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Dr Adequate nails someone stupid enough to use 'pseudosceptic':

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=109873&page=2

Ooh look, you're whining about "pseudoskeptics"!

Have a look at the company you're in.

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Real Proper Skeptics believe in UFOs even though they are "short of any kind of proof" : I propose that true skepticism is called for today: neither the gullible acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of the scoffer masquerading as the skeptic. One should be skeptical of both the believers and the scoffers. The negative claims of pseudo-skeptics who offer facile explanations must themselves be subject to criticism... There is another aspect to the UFO phenomenon that involves politics and secrecy rather than observational evidence. I do not currently have a ticket to any SCI program, but over the years I have gotten to know individuals who for one reason or another would be aware of the existence of relevant black programs... The above is, of course, short of any kind of proof, but all in all I have now gotten to the point in my exposure to the subject at which I think it somewhat more likely than not that something not merely delusional, but real and important may be going on with regard to the UFO phenomenon.

Real Proper Skeptics believe that "confusing memories" prove that you've visited another universe : Join us in a brave foray into the unknown and uncharted realms of parallel universes. Prepare yourself for a trek, not to outer or inner, but to adjacent space.

Will we find Eden? Lands of Magic? Our heart's desire? Or will we find worlds just like our own? Some of us may have already visited other universes - the evidence may be confusing memories - improbable places or people we have seen. Can we observe these parallel universes? Have we observed them? Can we travel between them? What kind of device would we need? What energy barriers would we encounter and have to overcome? Is there a shortcut between the worlds? Does quantum consciousness hold a key?

ASIDE TO PSEUDOSKEPTICS: Please don't bother. We are talking subjective experience here and trying to derive clues to what is happening. These things occurred - they happened to us - no amount of skepticism or psychobabble on your part will convince us otherwise.

Real Proper Skeptics believe that the "Face On Mars" is evidence of a lost Martian civilization, but that NASA is hushing it up : If the "Face" and/or other features test positively for artificiality, this discovery promises to be the most explosive we have ever encountered. The Cydonian Imperative advocates completely open disclosure of any findings that would tend to bear out the Artificiality Hypothesis. I am troubled by NASA's demonstrated refusals to comply with scientific method and acknowledge the work of independent researchers.

The Cydonia inquiry is not trivial, pseudoscientific, or dismissable. On the contrary, the enigmas on the Martian surface (and perhaps elsewhere in the Solar System) challenge our conceptions of planetary and genetic selfhood. We cannot afford to miss this potentially transformative opportunity...

It is interesting that this image, withheld from public inspection, depicts the Face in its entirety. Such accuracy tends to suggest that acquiring high-resolution images of the Face is not only easier than NASA/MSSS would have the public believe, but that NASA has an abiding interest in studying the Cydonia region. The reasons for the space agency's near-silence on the Cydonia issue, in light of the image above, are far from trivial...

Skeptics groups rail against "pseudoscience." But perhaps the time has come for independent thinkers, armed with real knowledge as opposed to false preconceptions, to begin questioning the agenda behind pseudoskepticism.

Real Proper Skeptics believe that John Edward can talk to the dead : One of the most famous psychic mediums in this country is John Edward who performs readings before a live audience on television. His impressive abilities suggests that he may actually be communicating with the dead. pseudo-skeptics claim that John Edward is a master of reading body language to elicit information. But, Edward often does phone readings and sometimes readings where he cannot even see the subject... pseudo-skeptics claim that questionnaires and bugging devices help producers learn about deceased family members... Concerning bugging devices, the show's producer replied, "Of course there's microphones, but are they being fed anywhere, no. And John doesn't see any of this."

