Baited into Rabbit hole: Mindset, social media and feedback loop.

[Math_Kernel]

I am a professional in STEM field. This is about my experience of almost falling into this rabbit hole, not about debunking.

I suddenly found the video from Jessica Utts(who was a previous president in American Statistical Association) where she emphasizes that Psi is real. Am I wrong in my previous belief --I like Anil Seth and Daniel Dennett analysis ?. I feel shocked. Since experimental statistics requires experience and analytical training, I thought Jessica Utts might be correct. And I could not tell that some of Utts' cited research was correct. And I knew critics of statistical analysis can still be wrong. Some people tend to ignore many phenomena, which also annoy me in my work sometimes. However this mindset bias me towards Utts' analysis.

Then I went into the online rabbit hole of "what if telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance" is correct. After I checked those parapsychology research, my youtube and social media feed contains information like remote viewing. I suddenly feel that remote viewing might be "sort of" true. The remote viewing feed drives me into the UFO field. Some remote viewer also believe that UFO is true. After I felt like that "UFO" can be true. I tend to think "OK, maybe those people are ignored by mainstream science, but what they say do make sense". Then I view some videos from Archive of Impossible. Suddenly I feel my mind are nudged to believe that "UFO might be true. There might be something buried underground. Mainstream academia ignore too many things. we might need more spirituality"

After I went into this rabbit hole. I realize something is wrong here. Why those things are connected ? The video channel which promotes parapsychology would also promote UFO. And the people invited are some sort of connected. Parapsychology, ESP, UFO, natural healing, spirituality and even "idealism" are sort of "connected"(my social media contains those stuff). I feel like there is a feedback loop which baited me into this rabbit hole. My social media see great increase of those topics: parapsychology, ESP, UFO, natural healing, spirituality, even "idealism" and conspiracy.

I suddenly become more clear when I realize there is a loop. I remember that Anil Seth says that our brain is a prediction machine and I realize that I was trapped in those prediction-feedback loop. After I read this some "scientists' spiritual awakening process", I realize that I also have the same feeling and thought process which tries to nudge me to the similar conclusion. Then I decided to stop all my social media and internet activity. After around two days, I realize that I might be baited into this thought patterns and the feedback loop is trying to distort my perception. Then I checked the metabunk which provides detailed analysis of those parapsychology claim. Thank you !

Another mindset which condition me is the dread from work. I am trying to find something to make me feel different and "better". As what Tanya Luhrmann suggested in How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others , people seek real making or religion to have the transcendental experience and feel better. Those fringe topics make me feel that I am different and I know something my circle don't know. I guess the spirituality part from those parapsychology circles plays the same role to make some people feel transcendental. Luhrmann's analysis is really valuable in this aspect. I do recommend her analysis in religion and paranormal experience.

 

[jarlrmai]

There's this thing in these kinds of fields where proponents of one thing, say UFOs sort of end up having to, at least on the surface, accept all sorts of other woo fields especially if someone 'big' starts connecting them together, because they all use the same rhetoric about being open minded etc, if they didn't they'd have to start being debunkers about some other woo and that is verboten.

You get people like Chris Bledsoe who apparently summons and sees orb UFOs but has expressed an overt religious origin for them so he crosses the gap from messianic Christian cult leader to UFO personality and he has a big following you probably can't afford to annoy if you want to be big UFO name, so he gets 'tolerated' and these kinds of links to other areas, ghosts, demons, Bigfoot etc etc are like a spider web of interconnected woo.

 

[Ann K]

Then I went into the online rabbit hole of "what if telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance" is correct. After I checked those parapsychology research, my youtube and social media feed contains information like remote viewing. I suddenly feel that remote viewing might be "sort of" true. The remote viewing feed drives me into the UFO field. Some remote viewer also believe that UFO is true. After I felt like that "UFO" can be true. I tend to think "OK, maybe those people are ignored by mainstream science, but what they say do make sense".

