I don’t really think that you actually need to focus on ends.
I don’t believe in homeopathy and I’m still perfectly capable of seeing that a lot of people who label themselves as Rationalists or Skeptics make stupid arguments when they argue against homeopathy because they misstate the claims that people who practice homeopathy make.
You can either focus on creating good arguments or you can focus on good maps of reality.
Your event that has probability of 0.999 might break down into ten arguments which while they are strong together can still be questioned independently.
There’s for example the claim that according to the doctrine of homeopathy all water on earth should have homeopathic powers because all water contains small amounts of nearly everything.
That just not true as homeopathists follow a certain procedure when it comes to diluting their solutions with involves diluting the substance in specific steps and shaking it in between.
Let’s say there a bacteria which builds some form type of antibody when you add poison into a solution.
Let’s when one of the bacteria who doesn’t produce antibodies come in contact with lots of antibodies and feels a lot of physical pressure that bacteria copies the antibody design that floats around and targets the poison and produces antibodies as well to defend itself against the poison.
It wouldn’t violate any physical law for such a bacteria to exist and do it’s work when you dilute enough at each step to get new bacteria who weren’t exposed to antibodies and shake to give the bacteria the physical pressure that it needs to copy the antibody design.
If such an bacteria or other agent would exist than it’s plausible that the agent could work under the protocol of (dilute by 1:10 / 10*shake)^20 but the bacteria or other agent wouldn’t do the work in the absence of that protocol in the free ocean.
Now I know that homeopathy uses distiled water and it’s therefore unlikely that there any bacteria involved but that still negates the ocean argument and the suggestion that all water should work as homeopathic solutions if homeopathy is right.
Seeking to make good arguments might be a better goal than always thinking about the ends like whether homeopathy is true in the end.
Seeking to make good arguments might be a better goal than
always thinking about the ends like whether homeopathy is true in the end.
This feels backwards to me, so I suspect I’m misunderstanding this point.
I’d say it’s better to test homeopathy to see if it’s true, and then try to work out why that’s the case. There doesn’t seem to be much point in spending time figuring out how something works unless you already believe it does work.
The question is not only does homeopathy work but do arguments A, B and C that conclude that homeopathy doesn’t work work.
You could argue that every argument against homeopathy that differs from the argument that meta studies showed that it doesn’t work is pointless.
If you however read an average skeptic, skeptics often make idealist arguments based on whether something violates the physical laws as the skeptic understands the physical laws.
Do you argue that any argument that isn’t based on whether a study fund that a process works is flawed?
I don’t really think that you actually need to focus on ends. I don’t believe in homeopathy and I’m still perfectly capable of seeing that a lot of people who label themselves as Rationalists or Skeptics make stupid arguments when they argue against homeopathy because they misstate the claims that people who practice homeopathy make.
You can either focus on creating good arguments or you can focus on good maps of reality. Your event that has probability of 0.999 might break down into ten arguments which while they are strong together can still be questioned independently.
There’s for example the claim that according to the doctrine of homeopathy all water on earth should have homeopathic powers because all water contains small amounts of nearly everything. That just not true as homeopathists follow a certain procedure when it comes to diluting their solutions with involves diluting the substance in specific steps and shaking it in between.
Let’s say there a bacteria which builds some form type of antibody when you add poison into a solution. Let’s when one of the bacteria who doesn’t produce antibodies come in contact with lots of antibodies and feels a lot of physical pressure that bacteria copies the antibody design that floats around and targets the poison and produces antibodies as well to defend itself against the poison.
It wouldn’t violate any physical law for such a bacteria to exist and do it’s work when you dilute enough at each step to get new bacteria who weren’t exposed to antibodies and shake to give the bacteria the physical pressure that it needs to copy the antibody design.
If such an bacteria or other agent would exist than it’s plausible that the agent could work under the protocol of (dilute by 1:10 / 10*shake)^20 but the bacteria or other agent wouldn’t do the work in the absence of that protocol in the free ocean.
Now I know that homeopathy uses distiled water and it’s therefore unlikely that there any bacteria involved but that still negates the ocean argument and the suggestion that all water should work as homeopathic solutions if homeopathy is right.
Seeking to make good arguments might be a better goal than always thinking about the ends like whether homeopathy is true in the end.
This feels backwards to me, so I suspect I’m misunderstanding this point.
I’d say it’s better to test homeopathy to see if it’s true, and then try to work out why that’s the case. There doesn’t seem to be much point in spending time figuring out how something works unless you already believe it does work.
The question is not only does homeopathy work but do arguments A, B and C that conclude that homeopathy doesn’t work work.
You could argue that every argument against homeopathy that differs from the argument that meta studies showed that it doesn’t work is pointless. If you however read an average skeptic, skeptics often make idealist arguments based on whether something violates the physical laws as the skeptic understands the physical laws.
Do you argue that any argument that isn’t based on whether a study fund that a process works is flawed?