637. The Mentally Hazardous Gray Zone Between Woo-woo And Science

637.   The Mentally Hazardous Gray Zone Between Woo-woo And Science

One important task of science is to draw a clear line between irrational beliefs and rational knowledge derived from evidence.   Responsible scientists accentuate this line.  

People being disappointed with modern scientific medicine often turn to so called alternative medicine.   While some of it is outright quackery, some parts of traditional non-western medicine are an unfortunate mixture of absurd beliefs with methods, which sometimes and under specific circumstances seem to be beneficial.    These benefits deserve scientific research.  

Researching the claims of alternative medicine is important.  But it can only lead to curative progress, when beneficial effects are thoroughly cleansed of the contamination by woo-woo beliefs.   

The line between science and quackery needs to be sharpened and emphasized.    Accidentally appearing to validate woo-woo beliefs, while in fact only validating their collateral benefits blurs this line instead,  It is a fallacy, which contributes to the persistence of all quackery.    


The following study presenting beneficial effects of QiGong on cancer patients is an example of scientists having irresponsibly blurred the line by attributing unwarranted value to an irrational belief:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130125142244.htm 

Presenting the lump method and entire package of what is called QiGong as beneficial is a dangerous and irresponsible fallacy.   

"qigong is traditionally viewed as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (chi) or what has been translated as "intrinsic life energy"."

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

The existence of such a qi is a typical woo-woo belief in the alleged existence of something too vague and elusive to allow finding evidence of its existence by experiments or observations.   QiGong is centered around this woo-woo belief.    Without the belief in this qi, QiGong would not be QiGong.   Therefore there cannot ever be a scientific QiGong.    QiGong is woo-woo or it is not QiGong.  

The fallacy of the study is the misrepresentation of appearing to validate a woo-woo belief, while it in reality only validates the outcome of specific behaviors.    Nothing in the study validates QiGong as a belief based method.   

Responsible science needs to refrain from ascribing benefits to woo-woo beliefs.    Studying methods like QiGong scientifically requires a very careful separation between rationally describable physiological effects of behaviors and obsolete irrational woo-woo beliefs. 

Once there is evidence for real benefits of any method, as was found in the study, a responsible scientific approach cannot end there.  Its task includes to also attribute the curative effects to evident causes and replace wrong ascriptions to woo-woo beliefs. 

Step 1 requires the evaluation of all claims like the existence of a qi.    Unless evidence for the existence of qi can be found, the concept of QiGong as a package has to be discarded.    Whatever has an effect, it is not QiGong.   It makes no sense to believe, that specific exercises influence an imaginary qi, which then does the cure, as long as there is no evidence for the existence of that qi.

Step 2 requires to distinguish between the specific woo-woo belief and general placebo effects.  

Step 3 requires to find those behaviors, gymnastics, practices and/or exercises, which are the real and direct cause of the observed benefits.   Whenever behaviors lead to beneficial results, research is important, but with the focus on the behaviors themselves.

The result of such research can lead to the definition of an independent curing method, which only coincides with the woo-woo method by the application of some same behaviors.   Such a method therefore needs a clear distinction by being given a different, non-woo-woo name.    It could be 'xyz'-exercises, where xyz can be any name.  

580. Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

580.   Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Before the internet, I took it for granted, that having a university degree were an indication of a person's ability for abstract, scientific and skeptical thinking.    The internet has opened my eyes for the fact, that people can get degrees by having a good memory even in the absence of sufficient rationality.    Therefore for such people, a university degree is no protection against falling for pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is a blend of scientific methods and gullibility to irrational beliefs.   The fallacy of pseudoscience can be on both ends of research, either by using the claimed belief as if it were a proven fact to be further investigated, or by interpreting results as if they were a proof of an unproven claim, and of course there can be both.   Sometimes even the methods are only pseudo-scientific.

