Flying Pigasus/Stundie awards

[jakesteele]

I was inspired by reading on JREF about their Flying Pigasus and Stundie awards and I thought it would be a great to create our own to award to the most outrageous and scandalous attempts to use what I call Ocaam's Hammer - the simplest solution is not usually the best, it is always the best…no matter what." What I mean by that is this, a vid of Joe Nickell attempting to debunk human levitation on a History Channel special

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwvEPeGPxeU

Go to 1:10 and watch Shameless Joe Nickell employ what I call an "Implausible Plausible -

1. Trying to make something fit where it doesn’t fit. Every explanation MUST be a plausible and mundane one, even when it doesn’t fit.
2. It is better to be mundane and wrong than to be complex and right.
(See Ocamm’s Beard – the simplest solution isn’t always the right one)
3. Trying to fit a size 9 foot into a size 6 shoe.

I think it would be fun and it would give them their just comeuppance, hoist them by their own petards, as it were. I think we should think of some names like: The Bundy Award (as in Al Bundy), The Cyclops Award (get it, one eye = tunnel vision).

[ciscop]

[jakesteele]

[ciscop]

first tell me what you think about a guy levitating in a Christian context???
did it happen?


do you use critical thinking at all or you refuse to think?

[NucleicAcid]

Clearly, you don't use critical thinking to a full enough extent if you think that just because levitation occurs in a Christian context, then all the rest of Christian Lore must be true. It's the ole silly fallback of skeptics, "Well, if X paranormal thing is real, then Santa Claus, faeries, unicorns, bigfoot, and aliens must also be true." And they accuse the "woo-woos" of jumps of logic.

Let's break it down.

You have multiple (hundreds) of reports of this guy levitating. The mechanism that seems to trigger these occurrences seems essentially identical to those described in Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist accounts of levitation. People in those times were simple and uneducated, but that doesn't mean they were retarded. They would still know the difference between someone doing a somersault onto an alter, and straight up hovering above a crowd. Additionally, while sometimes transcendental states can lead to unusual physical activity, they are most often "spaced out," and the faculties to perform complex athletic activities would not have been there.

(On the note of these experiences being reported across cultures, it is unlikely that the mechanism is purely Christian in nature at all)

The only reason the athleticism argument holds any water is because (ostensibly) levitation is impossible. It is not an ontologically solid argument and is a far cry from explaining away the testimonials. (pseudo)Skeptics do this thing where as soon as they get a shred of evidence based on known principles that explains even the smallest fraction of the phenomenon, they use that to explain the whole thing away. It would be simple enough to test this. Bring a really advanced gymnast to an isolated tribe, and have them perform feats, then have a magician do a self-levitation six feet in the air, and see if they can tell the difference. "Simple peoples" often make up for their lack of advanced cognition with a very solid understanding of the few things they do know, such as physical motion.

He would have been much better off and avoided putting his foot in his mouth if he just chalked it up to a tall tale. At least that's more plausible. But he tried to confabulate his own silly mechanism that makes little sense, and for that, I think he deserves a Bundy Award.

I totally agree that if you investigate a phenomena and find that new information does not support the old assumption, you should overthrow the archaic idea in favor of the modern one. However, why should there be a double standard for materialists? If their explanations also fail to support their hypothesis, it fails to support the hypothesis! It's that easy.

In this situation, the skeptic fails handily to debunk the phenomena. However, since no scientists were there, we will never know if it were a real phenomenon. Nonetheless, it says firmly rooted in the "possible" category, rather than the "debunked" or "explained away category.

And I'm going to make an intuitive hunch and say that now ciscop is going to come up with some weak ridicule and pitiful, uncapitalized rhetoric of how foolish I am, all the while basing the whole of his argument on appeal to authority (Science, with a big S, as opposed to science) and belief and confirmation biases. Without any evidence to support his precariously cantilevered statements.

[ciscop]

wow you are such a scientist arent you nucleic?
a pen falls and is tk
you read christian mythology and you think is gotta be true

yes
people can fly
lets better think that
than to admit skeptics have it right

you are one of those guys that give strangers big hugs on the street arent you?
i envy your lack of thinking
is gotta be awesome reading harry potter and believing it could be true

do your dummy stunt of the psi wheel and get the million...
oh right.. you cant do that either.. there's no million.. you dont wanna make randi look silly.. who would want to do that right?..
nah.. lets better denial the million and write on the web.. yeah.. that will show those damn crithical thinkers

by the way as long as we are accepting religion claims, also hubbard wasnt a cocainomane and revive himself and joseph smith didnt want to "do" many women, he actually found jesus christ lost documents in the woods.... everything goes when you refuse to think

[NucleicAcid]