Real Proper Skeptics believe that crop circles... or "at least some of them" were created by "Non-Human Intelligence" : If Nickell and Fischer had examined that question, they would have found that their four arguments for hoaxing are perfectly compatible with the hypothesis that crop formations, or at least some of them, are created on purpose by a non-human intelligence (NHI), such as extraterrestrials or spiritual beings... Proper skepticism must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Unfortunately, much of what comes out of the "skeptical" community these days is not proper skepticism, but all-out, fundamentalist disbelief. Such skepticism can be called pseudo-skepticism, pathological skepticism or bogus skepticism.

Real Proper Skeptics believe that Uri Geller has magical powers over cutlery : Some historians believe Jesus Christ was born on December 20th. Perhaps the first unusual event of Uri's life was that he was born on the same day, although some time later, in 1946 to be exact. Coincidence? Maybe, but a portent perhaps of the shape ( or shape-shifting ) of things to come.

Uri says that he first became aware of his mindpower at the age of four. He was eating, when the fork he was using bent and snapped. His mother, a member of the Freud family, was not surprised at his ability and nurtured his childhood accordingly. It was this acceptance, rather than denial, which enabled his self belief. A belief, Uri says, is inherent in all children, it is social conditioning which creates the denial...

When I spoke with Uri, he told me that he still meets with scientists and accepts the positive motive behind scientific discovery, it seems it is the adversarial 'pseudo skeptics' which Uri has washed his hands with...

Real Proper Skeptics believe that they can debunk the Big Bang without actually knowing any physics; and also in alien visitors, ghosts, ESP, Bigfoot... : These ordinarily sound scientific platitudes are used as the ultimate "get out of jail free" cards for pseudo-skeptics who have no answers to inconvenient questions. Let's examine Sagan's assertion that "extrarordinary" claims require "extraordinary" evidence. The problem with this statement is that popular science does not require extraordinary evidence for its extraordinary claims. Big Bang theory may be the most extraordinary claim in the history of popular science. Here we have an idea that can be neatly encapsulated in eight words: "At first, there was nothing...then it exploded." But how can NOTHING explode? Big Bang theory "defies gravity" and violates innumerable laws of physics, it remains a HYPOTHETICAL mathematical model, yet it is promoted as truth by NASA and institutions of higher learning around the world. Why has the mainstream never demanded the same standards of Big Bang theorists that it does of "paranormal" proponents?

Where are the "double-blind tests" validating Big Bang theory? Has Big Bang theory been tested by JREF or other skeptical organizations?

Real Proper Skeptics think that mediums can catch terrorists despite the fact that this has never happenned : I am presenting an issue which hitherto has NOT been part of the procedure of crime detection training.

One has to ignore the entrenched negativism of the closed minded skeptics (or as Professor C T Tart calls them 'pseudo-skeptics') They are defeatists and I submit they are a danger to national security for retarding or preventing professional investigation of psychic phenomena.

Law enforcement agencies ought to obtain the services of highly gifted psychics - not the run of the mill commercial ones, but those who can pass empirical tests for repeatable accuracy. There may be at least four or five in each country who ought to be regarded as absolute 'pure gold.' These would be hard to find as the truly gifted ones keep a very low, non-commercial, very private profile...

Two gifted psychic mediums would be required - one of them a trance-medium. Usually, the mediums bring others with them to give them psychic energy support. One of the mediums will be in a position to communicate with the terrorist's 'attachment.' This will be done while the other trance-medium goes into trance and allows the terrorist's 'attachment' to use the voice box of the second medium.

Real Proper Skeptics believe everything they hear, plus everything they make up : Fortunately, not every one is pseudo skeptic. We have also many true skeptics... It is said that even Hitler had some psychic powers (I just heard this and do not know the details of it). If true, this does not mean that everything this monster did was right or conversely, his crimes against humanity do not nullify his psychic ability... We know that thoughts are vibrations. These vibrations are what make the electroencephalograph machine (lie detector) work. Vibrations are created by particles. In quantum physics time breaks down and becomes irrelevant. So is it possible that your thoughts work in times that have not yet occurred? If true, this would explain how we dream things that come to pass later, telepathy, premonition, remote viewing and other psychic claims... This proves that healing comes from within and is triggered by our brain. In fact all healing come from our brain. All what drugs do is, trigger the defense mechanism of the body by stimulating the brain to release the endorphins and other chemicals that would heal the body... Belief is a powerful human faculty. If we can tap into this, we can basically heal our selves at will...The pseudo skeptics with materialistic persuasion are not after science or truth. They are promoting a religion based on materialism. There is nothing scientific, nothing logical and nothing rational about their belief. They are believers in a dogma that is contrary to human reason and observable facts... Islam presents itself as a religion. This, of course is not true.

