions of people believe in astrology, and it has a long and complex history of belief; that it is a lucrative industry; that it has an intellectual basis directly inconsistent with modern astronomy and indirectly with much of modern science; that it almost always fails to make predictions which are both testable and true. I think that just saying it's tosh, or alternatively bosh, or possibly even pish-tush, fails to convey the same breadth and depth of information.

I'm not suggesting that the Astrology article should start "Astrology is tosh". I was briefly saying what you are saying at great length; that summary is surely adequate for this site although not for Wikipedia itself.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

"Tosh" would be a word I would use for things like the endless fancruft about badly-written fiction involving Star Wars characters. But funnily enough you don't get obnoxious bullies harassing the authors of those articles because it's not "reality-based". Why not? That's the sort of thing this site could usefully discuss. As has been speculated here before, money could well have something to do with it.

[iii]

But if I was pretending to write an encyclopedia, I would try to treat astrology with some semblance of impartiality.

This is a fascinating contention. What, praytell, does "impartiality" look like? Entertaining the plausibility of astrology in spite of it having none?

Maybe you just mean that the prose should be so dry that no one would mistake the content for being juicy.

Still, astrologers have reason to feel Wikipedia is very unfair to them....
I reiterate that I think astrology is baloney. But I also think that Wikipedia's treatment of pseudosciences like astrology shows a spectacular failure of Wikipedia's purported "neutral point of view."

I think we agree on one thing: "neutral point of view" is a failure. This is mostly because when it comes to facts, there are no points of view in the Wikipedianistic sense.

If I say, "FACT: The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself", an astrologer would take offense.

"That's just... like... your opinion, man." To quote The Dude.

If you believe them, then the neutral way to explain such points is to, e.g., argue that this is not, in fact, a fact. Which is a lie.

Yikes.

[iii]

I find it rather depressing how quickly and how easily these ultra-rationalists become self-satisfied bullies. They behave as if they genuinely believed that there was such a thing as ultimate truth, that early 21st century science possessed in full measure, and that they themselves had privileged and complete access to that truth. This entitlement leads to them denigrating all others as irrational, ignorant or just evil. If they were a little more experienced they might hark back to a time, well within living memory, when, for example, climatologists were confidently predicting a new Ice Age, doctors were treating homosexuality as a disease which could be cured with hormones and promoting smoking as a cure for sore throats, DDT would wipe out malaria, dark matter was a mistake by Einstein, and so on. They might take account of the fact that physics has had no agreed and mathematically consistent axiomatic basis for about 150 years. They might want to know that we have only the most incomplete understanding of the processes of epigenetics and morphogenesis, and of the basis of consciousness. What is happening here is that people of rather limited life achievements latch on to a somewhat over-simplified version of some scientific notion and use their limited understanding to bludgeon anyone who wants to take even the most nuanced stance. None of the science really matters -- it's a licence for inadequate people to bully others and they take full advantage of it.

I took you to Chinatown for that paragraph of dreck in another thread. So I'll leave it be here.

Astrology makes some testable predictions, mostly turning out to be false.

"most" is an understatement.

One of the testable predictions, that your date of birth is correlated with your character and skills, appears to have some modest degree of support.

I've read the "papers" and "evidence" in favor of this. The "modest" degree of support is consistent with the null hypothesis. So.

Whether that is due to the position of the stars and planets at the time of birth, or the effects of nutrition just before and after birth, or age on entering the school system, are questions which can be asked and possibly even answered.

And controlled for, even. When done so, *ahem*, no effect is seen. But then, file drawer effects mean I cannot point you to the takedown of the poorly considered articles that made arguments for audacious astrological causality. But if you want me to point out the laughable statistical errors, just let me know.

It does nobody any good to suppress those questions on the grounds that Babylonian astronomers did not understand the motion of the planets the same way that we do -- after all, neither did Newton.

We can equally ask questions as to whether this thing I thought up one day is reasonable. It's perfectly fine fodder for, say, our discussions here. But it is far, far removed from reference work.

[MysteriousStranger]

I find it rather depressing how quickly and how easily these ultra-rationalists become self-satisfied bullies. They behave as if they genuinely believed that there was such a thing as ultimate truth, that early 21st century science possessed in full measure, and that they themselves had privileged and complete access to that truth. This entitlement leads to them denigrating all others as irrational, ignorant or just evil. If they were a little more experienced they might hark back to a time, well within living memory, when, for example, climatologists were confidently predicting a new Ice Age, doctors were treating homosexuality as a disease which could be cured with hormones and promoting smoking as a cure for sore throats, DDT would wipe out malaria, dark matter was a mistake by Einstein, and so on. They might take account of the fact that physics has had no agreed and mathematically consistent axiomatic basis for about 150 years. They might want to know that we have only the most incomplete understanding of the processes of epigenetics and morphogenesis, and of the basis of consciousness. What is happening here is that people of rather limited life achievements latch on to a somewhat over-simplified version of some scientific notion and use their limited understanding to bludgeon anyone who wants to take even the most nuanced stance. None of the science really matters -- it's a licence for inadequate people to bully others and they take full advantage of it.

