In Defense of "Pseudoscience"

[@GoodOwl0]

Pseudoscience - bad Sudo science- good

[@GoodOwl0]

@proteusx ~$ cat ~/.bashrc | grep science alias science='rm -rf/'

[@BananaMan23456]

Yahhhh that's hot

[@kekkek5634]

@@GoodOwl0 grep science ~/.bashrc =P

[@porky1118]

@@GoodOwl0 In this case, science should be fine, but sudo science is bad :)

[@ixp8605]

*doas science

[@KGSKGSKGSKGSKGS]

not enough wind 3/10

[@mcechss]

I like the wind, it makes me feel like I am there with Luke and we are good friends lol

[@josephdiaz2182]

I love this community

[@carterporter2627]

​@@josephdiaz2182 No rating? 2/10

[@Jombo1]

you should start doing food reviews in your car

[@cunningham.s_law]

please make a video on alchemy

[@ltxr9973]

yes

[@fullytokd]

yes

[@holalluis]

yes

[@veepizzapie]

yes

[@Matt-gd4vo]

yes

[@Thvl3]

My worst nightmare and my dream come true is to end up like Luke

[@iam-retarded-but]

?

[@nickpavia9021]

?

[@yuyuyuyuyuy484]

?

[@ソク]

? atleast reply

[@thegreatestpursuit]

?

[@vmisev]

Graham: asteroid melted ice Everyone: sudo! Graham: sudo asteroid melted ice NASA: Okay - kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHKpomWoqc5mY5Y

[@LukeSmithxyz]

In crossing over into many different topics, my channel sure enables the most ridiculous puns.

[@c.deg.7982]

In a lot of social sciences the use of intimidating statistics seems like wanting to impress the reader, just like it was very fashionable to sprinkle your speech with French and Latin in the not so distant past. It is there for form (status signalling) rather than function (more precise or shorter speech). Think of the architect in the Matrix Reloaded - academics likely did this to imitate the aristocratic dialect (U vs non U) spoken by ruling classes in Europe pre 1960s.

[@kruxdt6307]

*Gnu/Lunch with Luke*

[@pigboiii]

Gnunch?

[@djsigmann]

Authoring a bunch of reputable bootstrap files? Meh. Obtaining a doctorate in Linguistics? Sure. That stoner impression at 11:00? Hot shit.

[@beastbum]

Luke, my favourite pseudolinguist

[@Asthenar]

Looking forward to the Alchemy video :D

[@DeLewrh]

Luke, I don't wanna be that guy.. but you give off a Father Grigori from Half-Life 2 vibe

[@monsieurlemon]

it's the same reason for calling something a conspiracy theorist

[@eduardmg9456]

non meme comment: what you are talking about is something that is quite commonly know, at least in mathematics: you first have the intuition and then you give proof that is true. The most basic example is the abstraction of number: you can count thinks, and arithmetic works on them. And if you are able that the number can exist by themselves (defined by axioms), then arithmetic norms are also true for them.

[@Deguiko]

Yeah, agreed. Although the proof side of the work is standardized, the intuitive reasoning part is far from being standardized. Still, the intuitive reasonings of the author are left out of most books, which only carry the formalized mathematics. I'm not saying books should be one way or another, though, both forms of exposition have their advantages.

[@tobiasthrien1]

I'm not really sure if i get your point. Maybe it's because i (as a physics student) have a different viewpoint on falsifiability. In Physics there is also a clear seperation between theory and experiment (it's literally divided into theoretical physics and experimental physics). And obvioulsy (at least for me) there are in principle no restrictions or rules, on how to develop a new theory or what a theory is. But that doesn't mean that they all can become accepted. Therefore they have to be supported by evidence (so they also have to be falsifiable for that). However unfalsifiable theories can still be useful because they may grant a different perspective on a subject. But if they don't lead to the development of a new falsifiable theory they don't contribute to physics (but maybe philosophy).

[@DaRkShadOwxXx14]

axiom 1: you (are gay) proof is as follows: read (your post) Q.E.D.

[@DaRkShadOwxXx14]

jk btw, friend

[@TB-pf5nt]

The crux of the issue is that there's a big difference between the physical sciences and the humanities. Social scientists since the early 20th century have been trying to shoehorn their work into frameworks that are more like, say, physics, in an attempt to make them seem more "scientific", that is, more institutionally acceptable and profitable.