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Y'see, eventually every crackpot group starts whining about "pseudoskeptics", presumably because it's cheaper than getting "I FAIL" tattoed on your foreheads.

Myriad, on 'burden of proof'

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=110025

Except that, in this case, there IS proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.

No, but perhaps beyond reasonable doubt. Every inductive argument (of which any investigation after the fact is an example) allows for inductive skepticism and overcomes it with an inductive leap. The question in most of these cases then becomes just how wide the gulf of inductive skepticism is or should be. Thankfully in actual investigations there is a lot of past practice on which we can establish what "reasonable" means. This is why it is necessary to have some background in relevant investigational practice in order to engage in it or to criticize what others have done: you need to know when enough skepticism is enough.

Conspiracists who are inexperienced investigators will, for example, talk about the alleged inconsistency in eyewitness testimony. This implies they believe eyewitness testimony of a true even should always be consistent. This, of course, is laughed at by the professional investigator. But even then the question is still how much inconsistency should be allowed without legitimate question arising? And in practice that depends on quite a large number of factors. And that's where expertise comes in. "Expertise" in investigation encompasses (and forestalls the tedious enumeration of) the various ways in which eyewitness testimony is handled.

That some CTer's can't see that is simply willful blindness.

This still holds. Logicians still consider "denial of the inductive leap" to be a fallacy, but the principle is not quite as cut-and-dried as this.

Arguments of the form, "You say X happened, but you don't have evidence to show that Y didn't happen instead," deny the inductive leap. When a jury convicts someone, they acknowledge that it's possible that all the evidence against him could still be true, but that he is nevertheless innocent.

Most conspiracy theories taken the approach of trying to widen the inductive leap required in the prevalent theory. That is, they say, "There are so many anomalies and inconsistencies that you really have to stretch your imagination in order to believe that X happened." Or, as I sometimes call it, the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) approach. The goal is to so erode faith in X that any alternative Y, no matter how ludicrous, starts to look better by comparison. Often Y can explain individual anomalies with much greater facility, but that isn't sufficient as we discover below.

Remember that the goal of conspiracy rhetoric is to bog down the discussion, not to make progress toward a solution. As long as conspiracy theories simply "call for more research" or assert that "it remains an open question," their proponents will continue to enjoy attention.

As we discover, the alleged "anomalies" and "inconsistencies" almost always turn out to be a failure to meet the ignorant and ill-founded expectations of the conspiracy theorists. And so it's tempting to spend a lot of time arguing whether those expectations are right or wrong. Hog-heaven for the conspiracist. By quibbling over just how wide that inductive leap is, the argument becomes endlessly subjective and fails to acknowledge that the absolute width of the leap is utterly irrelevant.

Whether one's inductive leap is trivial or strenuous is irrelevant if it's still the shortest one. That is, the theory to which we rationally subscribe is always the best theory, regardless of how objectively good it is. If the inductive leap for one theory is long, we can still hold to it if the leap in other theories is still longer.

The only meaningful challenge to one line of induction is another line of induction whose inductive leap is shorter. The question is thus not that X isn't proved sufficiently to remove the inductive leap altogether and thus reject Y categorically. It isn't that X's inductive leap is so long that you're just better off believing Y on general principles. The question -- the only proper question, that is -- is whether the inductive leap associated with Y is greater or lesser than X's leap.

