Debate with Massimo Pigliucci on Evidence & Skepticism in Science

[@robertstar7463]

Sheldrake is wise in addressing questions regarding the non-material (which is connected to the material) but which mainstream material scientists don't understand and so ironically become dogmatic and closed minded. As Nikola Tesla said, if you wish to understand the Universe you must think of energy, frequency and vibration. Einstein - the only thing of real value is intuition (non-material). At the end Sheldrake says "why do people that know nothing about subjects feel so strongly they have to form organisations to denounce it and oppose it" - the powers that control the mainstream science community have ulterior motives to keep the human race in ignorance of their true nature as spiritual beings of light (Tesla - everything is the light).

[@daledude22]

"why do people that know nothing about subjects feel so strongly they have to form organisations to denounce it and oppose it" Or maybe they do know very well about them and have an agenda to make sure those subjects never gain traction.

[@GeoCoppens]

Sheldrake has been considered a pseudoscientist ever since his published works in the early 1980's! A crackpot!

[@calcooper2529]

@@RaveyDavey There is no 'mysterious lack of peer reviewed work'. A very basic search and you'll find all you're searching for. For example, here: www.sheldrake.org/research/all-scientific-papers

[@Mulberry2000]

@@GeoCoppens For a crackpot he handle himself very well

[@GeoCoppens]

@@Mulberry2000 Well enough for fools like you!

[@rosariomusumeci3615]

Sheldrake is not only a good and honest scientist but he is also smart and profound in his reply putting the skeptic scientist in difficulty and exposes his bias and limited coherence with his so-called scientific statements, and in this exchange it is very clear the arrogance of the so-called scientific community which Pigliucci supposedly represent.

[@oculii1]

Well said Mr. Sheldrake; grace in the presence of hubris, intellectual tenacity in the face of ad hominem-inclined 'skepticism'.

[@Mulberry2000]

Rupert really handled himself really well here.

[@tewtravelers9586]

"If I was going to bet, I'd bet against it." That pretty much summed up his argument against the possibility of telepathy. Funny that he felt the need to mention betting--a highly intuitive and superstitious activity.

[@CANNIBoy]

Great comment!

[@daledude22]

And that also suggests giving up to guesses essentially, at least until someone shows you otherwise, and how can someone show you otherwise when you refuse to look and instead just turn around and walk away, hiding behind "science". Coward and/or agenda pusher.

[@kencarey3477]

Rupert is humble and polite. And humorous

[@anduinxbym6633]

What is an extraordinary claim? What constitutes extraordinary evidence? Without clearly stating both of those things, the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a license to dismiss anything out of hand. Why is telepathy considered "extraordinary" when it is reported by every culture around the world? It only seems "extraordinary' when viewed from a materialist perspective that holds that it should be impossible without some kind of physical mechanism connecting separate minds. The problem is, there is not a shred of evidence for materialist assumptions and there is no reason to assume them by default. By Occam's Razor, the most logical default position is that mind is fundamental and encompasses the world around us. Massimo Pigliucci has no standing arguments against idealism. He got taken to school by Bernardo Kastrup. If mind is fundamental, then many of the things that should be "impossible" under physicalism may in fact be possible and telepathy doesn't seem so "extraordinary" anymore. The real "extraordinary woo" is the idea that conscious experience is a temporary and emergent property of "complexity" in non-conscious physical systems. These backwards thinking materialists seem to be willing to assume all kinds of nonsense to avoid having to accept the fundamentality of consciousness.

[@Jac0bIAm]

Very well said.

[@pabloraindogarcia8107]

Completely agree

[@sivanmisgav9468]

Massimo is quite hard to listen to, he goes on about a point you already understood from the first couple of words, over explaining - yes we got the idea move on... Also he interrupts sheldrake a few times and that doesnt happen in the opposite direction.

[@masterblou2119]

''Not believing is not the same as dismissing it'' While that might be true, in the multiverse exemple he gives he dismisses the mathematical evidences and falls back on ''there is no empirical evidence'' switching between the forms of evidence required for shifting beliefs, this is moving the goalpost. There are mathematical evidences for the multiverse and they ought not be dismissed. This mentality can be summed up to: dismissal of deductive reasoning in favor of inductive reasoning. Mathematical equations are deductive, experiments are inductive. This fallacious way of thinking is very recurrent in the mentality of so called skeptics. I even suspect that their approach to understanding mathematics is inductive as well, more like: ''We learned that these equations were true, and we know they are true because they always worked'' instead of understanding why equations are inherently deductively valid or invalid.

[@lifewasgiventous1614]

Stéphane Blouin Multiverse is a quack fest theory.

