Asklemmy

Modern geocentrism

kinda. It's more that "center" of the universe can be picked completely arbitrarily. I can say I'm the center of the universe, and when I spin on my chair, the universe revolves around me. You can define the frame of reference however you wish to. The change of perspective does not change how orbits work.

Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.

by that short definition sure, but probably not how they mean. If you're active at night, the amount of ambient light is surely going to impact your behavior. Not so much in areas with artificial lighting.

Memetics.

Insofar as there are self-replicating ideas, and the ones more likely to self-replicate become more prevalent...sure. Not the whole story either, as ideas can also be pushed by people that don't believe those ideas.

I like all the ones you listed and I love “woowoomancer” as a description. Other than those, I have a good feel for future sight.

I've kinda made up my own pseudo science that astrology is real. However, it has nothing to do with the location of the stars when you are born.

Instead, the time of year when you are born affects your personality for life. Think about it: babies born in winter and constantly being wrapped in blankets and mostly isolated from others except around the holidays. Babies born in summer wear light clothing, and are more likely to have encounters with others, perhaps causing them to be more social later in life.

Time probably isn't real.

I don't know what to do with that information. It's just a weird gut feeling.

All electrical components contain magic smoke that was put into them at the time of manufacture. If that smoke is released, it doesn't work anymore.

Some broken or malfunctioning machinery respond to incantations projected with emotion. Cuss a machine hard enough and it will start working again.

Another one I've personally experienced, but don't know of any studies for: the main casting of machining equipment such as mills or lathes is a big crystal with unique properties. Each machine has different frequencies it resonates at when cutting. You can hear and feel the vibration when cutting and tune the machine/program for more efficient cutting and tool life. Sort of like taking a guitar that is out of tune and tuning it to a pleasant chord. Two identical machines will need different tunings. This tuning can change over time due to wear, temperature, humidity or maybe the phase of the moon.

Unrelated to machinery: there are mountain lions in the deep south in the deep woods. I had one check me out once. The state wildlife agency denies the modern existence of mountain lions and I didn't believe in them until I was face to face with one. I had to growl and hiss at it to convince it that I wasn't interesting.

I'm partial to pan-psychism. Consciousness is a property of matter.

When someone says it's quiet at work, suddenly all these emergencies come in...

If you know the future you should be doing good with this power! There's so many things we need to stop before they happen, falling down stairs, health conditions, the questions we're gonna be asked in court!

I feel like the list is a mixed bag. There are things like flat earth, which are just against common sense, things like homeopathy, that sound promising to many people but were scientifically disproven many times.

And then there are many things that are mostly pseudoscience but can have some aspects that are true. For example aromatherapy is bullshit in general, but the smell of mint specifically was proven to have a beneficial effect on people's mood. And there could be more smelling efects we don't know about, so one day, we might witness the rise of a new science-based aromatherapy. Or Lysenkism - such a twisted terrible dark times for science! Such a disgrace, I always get angry just thinking about this totalitarian shit. But the Lamarckian evolution aspect is surprisingly not completely bullshit, as it turns out, now that we understand that genes are not the only vehicle for evolution and how things like epigenetics work. That's one point for Lamarck though, not for Lysenko.

Our decisions should be based on what was proven by science. That doesn't mean that's all there is. Otherwise we wouldn't need science anymore.

The list is very interesting, I've never heard of Minimum parking requirements and would definitely fall for that.

I've had good luck with acupuncture. In one extreme case it fixed my bell palsy months faster that the doctor said it would heal.

I believe that acupressure, meditation, reiki, etc. can actually help ease some chronic issues in the same way that a placebo drug does. The mind believes that it should feel less pain, anxiety, depression, etc so it does - to an extent. Afterall, if stress is harmful to our health then relaxation must be helpful.

Wikipedia is a terrible source for the likes of this.

I subscribe to historical materialism, which is apparently a pseudoscience according to that Wikipedia article.

If it’s not provable by science, then I don’t believe it.

We have come so far through the application of rationality and the scientific method. All the wonders of the modern world we owe to science.

What has pseudoscience bought us? Ignorance and stagnation.

I want to live in a world of technological progress not a “Demon Haunted World.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

my mother was a new-ager and my father was an engineer. the amount of woo i got exposed to on a regular basis, and the amount of explanations on how it's bullshit, has pretty much inoculated me against it.

it's all about theory of work; questioning what would cause the ascribed effect.

The USB law.

When you try to plug in a USB-A connector, there's a 70% probability it won't go in. Mathematically it should be 50%, but I don't believe that.

You switch it around, and there's a 30% probability it won't go in. This is not something they taught at school.

You switch it around the third time, and there's a 5% chance it still won't go in. Your mind begins to melt down, you switch and insert repeatedly until it finally works sooner or later.

Acupuncture, to a certain extent. There's obviously something to it (a friend of mine went there because of various issues, and it helped), but the actual science isn't nailed down yet.

I do suspect Qi is a useful abstract concept for focusing and activating parts of our physiology. But while it feels like a single thing ("energy"), it is more a very complex bunch of processes the same way our consciousness feels like a single thing, but is actually a very complex bunch of processes.

Osteopathy.

I thought it was scientifically proven, it seems that's not the case 😬