I think it's a two-way street. Once I became convinced that, for example, "psi" was bunk, I became more critical in examining other phenomena, and climbing out of the rabbit hole was easier once I'd made a single positive step. (My initial stepping stone was religion.) That first step happened when I was entering my teenage years, and since then (a good many decades!) I find that I'm annoyed at the credulity of those who make fantastic claims rather than being entertained. If an answer ends up being something like "magic" (or unexplained, or "explained" by jargon and half-formulated hypotheses), I am highly suspicious of it.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Another mindset which condition me is the dread from work. I am trying to find something to make me feel different and "better". As what Tanya Luhrmann suggested in How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others , people seek real making or religion to have the transcendental experience and feel better.

I think in many cases this is key. Depending on your age, either you were expected to grind it out until retirement/death or you are trying to rebel against the "grind it" mentality. Either way, it leaves one looking for something more, something meaningful and maybe something transcendental. My wife and I met in church and did the Evangelical Christianity thing in our younger days, including some time in a Pentecostal church where weekly transcendental events, like glossolalia (speaking in tongues) was encouraged. In the end, even if it was transcendental, it just seemed empty and maybe a bit performative.

We both ended up with careers we didn't really want, but we made the best of it, raised 2 well adjusted kids and used what we learned from the jobs we fell into to our advantage where possible. Along the way we came to realize maybe nothing in life is "transcendental", rather it's what you make of it.

As you say, in this modern world of Social Media, everything is amplified. Not only can I not figure out how to be better or transcendental, there are 100s of people on Instagram, or YouTube, or Facebook, or TicTok, that claim to be better and transcendental. They make me feel like a failure and the solution is whatever they are doing, or more often, what they are offering.

I don't know if my anthropologist son would agree, but I've always felt the search for something more, for something novel, for a sense of purpose, for something transcendent, is an evolutionary adaptation. Modern humans could have just stayed in Africa, occupying their niche. Instead, humans moved out and occupied nearly every corner of the earth. The downside is we're always looking for more, for different, and maybe for something transcendent.

Welcome to the forum!

EDIT: I just got How God Becomes Real on Audible to listen too, sounds interesting.

 

[Math_Kernel]

I think it's a two-way street. Once I became convinced that, for example, "psi" was bunk, I became more critical in examining other phenomena, and climbing out of the rabbit hole was easier once I'd made a single positive step. (My initial stepping stone was religion.) That first step happened when I was entering my teenage years, and since then (a good many decades!) I find that I'm annoyed at the credulity of those who make fantastic claims rather than being entertained. If an answer ends up being something like "magic" (or unexplained, or "explained" by jargon and half-formulated hypotheses), I am highly suspicious of it.

Yes, if I can detect the nonsense from psi phenomena, it would be easier for me to avoid the UFO etc.

If an answer ends up being something like "magic" (or unexplained, or "explained" by jargon and half-formulated hypotheses), I am highly suspicious of it.

I think my academic training decreased my "level of skeptics". During my research, I was convincing myself that I could do it and go through the hard process. And doubting others' work would be bad for my own research and interpersonal relationship, especially when those work come from respectful and experienced people like Jessica Utts. To some degree, I still believe that there are some unexplained phenomena and "secrets" in human and nature but not from those circles' weird perspectives.

 

[Math_Kernel]

I think in many cases this is key. Depending on your age, either you were expected to grind it out until retirement/death or you are trying to rebel against the "grind it" mentality. Either way, it leaves one looking for something more, something meaningful and maybe something transcendental. My wife and I met in church and did the Evangelical Christianity thing in our younger days, including some time in a Pentecostal church where weekly transcendental events, like glossolalia (speaking in tongues) was encouraged. In the end, even if it was transcendental, it just seemed empty and maybe a bit performative.

Thank you for your detailed and thorough response ! I can feel my urge to escape(or transcend) the current condition. I am still trying to improve myself in many ways. Those weird circles are targeting this weakness and social media is re-enforcing those bias. I worry that AI might amplify those bias further.

EDIT: I just got How God Becomes Real on Audible to listen too, sounds interesting.

Luhrmann also discussed the "speaking in tongues" in her several books. I like how she present it and find the patterns across different religions and rituals. The paranormal studies require this kind of research. Her research about voice hearing, tulpa and invisible others is really interesting and insightful. It might be the key to understand many paranormal cases like the alien /ghost/daemon etc. I saw Jerry A. Coyne's criticism towards Luhrmann, which made sense. But I understand it is better for Luhrmann to avoid criticizing those people since she needs to do research.
My rabbit hole experience reminds me that I need to understand others' better.

