@Coin Which is why I'm mentioning cryptozoology at all. It's something we have a 'hard science reference' for already.
It's why making generalizations about why it's inherently bad for people to be open to believing in the possibility of something, when people lump so much together under this general topic heading that have minimal relationships to one another (ex: religious practices), is faulty reasoning.
@Coin We're getting into semantics again, but I was pretty specific there: I'm saying they believe it is possible.
A lot of this conversation has focused on starting from a point of believing something is impossible until it's proven to exist.
That difference, it's pretty big.
That's not believing something is absolutely there and must be disproved, or absolutely isn't until it is proved. It's believing it's possible for it to be there, and we don't know if it is or not until we go look and try to find out.
I think it depends on the thing, though, that someone's lending credence to, because the number of things that can fall under this heading is tremendously broad.
Religion... is a sticky wicket. I am not going to touch that one with a bargepole personally, but that's partly because I have a very dim view of religion on the whole.
Compare that to someone who believes it is possible for unknown animals to exist, for instance. (Yes, I keep going back to that example -- but it's an example with a lot fewer intangibles at work.) Outside of a few sensationalist or urban legend examples (The Beast of Bray Road, The Jersey Devil, etc.) these tend to be things people eventually find (and like the old bestiaries of yore, their weird and/or mysterious elements generally are some unusual natural feature if they had such elements in the accounts of their existence), they're identified as a previously locally unknown invasive species (which is important for people to be aware of as this can be damaging to an ecosystem, see apple snails and snakeheads for examples) or something 'else'. And by something 'else', I mean anything from 'a new species' to 'a hoax' to 'a sloth with mange', not 'a beast with anatomically impossible qualities or magical powers'. While we (general entire human race we) don't find large new animals more than about once a decade these days, we do find small ones, especially in the ocean and areas like the Amazon basin, pretty regularly, from insects to birds to small mammals.
Is a Nessie realistic? Probably not. The general field of study, however, when even a minimal level of common sense is applied, is actually a real thing, and it's one that's providing useful and productive data.
It's worth mentioning that there are words that are generally useless in discussion that come up a lot. 'Magical' being prime among them.
Even supernatural simply means 'beyond our current scientific understanding'. It is not automatically 'pixies' and 'casting spells' and a lot of the other things that are ascribed to it -- usually, derisively -- as if to imply there's no mystery left to science, which is transparently bullshit. People simply don't use the term in those cases terribly often, because of those associations, and as a result, it's more or less useless.
The folks I know who leave the possibility open that 'weird' things exist that people generally put under those headings stick with unexplained, as calling something supernatural or paranormal presupposes a specific conclusion that they believe only might be the case.
(Unrelated to this thread, I send a virtual hug, @Vorpal. That's one hell of a day, damn. 
)
@Thenomain The uberliberal church in our area tends to say: come on in, we'll chat. We're not interested in converting anybody, but we'll happily explain what we think, and you're welcome to discuss your own beliefs, even if they're different.
No, really. It's a real place and everything. I'd link their web site if I remembered where the heck it was; if I had a car I'd go to some of their all-faiths discussion circles myself, and I'm not a fan of religion on the whole. It's kinda... awesome, actually.
@Auspice Because you totally know us crazy liberals lurve censoring people to ensure Christian ideology is thoroughly upheld in every facet of media.
I, I'm sorry, I can't even continue there, because I simply cannot convey the level of sarcasm required to handle this. I just can't.
@Arkandel I fail to care if that is on topic, that link is best link.
@surreality said in Good TV:
don't judge!
You must be new here.
Tangent: So, at the time, my father was working for the local paper. They had a book reviewer on staff and they would get piles and piles of promo copies of almost everything. To save us some cash on the research, he decided to go in and ask if they had any backlog piles of romance novels they could part with, "It's for my daughter, I swear!"
Am reasonably certain don't judge was also uttered at the time.
