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andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2009-07-15 12:01 pm
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[identity profile] endless-psych.livejournal.com 2009-07-15 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Well strange rock formations is well within the domain of psychology and neuroscience as it is (it's all pattern recognition dontcha know - simulcrua (sp?)and such).

I'm all for the open exchange of ideas. My initial ire was perhaps misguided as the hedging seems to make it reasonable. So the anger about how I believed him to be presenting his idea was wrong.

I mean the problem with the argument as I was arguing against it is peoples tendencies not to employ critical thinking and condescend to their own preconceptions. You can sleepwalk into a whole lot of bad doing that.

Also nothing I have said discounts any of the above or precludes the free and open exchange of ideas. To do so implies a false dichotomy. I can quite happily disagree with people using their position to imply the veracity of an argument from their position of authority. Because that is wrong. This doesn't not make me against the free and open exchange of ideas.

I may be mistaken in this case but if it were a genuine abuse of position... Say people using Watsons (it wasn't Crick come to think of it was it?) authority, as one of discoverers of the double helix, to back up their racist ideas and claim that those damned blacks are congenitally and genetically inferior to humans... Then the implication that I am against the free and open exchange of ideas doesn't hold.
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