I took you to Chinatown for that paragraph of dreck in another thread. So I'll leave it be here.

Astrology makes some testable predictions, mostly turning out to be false.

"most" is an understatement.

One of the testable predictions, that your date of birth is correlated with your character and skills, appears to have some modest degree of support.

I've read the "papers" and "evidence" in favor of this. The "modest" degree of support is consistent with the null hypothesis. So.

Whether that is due to the position of the stars and planets at the time of birth, or the effects of nutrition just before and after birth, or age on entering the school system, are questions which can be asked and possibly even answered.

And controlled for, even. When done so, *ahem*, no effect is seen. But then, file drawer effects mean I cannot point you to the takedown of the poorly considered articles that made arguments for audacious astrological causality. But if you want me to point out the laughable statistical errors, just let me know.

It does nobody any good to suppress those questions on the grounds that Babylonian astronomers did not understand the motion of the planets the same way that we do -- after all, neither did Newton.

We can equally ask questions as to whether this thing I thought up one day is reasonable. It's perfectly fine fodder for, say, our discussions here. But it is far, far removed from reference work.

For the record, you sound like a self-satisfied bully.

[iii]

For the record, you sound like a self-satisfied bully.

Ferfucksake, man, this is my job!

I don't know what your job is, but if someone started shitting all over it on this board, I would hope you might end up sounding like a self-satisfied bully!

[thekohser]

For the record, you sound like a self-satisfied bully.

For the record, I disagree.

[Zoloft]

For the record, you sound like a self-satisfied bully.

For the record, I disagree.

Our esteemed member iii detests pseudoscience and wacky but deadly medical shenanigans, as do I.

[Kingsindian]

I don't understand the OP at all. Like the OP, I found the Apparent retrogade motion (T-H-L) article to be bland and inoffensive, and not at all astrology-bashing. Indeed, astrology isn't even mentioned in the article.

[Wonderer]

I don't understand the OP at all. Like the OP, I found the Apparent retrogade motion (T-H-L) article to be bland and inoffensive, and not at all astrology-bashing.

Well, I skimmed the article a week ago, the day of the eclipse, and looked at it again today. There has been only one intervening edit, and it was to the section about Mercury, which I don't recall more than glancing at last week. The whole thing seemed to me to be very unfair to astrology last week, and this week it seems almost fair and impartial.

I'm revising my opinion, as I think about it more and I consider what other people are saying, and not because Saturn is moving direct again.

Indeed, astrology isn't even mentioned in the article.

Maybe that omission is an expression of bias, a feeling that the astrological view of retrogrades is not worth mentioning at all. Maybe there ought to be a line that says something like "Astrologers believe that retrogrades alter the normal influence of the planets."

Something else I noticed just now: the article has dates for retrogrades in 2016, but not 2017.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

If I say, "FACT: The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself", an astrologer would take offense.

If the sentence following FACT is the result of formulating a hypothesis and testing it by experiment and observation, and the results falsify that hypothesis, then that sentence is scientific. If you're enunciating it because you really really believe it, then it's your opinion. For what it's worth, I agree with it, but I know that that's an opinion, because I do not claim to have done the experiments.

The second sentence is simply a statement of your --and everyone else's -- lack of complete knowledge. Unless you know that every single force that exists in the material universe is known to us and we can compute their interactions and those computations have been done and the results agree with what you say, then it might be scientific. But in fact we do not, indeed how could we, know that we are aware of all the forces that exist? Until a few years ago, Dark Matter and Dark Energy were not known. And we currently know that we do not know how to compute the joint effects of gravity and the other forces, because there is no agreed consistent experimentally verifiable model that encompasses the two. So to assert that the effects claimed by astrology do not happen simply because you don't know of a way in which those effects could happen, and so in your mind they cannot happen, is prejudice. You may be right, in the sense that those effects don't happen, but if so it's by accident. It's experiment that tells us they don't happen, not your own thinking.

[Poetlister]

"Tosh" would be a word I would use for things like the endless fancruft about badly-written fiction involving Star Wars characters. But funnily enough you don't get obnoxious bullies harassing the authors of those articles because it's not "reality-based". Why not? That's the sort of thing this site could usefully discuss. As has been speculated here before, money could well have something to do with it.

Astrology purports to be a serious subject, yet is in total contradiction to the scientific consensus, and has been for several centuries. Even in the Middle Ages, the great philosopher Maimonides decried astrology. If people are foolish enough to try to set up endless fancruft about badly-written fiction involving Star Wars characters as a serious subject in the same way, I hope that it will be condemned.

[iii]

If you're enunciating it because you really really believe it, then it's your opinion. For what it's worth, I agree with it, but I know that that's an opinion, because I do not claim to have done the experiments.

The experiments, crucially, have been done.

The second sentence is simply a statement of your --and everyone else's -- lack of complete knowledge. Unless you know that every single force that exists in the material universe is known to us and we can compute their interactions and those computations have been done and the results agree with what you say, then it might be scientific. But in fact we do not, indeed how could we, know that we are aware of all the forces that exist?