This is a list of examples of pseudoscience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience

Those people, whose belief in a non-existent deity is blatantly absurd, often are at least aware, that their specific belief is not of general validity, but only shared by a limited number of people.   They can be aware of the impossibility of convincing others of a mere claim, which they cannot proof.  

Some believers in pseudoscience are even worse, because due to their impaired abstract thinking, they are not aware, that they confound pseudoscience with valid serious science.  They are duped by the superficial resemblance.  They are even more prone to be duped, when the pseudoscience appears to fulfill some of their dire needs.  

They expect to be rationally able to find general agreement based upon the validity of the results, the same way as if they were evaluating serious science.    

When a seriously ill person is religious, he may do both, praying and getting scientifically based standard medical treatment   Someone believing in pseudoscience as if it were science, gets duped to prefer quackery over standard medicine, believing it to be the most advanced science. 

The belief in pseudoscience leads to a variety of the Dunning-Kruger effect.   Someone believing in some variety of pseudoscience has often the delusion to be the one knowing better than the skeptical and rational person, who rejects and disbelieves it.   The rejection is misinterpreted as ignorance. The believer does not reconsider his belief, instead he feels a mission to instruct the allegedly ignorant.

People believing in pseudoscience are as annoying as are religious people.    It is better to avoid them, when the contact is not superficial enough to be able to avoid such topics.    I once attempted to explain to someone, why NLP is pseudoscience.   It was as futile as talking to a wall.    It is much more pleasant to interact with fellow apistics, who feel themselves annoyed by religion and pseudoscience.   

358. Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Whenever I am in contact with someone expressing the belief in irrational claims, my spontaneous emotional reaction is a strong feeling of repugnance and aversion.    For a long time I had been wondering, why I could not just shrug my shoulders in scorn and condescension for their ludicrous need of believing.    

Finally I understood:  I am very scared of gullible people, and for very good reasons.   More precisely I am scared of the harm, that they are driven to do to whoever gets in their way.   Their harmful behavior is programmed by their belief and there is no way of protecting myself except by avoiding them.  

Every personal contact with a gullible person creates the hazard of experiencing powerlessness and helplessness and of being harmed at any moment. 

In any situation, relationship or friendship, with someone significant enough to elicit emotions, I need reliable and logically predictable influence on how I am treated.    I need the influence to be able to stop someone from making me the target of hurting, unpleasant and discomforting behavior.   I need the influence to get my needs fulfilled in return, when reciprocity of fulfilling needs is in the nature of the relationship.   
My only available method to have such influence is rational communication, when the other is able to be convinced by good reasons, and when he is able to convince me in the case of a refusal by his comprehensibly better reasons.    

I am confident to protect myself successfully from harm in the interaction with rational people, who are guided by consequencity.   With gullible people, I have no influence, because they are controlled by the power of their belief, which deactivates their accessibility by reason.    

Gullible people do not feel guilty for any harm done as a result of their believes and they do not take responsibility for it.

• They know, that their behavior is experienced as harm, but they feel justified by the belief.
• They themselves do not consider as harm, what is experienced as such by the victim.
• They consider suffering harm as an obligation of the victim.

A gullible man's treatment of a woman can be determined by irrational and immune believes

• about himself and his entitlement
• about what is right or wrong
• about what methods are acceptable and valid to control the environment and other people
• about the person of the victim
• about the authority or charisma of a deity or third party guiding him

A few examples of harmful believes:

• A narcissist believes in his entitlement to get onesided benefits from a woman perceiving her as being a commodity for him.
• A muslim believes the koran to be an absolute moral authority.  He can never be faithful in a monogamous relationship, because his religion allows him 4 wives and an unlimited number of concubines.
• A man applies the pseudoscience NLP to manipulate a woman, believing that this gives him the control over her for as long as he wants her.   
• A man does not take a woman's word for serious, because he believes the urban legend, that women do not mean, what they say.
• A man forces a onesided decision upon a woman, which can be as bad as dumping her, because of a dream or of the advice of an astrologer, clairvoyant or any other quack.  
• A man in a relationship spends a lot of the couple's shared resources on expensive quackeries.
• An man does not understand a woman's behavior and reasoning and misinterprets this as her being stupid and flawed and believes in her inferiority without ever listening to her.  
• A man believes in the superiority of men and in his right to dominate and control women by methods like intimidation and coercion.
• A man feels protected by his deity and causes an accident by reckless behavior.  
• A man chooses a woman on a dating site by her zodiac.  The false belief in alleged compatibility causes a lot of  pain.   

