Are we skeptics fading away, succumbing to an onslaught of woo?

[Silent3]

Or are we all so quiet because we're simply losing our capacity to be shocked by mystical, pseudoscientific, and conspiratorial insanity?

MIHOPpers to the left of me, birthers to the right, here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.

[Warpy]

1. Speaking for myself

I'm out on the web under a handful of names trying my best to debunk health care reform myths and skewering the truly stupid with their own words.

[Silent3]

2. Good luck to you on that

When I see video of these teabagger town hall disruptors I despair of any chance of cutting through the belligerent ignorance and stupidity of it all.

When someone claims that they don't want "government messing with their Medicare", and attempts to explain that Medicare is a government program are treated as evil left-wing Obama-ass-kissing propaganda, what the hell can you do?

[Orrex]

3. At the risk of appearing to call anybody out...

I have lately discerned differences in the way some behaviors are tolerated while others are not. This inconsistency has made me reluctant to bother arguing certain topics.

[Odin2005]

4. I'm sick of the "Vaccines cause Autism" BS.

One poster even had the stupidity to declare medical science BS just because the first small-pox vaccine back in the 1700s would not have passed MODERN safety and ethical guidelines. :crazy:

[mr blur]

5. I'm so astonished by the ignorance and stupidity

of many in your country over Pres. Obama that all I can do is watch. Here you finally have an intelligent, compassionate person leading the country and the amount of bile, hatred and mindless stupidity directed at him is incredible. (Not on DU, obviously, but I see the tide turning here, too.) To an outsider, it's deeply depressing, as of course it must be to you. The amount of racist hatred being thrown around by foaming-at-the-mouth "Real Murcans" is frightening.

Morons and guns - a bad combination.

[onager]

8. Thanks. For our morons, it's the Clinton Years redux...

With the added bonus, of course, that Pres. Obama is only partly of the Caucasian Persuasion.

I remember one of Hillary Clinton's world tours during the Clinton Administration. The general reaction was, "Why is this woman so hated in America? She's bright, educated, and has accomplished a lot."

Well, that sort of answers the question about why she was so hated.

Strangely, I do have hope, which is unusual for me. I'm writing this from an area known for its racist Repub diehards, Upstate South Carolina. Lindsey Graham is from this area.

Even up here, at least among reasonable people, Repubs are TOAST. I generally hear a lot of good will expressed toward President Obama. Often expressed as: "Bush screwed things up so badly, we know it's going to take Obama a while to fix them."

The little local newspapers are interesting. My Mom subscribes to 3 of them. The idiot GOP governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, is invariably described as: "...philandering Gov. Mark Sanford..."

:rofl:

I'll close now. I have to go hike the Argentin...er, Appalachian Tail...er, Trail...

[LeftishBrit]

33. It is scary - but at least President Obama *did* get elected...

so the sane may outnumber the lunatics, even if not by as much as they should.

It was to be expected that there would be a surge in RW lunacy. Here's what I posted on a thread on March 26th

democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4914996

I would add to that now that the anti-establishment Right is likely to gain new momentum now that America has a relatively liberal government, and a black president with many international connections. It is now more important than ever that progressives, wherever they are, should not mistake 'all that is anti-establishment' for 'automatically left-wing', or give any aid or comfort to RW movements of any sort.




And one on April 10th:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5221649#5221895


But it fits in with what I've been saying for a while: that some progressives have been tempted to make common cause with people who regarded the Bush government as evil because they regarded *all* government as evil, and who opposed the war on xenophobic-isolationist rather than rational or humanitarian grounds. And that some RW-libertarians were passing as progressive because of their hostility to Bush. I argued in several posts (some of them in my journal) that any progressive acceptance of the likes of Paul is dangerous, not so much because he's so important himself, as because it is dangerous for the left to give aid and comfort to the anti-establishment Right just because it's anti-establishment.

At the moment, there is exceptionally fertile soil for the growth of anti-establishment Right movements: they always flourish in hard economic times, and if one were trying to imagine a leader of the political establishment who would most arouse the ire of such people, it would be difficult to find a better example than Obama: liberal, black, international in heritage and upbringing, *and* a member of the Educated Elite! (tut tut!) At least this means that the anti-establishment right-wingers are now beginning to show their true nature more clearly: they could sometimes pass as 'progressive' under Bush; their right-wing tendencies are harder to disguise under Obama.

