Well I certainly hope not, and with yet another old song floating in my head (Sister Sledge anyone?) I think that the Digital Human theme gets delayed as I wait with interest to hear what Alex K. has to say on Radio 4 over the next few weeks. So, by process of elimination, I am left with “Hell is other people” - J.P. Sartre - or…
Scientific predictions should be all about specificity and exactitude with clearly defined parameters and measuring techniques. Data gathered during experimentation and results subsequently published must be open to scrutiny and therefore can be proven false.
An easy way of avoiding falsification is to not make any ‘specific’ claims at all. Pseudoscientific claims will never be specific, generally tending to be vague and using ambiguous language…
In the mid 19th Century the term “Pseudoscience” came into being to describe the methodology involved in bringing about remedies, potions, devices and ‘applications’ that claimed to improve the general well-being of a person.
Pseudoscience, along with superstitions and general ‘Quackery’, poses a serious threat to public health; at least it does according to recent (2011) Psychological research. The somewhat illusory perception of causality arising during the normal functioning of our cognitive system(s) being the problem here, especially when one attempts to unravel cause and effect. This appears to become more complicated by the ‘nice warm feelings’ engendered by many pseudoscientific claims.
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Amend and clarify
Oops, that should have been Aleks (not Alex) with the K for Krotoski. She studied Social Psychology which is something that I would like to do, hoping I can get past (as pass!) DSE212 when I get there
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Obviously(?) Sartre, being French, did not actually say "Hell is other people" but it is a translation of what he did say.
The French would read “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or “Hell is [the] others.”, With a translation of the play, by Paul Bowles, actually rendering the line as “Hell is just – other people.” Sartre explains that the Other – that which is not ourselves – is, or can be, a source of our distress.
Still, I'm not doing this one yet, so back to (pseudo) science
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