All these examples are experiences of what a woman does better not expose herself to.  The only way to avoid such a risk is to reject all gullible man, that means, any man, who is guided, influence or determined by any belief.    The more often a man is caught with a lie, the more probable is the next lie.     If a man is gullible to harmless believes, then the harmfull believes are also probable.    

Gullible people are not reliable and not predictable for those, who do not share their believes.   

His own behavior makes perfect sense only to a gullible man himself, due to being in accordance with his belief.   For any person not only not sharing his belief, but considering it as irrational and absurd, his behavior makes no sense at all.   What makes no sense, cannot be predicted but is haphazard and random.  
A rational non-believing person can never know, what the gullible man will do the next moment out of the blue.  She can never be prepared for the next harm.  Therefore she can neither avoid the harm nor employ any preventive methods to mitigate the impact.    Being with a gullible man means the stress of walking on eggshells, of being on alert all the time.    

A gullible man is not reliable.   He can even have the intention to comply with agreements, covenants and promises, but as soon as the power of the belief overwhelms him, nothing is binding anymore. 

     
Only a man, whose behavior is guided by consequencity, can offer me a relationship as a safe haven, because his behavior is predictable and reliable.    I can entrust myself to such a man, when agreements are binding and not at peril by overpowering believes.

345. Gullibility and the Choice of a Belief

Gullibility and the Choice of a Belief

As already mentioned in entry 344, belief serves to convert something worthless into a pseudo-remedy for troubles, and it often replaces or impedes any real improvement, sometimes the trouble even gets worse.

A gullible's belief is another person's claim taken as true without doubt.    In this context, it makes no difference, if the belief is in the existence of an entity or in a contingency.   It also makes not difference, if it contradicts science, has never been scientifically evaluated or just cannot be proven or disproved.  

Gullible people choose their preferred belief depending on the kind of trouble and their personality.   The following are a few combinations of a belief chosen to fit a need.  

1.  Begging or buying help from imaginary beings

The gullibles in this group feel helpless to solve their problem.  They choose a powerful deity, whom they believe to be able to be the life stuntman or proxy to solve their problems for them.  They believe, that while the deity is able to supply the fulfillment of all needs, he only does this after being explicitly motivated to do so.  

• Those who believe, that an appeal is sufficient to bring the trouble to the attention of a deity,  just waste their time in prayers.  

• Others believe, that it is not enough to simply bring the trouble to the attention of a powerful deity.   They hope to get better results by bribing the deity.   This can be as simple as buying candles or paying money to some full time intermediate pastor to pray on their behalf.     

• Another approach to more fierce and unfriendly deities is earning favors by undergoing hardships of any kind.   Fasting or even sacrificing a close relative are examples.    Gullibles of this kind jump deliberately from the frying pan into the fire.   To get relief from one pain, they deliberately inflict another pain upon themselves, in the end they have added more pain to the previous.

The same methods as above for existing trouble can also be used for prevention and sometimes the effects are paradoxical.  Someone feeling protected by a deity is prone to recklessness and risky behavior.    Soldiers sometimes are encouraged by the religious benediction of weapons.

2.  Buying help from crooks and delusionals

The more pragmatic gullibles buy quackeries from real people.   They want an easy way out.  They hand over the money and then it is the quack's job to remove their emotional or physical ailments or prevent them.  
The skeptic's dictionary ( http://www.skepdic.com ) and quackwatch ( http://www.quackwatch.com ) have long lists of such quackeries.    Homeopathy, aromatherapy, Bach's flowers, magnet therapy, therapeutic touch, faith healing, feng shui are just a few examples.   There is a quackery for every imaginable discomfort.