[@tobiasthrien1]

@@DaRkShadOwxXx14 I think i don't really get the joke I mean why are you proofing an axiom?

[@DaRkShadOwxXx14]

@@tobiasthrien1 cuz some people are brainlets, and need the reasoning spelled out for them QED (above)

[@acerld519]

You've been baiting us with the alchemy pill for a while now.

[@nullnull9478]

I will riot until I get my alchemy video

[@drumitar]

can we get this man on joe rogan podcast ?

[@lafuenteposible]

Luke make a video on zathura vim-like features like jumplists, marks etc, together with synctex and some dmenu/fzf magic for opening files, sending current file to other programs (like email client, other pdf-viewers, etc.) and/or pdftext/pdfinfo (just some ideas out of the top of my mind ^^)

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

I'd love to hear a Not Related on Feyerabend.

[@chrisrosenkreuz23]

/hVxvLd6cF0k

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

@@chrisrosenkreuz23 Good show. Too bad he pronounced it weird, though.

[@sparky4747]

A good example of an unfalsifiable theory comes from my personal life and I learned it at a very early age. When I was about 7 years old I woke up and noticed that my environment has changed in subtle ways. Like the furniture and items in my home, the view out the window, and a multitude of other things. The whole world had an “uncanny valley” feel to it. I told my parents I have travelled to a different universe and they told me I’m being an idiot. The exact same thing happened several times as I was growing up. Looking back at it now it is more likely that it was just a quirk of my maturing brain. But there’s always the chance it is evidence that we are living in a multiverse. As much as I feel that I really did switch universes during those times, if I were to start claiming that I’m an interdimensional traveler, that would be pseudoscience. There is no realistic experiment I could run to verify my subjective experiences. So in the end it is just an amusing story not worthy of scientific consideration. The same can be said for all kinds of religious and mystical experiences people have.

[@wajideus4591]

Just wanted to leave a comment before watching the video, because I've spent a lot of time thinking about this topic myself: The scientific method is entirely encapsulated by the idea of creating experiments that DISPROVE ideas. Because you can't prove an explanation, you can only prove an observation. The primary issue here is that we've mathematically proven (via Godel's incompleteness theorem) that there are true statements that cannot be proven logically from a limited set of axioms. That is to say that the scientific method, as useful and dependable as it is, can only be used to explain a subset of truths about the universe. The things that are outside of this subset are basically "magic". These are things which are often clearly observable, but cannot be reliably reproduced by any experiment or are seemingly in defiance of natural "laws". Imo, the existence of magic is rational, but predicated on the idea that the laws of the universe are merely the byproduct of a distributed system. As if the observable universe was just the stream of thought of an infinitely massive brain, or the projection of a weighted range of an infinite set of probabilistic universes onto each other. Sit down for a while and just think about how causality would behave in a universe with exactly 1, 2, and 3 particles in it. You'll inevitably reach the conclusion that causality is a sympathetic phenomena, and an element of each particle's behavior is completely independent from all others; the manifestation of order within chaos. You'll also eventually notice that due to the asynchronous nature of discrete particles, that some will be effectively "invisible" to others. And this opens up another huge can of worms: does the idea of a void / vacuum (i.e. "nothing") truly even exist, or is just relative? Maybe the entire universe is "full", but can only observe an extremely small slice of it.

[@MisterBones2910]

"It came to me in a dream"

[@Throwingness]

Listening but wondering how someone can shave the back of their head and not cut themselves.

[@Daniel-Q.-Phantom-esq.]

I cant believe this came out before the pandemic

[@UCm0i6w5lBlRthCtZEoj99tg]

excited to watch your review you uploaded on your other channel about the Lords of Chaos movie they made about you

[@cookiedestroyer402]

one problem is how do you differentiate between actual science that the mainstream ministry of thought declares as pseudo science(race, gender based) to real pseudo science flat earth etc.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Does anyone need some invented formal epistemological cut-off to tell the difference?