[@masterblou2119]

4:19 Massimo Pigliucci confirms very well what I have criticised of the neo-atheist movement. Is that they don't teach critical thinking to their followers, but pre-established thoughts that are deemed logical and sound and ''scientific'' that the followers then take for granted. Which results in a very sophisticated (in the sense of sophistry) bandwagon that claims to pursue the higher aspirations of science while doing the opposite, aka following an antagonistic or anti-science bandwagon, similar to what they criticise of religion. ''They (atheists) rely on what scientists do to inform themselves'' this is a huge admission. It means that they rely on other people to think for them, that they are not philosophically and intellectually developed to think for themselves.

[@juansebastianforero-torres5169]

Well of course that’s the case, because the average person is not an expert in most fields. Most of Science is specialised into very minute fields, undertaking specific problems. For example, you go to the mechanic to get your car fixed, you can to a certain extent educate yourself on how your car works but most times you have to rely on the expert being the mechanic. It would be a tedious task becoming an expert in everything in order not to rely on any authority . Same goes in the field of Science, most people are not trained in Specialised scientific field and even if you are specialised for example in evolutionary biology, you’re not trained in the field of Astro physics, and thus you will need to rely on expert opinion in that field. That’s why in academia many expert challenge each other’s views all the time, like in physics, if anyone makes a discovery, it undergoes scrutiny and replication by other experts, just like if you don’t trust that mechanic that worked on your car, you can go to another expert (mechanic) to get his opinion on the same problem. So no, appeal to authority is legitimate but obviously one must be careful on who the authority is, it’s only illegitimate when the authority is not qualified or specialised in that field.

[@jonbainmusicvideos8045]

If materialists could harness esp they would cause serious mischief. That is why the spirits which lend us this power take it away in their vicinity.

[@therealDannyVasquez]

That's a very interesting idea. I believe something similar. That the bodies withhold these abilities and even information and new technology, until the person has reach a certain level of character development, intelligence and integrity that is in alignment with the agenda of the physical bodies. I see the bodies as intelligent and separate from us. We're dumb and constantly trying to figure out what's going on. But the bodies seem to understand almost everything that's going on behind the scenes. A lot more than we do.

[@minuterepeater2257]

Its hilarious Pigliucci goes on about convincing the proper communities, its disturning how science doesnt see just like organised religion they gave authority to themselfs; and expect other to fall in line.

[@oneoflokis]

It's very conformist.

[@RickDelmonico]

The multiverse is a poor interpretation of the measurement problem.

[@InterbeingArt]

So good to hear intelligent conversations on the subject!

[@rickemmons8023]

So well spoken Mr Sheldrake. Telepathy is a part of many people's lives, or at least the perception of it. A person doesn't require imperical evidence of their own senses and experiences. I appreciate your research greatly.

[@kencarey3477]

Right or wrong. I like rupert!

[@coopercooper8406]

People will show up to hear Rupert speak....who the f*** is that other guy ?

[@daledude22]

Rupert Sheldrake My wife and I love and appreciate you and your work very much. I'm very curious to know if you think that the majority of these skeptics and skeptic communities actually believe what they're saying or if they're there mostly to push an (anti) agenda. I wonder if you've ever tried to see what's *actually* going on there in particular, or if you think they just sincerely believe what they're saying. I must say, it's hard for me to believe that they actually believe what they're saying in the face of evidence and experience.

[@lifewasgiventous1614]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So then does it follow extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary claims? I would rephrase it, to say extraordinary claims require adequate evidence. I find it funny he thinks he understands the hard problem of consciousness...

[@joemarshall4226]

The extraordinary claim is that there is no such thing as ESP, when every culture, and every religion has stories and case histories where it occurs, and where the majority of the population, even today, believe that they have experienced it at some time in their lives. Where is the experimental evidence that ESP DOESN"T exist? It would be like saying color doesn't exist. The vast majority of people say they experience color, but skeptics say it is only an illusion...everything is black and white. Well that's an extraordinary claim. Prove it.

[@oneoflokis]

Like Dawkins: a know-nothing on the subject of philosophy, who thinks he knows it all!

[@anduinxbym6633]

I lost all respect for Massimo Pigliucci after his recent clash with Bernardo Kastrup. When Massimo's arguments were demolished, he could have simply acknowledged that he was wrong. Instead, he tried to escape and bury the encounter while pretending that he won the debate. He chose ego over truth. Shame on Massimo.

[@Mulberry2000]

You cannot give credence to people who never read stuff about the very thing they are debating against, because the experts they use say it is rubbish. That is a very poor defence. Then again the example about the portal needing evidence for it is, correct but the guy just defended people who refused to deal with research on telepathy and relying on their experts. It's a contraction, people need to see the evidence of the research people is doing not just relying on someone to say so. So the portal example was poor.

[@ThumbsHunter]

13:39 the moment pigliucci lost all credibility.

[@Beatriz-lj2td]

Rupert Sheldrake won!