 

[Math_Kernel]

There's this thing in these kinds of fields where proponents of one thing, say UFOs sort of end to having to at least on the surface accept all sorts of other woo fields especially if someone 'big' starts connecting them together, because they all use the same rhetoric about being open minded etc, if they didn't they'd have to start being debunkers about some other woo and that is verboten.

You get people like Chris Bledsoe who apparently summons and sees orb UFOs but has expressed an overt religious origin for them so he crosses the gap from messianic Christian cult leader to UFO personality and he has a big following you probably can't afford to annoy if you want to be big UFO name, so he gets 'tolerated' and these kinds of links to other areas, ghosts, demons, Bigfoot etc etc are like a spider web of interconnected woo.

We can do cluster analysis and social network graph analysis. That would be very interesting. People from academia who support those stuff can be more misleading.

 

[jarlrmai]

We can do cluster analysis and social network graph analysis. That would be very interesting. People from academia who support those stuff can be more misleading.

Yes that is certainly true, scientists onboard with woo can be hugely influential, even if their fields are very different.

 

[FatPhil]

Yes that is certainly true, scientists onboard with woo can be hugely influential, even if their fields are very different.

Perhaps more so *because* their fields are different. That support has broad coverage from diverse fields is considered a strength, pay no heed to the thinness of that support in each of those fields.

 

[Ann K]

Yes that is certainly true, scientists onboard with woo can be hugely influential, even if their fields are very different.

That's been described as "the Nobel disease":

It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise,[4]​[5]​[6]​ although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.[7]​ Paul Nurse, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you".[8]​"Nobel disease" has been described as a tongue-in-cheek term.[5]​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

 

[Math_Kernel]

Yes that is certainly true, scientists onboard with woo can be hugely influential, even if their fields are very different.

I would not use "scientist" to describe people from academia. To some degree, the current academia resembles industry more. If they don't often try ideas and publish new papers, they won't receive funding. People are publishing papers in a crazy way. I understand why some of them are open to those weird ideas. Academic work itself requires the openness. But those people themselves does not represent science. It is better to stop calling them scientist or stressing "science" in some cases. People outside academia need to realize that none of those "scientists" are special no matter how prestigious they are. It is always better to respect the process of science and inquiry instead of listening to specific people.

 

[Ann K]

I would not use "scientist" to describe people from academia

But the basics of good science is understanding the achievements of previous scientists and the principles upon which they work. Perhaps not every academic is a scientist (yet), but the concept of being a scientist without that academic training is nearly impossible.

 

[Math_Kernel]

But the basics of good science is understanding the achievements of previous scientists and the principles upon which they work. Perhaps not every academic is a scientist (yet), but the concept of being a scientist without that academic training is nearly impossible.

I agree that "scientist" requires the academic training. But the word "scientist" can be quite misleading in media. I also worked in academia and received my training. But the media often support their claim with some "scientists". I also saw the word "scientist" associated with "spirituality, parapsychology, natural healing". They will quote their research from people with PhD from prestigious places. Some of them hold high status like Utts who is a capable statistician. The word "scientist" may imply what they say is associated with science.

 

[NorCal Dave]

People outside academia need to realize that none of those "scientists" are special no matter how prestigious they are. It is always better to respect the process of science and inquiry instead of listening to specific people.

I think it's a case of "all scientists are people", as such they are a subset of the entire culture. People with PhDs or advanced degrees aren't inherently better or smarter than the population they come from, but they have completed a rather rigorous program of specialized study. Even then, they can still have all the same un-evidenced beliefs the rest of us have. Dr. Grover Krantz and Dr. Jeff Meldrum were both PhD level anthropologists, both had spent years in school learning about Human and primate physiology, both spent years doing research and both went to the grave convinced that Bigfoot, a 7'-10' bipedal hominid is roaming the forests of North America. Despite the utter lack of any fossil remains, any contemporary remains, any DNA, any fur, any scat or any other form of evidence, they still believed.

The vast majority of their colleagues disagreed, but they carried on and were likely more well known than their more reality based contemporaries. Ultimately science is self correcting and un-evidenced claims, like cold fusion will be shown to be wrong.

