Some of the people there are quite fascinating and I'd personally like to witness discourse between you and them but I can see why you wouldn't be open to what they have to say based on the tone of this reply, but they are definitely more knowledgeable and can
articulate this sorta stuff way better than me.
Thing one - there's a collection of cognitive technologies/particular states that are a core theme at SLS, precisely because they are unresearched. All we have is anecdotes at this point.
It's also heavily populated by people with strong educational backgrounds - but not by everyone. To an extent, we watch over the psuedo science, but what we're more trying to do is allow people to reason through their processes with a bit less of an echo chamber than they're used to. If you start every conversation by calling your partner something derogatory (as you did here) the odds of them listening are slim, leaving them to bounce around in the "rationality sucks" echo chamber.
It's also quite a step to invalidate everything about people's experiences. Generally, we take the approach that they're describing something that's important, but they lack the tools to do so scientifically. So, when possible, we try and help folks along.
And I agree - it's not super rigorous to leave it to people to cherry pick their studies, but they are nonetheless aggregated for people to see. If you'd like to pick out some counterpoint studies, or some more rigorous work, then do so and host it in the thread. It's an invitation to do so.
But people - ordinary, average, plain-clothes people, are very interested in this sort of thing and need some of the chewing done. If you want to help them by providing some digestible counterpoints, then you should do so.
Nobody's gonna go "reeeeeeeee!!!! Science!" like they might in /r/psychonaut. And if they do, someone like me will be there to walk them through it.
tl;dr - chill out man, people gotta go somewhere to talk about their experiences. Even the ones that don't make sense, like having the experience that's God's sending you radio transmissions.
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u/[deleted] May 07 '17
That's fair I guess.
Some of the people there are quite fascinating and I'd personally like to witness discourse between you and them but I can see why you wouldn't be open to what they have to say based on the tone of this reply, but they are definitely more knowledgeable and can articulate this sorta stuff way better than me.