Well, I'm glad you asked! It is, in fact, a well-worn and extensive line of investigation that extends back for decades. The fact that fifth forces cannot be the size that astrologers or other believers in magic would require for a mechanistic idealization of their faith is something that has been measured extremely carefully. E.g. this paper.

Until a few years ago, Dark Matter and Dark Energy were not known.

We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the discovery of Dark Energy, but let's leave that aside for the time being and look at what you are invoking to make your comparison. We can actually compute the effects that these phenomena have on our Solar System. Dark matter interacts essentially only through gravity which is well understood and the dark energy "force" (in simplest forms it is a fictitious force) is consistent with the paper I cite above. Effects from either phenomenon far, far dwarf any possibility for astrological pushes and pulls. To be fair to your complaint, you are correct that this is the regime to which you have to appeal if you want to talk about what mysteries remain in science. While they are fantastic mysteries, they do not allow for the possibility of the magical movements that every astrologer claim I have ever read requires.

And we currently know that we do not know how to compute the joint effects of gravity and the other forces, because there is no agreed consistent experimentally verifiable model that encompasses the two.

Don't confuse unverified with unknown. We can step around problems with some of the higher mathematics and as-of-yet unsolved equations and allow ourselves to parametrize what features the correct model must have. Astrology does not feature. Lots of other things do.

So to assert that the effects claimed by astrology do not happen simply because you don't know of a way in which those effects could happen, and so in your mind they cannot happen, is prejudice.

This has nothing to do with "my mind". This has to do with claims made by astrologers and the physical implications of them. I don't pretend to speak for what astrologers believe. I let them do the talking, and then I evaluate whether they can be correct or not.

Look, there is a way that astrology could be "correct" and that is that it stands in as a metaphor or a mythology -- a way to frame imaginative stories in a constructed and constrained fashion like dice rolled by a DnD player. And if that allows for a post hoc psychological comfort that induces happiness in its followers, there are worse things that people can involve themselves in to get the endorphin rush. If it makes you happy to think about how Venus and Mars dance around in the night sky through different houses, I do not begrudge any astrology fan the right to let their fancies run free. Honest astrologers say that it's "for fun" which is to say that it has no empirical or practical basis for its function. That's fine and dandy, but it's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who say that some particular arrangement of the planets influences in a material fashion (yes, that includes brains!).

You may be right, in the sense that those effects don't happen, but if so it's by accident. It's experiment that tells us they don't happen, not your own thinking.

That is exactly in line with my point.

[MoldyHay]

Astrology purports to be a serious subject, yet is in total contradiction to the scientific consensus, and has been for several centuries. Even in the Middle Ages, the great philosopher Maimonides decried astrology. If people are foolish enough to try to set up endless fancruft about badly-written fiction involving Star Wars characters as a serious subject in the same way, I hope that it will be condemned.

To be fair, Maimonides decried astrology because it was against his religion. The fact that it was also against science was a fortunate circumstance for him.

[Midsize Jake]

Look, there is a way that astrology could be "correct" and that is that it stands in as a metaphor or a mythology -- a way to frame imaginative stories in a constructed and constrained fashion like dice rolled by a DnD player. And if that allows for a post hoc psychological comfort that induces happiness in its followers, there are worse things that people can involve themselves in to get the endorphin rush. If it makes you happy to think about how Venus and Mars dance around in the night sky through different houses, I do not begrudge any astrology fan the right to let their fancies run free.

That's a good and generous attitude to have, of course, as it suggests you're not a complete absolutist. I guess the question is, does Wikipedia attract absolutists and/or reward absolutism, with respect to astrology and various other pseudo-scientific belief systems? I've always suspected that it does - which isn't necessarily bad - but each pseudoscience topic area is different in terms of how it attracts people to it, probably based on the degree to which people can be affected negatively by it. In other words, maybe it boils down to how (and how much) certain aspects of the pseudoscience in question can affect human behavior and therefore human events, and whether or not this causes negative outcomes for individuals (or society in general), and just how negative those outcomes can be.

For example, the Wikipedia article describes how in India, public resources (which could be used for other things) are used to teach Vedic astrology as a serious subject, while in Japan, as little as 50 years ago there was a substantial decrease in the birthrate as couples tried to avoid having children born during the Year of the Fire Horse. (Especially since they only had to wait a few months and they could have their children born during the Year of My Little Pony.) Most of the effects on society from this sort of thing are (IMO) minor, and arguably not even all that negative, but I suspect they do tend to encourage uncompromising (if not absolutist) negative attitudes among pseudoscience opponents (on Wikipedia and elsewhere) when they hear about them.

As for my own biases, my biggest pet peeve relating to this sort of thing (as many of the regulars here already know) is when proponents of things like astrology insist that people who don't believe are mostly, if not all, "atheists" - which to me is a fairly blatant attempt to piggyback on the popularity of religion (and the unpopularity of atheism) to dishonestly bolster their argument position. I get the distinct impression that the folks who oppose pro-pseudoscience editing on Wikipedia (particularly with the quasi-religious ones like astrology) feel the same way, so I end up agreeing with their approach more than I would with the way other subjects are handled on Wikipedia, despite my best efforts to just reflexively disagree with pretty much everything that goes on there.

