Essay talk:The Cluster

Aren't these just immature or autism-spectrum techno-libertarians? Hipocrite (talk) 19:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

PS - They are often actually racist but "scientifically" (which is pseudoscience) - see w:Race and Intelligence, specifically the nuttykookbager dinosaur nuts. Hipocrite (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's one way of putting it, but I think this term sums it up better, or at least shorter. EVDebs (talk) 02:53, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

On starting essays

Have you ever noticed how many of the people stirring shit up in the skeptical community all seem to sound the same?

No. Should I stop reading here? --Henk (talk) 20:40, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Up to you. It's an opinion piece; you don't have to take it the least bit seriously if you don't want to. EVDebs (talk) 02:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Good essay

I have met several people like this IRL. Evil fascist^{oh noez} 04:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

a lot of people

The TL:DR version starts with:

• a lot of people who put themselves forward as rational or skeptical fall into a cluster of woo-ish beliefs based around black box thinking and a transactional model of society.

The essay then goes on the describe a package of beliefs.

I am sure that this is good description of some people. Indeed, any randomly chosen package of beliefs would probably describe "some" people. The question is not "Does it describe some people in the movement"? but rather "Does is describe a significant proportion of the movement?

Does the author think "a lot of people" is 3%? Could be - but in that case - so what? Perhaps he could tell us what percentage of the self-described skeptical movement he feels falls into "the cluster"? --Weirdstuff (talk) 08:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I doubt, in terms of percentages or absolute numbers, that such people are a very large part of the movement. But they're both loud and influential, so they should be addressed. EVDebs (talk) 19:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

So perhaps the more neutral "some people" would be better than "a lot of people"?

But I'm still not convinced by the grouping. Effectively you are saying: "Some very vocal people have some of these views." And I'm sure that that is true. Equally you could find virtually any large grouping of people and say "some of them hold some of these views."

So I can't help feeling that it's a bit like Bush's "Axis of evil" - you are putting all the people (or views) that you don't agree with in one box and then assuming some commonality.--Weirdstuff (talk) 11:00, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

"hey tend not to be homophobic necessarily, but they seem to have an extreme aversion to experts, at least when said experts tell them something they don't like."

Maybe you should separate that into two sentences? Because the two thoughts don't seem related. Otherwise, insightful essay. A little too long for me to read, but then again I'll say that about anything (so don't worry about my attention span).--"Shut up, Brx." 00:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)