The insanity continues: http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/2007/08/genie-in-a-bott.html
After deleting one of my comments, the author deigned to allow two others . . . for the time being. See 'em before they are censored.
This is a prime example of a skeptic who honestly believes herself to be without bias. What a common delusion that is! No instrument and no mind is without bias. The worst bias of all is to imagine that you are the measure of all things and therefore without bias. As Francis Bacon put it:
"The images or idols by which the mind is preoccupied are either adventitious or innate. The adventitious have crept into the minds of men either from the dogmas and sects of philosophers, or the perverted rules of demonstration. But the innate are inherent to the very nature of the understanding, which appears to be much more prone to error than the senses. For however men may be satisfied with themselves, and rush into a blind admiration and almost adoration of the human mind, one thing is most certain, namely, that as an uneven mirror changes the rays proceeding from objects according to its own figure and position, so the mind when affected by things through the senses does not act in the most trustworthy manner, but inserts and mixes her own nature into that of things, whilst clearing and recollecting her notions.
The first two species of idols are with difficulty eradicated, the latter can never be so."
I would tell her that, but she would probably erase all my comments in fit of pique.
- Jed