[@jonathanwarner1844]

There is a procedure called scientific method, which consists of methods and logic, and procedures for making inferences based on observations. This method is considered by by many, including myself, to be the only way to achieve an understanding of objective reality we can all agree on, but this limits our capability of understanding to the narrow set of phenomena to which this method can be practically applied. This perception of science as a superior epistemology has led to attempts to apply science to many places where it cannot really be applied, such as in moral and value judgements, and discursive fields of study. This sort of misapplication of science is called "Scientism." kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHeYiWyXotB7aNU

[@jonathanwarner1844]

By the way, funny that gender and "mainstream ministry of thought" should be mentioned in connection with science. I think this is a basic category error, because the political issues of gender etc are overwhelmingly moral and cultural issues about how people should be treated. Since science is objective, and therefore neutral, it can have nothing decisive to say in terms of making decisions about how people are to be treated in society. At most it can only inform. Science has nothing to say about value judgments, but like everything else that humans do, it has to be conducted within a moral framework.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Thank you reddit for the same positivist pabulum that literally everyone has heard a million times and that this video is a response to anyway

[@silseh]

@@cookiedestroyer402 babby can't comprehend the fact that professionals disagree with him, resorts to calling them jews. amazing

[@CemKumral]

So, what's the hot take about alchemy?

[@boguslav9502]

Gimbutas- Oh god the migration hypothesis she proposed, its taken this many years of solid genetic evidence and a shift of proffesional geneticists opinions to consider that maybe she was wrong. Currently we might be seeing a shift from the yamnaya homeland to the weird Yamnaya vs CWC hypothesis, that klykov supports with genetic finds. More and more evidence seems to be going into this meaning that we might need to ditch the IE label for peoples migrations but possibly not for linguistics. (Gimbutas is the kurgan theory I think but its now turning out that she is probably wrong and another theory is coming out instead) And not to mention the political views of the people arguing. Everyone wants the IE crown for themselves it seems.

[@porky1118]

I agree, that some things don't need to be falsifiable, to be worthy, but at least according to the framework (axioms), you should be able to say something about something, which might be falsifiable. So I'd say, all science can be seen this way: Axioms and Observations => Conclusions (might be falsifiable)

[@SuperHeroINTJ]

Did you leave Void Linux? Why?

[@GioGziro95]

What you're explaining seems to be in line with the philosophy of Thomas Khun. He also believed that Popperian approach might make science impossible. Regardless, incremental steps are necessary for great leaps, or paradigm shifts, and a more methodological approach of Popper is still extremely relevant, even though it might be overly reductionist at times. Kuhn looks at science as more of a social phenomenon with lots of human factors which makes clearly defined methodological approach difficult. This is why, in real life, it's often not very clear when a theory is pseudoscientific, and there are a lot of blurry lines. I've thought about this issue a lot in the recent few months... ...In the shower. JK. 😂 Of course, this doesn't mean that the Earth is flat because NASA had lied in the past; it just means that we shouldn't place too much importance on a scientific consensus; rather, we should focus on the evidence. Veritasium has a brilliant video that sums up the philosophy of Khun: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j2bOfYCMnNtjjsk

[@andreipopescu7636]

"i am not Marxist, in fact I am against Maxism." Shh, he is Leninist

[@hashkeeper]

amazing, thank you

[@richardwayne809]

Sorry but the difference between science and pseudo science is methodology not frame works.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Sorry but methodology is "frame works"

[@richardwayne809]

@@LukeSmithxyz , so I've rewatched the video so I can make a more thoughtful response. Scientists are taught about the dangers of bias, both known and unknown, and how important it is to follow certain methods so as to minimize the impact of bias. Chief among these techniques is peer review, the part that comes after publication where others get to tear it apart if they can. A trial by combat if you like. Pseudo science is simply persuasion and no mitigation of bias is even attempted. Wegener's continental drift was and still is rejected because it is contrary to facts that were widely known in his time.

[@Warciarz04]

Finallly I know how to pronounce it.

[@cashel1111]

i love the message in this treat all ideas as though they are 100% wrong and see what usefulness can come from them regardless that way you never become blinded by a single particular system, but you can collect and compile all the gems from across the board

[@kubre]

I came for wind

[@sarundayo]

All science is based on trial and error, just like how installing Arch Linux is, therefore Linux is science applied. WTF!