 

[Gary C]

That's been described as "the Nobel disease":

It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise,[4]​[5]​[6]​ although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.[7]​ Paul Nurse, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you".[8]​"Nobel disease" has been described as a tongue-in-cheek term.[5]​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

This is not uncommon in any profession where one has reach very high levels of achievement. The social reinforcement they receive encourages this behavior.

ultracrepidarian

adjective

noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside their area of expertise.

 

[John J.]

Some of them hold high status like Utts who is a capable statistician.

That might be questionable, at least if by that we mean Jessica Utts has an uncontentious track record of interpreting statistical data relating to unusual phenomena.

In 1995 a report by the American Institutes for Research (PDF attached) into the utility of Stargate, the US government-funded research into "Remote Viewing", was published.

Their 29 September 1995 final report was released to the public 28 November 1995. A positive assessment by statistician Jessica Utts, that a statistically significant effect had been demonstrated in the laboratory [the government psychics were said to be accurate about 15 percent of the time], was offset by a negative one by psychologist Ray Hyman [a prominent CSICOP psychic debunker]. The final recommendation by AIR was to terminate the STAR GATE effort. CIA concluded that there was no case in which ESP had provided data used to guide intelligence operations.

Federation of American Scientists, STAR GATE [Controlled Remote Viewing] https://irp.fas.org/program/collect/stargate.htm

She also wrote in 'An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning', 1995 (PDF attached)

There is little benefit in continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.

...i.e. there's no point in doing experiments to demonstrate the existence of psychic powers, because she believes the existing evidence is conclusive. So no need to reproduce her experiments- which would mean, no chance of not replicating her results.

 

[Math_Kernel]

That might be questionable, at least if by that we mean Jessica Utts has an uncontentious track record of interpreting statistical data relating to unusual phenomena.

"capable" here implies his statistical analytical ability. Ignoring her rabbit hole research(Parapsychology and Psi), her textbook and theoretical paper are not bad. She has solid understanding of statistical methods and experimental statistics. Her undergrad and PhD training, I would say, is even better than many current PhD students in statistics. That is why I am baffled by her engagement of those fringe topics. She should have spotted those anomaly in those research. For me, I tend to attribute this to the lack of experience and training in human related issues outside academia, because I saw that she studied BA mathematics -> MS statistics - > PhD statistics-> academia.

 

[Math_Kernel]

I think it's a case of "all scientists are people", as such they are a subset of the entire culture. People with PhDs or advanced degrees aren't inherently better or smarter than the population they come from, but they have completed a rather rigorous program of specialized study. Even then, they can still have all the same un-evidenced beliefs the rest of us have. Dr. Grover Krantz and Dr. Jeff Meldrum were both PhD level anthropologists, both had spent years in school learning about Human and primate physiology, both spent years doing research and both went to the grave convinced that Bigfoot, a 7'-10' bipedal hominid is roaming the forests of North America. Despite the utter lack of any fossil remains, any contemporary remains, any DNA, any fur, any scat or any other form of evidence, they still believed.

The vast majority of their colleagues disagreed, but they carried on and were likely more well known than their more reality based contemporaries. Ultimately science is self correcting and un-evidenced claims, like cold fusion will be shown to be wrong.

There is another perspective. The current research environment rewards people who can invent something new more than debunking others' work. But science process will filter those bad ideas. I have seen many people from academia across several fields(math, statistics, biology, neuroscience, physics) hold some sort of "unusual belief"(UFO, fervent evangelical). Some of them are pretty smart and innovative. They sometimes come up with questionable claim in public. Indeed, the research and administrative work are very exhausting. I wouldn't blame them for those things. That is why we need others to filter their bad ideas.

 

[Math_Kernel]

That might be questionable, at least if by that we mean Jessica Utts has an uncontentious track record of interpreting statistical data relating to unusual phenomena.

I don't expect Utts to be correct all the time. I wouldn't blame her for her "statistical analysis" under the context of 1995. The problem is that she hasn't changed her analysis with more experiments and evidence coming up. The value and importance of statistical analysis is still contentious. I don't have time to introduce the problems of statistical analysis. If you are interested, you can check Ben Recht blog arg min's series: Meehl's Philosophical Psychology.
Ben Recht blog would be a great material and resources in metadebunk.