[@callyouone]

Being objectively biased seem to be a speciallity of devotees of scepticism. Such funny (an annoying) paradox and social phenomena.

[@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

Pigliucci is unbearable.

[@femkeborcheld56]

Yes, very pleased with himself...

[@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

@@femkeborcheld56and demonstrably mistaken

[@djad3115]

FANTASTIC! Thank you!

[@oneoflokis]

I don't know why telepathy is so controversial, nay taboo, among the scientific and skeptic community. Surely some of these people are science fiction fans?? Well, telepathy gets included in every second sci fi novel or TV show. It's in all the Star Trek series (which, incidentally, have been praised for their prescience about technology.) It's in hard SF as well as science fantasy and space opera. It's all over the place. I was reading something the other day which said it was culturally acceptable for scientists and philosophers in the 1930s to believe in it. So what happened?? How come today's scientists - and a lot of philosophers - are so unimaginative and mentally hidebound? What appears in visionary fiction, tends to become fact centuries later. Like they wrote stories of trips from the earth to the moon in the 16th century. Well: we aren't getting there via a flock of geese 🙂- or by a witch taking flight from the slopes of Hekla volcano, as in a treatise by Kepler! Or even by means of a giant cannonball, as in Jules Verne's 19th c fiction. But we Are getting there! 🙂 After centuries of people saying it was either demonic or impossible. So - re telepathy - which science fiction writers such as Julian May have pointed out would be very USEFUL in interstellar travel over huge distances - might be the only way we could communicate thus. (As in the latter's The Saga Of The Exiles quartet and other novels) So - WHY are all these skeptoids getting in the way, like goalkeepers, of something like telepathy? We might need it, in future times!! (And if the government DOES, and not just for secret projects, you can be sure they'll finally shut up the skeptoids, and people with the relevant talents will be sought out and treated with honour.) As for the way this shower of skeptics are going on now, it reminds me of Saul's persecution of the witch of Endor. You attempt to "drive them out of the land" - till you need them. 😏

[@EnvelopeOfficial]

Nice one Rupert, you handled it pretty lucidly, maybe you just lost cool in the point where you said "no, telepathy sceptics are just being bigoted and prejudiced", which is something you can't really say when dealing with the delicacy of the task of talking someone out of his own mental biases. Because mental biases are structures, and structures support a person's psyche, so removing them is a dangerous job that a person needs to feel comfortable doing. And with an attitude like "no they are just bigots" you're not tuning to your interlocutor, so he's not gonna feel comfortable undermining his mental safety and the whole purpose of the debate (to find a final synthesis that unifies the opposing parties) falls apart. In fact it seems like what debate means today is a fight between two factions that are immovable in their stance and that have, at all costs, to maintain their position otherwise they might loose. That is a format that might have entertainment value but not much else. And I'm sure you feel the same way about it, and I just wanted to offer you my words about it. I can see that you take both yourself and your opposition quite lightly and that flash of surly attitude was actually almost comical, but for him I can see it wasn't. So, you know, it's just kind of worth it to ponder about these things (difficult human interactions). BTW the full-length video on your website is offline.

[@daledude22]

Good point, but I think that only applies to a "normal" person that doesn't already have an immovable stance. Sometimes dynamite is required when a pick and shovel won't work. I'd suspect that Rupert was already well aware of this situation.

[@donaldmcronald8989]

Well edited.

[@TylerClibbon]

the ending is so good

[@baabaheru1284]

It’s a well known fact that some people of earth’s northern regions have calcified pineals(the soul gland). As a result of melanin(dark matter) deficiency, they are unable to pierce the veil of the intuitive feminine right brain realm. They remain stuck in patriarchal left brain exile. Poor things. Luckily Mr Sheldrake has escaped this fate.

[@VirideSoryuLangley]

"Patriarchal left brain exile" is what gives you the ability to type that phrase. Besides, men are more intuitive than women.

[@squatch545]

Who was the silent woman? A prop?

[@donaldmcronald8989]

The entire video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/apm4Y32Ajr10lc0

[@bentuovila5296]

The old saying that science advances one funeral at a time seems apt here.

[@Andrew-M-Davis]

For a more detailed look into Sheldrake's own fascinating path to these insights, see his personal contribution in a new book featuring the spiritual journeys and discoveries of todays leaders: www.amazon.com/How-Found-God-Everyone-Everywhere/dp/193968188X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532205591&sr=8-1&keywords=how+i+found+god+in+everyone+and+everywhere

[@vampireducks1622]

"Bigoted and prejudiced" is spot on.

[@danb7601]

Guy on the right literally just appealing to authority, what a literal joke

[@dennisjohnston7967]

He researches parapsychology? Lol. Nuff said

[@user-kn5wh5cg2g]

Too many drugs too many mushrooms.

[@hyperspacejester7377]

Too much conformity, too much ad hominem. 😄😆😅