by jashkenas on 7/20/21, 1:09 PM with 88 comments
by wpietri on 7/20/21, 2:34 PM
What I think people don't understand here is that the NYT doesn't just come out and call people assholes. A traditional journalist is not supposed to insert themselves into the frame to that extent. The highfalutin' journalist approach to the problem is to paint a sympathetic picture of the asshole in ways that make it clear that they are an asshole.
by krisoft on 7/20/21, 2:33 PM
> The very notion of dowsing — that an above-ground stick will react to the presence of something hundreds of feet below — breaks the laws of physics.
Really? It breaks the laws of physics? Tell that to my gravimeter. Oh you are saying a human with a simple wooden stick is not a gravimeter? Idk they are quite complicated. They can be many things. Maybe they can be a gravimeter too?
> Every single controlled test of the practice has failed, yielding results indistinguishable from chance.
This is the important bit. We know that "dowsing" doesn't work because we tried it many times, carefully, and so far it never worked better than chance. It has nothing to do with breaking the laws of physics.
by compscistd on 7/20/21, 3:04 PM
Not once does the article mention efficacy of geologists or dowsers because I didn’t think that’s what the article was about. It read more like, “Hey some vineyards are hiring crazy people and here are some of their claims that are widely disputed. Weird world right?.” An example is when they contrast the different feelings dowsers get: one feels hot like a battery, another feels cold chills, and yet another just swings a pendulum on a map and marks it with a sharpie like a magic spell.
People who read this and think they want a dowser will find another article or blog to succumb to confirmation bias anyway. Let’s not take our frustration with misinformation out on normal reporting.
by JohnBooty on 7/20/21, 2:46 PM
Yes, the claims of "water witches" are objectively untrue.
In a very real sense, it is fraudulent to charge for such "services."
However, the supernatural claims of any religion are equally untrue. And just about any major organized religion expects money from its followers either directly or indirectly in terms of donations, tithing, tax breaks, etc. In an objective sense these practices are all just as fraudulent as a "water witch" charging for their services.
And this is where the trickiness arises - do we want to single out some religions for debunking, while allowing others' claims to go unquestioned?
I don't like the idea of marks forking over money for these fraudulent water dowsing services provided by "water witches", nor the idea of a publication like the NYT lending any credence whatsoever to such antiscience.
But I'm also not in love with giving established world religions a free pass while picking on the smaller and less centralized religions. It's not too long ago that we literally burned "witches" here in America, and unfortunately it is common throughout history.
by tosser0001 on 7/20/21, 2:43 PM
These statements were made back in the days of "In Search Of ...", etc., when there were a lot of books and shows about pseudo-scientific phenomena like The Bermuda Triangle, Ancient Astronauts, Bigfoot, etc. It really wasn't all that long ago that it wasn't considered complete insane to be studying these phenomena and have details published in peer-review journals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI
by duxup on 7/20/21, 2:34 PM
To me the article was more about the people / desperation...
Sometimes I think people believe that almost any portrayal that isn't entirely negative of a thing they don't like is 'both sides'.
by JKCalhoun on 7/20/21, 2:30 PM
If it is all to chance anyway, there are probably a lot worse ways to "flip a coin". At least you can feel like you're divining where to dig.
How that ever persisted into the 20th Century and to now is perplexing but probably says a lot about human nature.
by thinkingemote on 7/20/21, 3:32 PM
1. Random chance.
2. The operator is a sensor and the rods the indicator. The person moves the rods unconsciously in response to some internal perception.
3. The rods are moved from outside by supernatural forces.
4. The person moves the rod unconsciously and doesn't sense anything external.
I have tried dowsing and think its a either 2 or 4. It's definitely the operator moving the rods. The question then becomes why.
It's within the realm of nature that organisms can sense light, magnetism, humidity, heat etc. It's also likely that we could indicate where things are from a kind of unconscious intuition or a guess of where something could be.
If you were to do an experiment, I'd suggest using buried electrical wires indoors or outside, as these someone should have actual plans for.
In my experiments with a group of people using a pendulum, the targets identified were basically the same as when asked a different group of people consciously to choose. In other words, #4.
by AbrahamParangi on 7/20/21, 2:25 PM
I think this is much preferable to the alternative of a controlled ecosystem of ideas, for which there are no positive historical examples and many negative ones.
by tzs on 7/20/21, 3:09 PM
Their dowsing rods are not reacting to the water. They are reacting to the dowser's unconscious recognition of those features and formations. The way they hold them makes them very sensitive to very slight movements on the part of the dowser, so that they have no idea that they are the ones moving the rods.
PS: yup, it was in "The Straight Dope" [1].
[1] https://www.straightdope.com/21341336/does-dowsing-for-water...
by ncmncm on 7/20/21, 4:03 PM
E.g., throughout 43's two terms, the stories were always whatever vice-43 or his enablers insisted was true, and never that vice-43 and his enablers were known to be lying when they said it. It is what got us mired in Iraq.
When a public figure expresses what is factually true or false, and is in fact false, it is actual news that they are doing that. That is the "lede": Public Official Openly Lying to Public. It is not surprising that they do, but it is still news when they do it, and in the public interest to get on record. What they are lying about is trivial except insofar as it reveals that they are trying to draw our attention away from something else.
Finding what that something else is would be a useful activity for a reporter.
by raincom on 7/20/21, 3:59 PM
When acquifers were not depleted, every 'water witch' was right. Once acquifers are depleted, they are useless. That's how I look at them.
by whatshisface on 7/20/21, 2:48 PM
by _5659 on 7/20/21, 4:05 PM
In essence, the oracle bone would give them a random direction. If there was nothing, they'd ask again, if there was something, they would keep asking. Doesn't matter. The important function of consulting the oracle bones was that they were randomly distributing their hunting patterns without overexhausting one particular area within range. This allows the population of game to stabilize over time.
tldr
If you're looking for answers, searching at random and searching frequently is probably the most efficient method instead of wasting time figuring out how to find it.
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition." -Alan Turing
by srtjstjsj on 7/20/21, 2:38 PM
> A version of this article appears in print on July 17, 2021, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: In Tech’s Backyard, the Hottest Search Engine Uses 2 Steel Rods. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Bold choice, trying to upsell me with a monstrously bullshit headline
by readonthegoapp on 7/20/21, 2:40 PM
It usually lacks any substance, and often - like this post - just says stuff.
by question000 on 7/20/21, 2:46 PM
by at_a_remove on 7/20/21, 2:37 PM
The amount of mental gymnastics I have been seeing around the, uh, "blessing" of hypocrisy has been Olympian. "Whataboutism," "both-sidesism," and so on. Make no mistake, the author has zero interest in dowsing as a topic, it's just the camel's nose in the tent to get you used to the idea that only one side need be represented in a story.
by smcg on 7/20/21, 2:13 PM
by eplanit on 7/20/21, 2:20 PM
It's classic Strawman arguing (and even has a Trump reference for a bonus point).
by dash2 on 7/20/21, 2:19 PM
by silexia on 7/20/21, 2:14 PM