[Cla68]

But if I was pretending to write an encyclopedia, I would try to treat astrology with some semblance of impartiality.

This is a fascinating contention. What, praytell, does "impartiality" look like? Entertaining the plausibility of astrology in spite of it having none?

No, just that the reader wouldn't be able to tell which side Wikipedia's voice takes. It's fine if the sources take a side, but Wikipedia itself isn't supposed to. For some reason, most of the "pro-science" editors in Wikipedia aren't able to grasp this concept, I suspect because their authoritarian personalities give them too much cognitive dissonance.

[Poetlister]

To be fair, Maimonides decried astrology because it was against his religion. The fact that it was also against science was a fortunate circumstance for him.

He said that astrology was false and therefore believing it violated the religious duty "keep thee far from a false matter".

[iii]

But if I was pretending to write an encyclopedia, I would try to treat astrology with some semblance of impartiality.

This is a fascinating contention. What, praytell, does "impartiality" look like? Entertaining the plausibility of astrology in spite of it having none?

No, just that the reader wouldn't be able to tell which side Wikipedia's voice takes. It's fine if the sources take a side, but Wikipedia itself isn't supposed to. For some reason, most of the "pro-science" editors in Wikipedia aren't able to grasp this concept, I suspect because their authoritarian personalities give them too much cognitive dissonance.

And I suspect the Dunning-Kruger effect explains most of your pontifications. But no matter. I'll just offer a little object lesson: "The electron has a mass that is 1/1836 that of the proton." That is not only taking a side, that's taking a side that excludes a lot of parameter space. If we had it your way, the statement would read, "Most scientists believe that the electron has a mass that is 1/1836 that of the proton, but Bill argues that the fraction is 1/2345, Camile says that the fraction is 1/3491, and Don says it is 1/1120."

[iii]

That's a good and generous attitude to have, of course, as it suggests you're not a complete absolutist. I guess the question is, does Wikipedia attract absolutists and/or reward absolutism, with respect to astrology and various other pseudo-scientific belief systems?

This is a hard question to answer because I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "absolutism". Wikipedia rewards stubbornness and it almost doesn't matter what one is stubborn about.

[MysteriousStranger]

For the record, you sound like a self-satisfied bully.

Ferfucksake, man, this is my job!

I don't know what your job is, but if someone started shitting all over it on this board, I would hope you might end up sounding like a self-satisfied bully!

Shitting all over it? No, he's just saying some people sound smug. Wikipedia is full of bullying and people generally being jerks and he was pointing out what he perceived to be an instance of that. If there are logical inconsistencies in his argument, you can point them out without treating him like an idiot.

I'm glad that you, like me and unlike most Wikipediots, have a job. I may have overreacted a bit there.

[Midsize Jake]

This is a hard question to answer because I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "absolutism". Wikipedia rewards stubbornness and it almost doesn't matter what one is stubborn about.

I guess I'm using it in the non-Wikipedia sense, whereby an "absolutist" would insist that it's never okay for someone to believe in astrology, and the fact that there's no scientific validity to it is all the justification they need for insisting. It's a defensible position, and it might be better for society in the long term, but it's hard to take that stance without coming off as mean-spirited and unpleasant.

So then you have to decide if it's worth it on a personal level to come off that way; in a real-world scenario you're less likely to want to, but with Wikipedia (and other anonymous internet platforms), you can indulge whatever desire you may have to be stubborn with relatively few consequences, as has been pointed out here zillions of times.

"It's a feature, not a bug," as the WP folks might say.

[Poetlister]

And I suspect the Dunning-Kruger effect explains most of your pontifications. But no matter. I'll just offer a little object lesson: "The electron has a mass that is 1/1836 that of the proton." That is not only taking a side, that's taking a side that excludes a lot of parameter space. If we had it your way, the statement would read, "Most scientists believe that the electron has a mass that is 1/1836 that of the proton, but Bill argues that the fraction is 1/2345, Camile says that the fraction is 1/3491, and Don says it is 1/1120."

That should of course be "approximately 1/1836". And of course under WP:UNDUE the prominence given to these various estimates in the sources should be considered.

[lonza leggiera]

If I say, "FACT: The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself", an astrologer would take offense.

If the sentence following FACT is the result of formulating a hypothesis and testing it by experiment and observation, and the results falsify that hypothesis, then that sentence is scientific. If you're enunciating it because you really really believe it, then it's your opinion. For what it's worth, I agree with it, …

Well, if the Sun and the Moon are regarded as being "planets", as they were until the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, and as they still are by astrologers for the purpose of casting horoscopes, then the statement "The relative position and motion of the planets do no[t] influence … the day-to-day occurrences of human beings." is not a FACT at all. It is demonstrably false.

The most obvious example is the alternation of night and day, which is caused by the position of the Sun relative to the location of a person's abode, and which clearly, and with good reason, influences our behaviour, as well as our health and well being if that behaviour is inappropriate for the current climate and time of day. And those of us who live well outside the tropics are also subject to the cycle of seasons, caused by the Sun's yearly cycle of travel between its northern and southern extremes. This will also affect our health and well-being if we don't adapt our dress and behaviour appropriately to this cycle.

