Science lover and free thinker

[spoirier]

Hi everyone.
My name is Sylvain. I'm French.
My first and main interests are mathematics and physics. My Meyer-Briggs type is INTP.
It was so painful for me to go through the official curriculum up to my PhD of mathematics.
This curriculum is especially dreadful in France for those who are INTP like me and wish to become scientists, because... it is a form of mental slavery, that is mentally exhausting but NOT intelligent.
I managed to understand general relativity theory by myself at the age of 16 (in parallel to my high school years), while, in parallel, developing thoughts in metaphysics and economics.
I was already interested in NDEs, as the first few books on the subject were being published and getting popular during my teenage.
I was shocked by the pseudo-skepticism I could find in a French popular scientific magazine at that time (Science&Vie).
After reading a few books of spirituality, I converted to Evangelical Christianity at about 19, expecting it to be the truth away from the nonsense and social oppression I had observed - until I painfully deconverted from it less than 10 years later (I was smashed by its nonsense, then searched if there was another truth by checking the reports of NDE showing that these testimonies do not depend on faith, therefore dismissing the Christian claim that faith is necessary for salvation).
After my PhD, I travelled to many countries but never to the US, for several reasons including the report of my sister who went there - thank you Winston for having explained why the US is not a good place to go, in your articles I just read in these last few days.
I'm generally depressed because of the many troubles I faced (the main one being the second one):
- The school system, including bullying by school mates and hard stupid school work
- I still could not find love, because of different things, including shyness, incredibly bad luck, the time wasted following the school curriculum, the taboo on the issue of search for love both in society in general and in Christianity in particular; then I wasted time travelling to search in many countries in vain, because... I'm only compatible with a too small minority.
- The damage made to me by the psychiatrists which the French security system somehow forced me to visit after I stopped my only year of math teaching at university, even though I was very careful trying to avoid and stop taking any harmful drug, but they managed to trick me into harming myself anyway.

I faced a lot the "victim-blaming" mentality that Winston told about. The only disagreement is that he assumed this phenomenon to be specific to the US; I never went to the US, but still I found it widespread.

I am generally horrified to see the widespread nonsense in this world, including the dire lack of communication between science and the public.
This includes the sort of schizophreny of many faculty members who play two roles: reasearch and teaching, but fail to be professors, that is to make the necessary connection between science and teaching, that would provide their students with a more direct access to science (you can google "The role of the professor" to see what I mean).

So I dedicate an important part of my efforts to re-explain science for a public that I would not claim to be large (it would not be realistic), but at least to include more people than now, the few ones that would be really interested and able to follow it, but lack the means to reach it in the current world.
I also spent some time writing some debunking articles, first in French, then in English. The subjects include pseudo-skepticism, dating and Christianity, but also crackpot science.

In particular I spent quite a time debunking Laurent Nottale, who has one of the highest scientific positions in the French public science system ("directeur de recherche CNRS", who are less than 5,000), and thus was trusted by the media and the public for this, and loved by them for his claims of having discovered a new theory of everything and publishing a book of science popularization introducing to his "theory" (see a comment on my debunking work, in a web page titled "Laurent Nottale said to deserve Nobel" - it says Nottale was less famous, but only concerns the English speaking media; while he was considered the one new Einstein by the French media, including Science&Vie presenting his ideas as one of the 4 rivalling theories of everything, aside string theory, loop quantum gravity and noncommutative geometry).
Just a little anecdote for you: there was on the web a paranormal believer, who likes to uncritically believe any "theory" against "scientific orthodoxy", and who expected to get support for his views from Nottale, just because Nottale seems to be a free thinker resisting the scientific orthodoxy. But then he was so shocked to discover that Nottale is a very materialistic person, who denies all possible existence of paranormal phenomena.

So I agree with Winston, that this world is governed by deception and nonsense. But I disagree about what is the way out of this nonsense.
He sees the way out in some spirituality, while trying to debunk some wrong religious and spiritual claims.
But I think the problems with spirituality are much deeper than this, and I see the true way out to be instead in reason, science and technology. I will develop this in another post, explaining what I think is wrong with this website, and how it jeopardizes its credibility in the eyes of scientists.

[NinjaPuppy]

Welcome!

[Arouet]

Welcome!

You might want to take a look at this Skeptoid episode discussing Myers Briggs: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

[spoirier]

I know the fact that this classification is not always exact, as some people can be in the middle for some parameters. If I said my type, it is because I consider my position at all these 4 parameters to be clear, and that the descriptions of INTP that can be found fit with me quite well, and make a good account of how I differ from usual people and what makes it so difficult for me to relate with them.