[@mc4444]

You said that falsifiability isn't a good measure of whether something is pseudoscientific or not but you didn't really give a reason why it isn't or what a better alternative is. I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want to get somewhere and not just explain but predict some future experiments why isn't it reasonable to skip theories which can't be falsifiable and have no predictive power? You could say that their theory hasn't gotten to that stage yet so it's still worth considering but it they state that they don't even intend to get there then what is the value of the theory? Again if you're interested in talking to them and using the terms is convenient, but some people aren't just interesting in going in circles and playing word games. You also gave examples of the value of wacky ideas but I wouldn't classify those as pseudoscience. There's a famous Feynman lecture on the scientific method where he states that the first step is guessing the solution. So the problem isn't when you guess is dumb or illogical, the problem is when the result of the guess doesn't agree with experiment. There's also a related A topic which you didn't bring up but relates to this. There are some fields were multiple theories can explain the same occurrence and there is no experiment that can distinguish between them. In that case I would say you should be familiar with all of them if you want to further the filed. I agree about your point on statistics. It's a very hard to understand field so you can most easily manipulate data, inadvertently or not, and get any result you want. This just means that very careful attention is needed when dealing with statements that are largely based on statistics.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

I give no alternative to "falsifiability" because as I say, I don't believe in the demarcation problem at all. The things people think of as theories/frameworks are usually only backdrops for doing research anyway. The gap between the philosophy of science and their quaint notions and science as it is actually practiced is enormous, and while I have a low opinion of institutional science, most of this gap is simply because philosophy of science is focused on philosophical issues that are pretty inane for real scientists: in every field, the backdrop to all research is a "unfalsifiable" core of assumptions that might even be unstated and unstateable. That's not a bug, but an inevitability, you have to have at least an implicit theoretical way of even interpreting basic data.

[@mc4444]

I think this is a good time to define the terms. Let's say science is a framework that follows the scientific method and pseudoscience is framework that claims to follow the scientific method but doesn't actually. So I wouldn't say that every theoretical framework is pseudoscience just because it's axioms are unfalsifiable or something like that. The axiom of choice is unfalsifiable but that doesn't mean that ZFC set theory is pseudoscience, it's just a branch of mathematics. On the other hand something like creation science would be pseudoscience. I'm not sure how dedicated the social sciences are in keeping with the scientific rigor so let's take your plate tectonics example. I don't think that people would be justified to call a dumb idea pseudoscience but since I'm not familiar with how the theory started let's take the worst case scenario: the theory was claimed to be scientific but it either didn't have any predictive power or it's predictions disagreed with experiment so it was called a pseudoscientific theory. At some point the theory was reformulated so that it could explain the geologic phenomena seen and predicted future experiments and so was accepted to be a proper scientific theory. This doesn't now mean that the original claim wasn't pseudoscientific because the idea it was based on turned out to be true. Again, I don't think an idea onto itself can be pseudoscientific. Do you have any examples of theories that would be called pseudoscience to this day but have a real scientific value? I agree that if something isn't claiming to be science that calling it pseudoscience is just dishonest and idiotic dismissal but that doesn't mean that the term is completely useless. I would just use it when the thing we care about in the discussion is science.

[@blacktiger974]

are you aware of the term "benefit of the hindsight"?

[@alphiek309]

is this a reupload?

[@herrpez]

You don't use an apostrophe for fucking plurals, you absolute ninny.

[@herrpez]

Fuck off, pleb.

[@fuzzybyte]

close the window next time

[@wild1729]

happy lunch luke

[@jolenewalker8199]

I disagree completely about Graham Handcock

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

#TeamGeologicCatastrophism #TeamThunderboltsProject

[@LittleMushroomGuy]

You should check out the works of pierre duhem

[@Kenanalasadi8989]

well, there is no way to disprove evolution, which make it a Pseudoscience

[@Kenanalasadi8989]

@@azertyuiop432 ?

[@AexisRai]

Hey Luke: Is "everybody has an interpretive frame" an interpretive frame? 😕 I like your pragmatic angle. More instrumental thinking and less pretense is good. But I feel like the falsifiability thing is more well intentioned (edit: and valuable) than you're letting on here. Your take sounds like that it's mainly there as a filter to determine what ideas get institutionalized status and what ones have to sit at the kids' table. And it is probably being used to that effect, even by purveyors of ideas that don't have good experimental basis, sadly. But my sense is that it's _supposed_ to be an institutional defense against confirmation bias. If you come up with an Explanation For Everything that can't be disproved in principle, it's probably exactly the kind of thing you want to believe, optimized for you and not for understanding the whole world. Even just pragmatically, this is not as good of a strategy as one that attempts to eschew bias. My sense is that the kind of personal epistemology you come up with when you want everything to line up with your biases, would not do well in the face of increasingly novel observations, would not tend to stay internally consistent, and would not transfer well to other people. ...but I'm willing to be shown wrong on this.

[@arkadianriver]

Yep, evolution requires wild mutations. We'd still be flopping fish in the mud without those first wacky leg-fins.