[TZ]

6. Bracing for the fall outbreak

Of woo- to coincide with the fall flu/H1N1 outbreaks. I'm probably going to be one of the first to get the H 1N1 vaccine..

[Silent3]

7. I've never bothered with a flu vaccine.

I'm not afraid of them, but just too lazy to get around to it, and I figure that I'm healthy enough to get through most cases of the flu anyway.

Does your work, and maybe extra exposure associated with it, make you one of the higher priority people for vaccination?

[TZ]

9. well my company

Is making the vaccine. We actually accidently got a package with the virus the other week by mistake. I have underlying health conditions so I think I will take it when offered

[Odin2005]

27. I work at a preschool and am a disabled young adult so I'm definitely getting it.

[salvorhardin]

10. Just speaking personally

I'm burned out on it all, tired of all the anger and righteous indignation, and more than a little disgusted with the lack of civil discourse and black and white thinking that characterizes both the woo and skeptic thinkers. I'll extend that to atheists and the left in general too. Oh don't worry. I'm not about to go all Mooney and Nisbet on you all. It's just that I think there has to be a better way of doing "it" (skepticism, atheist advocacy, science communication/advocacy, political talk) but I don't know what that better way is. Contrary to the Mooney and Nisbets (I guess we need to add Kirshenbaum to that list since Unscientific America) I sure as hell don't think we need to cede veridical truth. Nor do I think there's anything to be done with people who so thoroughly buy into solipsist or religious bullshit that they're incapable of hearing reason. And neither do I think we shouldn't point out matters of factual inaccuracy or lies and distortions. And I'm not above of making fun of the truly ridiculous. It's just that I see big-L Libertarianism encroaching the major skeptical communities and uncritical anger becoming the lingua franca of movement atheism. As far as what's happening on the left with conspiracy theories and ideological dogmatism becoming the norm, well, I don't need to tell any of you that. I hope. Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out how to proceed without lapsing into what I hate because it's all too easy to do that.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

11. What you said

...I found that advocacy of scepticism held my interest for a couple of years, but seeing the recycling of woo and the Woo-woos' follies of formal logic have gradually eliminated all traces of entertainment value that 'debunking' once held for me.

There is an element of "burn-out" here for me too. My DU presence has been greatly diminished over the last six months.

[moggie]

15. You can only play whack-a-mole for so long

You engage some fool online, and afterwards you think:

(a) That was kind of fun.
(b) More importantly, though I'm sure they guy I was arguing with is beyond reach, they may be lurkers who will be convinced by what I wrote.

Then you login again the next day, and see exactly the same nonsense posted. And the day after that, and the day after that...

Perhaps a professional educator could keep this up indefinitely, but the rest of us reach a point where we say: ah, fuck it, this is getting old, and so am I. You just have to hope that someone else steps up, because pernicious bullshit needs to be refuted.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

16. I get what you mean about the burn-out

I've been fighting the internet wars for nigh on a decade now, and the only thing that keeps me going is the idea that there may be a lurker out there reading my rebuttal of the woo and save some money that they might have otherwise spent on toad's tails and cream of newt soup (or whatever nonsense is the woo du jour at the moment).

[dropkickpa]

12. I've been in grant hell

so my brains are slightly mushy right now. Stimulus money has made my days *very* busy so I'm lucky when I can put 2 words together, and those are usually "flargle smoop", making my hard-headed and sharp-wittedness seem a little off, so I hold off on posting.

[Silent3]

13. It's spelled "smupe".

Talk about mush for brains! Can't even get your incoherent blather straight! Geez! :eyes: ;)

[dropkickpa]

14. See!?!?! Mush, I tells ya! Mush!

[LeftishBrit]

34. Good luck with the grants!

I am all too familiar with 'grant hell'!

[Evoman]

17. I've stopped caring. Life has become a gigantic joke for me.

Honestly, the world is falling apart, stupidity is reigning supreme, and I barely give a shit. I used to, I suppose. But the older I get, the more I realize that when I care, or make an honest attempt at arguing with people/convincing people, the less happy I am. Especially when it comes to woos or religious people...no matter how nice you are, no matter how mean you are, no matter how good an argument you make, it never makes a difference. It's like trying to empty an ocean of bullshit with a bucket.