 

[Mendel]

She has solid understanding of statistical methods and experimental statistics.

But she doesn't understand cheating, or how magicians work, and is thus outside her area of expertise without knowing it when it comes to PSI research.

We had a long thread about "Contact in the Desert" (iirc), where we suspected the blindfolds the moment it came up, because we realized that'y an old stage magic trick, and in that context, blindfolds don't do what people think they do. But a lot of people who watched it were quite impressed.

The old "I don't know how it works, therefore nobody does" wouldn't be as compelling if there wasn't a huge community of the credulous: "they can't all be wrong", you think, until you realize you've been caught in a feedback loop of social media that's cutting you off from balanced information, like you did.

Contact in the Desert threads:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/telepathy-tapes-presentation-taped-and-posted-to-x-and-yt.14266/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/is...-presentation-at-contact-in-the-desert.14286/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/co...ng-under-the-stars-orange-orb-sighting.14270/
People paid good money for this.

 

[beku-mant]

There is another perspective. The current research environment rewards people who can invent something new more than debunking others' work. But science process will filter those bad ideas. I have seen many people from academia across several fields(math, statistics, biology, neuroscience, physics) hold some sort of "unusual belief"(UFO, fervent evangelical). Some of them are pretty smart and innovative. They sometimes come up with questionable claim in public. Indeed, the research and administrative work are very exhausting. I wouldn't blame them for those things. That is why we need others to filter their bad ideas.

Your problem is you didn't approach these subjects using critical thinking in the first place. Now, instead of honing your critical thinking skills and trying to ascertain the true merit of an individual topic, like UFOs, as an example, you're using the package-deal fallacy to disregard it all. Instead you should steel man the UFO topic, research it properly, then only after you've studied it in depth, form your opinions about it.

 

[NoParty]

Hmmm. Not sure this is a great application of package-deal fallacy.
So I decided to refresh my memory, via Wikipedia.
The write up is nothing special...but unintentionally hilarious, as it appears to have been penned
by a first week intern at the Ayn Rand Institute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package-deal_fallacy

 

[beku-mant]

Hmmm. Not sure this is a great application of package-deal fallacy.
So I decided to refresh my memory, via Wikipedia.
The write up is nothing special...but unintentionally hilarious, as it appears to have been penned
by a first week intern at the Ayn Rand Institute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package-deal_fallacy

A agree the article is poorly written. And, while package-deal seems the best fit, maybe it would be better to describe through the lens of more well established/formal fallacies. That said, your post violates the Metabunk link policy. As I understand it this policy is strictly enforced, so just a heads up.

 

[Mendel]

Your problem is you didn't approach these subjects using critical thinking in the first place. Now, instead of honing your critical thinking skills and trying to ascertain the true merit of an individual topic, like UFOs, as an example, you're using the package-deal fallacy to disregard it all.

Except it's not a fallacy. This is the package:

And the people invited are some sort of connected. Parapsychology, ESP, UFO, natural healing, spirituality and even "idealism" are sort of "connected"(my social media contains those stuff).

When you look at events like "Contact in the Desert", this is literally sold as a package. (I don't remember, what was @NorCal Dave's experience at the McMinville festival?)

And @Math_Kernel has explained why these things are a package: because they serve the same psychological need. (And they all depend on conspiracy theories to some degree.)

Instead you should steel man the UFO topic, research it properly, then only after you've studied it in depth, form your opinions about it.

If this could be done, someone would do it; but the reason why no-one has done it on Metabunk is that the evidence for it does not exist. There is no "depth" to study here, it's an endless repeat of "I saw (something I thought was) a UFO" stories, where you could just as easily substitute "ghost" for UFO and leave everything else unchanged.

 

[Ann K]

Instead you should steel man the UFO topic, research it properly, then only after you've studied it in depth, form your opinions about it.

That's like saying "you should jump down the rabbit hole with both feet", when the idea is to climb out of it instead.

 

[John J.]

