User talk:PaleoNeonate/Pitfalls

Traditional medicine

This is still not clear. If nothing else, the comma should be removed. Does "traditional medicine" mean older medicine? Maybe it should be "outdated" medicine? SixteenSquared (talk) 04:04, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into it. I added a citation that puts it in some context, but when I originally wrote that I was thinking of another source that I failed to identify, I'll surely find it eventually. It should probably also be split in two sentences... —PaleoNeonate – 16:31, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

To do list

Ideas or items to possibly integrate in the future

• compartmentalization (psychology) and cognitive dissonance; people are not crazy for believing all kinds of things, or for actively avoiding confronting or inconvenient information. Already mentioned that part of science is to dispell normal illusions of scientists with processes like double blind experiments, peer review, etc.
• A way to put particular beliefs in perspective is the awareness of their origin and how they vary depending on one's background. This is an indication of subjectivity (vs objectivity). It would be unjust for an authority to reject or punish people depending on their particular indoctrination (here I mean judgement and persecution by humans or divine beings, not legitimate academic criticism). The most intellectually honest endeavors can lead to knowledge that conflict with some doctrines. A nice thing about science is that it's more universal and tends to converge and seek unifying theories rather than split (other than for technical reasons like specialization). Philosophy of science itself is already covered with the "ideas attempting to test other ideas" part. It's another reference to YEC that made me remember this (a view that not only conflicts with many other religious views, but also with what we learned about the natural world).
  For perspective, I was raised in a propaganda-focused apocalyptic organization that promotes a day-age creationism variant and produces anti-evolution literature (pseudoscientific literature as well as ridiculous arguments like that "Darwinism" would be a "false religion" designed/adopted to "justify sins" and only one man's idea, probably inspired by Satan), promotes flood geology and believes in a literal Genesis, Exodus, Revelation, etc. it's in my 30s that I reviewed biology and geology again and attained an understanding of those processes and how it's well established science. Incredibly, I used to believe that taxonomy was a type of propaganda in biology, instead of practical and very useful information. Before I was ready with an open mind to study science again, I had wasted years studying other religions, esotericism, reading the literature of various cults and magic movements. And modern theology, allowing to understand how traditions and holy texts originated, through human processes.
• Shorter and more practical WP-focused text, I like the outline approach Jps used in his essay that could serve as inspiration for organization.
• Demarcation problem
• Teleological argument, Teleology in biology