ITT: Personal experiences with pseudoscience believers

My dad, ladies and gentlemen.
I'd like to take this moment to mention that I'm adopted.

lmao

how come you went down the science route instead?

>muh high and low metabolism.
To be a little fair they weren't completely wrong because I was cutting with DNP.
But it's not like those cuts last long

>she

That's all you really need to know.

>Mary Coudneys likes this
user what have you done?

>tfw was a hardcore believer of radical feminism, libertarian Marxism and psychoanalysis in my teen years
>tfw almost fell for homeopathetic treatment of my dermatitis a couple years ago
My experience with this is unusually personal

>Catholicism isn't Christianity
Wow that guy is seriously deluded.

Oh, and also pretty much my only friend for a certain period of time in teenage years was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder and believed in every quantum mystical theory you can imagine.

>pseudoscientist and extrovert comes to me on the street
>asks if i will please give money for poor children in the mythological dark continent
>shove his pamphlets out of his hand and yell at him for spreading lies
>there IS no africa, it's all just a fairy tale i yell at him
>"i know people who are from africa" he splutters
>TRY SOME ACTUAL FUCKING EVIDENCE i shriek
>i realize people are watching and run away

I used to think homeopathy was just a kind of herbal medicine...
my parents swear that a homeopathic remedy that someone talked them into trying on me made me slightly less autistic as a toddler but are at a loss as to why, seeing that they both know that homeopathy is based on a faulty principle. my best guess is that it was the placebo effect.

my gf believes in ghosts and likes to watch ghost hunter shows. she gets kinda annoyed when I don't take her seriously about it, so I try to avoid the topic altogether. ah well, she's a social scientist, not a hard scientist.

u have my sympathies, user
are you from Michigan?

>ITT : americans

maybe he ran out of ideas and wanted to be remembered as a 'revolutionary' person

>the doctor says extreme daily stress and anger caused by arguing online is the cause of my artherosclerosis
>cannot believe these crackpot delusions have seeped this far into our scientific establishment
>"excuse me can you say that again"
>he repeats himself and i shove him out of his chair, rip off his doctor coat and stamp on it
>tell him he should know such terms are meaningless folk babble and that there are no "stress" and "emotions", only brain states
>leave office in disgust

OP here, I'm english. Pseudoscience isn't just an american thing sadly

Your willingness to debate pseudoscience is a raritiy. Whenever I talk about aliens STEM types get dogmatic "They just don't exist and that's that" complete refusal to consider anything I say. While your friend has a case of "I want to believe syndrome" many STEM types have a "I don't want to believe syndrome". Besides the more controversial aliens a more well-known example is climate change. The fact that almost no peer-reviewed studies support climate change denial is actually used as evidence that there's some sort of cover up. If that isn't /x/ I don't know what is.

In short both sides get dogmatic, overly defensive and the persecution complex. It's human nature, being good at STEM doesn't put you above it.

Wow man haha this joke sure never gets old. Have an upvote sir -- you've earned it!

>tfw when theory of relativity is the pseudoscience

>how come you went down the science route instead?
Growing up in communities in which fallacies were regularly used, I often found myself at the seat of allegations.
This lead to me question the validity of their methods for discerning truth.

Yeah, that comment was from my older brother.
I don't even care about his beliefs surrounding it, it's just the way he said it.
It's in line with WASP rhetoric and devoid of actual analysis.

Yes, I'm from Michigan, good sleuthing.

In undergrad STEM students approach mostly clearly frased problems that have a determinable solution. You almost never have to work outside of a certain comfort zone and entertain ridiculous notions in conversation.

vegan is scientifically the best way for a human of any age and activity level to eat if you do it right and get enough calories

no fucking way, it's like this was deliberately crafted to troll but i know its legit

back to /b/

>IS no Africa

19/20

Public high school science teacher would preach god stuff to us.

So annoying.

>I had a roommate that used to light catholic vigil candles

Literally nothing wrong with that.

...

