(April 6, 2018 at 6:01 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(April 6, 2018 at 4:43 pm)Transcended Dimensions Wrote: I get the feeling that perhaps skeptics reject paranormal findings and experiments at first glance. They don't bother to fully read into the things these paranormal researchers have to say which addresses any objections these skeptics have. When you disagree with something whether it be an idea, an experiment, or a certain claim, you should fully look into anything that addresses your objections. Otherwise, you would just be jumping to conclusions. When drawing a certain conclusion, you should do so only after having conducted full research and having read all the objections being addressed. In short, keep an open mind through the whole journey until you finally arrive at the final destination whether that destination be accepting paranormal claims and findings as truth or rejecting them as woo or nonsense.
It's a well known fact of psychology that people take short cuts in reasoning about the world. The idea that this or that particular area should be handled without appeal to these shortcuts is as irrational as it is futile. We tend to rely on consensus and method to weed out reliable claims from unreliable claims, as well as the fact that past performance predicts future behavior. Are these shortcuts? Sure. But do they produce a robust representation of truth and reality? I would argue that they do. Your complaint is long on principle and short on practicality. If we gave every advocate of every belief the type of treatment you here want us to reserve for the paranormal, we'd never have time for anything else. On top of that, it's possible that the reliability of our conclusions would be harmed instead of helped, as the wisdom of the crowd outperforms individual judgements in the bulk of situations.
So my question for you would be why you feel that treating only claims of the paranormal in this way is in any sense wise?
But the paranormal researchers would even reject to this as well. They would say that the skeptics are drawing the wrong conclusions through faulty methods and shortcuts. Therefore, I think it really all comes down to my method because you could be wrong here. Likewise, the researchers could be wrong and the skeptics might be right when saying that we can reject and dismiss paranormal claims and experiments based upon those methods and shortcuts you've mentioned. So, who is right and who is wrong here? Again, it all comes down to my method of doing the full research into this to find out for sure.