Hmmm. Not sure this is a great application of package-deal fallacy.
So I decided to refresh my memory, via Wikipedia.
The write up is nothing special...but unintentionally hilarious, as it appears to have been penned
by a first week intern at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Of course, Ayn Rand's own life demonstrates the Package-deal fallacy.
Her writings, and the company she kept, might give the impression she was steadfastly against publicly-funded healthcare and social security benefits.
But when her income dwindled and she (and her husband) became ill, it turned out she was in favour.

 

[NorCal Dave]

When you look at events like "Contact in the Desert", this is literally sold as a package. (I don't remember, what was @NorCal Dave's experience at the McMinville festival?)

Yeah, the Contact in the Desert shindig was a great example of, to borrow a big word from academia, the intersectionality of the fringe. What the Skinwalker Ranch crew sells as pop-science-entertainment on TV, is packaged for one's own personal UFO/paranormal/psychic/ experience at Contact.

McMinville is a bit different, in that it's really just a small town parade, though one on steroids for a town that size, that embraced a UFO theme. And the UFO angle was started almost as a lark by the quirky McMinnamens bar and hotel. It's grown into a tourist event with a carnival-like atmosphere. The serious UFO side is a series of talks by the likes of Elizondo, Corbel, Knapp, Sheehan and other prominent UFO personalities. Even then, one of the speakers was a formal Navajo nation tribal police officer talking about ghosts and Skinwalkers.

Just me, but I think by the end of the '50s the "nut & bolts" version of UFOs and disclosure was wearing thin. Blurry photos, a few hoaxes and lots of anecdotes, but little real evidence. Like in the Bigfoot world, at some point one has to account for a complete lack of physical evidence from a 7' tall hominid, or thousands of alien space crafts all over the place. Bigfoot became inter-dimensional or a spirit based creature that left no physical evidence, but was none the less real. In the '60s UFO world there were books like Morning of the Magicians and especially Vallee's Passport to Magonia which blended UFOs with fairies, magic and folk lore.

Nowadays, UFOs are hopelessly intertwined with Psy, cryptids and all manner of fringe. The Skinwalker Ranch crew literally lumps alien UFOs in with 7' bipedal werewolves as all part of the "phenomenon". One of the leading voices in the Skinwalker Ranch group and one of the leading voices in disclosure groups and one of the big perpetrators of the claim about the likes of Lockheed reverse engineering crashed UFOs is Hal Putoff.

To touch on the OP, Puthoff is a legitimate PhD. so, his claims carry weight. But he was a PhD in physics/lasers that went on to study Psy. He has for years claimed places like Lockheed have real nuts & bolts crashed alien UFOs, but he also firmly believes Uri Geller can bend a spoon with his mind and Igo Swann can remote-view. He supposedly taught remote-viewing to Elizondo.

Contact in the Desert was modern UFOlogy in one complete package. It had everything from Chris Bledsoe pointing out aircraft that God told him was a UFO/angle to a panel discussion on the diversity of aliens to an inter-dimensional sound bath. The only thing missing was any real evidence for UFOs.

 

[beku-mant]

And @Math_Kernel has explained why these things are a package: because they serve the same psychological need. (And they all depend on conspiracy theories to some degree.)

You could also lump together biblical apocalypse prophecies, nuclear war scares, rogue AI worries, and pandemic worries, as all fear based issues, and accept or reject them all together as a package. A lot of people do that kind of thing. Someone might have feared y2k or the 2012 end of the world theory for similar reasons that they fear nuclear war or other more credible risks. Whether you're believing them all for the same simple reasons, or rejecting them all for the same simple reasons, its just poor critical thinking. Same thing here.

Likewise, you could have a balanced and rational fear of a nuclear war breaking out based on credible information, or you could believe a nuclear war is immanent based on an AI generated YouTube video, or an Alex Jones podcast, or an infomercial for gold coins or bulk survival food. And then you could come to your senses and realize the infomercial was a scam, and if you're a bad critical thinker, you can then let that realization irrationally change how you assess credible nuclear war risks.

A lot of people like to just draw a line, use these associations as heuristics, and with no effort try to block themselves from being fooled. And if you've been fooled once, you might be more likely to put up these defenses. That's fine, as a practical way to avoid falling for stuff, especially for people who don't have the time or critical thinking skills to assess things rigorously. But don't pretend that doing this is a valid form of inquiry, or go on trying to convince people what the facts are and how to decide them based on fallacies.