There are three kinds of quacks.  

• The crooks, who know, that what they sell is fake and a fraud.
• The over altruistic gullibles, who believe to help others by selling the quackery, in which they believe themselves.    
• The delusionals, who are not only gullible to claims from others but create the claims by believing in their own ability to heal or help.        

3.  Buying information from crooks and gurus

The curious gullibles and those, for whom uncertainty and ignorance are difficult to bear buy bogus informations from crooks and gurus.  Bogus information can relief anxieties.  Here again, there are the crooks aware of frauding, the over altruistic gurus, who believe so much in their methods, that they want to share the source of their bogus information, and the delusional gurus, who believe to have gained special competency in a specific method.  
Again, there is a long list.  Graphology, astrology, numerology, biorhythm are examples of bogus psycho diagnostics for the wish to gain better knowledge about oneself and others, while clairvoyance, dowsing, ESP are a bogus access to unobtainable information.  

4.  Justification instead of changing

Some gullible people choose a belief system, when they feel bad, insufficient, a failure, in cognitive dissonance.   Something in themselves is in discord with their previous belief or that of their social environment.   Instead of changing themselves, they choose a new belief, which justifies their weakness, selfishness, irresponsibility and other behavior, that they experience as unwanted.  If it does not really justify their behavior and attitudes, it does at least so in their interpretation and perception.  The newly chosen belief makes them feel better about themselves. 

• A male cheater can convert to islam, where cheating does not exist, because the coran allows him not only 4 wives, but an unspecified number of concubines.   
• In entry 56 I already outlined, how zen-buddhism focuses on the present and can serve as an excuse to refuse responsibility for past transgressions.  
• Someone having damaged another chooses a religion, in which it is the deity's job to forgive sins by application.   When believing to have acquired the forgiveness of the deity, then he never makes amends to the victim of his transgression.

4.  Buying power by direct or indirect methods

The gullibles, whose main trouble is their lack of social success, buy methods from crooks and gurus to enable them to gain power over people.   

• Voodoo and witchcraft are paid for as the delegation of the use of their power on one's behalf. 
• Others want to gain power themselves.   NLP is an example.  In entry 177, I described, how jerks are attracted to NLP, because they believe to gain seductive power over women by applying NLP.

5.  Acquiring power by climbing up in a hierarchy

Cults are an especially interesting phenomenon, because of the hierarchy principle.    Gullibles enter at a low position of the hierarchy having two believes:  

• One or several masters or gurus at the top have some attractive special powers, knowledge or skills.
• By investing enough money and effort, they can become like the masters and acquire the same powers.  

Another example is the Chinese cult around the chi belief.  It includes martial art, which is some weird mixture of gymnastics and fighting techniques, not based on physical strength but on mental overpowering.   This has some interesting effects. 

• Those at the bottom of the hierarchy overestimate the power and ability of those above, because the more attractive the goal of becoming like them, the more they feel justified in their attempts to climb the hierarchy even at a high cost.  
• They react to the overestimated and alleged powers as if they were real.
• The masters get the wrong feedback and overestimate their own power.  

There is an interesting video on 

http://www.skepdic.com/chi.html

It shows, how the combined belief of a disciple and a master result in a weird double delusion, called the "no punch knockout".   It looks impressive, how one guy falls backwards, stiff like a board, doomed to hurting himself if not caught by others standing behind him.   He falls, just because another puts his hand close to his face.  
Then the video shows, how the master fails completely, as soon as he tries the same procedure with a skeptic, who stays unmovably rooted to the spot in spite of the master's efforts.  

The first presentation was enabled by a disciple believing in it to fall, and a master believing in it, else he would not have dared to do this in front of a camera.     
I wonder, how many of those martial arts masters have been beaten up by criminals, while they felt invincible.