An essay exploring the concept of 'psychedelic apophenia', where connections are made between unrelated things so that we see psychedelics' influence everywhere.

It looks at Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory, psychedelic theories of Christianity, and DMT-pineal gland theories.

I am a recently retired Earth scientist. I still have access to and privileges at a local college's library. In the past, I have engaged discussions involving Young and Old Earth creationistism. puedoarchaeology, and various other forms of psueodoscience. Despite current attempts to write decent science fiction stories, I have the time to devote to analyzing and writing on "flawed reasoning and deception."  However, I am uncertain where and how I might do this to best make use of my time given the wide range of venues for participating in such discussions.

 Does anyone have either any advice or suggestions about how and where, e.g. blogs, communities, organizations, onlie forums, websites, and so forth might I devote my time and effort in an effective manner?

Are there any resources that discuss these matters?

 I have a personal dislike either X, Facebook, Tik-Toc, or Instagram. 

While pseudoscience is not unique to Islam - nor more pervasive within the religion - it is important to challenge where the Qur’an is used to support clearly pseudoscientific ideas.

In this video, Rebecca Watson discusses why appealing to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy is a convenient distraction and a means to avoid accountability. It's true that one can simply define their ideological group in such a way that racist or misogynistic people are defined as outside, but appealing to the fallacy is just a way to pretend like your group is immune to criticism by default.

I find this interesting. I always thought the notion of AI going rogue was just science fiction. This attack is scary

“Ridicule,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.” More than 1,600 years ago, Lucian of Samosata made a career out of it.

In dozens of surviving works, Lucian adapted the Socratic dialogue into a comic form, using conversations among gods, philosophers, tyrants, and ordinary people to expose their contradictions and absurdities. In doing so, he forged a powerful weapon for skepticism: mockery. 

In Zeus Cross-Examined, Lucian exposes Zeus as powerless, naïve, and unjust. More importantly, he reveals the contradiction at the heart of ancient Greek and Roman religion: if Fate governs all events, what purpose can sacrifice and prayer possibly serve?

Zeus could not survive the court of reason and evidence. But other gods have taken his place. Lucian's legacy is to remind us that every god must answer to the tribunal of reason. This article demonstrates the technique of cross-examination Lucian used. 

In 1748, Scottish philosopher wrote an essay called Of Miracles.

”…no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”

And:

”When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened.... If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”

Hume hoped that this argument ”will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion”.

In that, he was unfortunately incorrect, as we can tell almost 300 years later.

Now, we know a lot more about the universe, about history (especially the history of how religious texts were produced), about psychology, and so many other things, than we knew in the 18th century. But the beauty of Hume’s argument is that it doesn’t require any deep knowledge about science and history to understand it, or at least not deeper knowledge than humanity had in Hume’s days.

It is a simple, beautiful, and sound argument, and it is very easy to grasp. Certainly noteworthy in the history of skepticism.

A lot of misleading science communication is not based on fake studies.

The study can be real. The data can be real. The distortion often happens later, when the finding is translated into a headline, podcast claim, self-help rule or social media post.

I keep seeing four recurring patterns:

1. Correlation becomes causation

Two variables are associated, but the public claim presents one as the cause of the other.

1. Relative risk is presented without absolute risk

A percentage increase sounds dramatic, while the actual change in probability may be fairly small.

1. A narrow sample becomes a universal claim

A finding from one specific population is treated as a general rule about human psychology.

1. One study becomes “science says”

An initial result spreads widely before replication, methodological criticism or contradictory evidence catches up.

The examples I looked at were insomnia and depression, processed meat and cancer risk, the marshmallow test and power posing.

I think the fourth one may be the most damaging because once a finding becomes part of popular culture, failed replications rarely receive the same attention as the original claim.

What would you add to this list?

And which distortion do you think causes the most harm?

Disclosure: I made a video expanding on these four categories and the examples above:

https://youtu.be/0qPZcJb-eaA

We all want more time with our pets, but there is no simple product to buy, or special diet to follow, that will hold back the clock on canine longevity.

Finally someone did the actual heavy lifting on this:(https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1s0nj6s/i_spotted_posts_claiming_light_can_destroy/). The UV headlines follow the exact same pattern as every other "scientists discover solution" story - real research, completely mangled takeaway.

The fragmenting thing is what gets me. We're not even debating whether UV works; the question is whether "works" means anything useful when the output is just smaller, "harder-to-track" particles. You didn't clean anything. You just made the problem less visible.

And that's kind of the whole story of microplastics management - isn't it. Every intervention we have either moves the particles somewhere else or breaks them into something we can measure even less. The controlled reactor stuff sounds promising until you remember we're talking about treating wastewater while the rest of it is already in soil, air, blood, placentas, Arctic ice.

What I keep coming back to is something I haven't seen addressed in mainstream coverage at all - nanoscale plastic particles apparently carry an electric charge based on how they're manufactured and how they degrade. If that's real and consistent, it changes what "inert" even means. Charged particles behave differently at biological barriers. They bind differently. They don't just sit there.

Nobody seems to be seriously funding the neutralization angle - not cleanup, not filtration, actually stripping whatever reactivity these things carry at nanoscale. Maybe that's because it's not feasible. Maybe it's because we're still pretending the reactor solution scales somehow.

Either way the accumulation is just ongoing...

