Useful Reference

[oddlots]

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense:

http://www.crispian.net/PTIR/Nonsense.html

[Sharky]

Re: Useful Reference

Love it!

[mooncliff]

Re: Useful Reference

Oh, but missing Breatharianism, in which people believe they can live on light and do not eat.
Sadly, some people have died doing this, but I would think there were psychiatric issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

Having to construct a neural network that will reasonably accurately mimic the behavior of the world takes quite some time and is difficult. Even learning to pour liquids as a child, back and forth and back and forth, typically takes 50,000 trials. Without good feedback, incessant checking, and vicious empiricism, it is difficult to discard the stuff that at first glance certainly seems more plausible than invisible signals all around us, time passing at different rates at your head than at your feet when you are standing (actually measured recently!), that disease can be caused by invisible microorganisms, and that eukaryotic organisms like us have endosymbiotic bacteria (mitochondria) without which we cannot live.

I envision the way economics thinks about the world like this:
The entire planet and everything and every being on it is invisible and transparent. The only thing visible are the chips in the casino, the cash moving around, the numbers in the computers representing money. Try to understand the behavior of these chits with limited ability to track them, and bereft of context, both physical and social.
The more delayed the effect, the greater difficulty in linking it to the cause, and sometimes you can't see the relationship at all in this infinite game of go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

[Spartacus]

Re: Useful Reference

It's incomplete.

3 things I don't see (underlying, foundational stuff more than specific woo-woo, but it should be in there IMHO)

1. "quantum is weird, and my sh*t's weird, and quantum is science, so my sh*t's science"

2. "scientists are closed minded, I'm not, and you don't want to be, so believe the bull I just pulled out of my ass".

3. "10 studies from the 1960s support my cr*p and all since the 70s don't (but I omitted those) so believe my cr*p"

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense:

http://www.crispian.net/PTIR/Nonsense.html