In the skeptic page you linked to, I was amused to read that person's type is ISTJ. I'd call this type another name: "the Good Pupil", who is very happy in school classes and doing his homework, then succeeds at school and ends up as inspector, school director, police officer or prison guard (according to some web page I once saw about professions associated with types), but certainly not scientist.

[NinjaPuppy]

This INTJ seriously doubts the Meyers-Briggs test is accurate.

[The Warrigal]

That's interesting Ninja.

I also come as an INTJ personality type in the Myers-Briggs test.

[The Warrigal]

Hi spoirier and thanks for such a stimulating post.

I look foreward to reading the next installment.

[spoirier]

So now I posted a few important messages, and I just completed exploring the threads of interest to me in this forum. But then, sorry but the feeling I get as a result of this exploration is no more a stimulating mood, but rather a mood of puzzlement and discouragement.
Please see my messages (you can find from my profile), and if possible, my own and other web pages I linked to. This can help you understand the following remarks.

When , I have a deep admiration for Arouet's patience (which I would not have), and a lot of despair about Winston's scientific illiteracy and self-defeating and self-discrediting methodology.
I remember a proverb saying something like: an idea suffers not so much of being strongly opposed, than of being pitifully defended.

I'm so sorry I cannot decently recommand SCEPCOP as long as Winston stands along his current mind and does not make some drastic changes to this site.

There is a good reason that he visibly failed to see, why scientific research usually needs to be specialized in some way.

If you can't see what the specialization of scientific research may have to do with SCEPCOP's problems, then you can get it by meditating on the following imaginary logical fallacy: "If Lloyd Pye's claims are ridiculous then the all evidence for Psi of the world can safely be discarded".

What more ?
In some other threads, the participants are trying to discuss about physics, especially quantum physics, while being limited in their concluding power by the fact none of them has any qualification in this field.

Indeed, this site is called "Scientific committee...". Interesting, isn't it ?

As for me, I do know quantum physics quite well. Not all (not up to the standard model) but enough for being familiar with the meaning of its famous paradoxes, and having rather precise ideas of what it can have to do or not with the psi problem.
But I'm just not sure of being really welcome here, for the same reasons, which might have also been the cause why nobody else already came to assist you with physics questions.

Maybe the only solution will be to create still another scientific committee with its own independent site, after all. But I don't have the time and motivation to work on it. I think the supernatural is real and that NDEs do describe the glimpse of afterlife but I can't invest myself in this field, as I have other much more important issues to work on.

So sorry.

[derrida]

talking about your Myers Brigss is like me talking about my Horoscope..
take it from a psychologyst that spent 3 years working just reviewing tests.. is just nonsense.


Bienvenue!

[The Warrigal]

Hi Derrida.

I don't take the Myers-Briggs test seriously at all, but there is no denying the fact that many Corporate and Public Service employers obviously set much store by it and obligate their employees to do the test.

That's the only place I ever did the Myers-Briggs test. - At work.

You don't have to be a psychologist to realise that it's crap. (I've done it about three times and got a different personality classifcation each time. INTJ just happened to be the last of them).

To my mind the fact that employers are able to use such obvious junk science to pigeon hole their employees is matter of greater concern than bored commuters reading the newspaper horoscope on their way to work.

[Arouet]

No doubt Warrigal! The interesting stat from the Dunning article is that 50% of people who take the test twice get a different result! The fact that businesses rely on it is worrying.

[Scepcop]

What's wrong with the Myers-Briggs test? It's pretty accurate for me and everyone I know. I usually get the same one each time, with only E and the I on the borderline cause I am sometimes introverted and sometimes extroverted, so I'm about on the border. Mine is INFJ or ENJF, or on the border of both. It's very accurate for me at least. So don't consider something debunked right away.

[Arouet]

[ProfWag]

[spoirier]

Sorry but here I agree with Winston on this point. His claims have no contradiction if you make a decent care to understand what he really means by them and don't stick to some stupid litteral interpretation of some of his words. It is in agreement with what I wrote in a previous message.
Once again, what he and I claim is that these parameters are generally meaningful, but need to be taken in a fuzzy sense, where each person may eventually be on one side of each duality, but may also be somewhere in between for one or more dualities.
This is a clear meaningful claim, which has no contradiction and is no way contradicted by the observation that repeating the test may give a different result (insofar as the systematic choice of expressing the result as binary data do not properly reflect more subtle and fuzzy realities).
Also, please go read again , which interestingly debunks the pseudo-criticism that is being made here for nothing.

Let me also mention that I got to know about this classification very freely, outside any organization or consultation process; I found my own type myself checking every of the 4 dualities successively (and finding them quite meaningful), not through any "formal test" with any long list of mysterious questions leading to any surprise result at the end. And the guy who first invited me to check my type has a long experience of understanding much of the people's behaviors around him by guessing their types, and he developed this experience all by himself very far from any business, propaganda or administrative influence.