So why bother? My whole purpose has become amusing myself. Every now and then I'm outraged enough to be serious, but it's happening less and less.

[SidDithers]

23. I feel the same way...

I'm only here for the lulz now. I used to care. I used to make cogent posts, with detail and nuance.

Now, I pretty much just point and laugh, with the odd funny pic or 2 thrown in once in a while.

La plus ça change, la plus c'est la même chose.

Sid

[realisticphish]

18. Honestly

I'm growing weary of DU. This group helped keep me here for a long time, but... i dunno

[salvorhardin]

19. What kind of a forum would you like to see?

Or are you just tired of internet message boards in general?

Obviously, JREF is the big dog in message boards when it comes to skeptical communities. I have an account there and read there whenever anything pops up on the RSS feeds for the sub-fora I'm interested in but I've never posted. In general, the trolls the place attracts, the combative atmosphere and the rather bizarre fixation with just a handful of topics (Bigfoot!) are big turn offs for me. I'm more interested in discussion than debate and I'm more interested in meta-skeptical topics than most people (which is another way of saying I'm most interested in the psychology, sociology, philosophy and history of topics of interest to skeptics).

[realisticphish]

20. i don't think it's woo-related, per se

I just find myself growing tired of the same old jokes, arguments, and exaggerations. I think having a dem president is causing DU to implode... I just hate the drama, the "internet is serious business" people; and it seems like everyone has a chip on their shoulder about some issue now. Say ANYTHING, and someone will try to start a fight over it.


I agree with you, I think, in that discussion is better than debate. I don't want to try to convince a true believer, though that's a good skill to have. I want a more genial and respectful situation. Which, honestly, this group has had, for the most part. The problem is that those of use that post in here frequently already know a lot about the issues that pop up, and the discussion ends up being simply a confirmation of what everyone knows.

I think perhaps I am outgrowing the internet. Or at least communication on the internet. Or maybe it's my finals coming up :D

[salvorhardin]

21. I concur

I don't want to try to convince a true believer, though that's a good skill to have.

I don't think that's a skill that's even possible to acquire. For evidence, I give you the CT dungeon here on DU. Tens of thousands of words have been written by debunkers correcting factual inaccuracies, combating fallacies, and pointing out the unsavory connection of CTs to the far right. And yet, for the true believers, the impact has been nil. But yes, arguing more effectively for your case is a good skill to have.

I want a more genial and respectful situation. Which, honestly, this group has had, for the most part.

This is one area where I agree with Chris Mooney. The discourse on popular blogs like PZ's is horrendous and I think it's harmful. Here on DU it becomes absolutely frightening at times. I believe it's possible to unflinchingly advocate for your cause without demonizing those who believe otherwise. On the other hand, what's to be done when your opponents behave like angry drunks and get their news from Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?

I just find myself growing tired of the same old jokes, arguments, and exaggerations. ... The problem is that those of use that post in here frequently already know a lot about the issues that pop up, and the discussion ends up being simply a confirmation of what everyone knows.

Yeah. A large part of the attraction of this group is that it's a safe place to blow off steam, but the repetition of the same cartoons, jokes, and rhetoric is tiring. To move beyond that though I think requires all of us to make a greater commitment of time, energy and creativity than most of us are able or willing to make.

More and more I find myself being attracted to what people like Brian Dunning, Mr. Deity and Captain Disillusion are doing. Some of the stuff Cracked.com and The Onion have done too is great. They're all using various media effectively, with humor and without snarling condescension to promote the scientific skeptical worldview. Which is one reason why I love onager's travelogues so much. They're like little morality plays and interesting as all hell. I'd like to see more of that kind of attitude from skeptical, atheist, etc. online communities. I fear it may be too much to ask for though.

[realisticphish]

30. I was thinking

of trying to do a little homework thing... like, pick some obscure woo, then make a little research project about it. Do a little work to contribute.

We'll see. It's hard to find something totally new that we haven't at least touched on

and as an aside, Mr. Deity is freakin brilliant

[mr blur]

22. The internet is an awful place to discuss *anything* -

Over the last 16 years I've watched it degenerate into a children's playground, all shouting, screeching, bullying and whining. DU is beginning to reflect that.

[moggie]

24. I don't think usenet was much better

There were oases of sanity, of course, but there were also groups every bit as bad as modern discussion sites.