>ITT: People who think American Protestantism == all religion

Totally incorrect in every conceivable way

When people are sick they don't always react rationally

>[Note: I'm am atheist]

I'm so sorry that you're autistic.

>My family are young-earth creationists.

I'm so sorry that made you autistic.

>I also went to a religious boarding school.

Don't just say "religious" like they are all the same. Say protestant school.

>My therapist wrote a book about Christian therapy practices.

All therapists are quacks anyway.

>About 99% of people I know believe stereotyping people is a form of psychological insight.

Psychiatry is all about stereotyping if you think about it.

>I had a roommate that used to light catholic vigil candles believing they did all sorts of things.

And? Nothing wrong with lighting candles or leaving flowers at shrines/graves as a symbol of respect/prayer.

>Vegan roommate that believed in all sorts of vegan hocus pocus.

Hippies are retarded by definition

>Had a friend that refused to believe in atoms.

To be fair, it took Einstein's 1905 paper on Brownian Motion to get chemists to acknowledge atoms existed.

this is cheating but in my creative writing class i'm taking in my senior year of high school, some journalist guest speaker came in and talked about how Prince played his music on higher frequencies than other musicians, and by playing on higher frequencies he could talk to god.

People who believe the earth is flat. I was discussing with some hippie bitch and all she did to respond to my valid points about how its a fact the earth is round was post youtube links of american idiots who don't know how the pythagorean theorem work, or what light difraction and physics are.

"But the sun and the moon are round"
>"nuh uh they're like lightbulbs circling the flat earth from above"
"But the moon and the stars look different from the north/south hemispheres"
>"Nuh uh thats because the entire universe moves around the flat earth"
What about the planets and the hundreds of satellites and probes and pictures?
>"all is a conspiracy from NASA and the government"
What about private companies that have their own satellites in space?
>"part of the conspiracy, here's another youtube link"
The guy is using Google Maps to measure stuff, Google Maps are literally photographs taken by satellites who circle the globe
>"nuh uh, open your eyes friend"

How do these people function? These are the kind of idiots hindering the progress of mankind, goddamn.

Needless to say this person is also anti-vax, against fluoridation and thinks chemtrails are a thing and all that. There's gotta be a name for these kind of people or train of thought.

>My high school science teacher told us atoms should[n't] be able to stay together, but they do because of gods will.

He's was probably joking you aspie. Also, atomic nuclei shouldn't be able to stay together based solely on their gravitational and electromagnetic forces which is why physicists postulated the strong nuclear force. He could have also been referring to the fact that orbiting electrons would emit EM radiation losing energy until they spiral into the nucleus in the classical (pre-quantum) models. Obviously a HS science class isn't going to get into the detail of why they are able to be stable hence "God wills it".

>>Catholicism isn't Christianity
>Wow that guy is seriously deluded.

Most protestants are like that.

>>tfw was a hardcore believer of radical feminism

How can a dude be a hardcore believer of radical feminism? Don't you know they want to #killallmen?

wow

>and by playing on higher frequencies he could talk to god
>Taking a metaphor literally

Son,

she was quite literal, and based on her other ramblings i figured she took it seriously as well

>My therapist wrote a book about Christian therapy practices.
My first therapist printed out 20 pages of a book that told me I shouldn't be depressed because God loves me. I told her I wasn't religious, despite the fact that my parents are, and she asked me why. She then switched to recommending affirmations. Needless to say, I did not see her for long. Oh, my contract said that I wasn't allowed to swear during our sessions. I don't swear around people I'm not super familiar with who have already demonstrated they aren't bothered by it, but what.

nobody legitimately stem is dismissing the existence of aliens; however, the fact that they're hovering in our atmosphere is another autistic matter akin to believing in bigfoot or the lochness monster

It isn't. You're incredibly ignorant. Basic reading of the Bible compared with Catholic doctrine would teach you this very basic fact.

>to believing in bigfoot

But bigfoot could be real.

Just fuck her anyway.

