Indian Skeptic Charged by Church for Blasphemy due to debunking "miracle"

An Indian skeptic, sometimes known as "James Randi of India", was threatened with arrest because he recently debunked a miracle at Church and explained the "seeping Jesus on a cross" dripping water logically: it's from a nearby drainage pipe.

Skeptic.com reports:

Sanal Edamaruku, an Indian skeptic, went to Mumbai and revealed that a “miraculous” weeping cross was really just a bit of statuary located near a leaky drain whose liquid reached it by way of capillary action. The local Catholic Church demanded that he retract his statements, and when he refused, they had him arrested for blasphemy.

Yesterday (10th April,2012) Sanal received a phone call from a Police official of Juhu Police Station in Mumbai directing him to come to the said police station to face the charges and get arrested.

I would like to think of myself as a somewhat amateur skeptic, focusing on more economic topics than scientific topics, but the idea is the same: debunk bad logic and baseless beliefs.

What is Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy?

To explain Texas Sharpshooter policy requires telling a story.

-----

There's a sharpshooter in Texas. He has a lot of targets on display, a cluster of shots all around the bullseye. Everybody was awed.

Until someone noticed that on most of these targets, none of the bullseye was in the exact center, the way a real target bullseye should be.

So one night he went to secretly observe the sharpshooter doing target practice.

As it turned out, the sharpshooter was painting the bullseye AFTER he had a cluster of shots.

-----

SIDENOTE: accuracy, vs. precision

Most people use the two words interchangeably, when they are actually quite different.

If you can put 5 shots inside the red circle on a shooting target in a VERY tight cluster, you are both accurate, AND precise.

If you can put 5 shots 3 inches below the red circle in a tight cluster (even though you're aiming for the red circle), you are NOT accurate, but you are precise (little if any scatter)

If you can put 5 shots inside the red circle, but they're spread all over the circle (not a tight cluster), you are accurate, but NOT precise (there's scatter).

-----

The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is a cognitive trap where the brain chose to shift the remembered position to fit the evidence better.

For example, let's say before the election, you are asked to guess what percentage of votes will a certain candidate get.

A week after the election, you are asked about your guess. Invariably, you will give an answer that's CLOSER to the real number than your actual answer. Your memory shifted to more correspond to the "right" answer.

-----

Scammers often rely on this to shift your position even if you don't remember doing so (and if you do remember, you'd think it was your own idea and it made perfect sense).

Why do MLMers keep joining one MLM after another?

People who studied MLM, i.e. network marketing, from the outside, often wondered why do some of the members just keep moving from one company to another, never succeeding, yet never quitting. They are sort of hung in limbo, going in circles. Those are often referred to derisively as "MLM Junkies".

But why? Why do they act as if they are "addicted" to MLM? is there such as thing as addicted to MLM, even though clearly the previous choices are failures causing the person to move on?

One possible explanation is "hindsight bias".

Hindsight bias can be best described as "convenient memory". You believe that whatever you remembered is right, even though it may be somewhat different from the truth.

Let's say, you just learned that "being nice to cops can cause them to issue you a lesser ticket when they have a choice."

If you say "I knew that", or "That's common sense" or similar response, you probably have hindsight bias, as you have assumed that you knew that all along, when you only learned it recently. (unless, of course, you actually already experienced this or learned this from some other source)

(BTW, this actually true in California, if you made a right turn at red light at a "no right turn on red" intersection)

How does it apply to serial MLMers? They probably suffer from hindsight bias, where they only remember the "good" parts about each MLM they joined, and just enough about the bad parts that caused them to quit, without a full examination of all the factors.

Then when they run into a new MLM, they don't see the "bad" parts they saw before (due to the hindsight bias), noticed all the "good" parts they liked before, and conclude this is a "better" opportunity.

As they learned more about this new business, they found a new set of "bad" parts, and eventually quit, so the cycle starts anew.

What's the eventual outcome? Only two ways this cycle will end

1) They got so good at MLM they actually succeed (very rare)
or
2) They learned so many different bad parts through the years, they quit MLM in disgust (vast majority)

In the meanwhile, they keep going from one MLM to another, chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and never get there.

If you are in a MLM purgatory, doomed to repeat your MLM cycle, are you trying to get out? Do you even recognize your MLM purgatory?

Related articles

• Hindsight Bias: Tripping Over the Past on the Way to the Future (ozziepaezdecisions.com)

Gullible Morons Passing on Bad Info

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier today, I was eating lunch with a friend while lamenting that the GPS on my phone is glitchy. I had a GPS app loaded, which is telling me that it saw the GPS constellation of satellites (about 10) while I was sitting still inside the restaurant. We walked out, and I was remarking about how the GPS lost track while moving, when some high school kids around the corner made a random remark:

"Mister! You may want to turn that GPS off! Government can track you with it!"

For a moment, I was about to turn back and tell him that he's being stupid, that he had no idea how GPS actually works, but then, I thought better. You can't convince a conspiracy theorist that there is no conspiracy. His mind is already made up.

Besides, there is slight bits of truth in that statement, crazy as it sounds.

E911 service is always on for any cell phone sold in the US. This means if you dialed 911, the other side will receive your location (if available).

However, a GPS by itself doesn't send anything. GPS is a PURELY PASSIVE DEVICE. it only receives. It is NOT A BEACON.

A cell phone on the other hand, can be tracked even withOUT the built-in GPS, by triangulating the signal off multiple towers. This is called aGPS. Some WiFi equipped cell phones can also look for WiFi hotspots with known locations and thus know the current location.

But this goes back to a fundamental question: how *does* GPS receivers work? How can they calculate your location on earth based on just receiving signals from the sky? Well, it has to do with the GPS satellites in the sky (together, they're known as a "constellation").