Also, the activities of fishermen, or anyone else whose livelihood depends on putting out to sea, will be strongly affected by the positions of the Moon and the Sun through their influence on the tides.

None of this, of course, has any bearing on the validity or otherwise of astrology, although books on astrology will sometimes cite these penomena as evidence that the motions of heavenly bodies relative to the Earth can indeed affect human affairs.

[iii]

Shitting all over it? No, he's just saying some people sound smug. Wikipedia is full of bullying and people generally being jerks and he was pointing out what he perceived to be an instance of that. If there are logical inconsistencies in his argument, you can point them out without treating him like an idiot.

It is possible I misinterpreted what he's just saying, but reading back in this tread, I still don't see it. I did not interpret him as arguing that the tone was wrong (though I believe that trying to evaluate tone is an absolutely fraught scenario -- see WP:CIV (T-H-L)) but rather that the rhetoric itself was wrong.

[iii]

I guess I'm using it in the non-Wikipedia sense, whereby an "absolutist" would insist that it's never okay for someone to believe in astrology, and the fact that there's no scientific validity to it is all the justification they need for insisting. It's a defensible position, and it might be better for society in the long term, but it's hard to take that stance without coming off as mean-spirited and unpleasant.

Such absolutists probably have to answer for what they think "belief" means. I have met people who tell me that they believe in astrology to the extent that they appreciate that it allows them to tell comforting stories about the world. Anyone who says that people shouldn't be allowed to "believe" in that way is just being a jerk. But perhaps such "absolutists" would claim that this isn't exactly a "belief" anyway in the same way that some argue that John Shelby Spong is actually an atheist.

[iii]

If I say, "FACT: The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself", an astrologer would take offense.

If the sentence following FACT is the result of formulating a hypothesis and testing it by experiment and observation, and the results falsify that hypothesis, then that sentence is scientific. If you're enunciating it because you really really believe it, then it's your opinion. For what it's worth, I agree with it, …

Well, if the Sun and the Moon are regarded as being "planets", as they were until the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, and as they still are by astrologers for the purpose of casting horoscopes, then the statement "The relative position and motion of the planets do no[t] influence … the day-to-day occurrences of human beings." is not a FACT at all. It is demonstrably false.

I intentionally used the term "planet" in hopes to avoid such justifiable nitpicking. The very real effects that Sun and Moon have on humanity helps explain why astrology and associated beliefs such the debunked claim that the full moon is correlated with more emergency room visits held/holds so much sway. This connection is less obvious these days since as a society we are more disconnected from the celestial sphere than even one hundred years ago.

[iii]

And of course under WP:UNDUE the prominence given to these various estimates in the sources should be considered.

Spoken like a good Wikipedian. But I suspect that Cla68 isn't too fond of UNDUE being invoked to allow for facts to be listed as, y'know, facts. E.g., "humans and great apes share a common ancestor" is a fact, but it is easy to find huge swathes of humanity who have an opinion that this is incorrect. If we followed the radical neutrality gospel of Cla68, a person reading Wikipedia shouldn't be able to tell whether the author of any given article agreed or disagreed with such opinions.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Well, we seem to be at cross-purposes. I'm not suggesting that any or all of dark energy, dark matter or a putative fifth force mediated through ultralight bosons might be responsible for astrology -- indeed I'm not suggesting that astrological phenomena have been demonstrated to have any effects at all. Those effects, to the extent that they can be turned into verifiable or falsifiable predictions for experiment or observation, are the proper subject of scientific discourse.

What I am claiming is that it is incorrect to assert that there can be no such effects because we currently know everything that there is to know about the forces that exist in nature, to a degree sufficient to compute the interactions between various bodies in the universe. Discoveries of new physical phenomena continue to be made, and it is simply not correct to say

We can step around problems with some of the higher mathematics and as-of-yet unsolved equations and allow ourselves to parametrize what features the correct model must have.

In fact a statement so naive does not sound like the sort of thing that physicists say at all.

A statement of the form "This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself" is not science.

[iii]

What I am claiming is that it is incorrect to assert that there can be no such effects because we currently know everything that there is to know about the forces that exist in nature, to a degree sufficient to compute the interactions between various bodies in the universe. Discoveries of new physical phenomena continue to be made, and it is simply not correct to say

We can step around problems with some of the higher mathematics and as-of-yet unsolved equations and allow ourselves to parametrize what features the correct model must have.

In fact a statement so naive does not sound like the sort of thing that physicists say at all.

Maybe you just haven't been paying attention

A statement of the form "This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself" is not science.

Statements aren't science. They are statements. If you think there is something false in the statement, let me know what it is!

[Rogol Domedonfors]

What I am claiming is that it is incorrect to assert that there can be no such effects because we currently know everything that there is to know about the forces that exist in nature, to a degree sufficient to compute the interactions between various bodies in the universe. Discoveries of new physical phenomena continue to be made, and it is simply not correct to say

We can step around problems with some of the higher mathematics and as-of-yet unsolved equations and allow ourselves to parametrize what features the correct model must have.