[Silent3]

25. The internet could get pretty awful even back in the days...

...of Usenet newsgroups. You might not expect a lot of flaming in a group like "rec.audio.opinion", but the high-end audio world has an enormous amount of woo in it. Flames burned high and bright when the "objectivists" went at it with the "subjectivists" over the voodoo and pseudoscience involved in issues like analog vs. digital, tube vs. transistor, $1000/meter cables, and absolutely bizarre shit like Tice clocks and Mpingo discs.

It's funny you mention the time period of 16 years, because I just dug a post of mine from July 1993, when I was having some fun responding to another poster's overwrought opinions about different brands of speaker cable.

> Monster interconnect is terrible. I'm not sure about all the models, but
> I have heard two and both sounded contaminated and 'dirty'. A noticable
> increase in colouration is very evident.

I found that Monster cable sounds wobbly but astringent. There is a sort of
bluish violet coloring to high frequencies, notably between 12.33 kHz and
14.08 kHz (judging by ear, of course). Imaging is pretty good, but I feel
like the performers are turned slightly to the right in their chairs and
won't look at me.

> I currently use Audio-Technica interconnect. However, I am unsatisfied
> with it's sound, as it sounds lazy and 'slow'.

Hmmm. The pumping of the noise floor that I heard with Audio-Technica added
a somewhat exuberant feel, like someone briskly jogging. I was let down,
however, by the sticky feeling that the cable imparted on the lower
midrange. It made me feel as if every other note sung by a tenor was
sticking to my shoes like gum on a movie theater floor. Just a rough
analogy, of course, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

> I have heard Crystal Line interconnect, which sounds much sharper,
> clearer, and focussed. Also sounds thinner and more analytical than the
> above two, but these are minor points. However, it costs (in Australian
> dollars) $250!!! Which is a ridiculous price to pay for 0.5m of cable. I
> could better spend the money elsewhere in my system.

Crystal Line sounds good at first, but after a while it loses its
convictions. Sort of like the difference between campaign rhetoric and what
really happens when someone gets elected. If you threaten the cable with
being replaced, however, sometimes the performance will improve.

Trust me.

What's really funny is after posting this crap, one guy took me seriously enough to e-mail and ask me for my opinions on something else he was thinking about purchasing. :eyes:

[dropkickpa]

29. I remeber getting in flamewars with people

over the *dumbest* stuff. Even geneology stuff for yaks sake! My self-edit ability has grown by leaps and bounds since the old days of the interweb. I don't hit send on about 85-90% of the posts I type these days, as I am a pretty caustic person and just don't feel like wasting the energy except when I'm drunk posting, and I've learned not to do even that for the most part (even if for no other reason than the typos irritate me the next morning).

[mr blur]

37. Hmm... "threatening the cable", eh?

I'll have to try that.

Actually, "threatening the cable" is going to be my new favourite buzz-phrase when dealing with idiots.

[dropkickpa]

28. It seems exactly same as it's always been to me

I got on pretty young compared to a lot of people, way back in the very beginning of the prodigy days, when I was in middle school. People had no idea what I was talking about, but flamewars erupted over the DUMBEST shit even in the way back when. I go in fits and spurts on internet boards, and I have seen many come and go and I've seen many self implode.

DU has actually lasted longer than most of them. The worst self implosion I ever saw was on, of all things, a mother's board with well over a thousand registered members. That one was an epic and glorious thing to behold and took all of about a week and a half. Complete nuclear meltdown.

I don't invest myself too fully in these interweb things.

[realisticphish]

31. I think it's always been that way...

but it's just gotten louder lately. There used to be a larger "middle class" on the internet, in terms of maturity. Now, you seem to either have serious scholarship, or high-school level bullshit.

[salvorhardin]

32. Yes! That's it exactly!

I fully agree with everyone else that the internet and other online forums have always been caustic and full of bluster. I've been at this a long time too. 1981 was the first time I ever went "online" via our high school's paper teletype connection to the regional BOCES PDP 8, which was in turn was tied into the rest of the State University of New York system. I've been more or less connected ever since, and yeah, did networked dial-up BBSs (I preferred Citadel BBSs) and Usenet. You can still find some incredibly stupid things I said on Usenet. Thankfully, the majority of it has disappeared. I hope.