That's why you never get a coherent Y out of conspiracists. That's why they'll have individual scenarios that explain individual anomalies (thermite on the steel, missiles at the Pentagon, etc.) but no coherent full-scale theory. Why? Because by giving you just bits and pieces, or by claiming they don't have or need a Y because they're only "raising issues", they don't give you anything whose inductive leap can be measured against X's.

It's blindness, for sure, but it's blindness in the sense that they don't understand why their approach will never be given equal consideration alongside a testable theory.

There are two points I'd like to make to you, tanabear, that seem to have escaped your attention.

Firstly, you seem a little mistaken over the identity of this forum. It's an internet discussion forum, on which a number of people interested in and more or less well-informed about the events surrounding various conspiracy theories like to discuss those theories, drawing on their own personal expertise to do so. It is not a clearing-house for officially sanctioned US government analysis and comment on the minutiae of the events surrounding the 9-11 attacks. Therefore, if you're looking for consensus here and you don't find it, that has no particular implications for the plausibility or otherwise of any particular interpretation of events. You may have been taken in by the standard conspiracy theorist position that the forum is a collection of government agents rigidly enforcing a communal groupthink and ostracising anyone whose opinions differ from the party line, in which case I imagine you might find it difficult to cope when this turns out not to be the case. The normal action of a conspiracy theorist at this stage is to hypothesise a further layer of conspiracy to account for the discrepancy between bias and observation, so if you decide we're deliberately doing this to confuse you, I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise.

The second point concerns the burden of proof. This is something, as has been pointed out, that currently rests with the truth movement, not for any legalistic reasons but because the truth movement is campaigning for certain actions to be carried out which are not at present planned or countenanced by the US or any other government, or by the overwhelming majority of its population. Unfortunately, by refusing to formulate any alternative hypotheses that explain completely the events of 9-11 - as recommended recently by David Ray Griffin - the truth movement is not able to compare the merits of its own hypothesis with the accepted view of events by assessing the evidence available. The only route open to the movement is to show that the conventionally accepted sequence of events of 9-11 could not possibly have happened. In other words, DRG and the rest of the movement have elevated their own burden of proof from the balance of evidence required in a scientific analysis or a civil lawsuit to the standard of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" that is typically required in a criminal prosecution.

How does this latter point relate to the Pentagon C-ring hole? Well, in this case, the aim of the truth movement must be to prove that this hole cannot possibly have been caused by the impact of flight 77 and any resulting deflagration and secondary impacts. In this thread, several possible explanations have been discussed, and your complaint is that the one true explanation has not been presented to you. However, this is actually a problem for you, not for the debunker. In order to prove your case, you now have to examine each of these possible explanations in turn, and demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that every single one of them is physically impossible. You then, having achieved this unlikely victory, have to go on to prove - again, beyond reasonable doubt - that every other possible explanation is also impossible. Because as long as there is still a way that flight 77 could have caused the C-ring hole that you haven't specifically disproved, then you haven't established anything whatsoever.

Good luck with your irrefutable proof that every possibility must be excluded. Because although Sherlock Holmes famously said that, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth, he should in fact have said that whatever remains must include the truth. You may have to try to exclude a great deal of the possible before you arrive at the truth you want to find.

So you think that the conspiracy theorists, when confronted with an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that clearly refutes their theories, will accept that they were wrong rather than claiming that said evidence was entirely fabricated?

Tell me, what colour is the sky in your world?

Dave

Rapier78 wrote:

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The success of the Holocaust myth surely convinced the organizers of 911 that the American public would not believe they were brazenly manipulated.

Is the myth of the mechanics and labor of gas chambers and their disappearance etc. etc. any less incredible than when the Pentagon air liner's novice pilot performed a vertical dive then levels off to hit the first floor head on at a location that was in the process of being renovated, killing 125 people in a building with 20,000 people? :roll:

congratulations, you are a moonbat.

When you have eliminated the inconvenient, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the twoof.