 

[JMartJr]

You could also lump together biblical apocalypse prophecies, nuclear war scares, rogue AI worries, and pandemic worries, as all fear based issues, and accept or reject them all together as a package. A lot of people do that kind of thing.

A point I'd stress, though, is that a lot of people doing that lumping together are the proponents of the various woo. As NorCal Dave points out above, the idea of UFOs or Bigfoot as physical phenomena fitting into but previously unknown to science is being superseded by some amalgamation of UFOs/Bigfeet/Ghosts/Spirits/Demons/Angels/Remote Viewing/ESP. As the claim that they are making becomes more of a merged "grand unified woo theory," dealing with it all as one thing is going to be hard to avoid.

Here, we can continue to look at one claim at a time, but the claims are starting to blend!

 

[Gary C]

... Here, we can continue to look at one claim at a time, but the claims are starting to blend!

I agree and I'm sure the various social media platforms recognize this and their algorithms use it to "promote engagement" by suggesting other woo "you might be interested in."

 

[Math_Kernel]

Your problem is you didn't approach these subjects using critical thinking in the first place. Now, instead of honing your critical thinking skills and trying to ascertain the true merit of an individual topic, like UFOs, as an example, you're using the package-deal fallacy to disregard it all. Instead you should steel man the UFO topic, research it properly, then only after you've studied it in depth, form your opinions about it.

I admit that I don't evaluate ESP claims critically at the beginning and thought Utts' analysis might be right.

I just felt something not right after finding all those topics connected with each other. Starting with UFO, I decided to watch Mick West video and come to metabunk to evaluate other topics because at least Mick used physics instead of psychology, religion or psychotic experience to explain that.

I was open to those ideas of UFO and thought they might be aliens. NYT also did several reports and podcast about the UFO stuff. I hadn't realized how unreliable those claims were until I fell into the rabbit hole because of ESP. But people who promoted UFO and ESP also promoted other fields, like some youtube channels and people from academia(Jeffrey J. Kripal).

You could also lump together biblical apocalypse prophecies, nuclear war scares, rogue AI worries, and pandemic worries, as all fear based issues, and accept or reject them all together as a package.

I wouldn't reject all them at the beginning without enough background information. I would like to refer to sources who used logic and science to evaluate those things like people in metabunk.

Suppose I can only read all those papers which support parapsychology and weird physics, even if I use my critical thinking, I cannot say that I won't fall into the rabbit hole

 

[Mendel]

Likewise, you could have a balanced and rational fear of a nuclear war breaking out based on credible information, or you could believe a nuclear war is immanent based on an AI generated YouTube video,

There is no such duality in the fields that are in this package deal.

 

[Ann K]

If a person has a modicum of knowledge of the physics of interstellar travel and of the magnitude of the distance between our planet and the next possibly-habitable one, as well as of the physics of flight within our own atmosphere, then "UFO" sightings become an extraordinary claim. But"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and rightly so. I'm not a physicist, but I can grasp the basics, and not even a small fraction of my skepticism about UFOs is balanced by ANY credible evidence at all, so I see no reason why I should entertain any belief in them. Evidence first, please; it would be foolish to jump on that bandwagon on the strength of tall tales or careless misidentification of ordinary objects.

 

[FatPhil]

Of course, Ayn Rand's own life demonstrates the Package-deal fallacy.
Her writings, and the company she kept, might give the impression she was steadfastly against publicly-funded healthcare and social security benefits.
But when her income dwindled and she (and her husband) became ill, it turned out she was in favour.

This is a frequent misrepresentation of her attitude to socialised healthcare. For the anti-Randians, fortunately the reality of what she actually thought makes her look even crankier. Her belief was that *because she'd paid in* - which she had - against her will - she deserved the service that she'd paid for. That's superficially fair, but here's where the crank kicks in: her belief was also that those like her who were *forced* to pay have suffered an amoral-but-legalised plunder, and that receipt of socialised care is mere compensation for that prior wrong - those that willingly paid in are not just *less* deserving than of that later support because they have not been stolen from, but, as supporters of an evil system, are completely *undeserving*.

It was hard to write that paragraph whilst avoiding her favourite word - I'm saving that up for what follows - because her philosophical fetish was clearly that of victimhood:

The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism. Those who advocate public scholarships, have no right to them; those who oppose them, have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.

Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . .

But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.

-- https://newideal.aynrand.org/what-gave-ayn-rand-the-moral-right-to-collect-social-security/

Feel free criticise Ayn Rand and Randians for pretty much everything they wrote and said, but please make sure you're criticising what was actually written and said. She's definitely become a caricature, which can hinder such discussions. However, some might argue that as victims of her sometimes barely coherent screeds we have earnt the right to turn her into a caricature, and she has deserved that as punishment for the wrongs she has wrought...

 

[John J.]

This is a frequent misrepresentation of her attitude to socialised healthcare.

My comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, although the implied criticism of Rand was deliberate. Actually, it was a poor example of the package-deal fallacy; we don't have to suppose she objected to publicly-funded healthcare from her other beliefs, we know she was opposed to publicly-funded healthcare, and staunchly opposed to the concept of a right to healthcare, which is a different concept but which de facto exists in almost all developed nations and (although provision might be more limited) in many developing nations. She believed this fundamentally impinged on the freedom of doctors- I'm not sure what she felt about the freedoms of firefighters, police officers or military personnel to not provide their services to/ in the cause of people they might not like or who don't pay them enough.
-I'm going off-topic. I don't disagree with any of @FatPhil's clarification/ more precise summary of Rand's views.

 

[Mendel]

For the anti-Randians, fortunately the reality of what she actually thought makes her look even crankier.

In today's terms, I'd describe it as an attitude of entitlement.

 

[Math_Kernel]

A point I'd stress, though, is that a lot of people doing that lumping together are the proponents of the various woo. As NorCal Dave points out above, the idea of UFOs or Bigfoot as physical phenomena fitting into but previously unknown to science is being superseded by some amalgamation of UFOs/Bigfeet/Ghosts/Spirits/Demons/Angels/Remote Viewing/ESP. As the claim that they are making becomes more of a merged "grand unified woo theory," dealing with it all as one thing is going to be hard to avoid.

Here, we can continue to look at one claim at a time, but the claims are starting to blend!

I find another topic which is related to those woo theory--meditation/mindfulness like Sadhguru and Alien encounter. I practiced meditation before I discover all the woo things. I know there are a lot of evidence which support the benefit of meditation. In meta-bunk, I saw people's opinions are mixed. As I look more into those downsides of meditation, the more I realize that I and many people might be harmed by some meditation practice. Now I am thinking that meditation's benefit might be exaggerated and downsides are overlooked to some degree. There are meditation induced psychosis:

Britton's research in meditation induced psychosis

And I find many personal accounts which say the meditation induced "loss of concept" phenomena. This is not research, just personal report. But I felt something similar:

account 1

account 2

Some of those symptoms might be benefits of some people but downsides of others. I hope there are more research into these. Meditation has been pushed into schools and companies.

 

[Todd Feinman]

A point I'd stress, though, is that a lot of people doing that lumping together are the proponents of the various woo. As NorCal Dave points out above, the idea of UFOs or Bigfoot as physical phenomena fitting into but previously unknown to science is being superseded by some amalgamation of UFOs/Bigfeet/Ghosts/Spirits/Demons/Angels/Remote Viewing/ESP. As the claim that they are making becomes more of a merged "grand unified woo theory," dealing with it all as one thing is going to be hard to avoid.

There is indeed a lot of mixing things together, and it is not helpful. I quit UFO / paranormal forums because of the amalgamation of many different kinds of fringe beliefs with the UFO phenomenon. There are many people who don't care to think critically, and prefer to believe a good story or confabulate one (choose your own reality), and this is true in many arenas, unfortunately. I think it's important to draw a distinction between UFO "believers" and "experiencers", regardless of whether or not you think the "experiencers" saw "aliens". Not all people who have a UFO experience believe in all of the other stuff, or if they do, that they are connected.

 

[Math_Kernel]

We both ended up with careers we didn't really want, but we made the best of it, raised 2 well adjusted kids and used what we learned from the jobs we fell into to our advantage where possible. Along the way we came to realize maybe nothing in life is "transcendental", rather it's what you make of it.

Thank you again Dave ! After reading it again, your words really comfort me !