According to this list neuroscience is pseudoscience
>Hostile to criticism
check
>Uses vauge jargon to confuse and evade
Semi-random names for proteins, cell types, layers, regions, signals, whatever
>Grandiose claims that go beyond evidence
"Curing" AD and MS, brain-"computer"-interfaces, Marketing , Prosthetics, Everything
>Cherypicks on favorable evidence, relies on (...) weak evidence
Check. Whoring for government funding.
>Uses flawed methods
fMRI, FFT with small resolution, extreme "filtering" of data and curve fitting etc.
>Dogmatic
check. A one giant echo chamber. And nobidy even tries to negate theories becausee "book said so" "some 'authority' said so"

neuro""""scientists"""" have basically thrown away all knowledge regarding EE and Chem-E to creeate their own "theories"

I hope to God this is bait. Please be bait.

The logical faculty is imperfect and easily disrupted. Neurologically, the psychotic has more going on in his brain than the sane person (Excitotoxicity) - the drugs used to cure his syndromes eat holes in his brain. Ancient humans cut holes into each other's skulls - modern humans cut holes into each other's skulls. Does the justification matter? Did lobotomies help anyone?

Have you ever tried to model a cellular function? You have to look at multiple scales, and create a system of correspondences. The specific sciences often don't have formal translations - you're on your own if you try to create an integrated picture of physics, chemistry and biology.

People with no formal education in science will often be hardpressed to defend their arguments. As you become more educated, you learn or design elaborate counterarguments. The moment you get objective proof of being right while some higher authority is wrong, your ego explodes and you start questioning everything.

Add in a few degrees, and you have a cast-iron fortress of mind which can't be dissuaded.

I'm not a vegan, but there is in fact reasonably damning evidence of red meat at the very least.

Red meat and fish sure. But unprocessed chicken and pork are about as healthy as you can get whilst fresh and properly cooked.

it's not bait.

Try to prove wrong you swindling faggot

>Literally nothing wrong with that.
It is if you read the rest
>ie; Believing they did all sorts of things

Being an atheist doesn't make you autistic nor vice versa.
I can't tell if you're stupid or just trolling.
Most scientists are atheists.

Also I didn't go to a protestant school.
I don't know where you got that presumption from.
>waiting for false dilemma fallacy

>All therapists are quacks anyway.
Existential fallacy

>Psychiatry is all about stereotyping if you think about it.
Also lying about how sedatives and stimulants function; never forget that

>And? Nothing wrong with lighting candles or leaving flowers at shrines/graves as a symbol of respect/prayer.
It is wrong to believe lighting candles causes things to happen.
He's hispanic and he used to believe the candles cured illnesses, forced magical insight and all sorts of nonsense.
When his busted TV would act up, he would light candles and pray.
If I fixed the TV for him, he would claim it was the candles and prayer or alternatively he would claim the candles and prayer convinced god to use his power through me.

>Hippies are retarded by definition
Agreed

>To be fair, it took Einstein's 1905 paper on Brownian Motion to get chemists to acknowledge atoms existed.
Yes, but a modern adult in this day age being oblivious to basic physics?
C'mon.

He wasn't joking, and don't throw that lame aspie/austic personal attack in there you moron.
It was a religious boarding school.
A southern baptist creation boarding school to be exact.
Our science classes were just watching Kent Hovind Videos.

You presume a lot, like you're retarded or something.

Quick clue: Flawed stereotyping t or making shit up in your head is ALWAYS wrong.
Always.
100% of the time.

Check your retarded ass fallacies please.
You sound like a kid or a hysterical psychotic.