But I think the web has increased polarization and tribalism just as it seems to propagate woo faster than any skeptical organization could combat it. What has disappeared is the middlebrow, the amateur scholar. Not entirely. They're still out there. But one only has to look at the decline of, for example, sci.space.science.history or the progression of HuffPo (Phil Plait used to post there) to see how far we've advanced along this curve.

[mr blur]

38. Yeah, but BBSs were so slow,

it was really hard to get a good slanging match going!

[LeftishBrit]

39. 1981??

Blimey, I wasn't even aware of even that sort of localized system in 1981. I don't think we even had things like computerized library catalogues over here at that time.

I think you may win the prize here for length of time online!

[Silent3]

41. I think it wasn't until the late 80s that I started using BBS...

...services. I've been working with computers one way or another since my freshman year of high school back in 1976. In a sense I was "online" even then, but only in the sense that the teletypes in our school's computer lab were connected by modem to a minicomputer at another school, a system which provided no access to any sort of social network.

I've owned a computer of some sort since the Apple II my parents bought for me in 1980. I'm having a hard time remembering exactly when I finally bought a modem, or even why I did -- it was either being able to connect with the computer system at the college I was attending, or to get onto CompuServe. I don't even remember what I used CompuServe for, just that I had an account at one time. It wasn't until 1989 that I somehow found out about BBS systems. I met some people locally through that BBS I still hang out with today.

[moggie]

42. Noobs!

Try 1974. Or maybe it was 1975. Anyway, I was at school, and we had a teletype to the local university's mainframe, along with other schools in the area. A bunch of us at three schools came up with an informal and crude way of communicating using files in a shared area. It would be stretching it to call it a BBS, but we had a lot of fun with it, and I think one romance resulted.

[LeftishBrit]

35. I'm still quite keen on being on DU..

Partly because I'm interested in American and international, as well as British politics. And there isn't a real British equivalent. Either you get forums for a specific party (our left-of-centre is rather fragmented) and I'd rather be part of a united anti-Tory front; or the forums are for blogs rather than discussion; or they are not restricted to the left/liberals and thus contain too many RW nuts (and British RW nuts are less numerous but just as nutty as their American counterparts). Oddly enough, there are at least two British equivalents of Freeperland - in fact, they even have some actual Freepers posting on them along with the RW Brits.

So I will definitely want to huddle with the UK DU-ers when we have our next, and likely disastrous, election in 2010.

And I like coming and meeting all the Sceptics, and all the people on other forums who share a left/liberal approach. I rarely go on the 9-11 forum so I avoid some of what you deal with. I do feel that there is a small but vocal contingent of people who are anti-establishment right-wingers, or at least prepared to collaborate with them. This is what I tend to argue against. But I think that this is getting less, since the fundamentally RW nature of such attitudes has become clearer with the 'Birthers' et al.

[WoodrowFan]

26. burned out

I am burned out, by the anger and hatred on the right, and by the all-to-common woo on the left...

[woo me with science]

36. You have to take a break sometimes.

But I still think it's important to engage in the discussions. For every True Believer who drives you to tear your clothing, there are probably 20 others who are silently reading and still forming opinions.

Keep the faith, is what I always say.

[Silent3]

40. I think even True Believers change their minds sometimes...

...it's just not going to happen very often at all under direct observation. People do actually change their minds about things over time, switching religions, abandoning particular forms of woo (often, however, only to latch onto new religions and new woo), and (sadly!) even atheists and skeptics change their minds from time to time.

Something has to lead to the changes in belief and opinion which people undergo. Some of that might simply be positive and negative life experiences. Some of it might be biochemical. Some of it might be traumatic brain injury. :) But some of the change I would think has to be due to a little bit of actual thinking, thinking things through and arriving at new conclusions.

It would be very hard to study this sort of thing to really know what forms of persuasion actually work over time. In absence of solid data, I just have to guess that the seeds of doubt planted by atheists and skeptics at least occasionally bear fruit.

Cultures certainly shift over time, sometimes to a great degree, as exemplified by the huge decline in the importance of religion in Europe over the past century. I'd like to think that continued efforts by atheists and skeptics might eventually produce similar shifts in the US and elsewhere.

[salvorhardin]

43. I'm pretty well convinced that what causes most people to change their minds isn't reason

I think it has much more to do with shifting values and engagement with the respective community of believers.

[semillama]

44. I was on vacation. n/t