Yeah, I'm pissed. Stop reading lest you be offended.
What the hell is wrong with people? The spiritualists are just as dogmatic as the materialists, damn it. I've talked to many people who love/hate Perl. Perl, like any other programming language, is a tool. If it's the right tool, use it. If it's the wrong tool, don't use it. Don't tell me it's worthless because it doesn't have feature "foo".
It's interesting, though, that if I happen to point out flaws with Perl, or Linux, or the Republicratic party that people assume that I'm against $_. What the hell is up with that? My girlfriend has a mole on her chest. Am I to ditch because of that? Sheesh. Pointing out problems with a thing doesn't mean that I necessarily dislike the thing itself.
Today, I had an issue brought home to me regarding the "spiritualist" version of this. Now frankly, I think that astrology and homeopathy are bunk. They make testable assertions and, in controlled double-blind studies, they're often demonstrated to hold little to no value. So, in this case, yes, I point out a problem with something and I have a problem with the thing itself, but this is because the entire rationale behind the thing is subverted by the problem I point to.
How, exactly, does this make me close-minded? I have been accused of that so often that I am just sick of it. I think many forms of alternative medicine have merit. Naturapathy and acupuncture both appear to have benefits (your mileage may vary, this ain't the point), so I admit that this is potentially good. When it comes to astrology, I don't care if you believe it or not, but if I am going to make decisions based upon a retrogade Mercury or a belching Jupiter (Jupiter has gas?), then I want to see some damned evidence. If I'm wrong, that is perfectly okay. Prove to me that I'm wrong. And no, anecdotes do not constitute proof. Futher, your personal experience is perfectly valid -- for you.
So, I see value in many practices (such as meditation) that some spiritualists espouse, but if I don't tape a crystal to my frickin' forehead and wear a foil pyramid on my head, I'm close-minded all of a sudden? I am required to state that every stupid idea has merit or else I'm not allowed to belong to your elite club of pseudo-intellectuals? If that's your attitude, you can go to ... oh, wait. I don't believe in that, either :)
This rant brought to you by the letter 'F'. Thanks for listening and my apologies to all who may have been offended. This has been a frustrating day.
Perhaps it's better to think carefully about what it means to be closed minded about something, in this case astrology. You can take the position that yes, there is something we and armies of scientists don't know about and astrology is never the less true, or you can take the position that no, there are no grounds to the claims that astrology makes and it is not.
Of course, you then need to ask which of those two positions is closed minded? Is it more open minded to believe something to be true, or to accept that someone claims something is true and then subject those claims to rigorous tests? The first position is, to all intents and purposes, contained within the second. Both require consideration of the idea, but only one extends as far as a decision as to its veracity.
Re:Careful definition of 'closed' required
Ovid on 2002-02-16T04:56:30
I hope you don't take this personally. I don't mean it that way!
quidity wrote:
You can take the position that yes, there is something we and armies of scientists don't know about and astrology is never the less true, or you can take the position that no, there are no grounds to the claims that astrology makes and it is not.As a rule of thumb, I rarely, if ever, take either position when I encounter a new subject. I start asking a question: "does a particular belief make testable assertions?" In the case of religion, for example, this is often "no". (e.g., if I'm a good boy, I go to heaven when I die) However, astrology makes a claim that there are certain factors about human behavior that are influenced by the position of heavenly bodies at the time an individual is born. Why birth? Why not conception or their third birthday? Also, what is the source of the influence? It ain't gravitation as the chair I am sitting on exerts a greater gravitational force on me than Jupiter. I don't see astrologers saying "your chair is rising". Well, astrologers like to wave their hands at this point and start talking about the limitations of science, but if they make predictions, we can look to see if those predictions come true with a greater frequency than random chance.
They don't.
There was a great study published in the December, 1985 issue of "Nature" where a double-blind study was performed with the participants being 30 of the strongest American and European astrologers (as chosen by their peers) interpreting natal charts for unseen people. Results showed the astrologers could only match one out of three charts to the correct personality -- the same results predicted by chance.
My favorite study, however (and I can't find the reference, darn it), is one that, if I recall correctly, was sponsored (or at least published by) CSICOP (http://www.csicop.org/). To counter the claims by astrologers that all of the scientific studies were biased, a study was drawn up that the scientists and the astrologers both agreed was not biased. The astrologers still didn't do better than random chance. When the astrologers heard the results, they started attacking the scientists and still accused them of bias. In the ensuing 'self-defence', not a single astrologer attacked the methodology of the study.
So, I have to wonder once again: if something is demonstrably false, am I required to believe in it in order to be "open minded"? Or worse, am I not allowed to question the assertions? Until I see some pretty strong (note, I did not use the word "irrefutable") evidence to suggest (not even "prove") that there is something to astrology, I'm going to have to go with the strong evidence that it's nothing more than random chance.
And I'm still not going to listen to those people who tell me that I have to accept every last piece of drivel I hear in order to be "open-minded".
Ugh. This conversation makes me feel depressed. I was just hoping to get this off of my chest. I had a very nice woman tell me in no uncertain terms what she thinks of me for not believing the way she does. She refused to apply for a job she really wanted because she thought the horoscope in the newspaper told her not to (admittedly, even most astrologers say those are bunk). Maybe I'll come back later and just delete all of this
:( Re:Careful definition of 'closed' required
chaoticset on 2002-02-16T17:29:36
Maybe I'll come back later and just delete all of this:( I'd rather you didn't, myself. Just an opinion.
A feedback loop exists within many of these people that merely reinforces whatever they happen to believe. Nothing escapes their framework, and nothing could possibly contradict it. Everything is because of X, or X's effects.
So you say, "But what effect is it that causes this? How does it work? How can X cause this?"
And internally they go, "X told me to expect doubting people today!" whether it did or not, and believe the X even more strongly.
It's not as though the feedback loops can't be broken; it's just that, for a human being acclimated to a belief-loop, it's usually easier to not break the loop.
Re:Careful definition of 'closed' required
pudge on 2002-02-18T13:20:03
What I think is closed-minded has nothing to do with whether you believe in astrology or not. It has to do with why you don't believe it, and what you think about people who do or don't believe it.
Example: If you think people who do believe in astrology are morons, then you are probably closed-minded, because you probably haven't really been able to get inside someone's head to know why they believe in astrology. Simply believing it is bunk is fine; chances are that you've been able to weigh it with some semblance of objectivity, and you came to your own conclusion. Sure, that's how these things work, that's fine. But you likely can't say with any significant amount of reason why someone else believes it is valid, so to make judgments about someone else's belief is usually closed-minded.
Similarly, to say someone is closed-minded because they don't share your belief is usually the closed-minded one, because they don't consider what thought processes the other person's actually gone through to arrive at his beliefs.
Basically, closed-mindedness is dismissing something as valid without really having enough facts to do so.