The guys who created GPS was inspired by the Sputnik. Sputnik puts out a 1 Hertz beep, and you know its orbit. By listening to the signal, and calculate its doppler effect, you can work out where on Earth you can approximately, but it's not very accurate, as there's no cross check.

So GPS uses multiple satellites.

Each satellite has a unique orbit, and its transmission has a unique signature. It is also VERY VERY precise in its broadcast time-wise. Thus, if you have an accurate clock, you can measure the signal coming off one satellite. You know what pulse rate it *should* be. If you then measure its pulse rate as received by you, then you know the doppler shift. You know its velocity, thus, working backwards, you can calculate your approximate latitude. By working off math off at least THREE satellites in the constellation, you can get both lattitude AND longitude, and if you get a fourth one, you can get height. The more satellites you can "fix" the better your accuracy.

So that's the rant. :)

You call this "free-thinking"?

As I remarked before, by NOT holding an extreme position, you get fire from both sides.

When when you point out one side's blind spots, you got labelled as "obstructionist, misleading, inaccurate" and other derogatory labels. 

So what was a "stream of false and defamatory statements" that this guy was referring to? I'll link to it and you can see for yourself:

Here: http://randomrantsbykc.blogspot.com/2011/09/update-on-dbs-situation.html 10-SEP-2011

Here: http://randomrantsbykc.blogspot.com/2011/09/db-update-again-except-it-aint-db.html 10-SEP-2011

here: http://randomrantsbykc.blogspot.com/2011/09/truce-with-db-did-not-hold.html 12-SEP-2011

and here http://randomrantsbykc.blogspot.com/2011/09/ive-been-declared-persona-non-grata-but.html 20-SEP-2011

The only "negative" word I have used is "fanatic", as in "don't argue with a fanatic". 

What is the definition of "fanaticism"? 

Definition for fanaticism:

Web definitions:

excessive intolerance of opposing views. wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Yep, that's EXACT what it is. They are so convinced they're on the side of absolute truth (that is "self-evident") that they don't tolerate one iota of dissent. They are, by definition, fanatics. 

And the fact is they are such fanatics, they refused to be labelled as fanatics. When I quoted the definition back at them, my definition was deleted. 

And they claim to be "free-thinkers". Clearly, they mean "thinks-like-us-ers". 

Another item: they claim to be tracking the TVI Express scam:

Funniest thing: I posted that URL on their website. And they claim they're closely monitoring it. Must be AFTER I posted it, yes? Because you will find NO MENTION of TVI Express between April 2011, and November 2011. 

If they were closely monitoring TVI Express, how could they have missed an article published in South Africa back in AUGUST 2011? Or how TVI Express got its business license revoked in Indonesia, declared illegal in Lesotho, and various other developments? Clearly, they were NOT monitoring TVI Express (at least, not as close as I was monitoring it), and their dismissive attitude is merely a facade to cover their own lack of coverage on this scam.

If you point out something they missed, they claim they didn't miss it, they've been watching it all along. (Yeah right ) Clearly, to be a part of their "free-thinkers" one must pretend that DB and SS knows everything and choose not to share them, and then when someone else posts something agree with their claim that "we knew that all along."  

If you point out they said something that didn't follow logically, they censor your comment and claim you were insulting them, or they pull out some bogus logical fallacies, like "All MLMs are illegal because all MLMs are fraud and all frauds are illegal", when one cannot prove that all MLMs are frauds. When you ask them why all MLMs are frauds, they cite Robert Fitzpatrick, who, along with Dr. John Taylor, concluded that 99% of participants lose money. However, that doesn't in itself prove that MLMs are frauds. It just means that MLMs are financially bad for participants. It doesn't necessarily mean fraud (unless you define fraud as "losing money", which is way too broad).

I will go as far as saying that MLMs are always in danger of turning fraudulent, but I won't go as far as say all MLMs are frauds, because such a blanket statement is nearly impossible to prove (but not to these "free-thinkers", who even agreed that "MLM is not yet declared illegal in the US")

That's why I am an enemy to these so-called "free-thinkers". I won't go the rest of the way to agree with their extreme position. 

If you point out that censoring comments that in any way does not conform to their view is fanaticism, they censor your comment and claim you were insulting them. 

Does that sound like "free-thinkers" to you?

SpeakAsia: intent to violate the law in Bangladesh?

SpeakAsia was in MAJOR legal trouble in India, and the business basically withered on a vine in Bangladesh.

So it was surprising that some panelists are speaking about reviving it and run it as a NON-MLM company.

But they are keeping "uplines".

So already they plan to defraud the government: claiming they are NOT MLM when in fact they are. Why else would it have uplines?

5. If any one want to change the upline, then it would be allowed for 1 week or less

6. Speak Asia would run here as a NGO (Non Govt. Organisation) not a MLM (Multi Level Marketing concern)

http://www.thebhaskar.com/2011/12/speak-asia-would-run-bangladesh-as-ngo.html

When scams attack: using DDOS on critics

One of my most visited websites, BehindMLM.com, is down, and so did its companion site.

As it had worked for months and months without a hiccup, and today is on the eve of a MAJOR announcement in a scam it is tracking, either this is a terrible coincidence, or someone unleashed the "low orbit ion cannon" on it to prevent it from comment on the news.

If this is indeed what happened, this would be a SECOND time an Indian scam has unleashed a cyberattack on a website that criticized the scam. The first time was TVI Express unleashing LOIC on Ted Nuyten's website in the Netherlands.

UPDATE: FALSE ALARM

BehindMLM.com is back, apparently some sort of DNS screwup.