In fact a statement so naive does not sound like the sort of thing that physicists say at all.

Maybe you just haven't been paying attention

A statement of the form "This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself" is not science.

Statements aren't science. They are statements. If you think there is something false in the statement, let me know what it is!

Very well, I will.

• "The forces" cannot all be calculated since there is no reason to believe that they are all known.
• The calculations cannot be made as there is no agreed mathematical basis that allows all known physical forces to be computed simultaneously.
• Such calculations as can be made are not capable of showing what is claimed
• Such calculations as can be made are not at all simple.

Does that help?

[Poetlister]

And of course under WP:UNDUE the prominence given to these various estimates in the sources should be considered.

Spoken like a good Wikipedian. But I suspect that Cla68 isn't too fond of UNDUE being invoked to allow for facts to be listed as, y'know, facts. E.g., "humans and great apes share a common ancestor" is a fact, but it is easy to find huge swathes of humanity who have an opinion that this is incorrect. If we followed the radical neutrality gospel of Cla68, a person reading Wikipedia shouldn't be able to tell whether the author of any given article agreed or disagreed with such opinions.

I'm not trying to be a good Wikipedian, just explaining how good Wikipedians think. But there's a big difference between a well-documented and widely held incorrect belief, which should not be ignored (though of course they should be debunked), and one crank's opinions, which should be ignored unless they have received enormous publicity.

[Wonderer]

Unless you know that every single force that exists in the material universe is known to us and we can compute their interactions and those computations have been done and the results agree with what you say, then it might be scientific.

This made me think of the butterfly effect (T-H-L), the idea that a butterfly in Brazil could cause a snowstorm in Salzburg or a tornado in Torino (or, more likely, something less alliterative).

What if when Mercury moves direct again, it causes me to miss my exit on I-75? Or what if it causes a vending machine to fail to dispense a candy bar to a young Aryan supremacist, causing him to go on another one of those deadly rampages which news reporters are afraid to call domestic terrorism, at least until someone falsely suggests the guy was thinking of converting to Islam?

In part because of its heavy dependence on ancient mythology, astrology is ill-equipped to predict the sort of indirect causalities I postulated in the previous paragraph.

This connection is less obvious these days since as a society we are more disconnected from the celestial sphere than even one hundred years ago.

It also lessens the power of suggestion of horoscopes. If I can't see with my own eyes that the Moon is trining Mars, I am much less inclined to believe that it will have the effect on my life that the horoscope says it will.

[iii]

What I am claiming is that it is incorrect to assert that there can be no such effects because we currently know everything that there is to know about the forces that exist in nature, to a degree sufficient to compute the interactions between various bodies in the universe. Discoveries of new physical phenomena continue to be made, and it is simply not correct to say

We can step around problems with some of the higher mathematics and as-of-yet unsolved equations and allow ourselves to parametrize what features the correct model must have.

In fact a statement so naive does not sound like the sort of thing that physicists say at all.

Maybe you just haven't been paying attention

A statement of the form "This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself" is not science.

Statements aren't science. They are statements. If you think there is something false in the statement, let me know what it is!

Very well, I will.

• "The forces" cannot all be calculated since there is no reason to believe that they are all known.
• The calculations cannot be made as there is no agreed mathematical basis that allows all known physical forces to be computed simultaneously.
• Such calculations as can be made are not capable of showing what is claimed
• Such calculations as can be made are not at all simple.

Does that help?

Well, I would have you enroll in one of my classes, I guess.

We can calculate what possible places in parameter space "new forces" can hide. If you would like to propose a force that, for example, influences people you need to say what its magnitude is. We can then look at whether it's in that part of parameter space. It's actually an extremely simple calculation! I usually require it of my introductory astrophysics students. In fact, in my day-to-day life I calculate what all known physical forces do to various things I study. That's literally the job description at some level. And this is done with specificity and simultaneity. It is a trivial thing to apply this to planets and things on Earth.

So you've posited a bunch of things which are simply false. Basically wallowing in your own ignorance.

[iii]

Unless you know that every single force that exists in the material universe is known to us and we can compute their interactions and those computations have been done and the results agree with what you say, then it might be scientific.

This made me think of the butterfly effect (T-H-L), the idea that a butterfly in Brazil could cause a snowstorm in Salzburg or a tornado in Torino (or, more likely, something less alliterative).

What if when Mercury moves direct again, it causes me to miss my exit on I-75? Or what if it causes a vending machine to fail to dispense a candy bar to a young Aryan supremacist, causing him to go on another one of those deadly rampages which news reporters are afraid to call domestic terrorism, at least until someone falsely suggests the guy was thinking of converting to Islam?

The butterfly effect is often a misunderstood idea. The idea comes from the study of chaotic systems which are, in an informatics sense, non-deterministic because we lack computational power to specify the system. The analogy is to a butterfly flapping its wings causing a tornado, but really what is actually happening in computational modeling is that the computational power itself sets a diverging uncertainty to the simulation. This is true for systems where there are effects that scale over large ranges (butterfly to tornado), and in such cases the only deterministic way to calculate the large scale phenomena is to compute all the small-scale ones. For the weather, this lands you at scales down at less than one meter and extends to a dynamic range that will be beyond computational capabilities for generations even assuming Moore's Law holds in perpetuity.