[ciscop]

hahahahaha oh man.. so much hate from believers
and then they said randi is the hateful one

by the way i didnt meant to say you believe christian mythology i just said
you wanna ride that wave because it goes against skeptical thinking

i speak 4 languages
how many do you speak sir?
my toefl ibt was 115-120 by the way


go and read radin
and eat some intentional chocolate
it will get you in a better mood
afterwards train with your psiwheel
i am pretty sure i can get into a maraton before you can start to move stuff with your mind
lets face, if it was possible, ill be in science books.. since the only ones doing are selfdeceived.. well.. it remains in the paranormal world (another word for.. NOT REAL or in your case just pure imagination)

[NucleicAcid]

Actually, ESP was mentioned in the psychology book that my statistics professor was proofreading. Parapsychology works its ways into lots of places, despite its lack of universal acceptance. That's what happens when you have good quality scientific data.

And nice score. I still think your posts are near impossible to read.

[ciscop]

hahahaha all right
i still can speak 4 languages while you can only speak 1

in the language field as in many others
i beat you


dont make fun of people smarter than you
youll end up losing
it was kind of cute, thought.

[NucleicAcid]

*laughs*

Everyone knows that there isn't one single axis to measure intelligence. Especially a psychologist.

Know more languages? Sure. Smarter, no. I don't have any use for knowing any other languages right now. If I did, I'd learn them.

I do know Latin, which, while a dead language, I can understand the basics and get by with essentially any Romance language, though more so with Italian because my family is from there and I've been there 4 times.

When I last got my IQ checked, which was about five years ago, I scored a 142 (WAIS-III I think?).

I'm pretty solidly rounded as well. Currently getting a dual major in Chemistry and Psychology. I can program in several programming languages, and I can learn new ones in about two weeks. I play saxophone, drums, piano, and I write digital music and DJ clubs on occasion. I like creating digital art, especially vector drawings and layout/poster design. I'm good with electronics and computers, and I can fix damn near everything. I read up on quantum physics in my free time.

I'm a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and a yellow belt in Isshinryu Karate; I'm testing for Rokokyu (blue) on Wednesday. I could probably run a 6:30 mile right now and had a 5:15 mile in my peak.

And I capitalize my sentences.

I'm really blank smart, no matter how you cut it. You could argue that you're as smart as me, but there wouldn't be enough data to say that you're smarter than me by a statistically significant amount.

Don't make fun of people that are extremely intelligent. Especially when they know their shit.

[ciscop]

hahahaha
i know that there are several intelligencies
i dont think i am smarter than you because i speak more languages than you
i just make reference to your intelligence because you believe you can move objects with your mind
that qualifies you as below the 70iq points on my test (and you know what that means)

congratulations on the WAIS
i did better than you on the WAIS but then again.. i cheated,
i was interning since highschool checking and applying tests for a RH company
(my aunt owns it) so it wasnt a real test for me.. it was more a memory thing when i did it in university.
thing is.. i was taking a psychometry course.. and the professor always showed us how to apply the exam to people
and he asked me to do it.. so there i was.. kind of performing some mentalism stunt .. at the end
the professor told everybody i was the smartest person he has ever known... while i was.. trying to keep myself from laughing.. hahahaha it was kind of funny

Last edited by ciscop on 27 Apr 2010, 08:02, edited 1 time in total.

[rachelschmink]

[ciscop]

yes..
ask him for his spectacular youtube videos

one of his friends even moved a pen!
an impressive stunt almost never heard about nor perform in the magic community..

[NucleicAcid]

I have studied telekinesis pretty extensively for about a decade, on and off. With practice, I believe I have more control over a psiwheel, which is basically a paper pinwheel on a tack, than could be afforded by chance alone. I have also seen numerous other objects, such as pens, dumbbells, geiger counters, magazines, and some other things move (or be forced to stay still) in ways that are inexplicable, after controlling for as many mundane variables as possible. I also have one pretty cool story of a chandelier spinning wildly, with a few hundred witnesses.

I strongly believe that telekinesis could be legitimate. I am not 100% convinced, as I am very scientifically minded, but I have seen and done things which are pretty incredible. It would take an incredible string of coincidences in order to account for every single experience I've had, and at this point it's just a matter of seeing if I can do it again after taking a bit of a break from it. I have already had some success, but I haven't gotten to the absolutely 100% telekinesis point (considering I've only practiced twice in the past two months and have both times gotten it to spin 720 degrees). For me, a good run is getting it to move from a dead start, be able to spin 3 times around continuously, in both directions, and be able to stop it when it is moving.

And I've thought of every variable you could possibly come up with, and several you haven't thought of.

Maybe I'll take another shot at it tonight.