Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock: TED Ideas Not Worth Spreading – A Fresh Take

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

This is a continuation of my previous post on the latest TED fiasco.

I’ve read thoroughly and carefully TED’s more nuanced “fresh take”. Below is my reaction. I posted it as a comment on the TED Blog.

1) Props to TED for making this discussion transparent, posting Sheldrake and Hancock’s responses, and for listening to the deluge of passionate voices who rattled the TED Blog (present company included). as someone who has an experience working as a social media community moderator, I understand the challenges of balancing the platform content while maintaining a brand. You can’t make everyone 100% happy 100% of the time. You have to walk the fine line of freedom of speech, censorship, as well as the legalities.

2) TED is now a global brand. For it to be continually successful it has to be pro-establishment and stay within the bounds of the status quo. In the domain of science, which is currently dominated by the materialistic paradigm, TED cannot afford to be too radical. Since TED’s “Science Board” is comprised of anonymous scientists, I can only speculate that many, if not most, of them are deep into the materialistic paradigm (hence the knee-jerk reaction to Sheldrake’s presentation). For those in the know, it’s no secret that Rupert Sheldrake is a very divisive figure in the scientific community, precisely because his theories and research challenge the very fabric of establishment (materialistic) science.  Continue reading >

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Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock: TED Ideas Not Worth Spreading

Saturday, March 16th, 2013

TED just got itself into hot water again. I’ve been following the latest TED fiasco on the “censorship” of Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock’s TEDx talks. (Sorry Chris Anderson and TED Staff, what TED did was *censorship* no matter how you spin it.)

For those who want to know the details that led to this TED brouhaha, a very meticulous guy named Kent Bye put together an excellent timeline of the events on the comments section of the TED Blog. Here’s an excerpt and the closing questions he included in his comment:

*** March 14, 2013 ***
Hancock posts three specific refutations of alleged claims in the comment section stating that “I would like TED to identify where exactly in my talk these alleged ‘many inaccuracies’ occur.”

This request went unanswered for most of the day until Anderson posted later in the day that he was going to “reach out and see if any of our advisors is able to go into more depth in answering your specific questions.”

QUESTIONS FOR TED STAFF:
* Who are the members on TED’s Science Board?
* Why weren’t Sheldrake or Hancock informed and provided an opportunity to respond to these allegations before having an anonymous Science Board frame their presentation?
* If you weren’t intending on censoring the videos, then why didn’t you tell TEDxWhitechapel that the videos would live on in a special section of the site, and thereby clearly communicate that to Hancock & Sheldrake this plan? Why did you instead tell TEDxWhitechapel, “Graham Hancock’s talks from TEDxWhiteChapel should be removed from the TEDx YouTube channel and any other distribution platform currently hosting the videos” and to “delete the videos from YouTube and inform Sheldrake and Hancock that the videos have been removed”? Can you possibly see how this might be interpreted by Hancock and his fans as censorship?
* Why did you not provide specific quotes from Hancock’s talk, which has lead to what Hancock and others claim is a mischaracterization of what he was saying?
* Why wasn’t Hancock’s video provided the same public review process as Sheldrake’s video?

But the gist of it, from my perspective, is that a couple of atheist/scientist bloggers (Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers) were instrumental in getting the Sheldrake and Hancock TEDx talks pulled out from the official TEDx channel. In fact, Jerry Coyne was so pleased that he even gloated on his blog. (Yay, a victory for “real science,” whatever that means.)

Continue reading >

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Sam Harris on the Brink of Having an (Intellectual) NDE?

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

Previously, I posted my take on this whole Sam Harris vs. Dr. Eben Alexander controversy. Since then Sam Harris has received flak from people who are informed on the science of NDE (present company included). I think that some of that criticisms hit a nerve which prompted Harris to write a follow up post on his blog. See Science on the Brink of Death.

In his latest post Sam Harris called Skeptiko a “parapsychology podcast” (which is not entirely true) and Alex Tsakiris as “irritating and unscrupulous host” (I’ll just let Alex respond to that) without even having the courtesy of linking to the content that Harris was reacting to. Yeah, how transparent of you, Sam! What’s the matter? You don’t like your readers to easily see your email exchange with Alex? 

Anyway, as I’ve said in my posts in various discussion threads, it would be too tempting for Sam Harris to turn down a debate with Dr. Eben Alexander, especially now that Alexander has become a best-selling author. So it’s now looking like a Harris v. Alexander might eventually happen.

Jeesh, I do make it sound like a Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight. But Harris is no Pacquiao. He’s more like Mayweather in this analogy since he’s the one doing all the thrash talking. LOL. Popcorn please!

However, compared to Harris’s original post, his follow up post at least has more substance and more interesting. First, he gives us a clue that he has read the book “Irreducible Mind” which he quoted in the opening of his post. (Maybe that’s one reason why Sam Harris is open to the mystery of consciousness and not a staunch materialist, or so he says.) Second, he referred to the classic NDE case of Pam Reynolds. Third, Harris has finally read Dr. Alexander’s book. And fourth, he narrated a seemingly *psi* experience he had in a dream with Tibetan Vajrayana Master Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche. If you haven’t read it yet I recommend reading Harris’s post in its entirety first and then come back here when you’re done.

At first I was planning to write my own rebuttal to Harris’s post. But after reading some reactions on the Skeptiko forum and Bernardo Kastrup’s excellent rebuttal I’ve decided to just piece together some of the more eloquent critiques which point to Harris’s own *lazy and tendentious* thinking.

Continue reading >

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