Dowsing

[Walter]

Please can we leave Brexit to the thread dedicated to it?

[Walter]

I beg to differ, but each to their own opinion on this topic.

opinion is irrelevant , as I pointed out a couple of days ago , you don't seem to understand this important principle .

Begging to differ is not an answer nor is it an acceptable conclusion to whether something works or not .

Would you apply that logic to the manufacturers of passenger planes ?  ' you'll be alright, I think it will fly''

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Difficult to do when you find that there is no phenomenon to understand. Dowsing simply doesn't work: Dawkins debunks dowsing.

It looked more like Goldsmiths college had debunked dowsing and Richard was just there spectating.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Please can we leave Brexit to the thread dedicated to it?

Ah Brexit. The first experiment to test the hypothesis that if you suddenly grab the steering wheel of a car it will crash.
And the first time hazel twigs were used to find trade deals

[Walter]

It looked more like Goldsmiths college had debunked dowsing and Richard was just there spectating.

if you try a bit harder I'm sure you can find even more to have a go at 'Richard' about .

[Stranger]

It looked more like Goldsmiths college had debunked dowsing and Richard was just there spectating.

"Dawkins debunks dowsing" is just the title of the video, I don't know or care how much he had to do with the experiment - that isn't the point.

[Sebastian Toe]

if you try a bit harder I'm sure you can find even more to have a go at 'Richard' about .

Ah, Vlad's Dick obsession. It's incurable from what I can see.

[Walter]

It looked more like Goldsmiths college had debunked dowsing and Richard was just there spectating.

yesterday I thought maybe you were receiving too many comments against you which cumulatively could be hurtful.

So I decided to try and see things your way for a while and give you some positive favourable comments instead .

Today I saw what you put and thought, bollocks to that !

[Walt Zingmatilder]

yesterday I thought maybe you were receiving too many comments against you which cumulatively could be hurtful.

So I decided to try and see things your way for a while and give you some positive favourable comments instead .

Today I saw what you put and thought, bollocks to that !

Thank you for your concern.
Let me tell you then some things from my way . One of those things is New Atheist humbug concerning adoration and worship. I will therefore on this board not hesitate to flag up atheist sycophancy concerning the four horsemen and any "To Richard Dawkins be the glory" which manifests itself on here.

As you point out "posse-ism" has long been a bit of a skid ark on this board.

[Shaker]

Thank you for your concern.
Let me tell you then some things from my way . One of those things is New Atheist humbug concerning adoration and worship. I will therefore on this board not hesitate to flag up atheist sycophancy concerning the four horsemen and any "To Richard Dawkins be the glory" which manifests itself on here.

Haven't seen any - have you?

[wigginhall]

A lot of atheists that I know are not all that interested in Dawkins.   I think when he got rid of his forum, it disillusioned some, and his twitter career is, well, interesting. 

[Shaker]

A lot of atheists that I know are not all that interested in Dawkins.   I think when he got rid of his forum, it disillusioned some

It was certainly a great pity - in its heyday it was not only huge and hugely active but fascinating.

[wigginhall]

It was certainly a great pity - in its heyday it was not only huge and hugely active but fascinating.

Yes, 60, 000 members, wasn't it?  Some brilliant stuff on science.

[Stranger]

One of those things is New Atheist humbug concerning adoration and worship.

Example...?

[Shaker]

Yes, 60, 000 members, wasn't it?  Some brilliant stuff on science.

At least.

Yes, there were some scarily knowledgeable people there.

And their opposite numbers, of course 

[Walter]

It was certainly a great pity - in its heyday it was not only huge and hugely active but fascinating.

I learnt a few new swear words from there 

[Shaker]

Example...?

Any post containing the word Dawkins, I suspect 

... even though most of these actually come from Vlad. Now there's a thing.

[Shaker]

I learnt a few new swear words from there 

Sheltered life, Wal 

[Walter]

Haven't seen any - have you?

nope, me neither

[Walter]

Sheltered life, Wal 

and I was brought up in  a south Yorkshire mining village 

where the term ;'' yer cunt'' ,was a term of endearment

[Shaker]

and I was brought up in  a south Yorkshire mining village 

Sounds like the pits.

[Walter]

Sounds like the pits.

hahaha

actually it was quite the opposite .On a summers day the kids in the street would hold hands a skip and sing to the top of a slag heap where we would dowse for coal , we found loads , so I know it works . Then we would have our jam sandwiches and skip all the way home with our basket of coal and mummy would hose us down in the garden . Happy days!

[Sriram]

What's all the big deal about 'double blind tests'...double blind tests'...?!

The public have been fooled for 40 years about eating saturated fats and cholesterol and atherosclerosis and all that stuff. Now its all being claimed as.... "well...not really...you know...maybe cholesterol really isn't so bad...maybe fats are ok....hee...hee".  There were all kinds of tests with a whole village (Framingham) being studied over decades (starting from 1948). It still turns out to be wrong.

Double blind tests or any other are not infallible. It all depends on the assumptions being made to begin with, the way the experiments are designed and finally the vested interests of the people sponsoring the study and so on....   

Its quite silly when entire communities of people experience and accept certain phenomena but some 'scientists' come along with their double blind tests and dismiss everything as nonsense. The scientist types like to believe that they are right and that the entire world is foolish and naive. But they are increasingly beginning to look foolish themselves. They no longer hold the authority they once did.

Coming to dowsing....it involves the mind and our spontaneous reactions to subtle natural phenomena. Testing (double blind or otherwise) always involves the Meta consciousness. Once the meta consciousness gets involved, all spontaneous and natural reactions and responses get blocked automatically. Self consciousness prevents spontaneous responses.

This is why most mental phenomena that require a natural, unhindered, uninhibited and non-self conscious state of mind, fail when tested under so called 'strict test conditions'.  The test itself hinders the process. 

[ProfessorDavey]

What's all the big deal about 'double blind tests'...double blind tests'...?!

It is the only way you can actually determine whether something actually works, because it removes the placebo effect.

Frankly if you aren't prepared to accept that properly controlled double blind studies are the gold standard way to determine whether something actually works then there really isn't much point in discussing this.

[Shaker]

It is the only way you can actually determine whether something actually works, because it removes the placebo effect.

I would however say that the placebo effect - undeniably a real thing - isn't (yet) an explanation of anything. It's a label for sure, a name for a well observed and well attested phenomenon, but not an explanation because it rests upon a still unexplained link between the mind and the body and the way that the former can influence the latter to the extent that a bland substance of no medicinal value can make someone feel better psychologically because of their mental attitude that it will work. Just calling it the placebo effect doesn't take us any further forward in understanding how this happens. The same goes for the ideomotor effect - it's a label for a particular thing but not much of an explanation.

For the record I would say exactly the same (to date) of some of the ongoing researches in physics and cosmology, namely dark matter, dark energy and dark flow. Carefully sceptical people recognise that these are, for now, placeholders for areas in which we don't have sufficient data, often because the technology isn't yet sufficiently sophisticated.