Fish? Fish are perfect. The closest thing ive found to a genuinely "scientifically recommended diet" is pescatarianism. As long as it isnt contaminated with mercury seafood is amazing

Mine wrote that I had "Not Otherwise Specified with Narcissistic Traits" when she found out I was an atheist.
She labeled me with PTSD and Severe Depression claiming that was the only way to explain why I wasn't religious.
Odd, since she was exceptionally corrupt and was part of a shut down referral network that committed medicare fraud and even bullied people into faking illnesses so they and a related agency could rake in millions in fraud and benefits.
That network is what actually coined the term "Warehouse Social Services" in 2010.
Her reasoning when they got caught?
She and the others claimed it's alright to lie, coerce and exploit people if it allows the system to grow, that way they can get big enough to care for everyone that isn't as capable of taking caring of themselves like they are.
Seriously.
Sat there sobbing in the court room trying to defend machiavellian exploitation and fraud with narcissistic fantasies.
>TFW no prison time or revoked licenses
>Just suspension and a few agencies closed
>This is why we can't have nice things
>No real consequences

>Be astronomy postgrad.
>People want to talk to you about what you do because it's interesting and not conceptually difficult.
>Do lots of outreach because it's fun, I'm not a sperg and helps the CV.
>Neckbeard comes up to me at an exhibition about galaxy formation (not my field, big in the department), I tell him about the our stall and what I do.
>Explain I do cosmology and study the cosmic microwave background and how it's affected by plasma in clusters and dark energy.
>He starts perks up at the word plasma and starts telling me how he thinks all cosmology is wrong and that the universe is dominated by electromagnetism.
>He says some people have disproven "Big Bang Creationism" and cites the CMB which is really just plasma in the Galaxy.
>I tell him I'm aware of Alfven's historic claim but it doesn't hold water because we can see distant objects imprinted on the CMB, which couldn't be if it was from the Galaxy.
>He becomes more defensive and says that modern science has become math fiction and people like myself stick to our "dogma" and never look at what the data actually looks like.
>Now I'm offended because 90% of my job is data reduction. My supervisor also spent his career trying to disprove standard cosmologies though the decades.
>Smile and tell him I'll have to look into that because he's not going to stop.
>He cites me the youtube of the "Electric Universe" and the "Plasma Universe".

I looked into it, it's fucking nonsense. Hours and hours of youtube videos which are a combination of pure handwaving and some outright lies. There's no substance to it but it has a massive following. The only papers that exist were published in an engineering journal more than a decade ago. I've talked to other students in my department and a couple of them have met simplify people citing the same bullshit. One student (who works on black holes) got a little bit of media attention at a conference and then got emails by these nuts calling him a shill. It's terrifying.

Interesting because there isn't a "Criticism" section on the Wiki page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology
Perhaps you could send an edit in.

Look at the talk page, it has 11 Archive pages. There's clearly been an edit war over it an in my experience pages like that are usually reverted if you put something someone doesn't like.

The major points are in the "Comparison to mainstream astrophysics" section.

Plasma cosmology isn't really the same thing as the electric universe woo. Plasma cosmology was a real cosmology 40 years ago when everyone had a cosmology but nobody had and good data. The electric universe on the other hand is new age nonsense combined with mythology and a poor grasp of physics. There are no papers on it and these people will openly deny relativity or even gravity depending on who you ask. They are the ones making the youtube videos.

>he's so insecure he get buttflustered just from being reminded that there are Christians who believe stupid shit

kek, underrated post

Humans, like all animals of enough intelligence, are superstitious and esoteric.

It is easy to fool someone, but it is hard to convince someone they've been fooled. People who fool themselves are the most stubborn.

just be glad you got out.

And good point, too. People are fucking stupid and it shows in all fields, not just sciences, but in politics as well. Some people will think that homeopathy solves all problems. Some people will pick up a book written by Marx and think that it solves all problems. Really, it's just their bible, and all bibles are fucking retarded.

I can't stand that shit. I read everything written by Marx because I was curious and I wanted to see it for myself. It was interesting stuff, but I can't fathom how someone would turn it into their bible.

>There's gotta be a name for these kind of people or train of thought.

Republicans

This is my shit right here. Grew up with a baptist cult in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and I heard (and still hear) this shit all the time.
>mah grandpa weren't no monkeh

The one that sticks out is someone who believed in chemtrails, and had some people on her side or getting there. I met them at an autism social event. You cannot make this shit up.

>Being an atheist doesn't make you autistic nor vice versa.

Atheism is linked the autism.

>Most scientists are atheists.

Most people who bring that up are autists.