In contrast, the physical effects that Mercury has on you or I do not suffer from this kind of chaotic behavior except after incredibly long timescales where n-body systems like our solar system become chaotic (billions of years). The details of how this chaos behaves are still not worked out, but the timesteps of a human lifetime or generation are trivially easy to calculate. Astrology has no space to operate there.

It also lessens the power of suggestion of horoscopes. If I can't see with my own eyes that the Moon is trining Mars, I am much less inclined to believe that it will have the effect on my life that the horoscope says it will.

Those who study this sort of thing for a living tell me that because astronomy was so important in the past for timekeeping and it required a concentration of resources, astronomers were looked upon as fonts of wisdom for things that they really had no business talking about, even. While knowing that the time of year that the Dog Star rose was a good indication for when the Nile would flood, confirmation bias could make people readily believe that these astronomers could predict just about anything. And so many did. How much of this is just lore and how much of this is based on solid historiographical evidence, I cannot say. Suffice to point out, perhaps, that most astronomers before the Scientific Revolution were properly astrologers.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Well, I would have you enroll in one of my classes, I guess.

We can calculate what possible places in parameter space "new forces" can hide. If you would like to propose a force that, for example, influences people you need to say what its magnitude is. We can then look at whether it's in that part of parameter space. It's actually an extremely simple calculation! I usually require it of my introductory astrophysics students. In fact, in my day-to-day life I calculate what all known physical forces do to various things I study. That's literally the job description at some level. And this is done with specificity and simultaneity. It is a trivial thing to apply this to planets and things on Earth.

So you've posited a bunch of things which are simply false. Basically wallowing in your own ignorance.

You still do not, and cannot, know that there are no new forces. You even admit that things have been discovered recently. You are trying to move your assertion away from "We know all physical forces" via "We know all forces that could possibly be relevant to this question" then "We know all forces of a certain strength and range" onto "We know what strength and range any unknown force would have to have". None of these is fully supported, although obviously the weaker you make your assertion, the less support it would require, if only you could find it.

I really would like to audit the class in which you expound your unified field theory -- is it strings or quantum foam? Not to mention the lecture in which you perform that trivial thing of applying your solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations to, say, weather forecasting. That's your Clay Prize and your Nobel Prize straight off. Are they on YouTube?

I deny your assertion and ask whether do you judge the analytical investigation of the first part of my Enthymeme deficient secundum quoad or quoad minus?

[iii]

You still do not, and cannot, know that there are no new forces. You even admit that things have been discovered recently. You are trying to move your assertion away from "We know all physical forces" via "We know all forces that could possibly be relevant to this question" then "We know all forces of a certain strength and range" onto "We know what strength and range any unknown force would have to have". None of these is fully supported, although obviously the weaker you make your assertion, the less support it would require, if only you could find it.

You, me, and everyone we know are allowed to have as many new forces as we want. Have a billion. But those forces... please stay with me here... can only act in certain regimes because we've exhaustively tested the other regimes. Human scales are extremely well tested and completeness theorems for what forces can and cannot operate at meaningful levels are easy to come by (read Sean Carroll's post again if you don't believe me). To have a force that acts on humans or even parts of humans or individual cells or all of society -- physical forces (and, YES, astrologers who argue this way are arguing about PHYSICAL forces and not metaphorical ones) -- we can say exactly how such a new force would behave and under what conditions. These things simply are not available to have the outcomes astrologers desire.

I really would like to audit the class in which you expound your unified field theory -- is it strings or quantum foam?

You, again, have missed the point. We don't need to know what the right answer is. We just need to know what conditions the right answer has. That's the name of the game for trying to decide how to move beyond what we've already figured out.

Not to mention the lecture in which you perform that trivial thing of applying your solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations to, say, weather forecasting. That's your Clay Prize and your Nobel Prize straight off. Are they on YouTube?

I don't think you have cared to think about the difference between a closed-form solution and a parameter-space investigation. Is it worth trying to get it through your head? No? I could let someone else try, but your insistence on thinking that because you know there are open questions therefore... MAGIC... is as tiresome as it is predictable.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I could let someone else try, but your insistence on thinking that because you know there are open questions therefore... MAGIC... is as tiresome as it is predictable.

I think I was at pains to say that I didn't believe in astrology either, but for reasons to do with experimental evidence rather than scientistic dogma. But you prefer to project onto anyone who disagrees with you a fallacious image of anti-rationalism if they dare to point out that while the emperor has some quite natty new clothes, his ensemble is not complete and doesn't quite fit together. Anyway, I've made my point, you've made yours.

[thekohser]

Anyway, I've made my point, you've made yours.

And in my mind, I've decided on the winner, but in celebration of this painfully non-Wikipedia-criticism debate being ended, I'm just going to keep that to myself.