[@sharqueeshajohnalaneesha2019]

I propose that we do away with referring to what is conventionally termed "pseudoscience" as pseudoscience, and instead use the word to refer to technobabble in movies, games, and books.

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

"epistemological anarchism" I like it. I've also used the term "epistemological vandalism".

[@reallybadmeme2838]

Agree with you 100% but the video title puts you into the "tinfoil hat" category in the brainlet eyes of the bugman

[@LukeSmithxyz]

"Dumb people will think you're dumb". Okay.

[@reallybadmeme2838]

@@LukeSmithxyz well true. GNU/Luke refuses to be cucked

[@bioemiliano]

Interesting view.

[@Lsvy97]

Why English pronunciation fucks with letters so much? I thought it was "sudo science" for 4 minutes along.

[@csmusic6505]

Because us anglos are norman-danish-celtic-roman rape babies with French characteristics,.

[@oddbob6230]

You need a boom mic.

[@herrpez]

Boomer mic*

[@glennedgar5057]

Gram handcock was popularized on art bell's show, a couple of decades before joe rogan. Useless trivia.

[@DaRkShadOwxXx14]

still excited for his upcoming podcast on JRE in april

[@MsDuketown]

Are you also an expert on the Younger Dryas theory, The Hudson Craters and the Clovis Culture (beating the guy from the Bearing Straight)? One thing I know: The sofists are beaten by the Saurhaus philosphers, the Antro Guys. Either way, there needs to be an earthly justice system. Even when Colombus took off to The Indies. I think you mean hard- and soft science.. If RMS is Ignatius, then Luke is Simonus 😂 A nice testcase would be Mount Rushmore.

[@TheAlison1456]

What are the alternatives to having pseudoscience exist? What other "kinds" of science are there? How do you not have any pretense in science? What the fuck is good science? I guess Feyerabend shall tell me.

[@doinalil]

su -c 'science' > sudo science.

[@amir78989]

Sudo apt-get install science

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

It is so funny how I actually know A METRIC SHITLOAD about the "Venus figurines", "indo-european invasion", and "continental drift".

[@mashygreen6974]

Finding it very hard to follow... the idea of gradual increments of scientific knowledge just implies that a new theory has to ‘also’ explain the facts that an existing theory is validation upon, and extend it to be more general without dismissing what was factually validated. What I mean by that is for instance (I like using this example a lot... sorry) when General relativity was verified, it ‘also’ validated everything that Newton’s theory of gravitation did, and then extended it to objects which move at very very different velocities. Even when Kantor came up with the idea of an atom (which in his day was also considered pseudoscience, partially because there were no tools to properly validate it back then), his theory still encapsulated the molecular science that came before him. In this video you make it seem like increments have to come in a very linear fashion, that the exact same theories that are ‘standard’ must hold exactly as they are now, rather than just having the requirement of being able to explain everything that they do. Anyways, I did learn a few new things here, so thank for the video! I’m now going to go dig some more into your dotfiles and improve my workflow! *written be a junior academic who is trying to compete for funding.

[@jacobscrackers98]

What if it's not pretense? What if those standards are there for a reason?

[@ninjarichi]

It's not about dismissing other views, it's about Newton's flaming laser sword.

[@ryang7759]

subscribe-worthy vid bro

[@TB-pf5nt]

Luke, say it ain't so! You're telling me professional scientists come at problems with foregone conclusions and massage data to fit their perspectives? Perish the thought!

[@Zaurthur]

Wind, please stop the wind.

[@jeffreyalanscudder]

You’re like Mr. Rogers for 18 year olds. 🌹

[@xyugi0007]

Luke are you into esoteria?

[@aristotelispapageorgiou4627]

peer review is broken...

[@seanmccrary8300]

Peer review means circle jerk of academia

[@digm0repaka]

based big brain boomer

[@possumcode]

Sciense has developed a Messiah complex..

[@tesso5243]

doas superior race

[@outeast7344]

Boomer destroys scientism with Taleb, T. Kuhn and Feyerabend.

[@William1942-t2w]

Nice.

[@hokkypro]

I hope it's not a Ford you are driving...

[@LukeSmithxyz]

It was in the universe I bought it, but now there are just squiggles everywhere!

[@AbsoluteScotch]

If you were a girl you'd be hot.

[@rchetype7029]

Bald girls are hot, yeah.