> The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
This phrase is repeated many, many times in the legendary fan-fiction Harry Potter and the Methods Of Rationality (HPMOR)[1], which I'm sure many here are familiar with already.
It is perplexing to hear people making room for their favourite pseudoscience using the excuse that "there are things science cannot explain". See, the annoying thing about science is that if something can as much as be observed, then it can be observed repeatedly, and then reasoned about - effectively allowing us to do science on it. That's even the case for magic, if it were real, as illustrated in HPMOR.
Even the most absurd and chaotic phenomenon, bereft of any discernible pattern or rhyme or reason, can at least be observed to behave chaotically and then be described as such. Et voilà : science !
It is perplexing to hear people making room for their favourite pseudoscience using the excuse that "there are things science cannot explain". See, the annoying thing about science is that if something can as much as be observed, then it can be observed repeatedly, and then reasoned about - effectively allowing us to do science on it. That's even the case for magic, if it were real, as illustrated in HPMOR.
Even the most absurd and chaotic phenomenon, bereft of any discernible pattern or rhyme or reason, can at least be observed to behave chaotically and then be described as such. Et voilà : science !
[1] https://hpmor.com/