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The issue that TEDx has been having is not that talks have been given that are "maybe pseudoscience-ish". Not stuff in which an unclear demarcation line is an issue. Rather the issue is that talks have been given that are plainly bullshit to anybody with a few braincells still firing. We are talking crystal and pyramid levels of bullshit here. Barely above the level of mad ravings on a street corner.

The issue with botched skepticism among TEDx organizers appears to be so severe that the guidelines to skepticism given, no matter how crude, are entirely justified.



Could you give an example of one that's particularly egregious? I've seen a couple that seemed questionable (based on my gut feeling, not any specific knowledge of the subject), but none that seemed as absurd as the crystal folks.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzfgq1zv8jg

Randy Powell on Vortex Math - "The most advanced mathematics ever known to mankind."

yeah.


I am speechless... What appals me the most though is the applause and cheers at the end, even one person -- that I could see -- standing up while clapping. As far as I could tell this talk was generated by a bot(something like this: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/) or something and nobody seemed to notice anything wrong. Just a stream of jargon strung together in what seems like english.


Yikes, this is just awful. I keep expecting James Randi to enter stage right and explain this was all some kind of test for the audience.


Another gem from this video, not that there is a shortage of them - at 3:55 - "It makes us into a vortex machine, sucks things in at the top and shoots them out of the bottom"


How many points for this in the Crackpot index?http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html




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