I found this article to provide a lot of context around the water used by data centers. A key takeaway being water is too cheap or free for many large businesses.

I’m wondering if you all would be willing to take a critical view of the claims I’m sending below:

For claim 8 it’s about the mysterious letters of the Quran and the number of times they appear in chapter 19. This is one of the claims I believe I can personally contest. When looking at the mysterious letters, for letters like Ya they count alif masqarah and hamzas seated on top of the letter ya as occurrences of ya (which I think makes no sense, since they’re not the same letter and only look similar). On the other hand, Rashad Khalifa even during his life was preaching about Surah 19 having 798 letters, and coincidentally, he lives for 19,798 days (if you include the start and end point. In reality, he lived for 19,797 days). As mentioned, though, if one includes the start point of November 19 and the endpoint of January 31 it comes out to be 19,798. I still can’t get over the fact that he during his life preached that Surah 19 has 798 mysterious letter occurrences and he himself lived for essentially that many days.

However, on the other hand, in released FBI files on Rashad Khalifa’s life, it’s stated that he was born on November 18.

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/scientists/rashadkhalifa-fbi1.pdf
(Page 14)

In that case, my counterpoint above of him having in reality only lived for 19,797 days wouldn’t be applicable anymore. Now he would’ve lived for 19,798 days.

In any case, whether you use an exclusive on inclusive count, it just so happens that Rashad Khalifa lived for 19,798 days. It could’ve been 20,100 days, or 17,100 days, but instead it happened to be on the 19,798th day (which, once again, chapter 19 according to Rashad had 798 occurrences of the mysterious letters).

Point 5 isn’t elaborated but during Rashad’s life interstate 19 was built running through Tucson Az (where he lived at) and is also the only highway in the US to use the metric system. Furthermore, another interstate highway goes through Tucson, that being interstate 10 (if you combine these 2 roads you end up at 29, the same number as the number of chapters that include the mysterious letters in the Quran).

If you also count the number of days from November 19 to January 31 you end up with 74, which is the Surah in which the number 19 first appears.

Finally, for point 11, it’s not mentioned either but the numbers 1230 come from 2 things. First, it’s the abjad value of the name Rashad Khalifa and also if you count the verses of only initialed (mysterious letters) surahs, Q 19:1 is the 1230th verse and Q 19:98 is the 1327th verse. This is by counting only the verses in chapters 2,3,7,10,11,12,13,14,15,19 since they are the ones that contain the mysterious letters.

Once again, I would be so grateful if you could take a look at these claims and give me your view on them. I don’t know what to think with this information being present at hand.

The claims that strike me as the most impressive are him living for 19,798 days and the 19x1230x1327 claim.

Potholder54's summary: Should fluoridation of our water supply be banned? That's a political question, but we all need to understand the science behind it. What's the science behind it? And are there alternatives?

My summary: Once again Peter Hatfield provides an in depth summary of the histrionic arguments made by folks like RFK Jr and breaks them down into how they are misinformation.

He also discusses where the concerns about fluoride in food/water came from and talks about how the dosage makes the poison.

I know they're out there. I just doubt UAP sightings are non-human origin. The tictac footage and subsequent reportings and sightings is intriguing, the advanced maneuvers that are so far ahead of our technology it's arguably impossible according to laws of physics. What are these reputable sources, professional/experienced pilots seeing? I would love for it to be aliens, but I cannot reason myself into believing it. -- Being visited by advanced technology. Converging on the truth, what do you think it most likely to be: human or non-human origin? Is it just as likely to be human-origin sent back in time as it is to be another alien civilization craft that has traveled/conquered the problem of immense distances between star systems for reasons less likely than expected? Nothing can ever travel faster than the speed of light, it's the universal established law.

Even traveling at sub-light speed, it just isn't likely to be transversed. And furthermore statistically, agaisnt all probability, if it is alien advanced technology that we are seeing here, one that has transversed to Earth, what is the likelihood they would have done so in such a manner that is being dictated, i.e. remain mostly elusive, mysterious, small interactions for an extended/indefinite amount of time without being discovered?

For that to be a part of the parameters in general, the likelihood against it happening is compounded here. •Not likely to be able to get here. •ABLE TO GET HERE but not likely to be worth it to come here considering the risks and energy needed outweigh any possible reward. •WORTH VOYAGING but not likely to come here under the parameters of not being totally noticed by the modern world and to then do whatever, undiscovered. ★Their motivation for interstellar traveling would then want to accomplish X,Y,Z. which are more limited when these parameters are established.

•If possible, agaisnt all odds, what would make the trip worth it for this advanced civilization? The immediate motivation for this unlikely event to unfold as narrated would mean X,Y,Z, cannot be the most likely motivating factors: destroying/conquering the planet nor is it establishing any communication for more amicable/altruistic motivations one could imagine. The motivation could only be in this circumstance, something that successfully eludes the entire world, mostly, for an extended or indefinite amount of time. •Basically, what are the chances that if visited by an alien species from another planet, what are the chances they would arrive and behave the way it is narrated. To be elusive and remain a mystery for years after arrival. To want to be elusive and remain a mystery for years after

arrival. And then to do so successfully, mostly. Thats implausible on top of implausible.

The White House released their own "Disclosure Day" tranche of UFO files - and the result was the dampest of damp squibs.