[halfcat]

> The main thing I realized from arguing about it with them was that <my beliefs> did not really matter and would not convince them of anything

> It's an emotional and spiritual belief for them - a way for them to rationalize...

And for you, too.

Science the method is pretty damn great. Science the institution is closer to any other agenda-driven information source. If you’re doing first-hand, first-principles science, great. But if you’re doing the “here’s a study...” game, you’re relying on external authority you aren’t equipped to interpret, which, in practice, isn’t so much different from the people who think CNN or Fox News or Ancient Aliens is gospel.

Put another way, a real practitioner of science would seek to understand the phenomenon of why your family member believes what they believe. I guarantee you, it makes sense, once you know enough information (it always does, even if they’re actually insane, that helps it make sense). But to say, ”this person won’t even accept science” and hand wave it off as a “them” problem, emotional religion etc, are the words of a politician, not a scientist.

[protocolture]

Asking for evidence isnt a "belief system" its a coming to know things system. Equating a request for scientific rigor, to contrarian ancient aliens is nonsensical.

If someone wants to hold something up as true, its correct to disbelieve it until evidence is provided.

These people don't provide evidence, what they do is show you something cool and then beg the question. "Look at this cool rock in this place it might be hard to get a rock to, really makes you wonder who put it there huh". Literally any dumb science "content producer" is going to be able to get you closer to truth than listening to that bunk.

Not to mention that:

>It's an emotional and spiritual belief for them - a way for them to rationalize

>Put another way, a real practitioner of science would seek to understand the phenomenon of why your family member believes what they believe.

Seems like you quoted them having investigated it.

But having done so you call them a politician.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I think the problems with alternate theories such as Ancient Aliens is that they seize upon some examples of evidence (which are typically not great evidence anyway) and build a whole story on top of that. However, they then don't consider the ramifications of that - if ancient aliens did exist, then we should expect to find other sorts of evidence and thus make predictions about them. Of course, without predictions, theories are non-falsifiable and thus worse than useless.

[halfcat]

> Asking for evidence isnt a "belief system"

> If someone wants to hold something up as true, its correct to disbelieve it until evidence is provided.

So, a belief system.

> Seems like you quoted them having investigated it.

Asking for evidence isn’t investigating. It’s zero cost to ask for evidence.

Evidence alone doesn’t produce wisdom. It produces cleverness. Feelings and emotion are faster and vaster in terms of information processing, but provides a very low bandwidth output, basically a gut feeling of “good” or “bad”. Emotion isn’t irrational, it’s pre-verbal compression that contains real insight once it’s unpacked. Most people never unpack it, so an outside observer makes the (incorrect) leap from emotional -> irrational.

If you can marry evidence with that unpacked pre-verbal compression, that will be gold. But that requires a bunch of work and soft skills to have a good faith dialectic over time with someone you disagree with.

[protocolture]

>So, a belief system.

Nope

>Evidence alone doesn’t produce wisdom. It produces cleverness. Feelings and emotion are faster and vaster in terms of information processing, but provides a very low bandwidth output, basically a gut feeling of “good” or “bad”. Emotion isn’t irrational, it’s pre-verbal compression that contains real insight once it’s unpacked. Most people never unpack it, so an outside observer makes the (incorrect) leap from emotional -> irrational.

Thats a lot of unsubstantiated feels.