[iii]

I think I was at pains to say that I didn't believe in astrology either, but for reasons to do with experimental evidence rather than scientistic dogma. But you prefer to project onto anyone who disagrees with you a fallacious image of anti-rationalism if they dare to point out that while the emperor has some quite natty new clothes, his ensemble is not complete and doesn't quite fit together. Anyway, I've made my point, you've made yours.

Your attempts to thumb your nose at "the emperor" made you look like a clown. There is and was no "scientistic dogma" relevant to the main question as to whether astrology is plausible or possible, and yet you remain convinced that it is righteous to bring all those red herrings we've dissected in this tread. Then you dug in your heals in a very muddy stick fashion.

This kind of faux-intellectual snobbery may be a "on the one hand/on the other hand" sort of game to you, but it causes very real problems in the realm of pedagogy and edumacation. Not more than ten years ago, the flat earth argument was used as an object lesson to point out intellectually bereft positions. But the kind of hypercriticism of scientific knowledge writ large provided an opening for people to be converted to such a gestalt. Just great! Now I get to have fun with them!

You might find it satisfying to play these sorts of games, but it makes my job that much harder. Maybe you weren't anticipating having to deal with people who are, in a professional fashion, directly affected by the arguments you are lazily making. We have a big broad tent here, however.

[thekohser]

Then you dug in your heals in a very muddy stick fashion.

You know, I may have change my position on who won this thing.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

The question at issue, in case you weren't paying attention, is not "Is astrology true" but "How would an encyclopaedia treat astrology". Your preferred position was that your encyclopaedia should say "The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself". Mine was that it should say something like "The relative position and motion of the planets do not influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple experiments".

I thought, and think, that yours was more dogmatic and less well-supported than mine. You disagreed, somewhat rudely, and seemed to think that disagreement had to mean a position of complete anti-science, irrationalism and intellectual inferiority.

It's odd that you think that reading something like what I proposed in an encyclopaedia would make it harder for you to teach science to your students. In my simple-minded way I thought science had something to do with experimental verification and falsification, not about dogmatic assertion and insulting those who disagree with you. It's also odd that you think that pointing out that science advances in understanding, that complex systems are incompletely understood, that even physics is not completely mathematically consistent, and that many open questions remain, would make it harder for you to teach science to your students. In my non-expert sort of way I thought that might stimulate and challenge them. No doubt university teaching has moved on since I was last involved in it, a couple of months ago.

I have had to deal a lot with scientists and other researchers. I also have to deal, fortunately much less often, with bullies, braggarts, and egotists. Sadly the various dealings are not always disjoint.

[iii]

Then you dug in your heals in a very muddy stick fashion.

You know, I may have change my position on who won this thing.

Forgive me Kohser, for I have sinned. As penance, I'll watch

[iii]

The question at issue, in case you weren't paying attention, is not "Is astrology true" but "How would an encyclopaedia treat astrology". Your preferred position was that your encyclopaedia should say "The relative position and motion of the planets do no influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple calculations of the forces that such planets impart upon human beings and the Earth itself". Mine was that it should say something like "The relative position and motion of the planets do not influence personality or the day-to-day occurrences of human beings. This can be shown through simple experiments".

To be perfectly clear, I do not prefer one statement over the other. I find them to be both reasonable. I have problems with people who argue for preference of the second statement using the arguments you are making.

I thought, and think, that yours was more dogmatic and less well-supported than mine. You disagreed, somewhat rudely, and seemed to think that disagreement had to mean a position of complete anti-science, irrationalism and intellectual inferiority.

But whether you intend it or not, that's kinda how it goes. I'm not accusing you, an obviously erudite and well-read individual, of lacking knowledge. I'm accusing you of adopting a line of argument that is irresponsible when carefully analyzed. And my "rudeness" is based on my decades of experience interacting with this kind of argumentation. I'm brusque in this context because I am tired of having this conversation, but I nonetheless think it is important to continue to make these arguments for the sake of the audience.

It's odd that you think that reading something like what I proposed in an encyclopaedia would make it harder for you to teach science to your students. In my simple-minded way I thought science had something to do with experimental verification and falsification, not about dogmatic assertion and insulting those who disagree with you. It's also odd that you think that pointing out that science advances in understanding, that complex systems are incompletely understood, that even physics is not completely mathematically consistent, and that many open questions remain, would make it harder for you to teach science to your students. In my non-expert sort of way I thought that might stimulate and challenge them. No doubt university teaching has moved on since I was last involved in it, a couple of months ago.

I have had to deal a lot with scientists and other researchers. I also have to deal, fortunately much less often, with bullies, braggarts, and egotists. Sadly the various dealings are not always disjoint.

Takedowns are rarely pretty, but ostensibly the goal is to stop a bad argument from gaining traction or being repeated. I'm saying that the attitude you adopt, which is by no means yours alone, has seeped into places where it causes problems. This board is one venue where I can explain exactly what I find problematic about the argument without worrying about offending sensibilities. As I'm not in the pedagogical mode of trying to forestall students from imposing attention filters on their learning, I unload here.

Harsh interrogation, I think, is the best way to test which ideas can withstand scrutiny.

[Poetlister]

Please can someone close this thread now?