>Also I didn't go to a protestant school.

What school did you go to then? BTW "nondenominational schools" are protestant schools contrary to what the name would seem to imply.

>I don't know where you got that presumption from.

You're parents are protestant (Young Earth Creationists). Usually they would never consider sending you to an Islamic school or some other religion's school.

>Yes, but a modern adult in this day age being oblivious to basic physics?

Have you seen the state of public school education? Most people don't see any arguments that discrete atoms exist and take it on faith. Nothing wrong with wanting to see an argument before accepting it.

I don't think it's good to do, but that's about the best reasoning for doing something like that IMHO

oh, so believing that the creator of the universe wrote a book as shitty as the bible/qoran is just fine and dandy, then?

>Also I didn't go to a protestant school.
>A southern baptist creation boarding school to be exact.

Jesus Christ you're uneducated.

>I can't tell if you're stupid or just trolling.

It's called "devil's advocate".

>and don't throw that lame aspie/austic personal attack in there you moron

This is Veeky Forums kiddo. If being called an aspie triggers you, then go to you safe space on reddit.

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When I've read the right column - It felt like that was an universal definition for cosmology, evolutionism, theoretic physics.

My entire school was composed of YECs. Even the science teacher. The only one who even explicity told me he wasn't was the bible teacher, and he's an old-earther.

...

lmao omnipotent love kills man forever because bitch ate a fruit NOPE CHRISTIANS nope.

I met retards who believe in scientific realism.

I need more in depth of a story

>someone called me dumb for making this argument/attack/post/bed
>better accuse them of being offended
Why are there so many of these?

>implying protestants are christian

top kek

>You presume a lot

That considering the possibility that he was joking is presuming a lot? The rest of the post is about how atoms aren't possible with HS science level understand.

>like you're retarded or something.
>Check your retarded ass fallacies please.
>You sound like a kid or a hysterical psychotic.

>Quick clue: Flawed stereotyping or making shit up in your head is ALWAYS wrong.
>Always.
>100% of the time.

Oh the irony. And where are the fallacies?

>That considering the possibility that he was joking is presuming a lot?

Also
>Oh the irony. And where are the fallacies?
It's called Epistemological Analysis.
I'm not your slave, educate yourself.

>[Note: I'm am atheist]
I think people need to invent a new term for this kind of people. Atheists are people who deny Gods existence. I'm not for instance. I don't deny that there's possible could be a God but I think that all religions speculate on the unknown and should be purged with fire. I just don't blindly believe. I'm more of a skeptic.

a·the·ist
ˈāTHēəst/
noun
a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Disbelieves or lacks the belief isn't the same thing as outright denies the possibility.
It just means there isn't evidence to even suggest there is something there, and therefore the claim is treated with disbelief.

It's called the burden of proof, and accurately analyzing the argument from ignorance.

In regards to theism, either you believe or don't believe.
Agnostic and Skeptic aren't terms that address that, they're tangential terms.
You can be an Agnostic Atheist.
Look it up.

Agnostic was a term invented by Atheists by the way, to convince people it's ok to doubt.
It was coined by Huxley to coax disbelievers out of their shell.

It's called agnostic, jesus fucking christ.

>its an amerifat things not eating red meat means you are a vegan episode

fish is cool too right? i can eat tons of fish and call myself vegan right? i really just want to wear the label honestly

See:
Agnosticism was invented by atheists to trick disbelievers out of their shell, since it wasn't socially acceptable to outright say that you disbelieve what the majority believe.

It has never been theist, atheist and agnostic.
Agnostic is a tangential term.
Either you live like you think there is a supernatural being or you don't.
You can't live in a superposition state.

No, vegan means you don eat any animal produce which is stupid af. Vegetarianism is a much more sensible way to approach it.

It's a joke mate, I'm lacto-ovo vegetarian.

Regardless, there exist people stupid enough to definitively state the lack of existence of a supernatural being, when it is clearly unfalsifiable. Thus, "agnostic atheist" or "agnostic" for short, is still useful to differentiate from children.

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Pussy