I got through the first book, and then part of the second (before I lost it and promptly forgot I had them at all and then had already moved on to something else... ) and what I read really was pretty good. I was reading a pile of romance novels at the time because a friend insisted I should look into writing them -- don't judge! -- and that one stood out about a mile from the rest as being better-written and generally more realistic in spite of its fantastical elements.
(I can suspend belief on mystical woo woo time travel stones. I cannot suspend disbelief about day-long bedroom romps that don't leave people achey and sore afterward, dammit, and the books won a thumbs-up from me after a mention that four hours in, they had to nope the idea of hour five in the bud because friction burn is a thing. POINTS FOR THAT, it earned it.)
@EmmahSue I normally hate time travel everything, with Doctor Who being the exception. (It's too much campy fun to hate on, I just cannnnn't.) Outlander is pretty good in spite of it, though. It isn't the constant theme of the show itself, and though it's more prominent in the second season than it was in the first, it's not overbearing about it.
In the first, it's more 'a thing that happens'; the second season deals more with some of the ramifications of it.
I will admit, it's a little less irritating somehow since it's not someone from today going back to a distant era, but someone from an already distant era going further back in time. 'Jane Everyman of Today' going back in time... meh. So much meh. But somehow, that it's a war nurse from another era does actually help me get past my standard gag reflex.
It's more like a period piece within a period piece, in many respects.
It's definitely worth giving the first episode or two a glance, since it is very much not a typical time travel story. (Being honest... it's a historical romance novel with a weird mystical woo woo time travel element in it. It does not even pretend to science it up and the lack of dwelling on it is almost classic MUX handwavium. 
)
TURN is good, if you haven't caught that one, @Arkandel. They just wrapped up their season, and the first few seasons should be up somewhere.
I tend to re-watch a lot when summer hits. Rome and Carnivale are good for this, thank you, HBO. I'm also not above watching a truly random selection of documentaries on Netflix as background noise while working on other stuff. Since that's how I usually watch more or less everything with few exceptions, that means the standards for awesome factor are not as critical. (It also means anything with subtitles is right out unless I have dedicated no really I have to watch watch this time, which I almost never do. )
I have been informed I am to begin watching Hell on Wheels for historical research (sigh) and I am admittedly not sure how that's gonna go, but we'll see.
Slasher is up on Netflix now, and it's... sometimes a little weird but not awful. It's not bad for a drama horror series that isn't aimed at the typical tween audience.
@Coin Remind me to send you the log of the reluctant tentacle monster refugee scene from Shang. I suspect you will appreciate it. (He just wanted to find a nice girl who didn't want him for his tentacles. Is that so wrong?!)
Also, yep on Outcast. It really has not been grabbing me. I'm trying, but it's not grabbing me. It reminds me of all the 'bleak bleak bleak bleaker mild supernatural incident bleak' that makes WoD eventually boring as heck to me, unfortunately.
@Arkandel Sadly, a whole lot of 'not much', from what I can tell. Or not much that's showing up yet. From what I gather, their next season of Marco Polo starts up soon, so if you saw and enjoyed the first season, that's coming up on the 1st. I'm picking my way through the first season out of sheer desperation, frankly, but it's interesting.
@Arkandel I've been impressed with Preacher thus far? Not remotely the same vibe, but it's been good. There's a similar one I'm blanking on the name of off-hand that seems interesting but isn't as fun, IMHO. (It is not fun. Preacher is fun.)
Summer has a bad habit of being the official television doldrums, and time to shuffle off to Netflix for things you might have missed over the colder months.
@tragedyjones When I ask to run a haunted vajayjay plot on BITN, just remember that it's @Coin's fault.
@Vorpal Mine does this re: mold and dust and cleaning to the same ends... often, so, like, it's not like he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen. I feel you on this.
I am always tempted to offer to nail him up on a cross for a proper martyrdom if he really insists on continuing to do that.
@surreality said in Good TV:
@Arkandel Well, there's always The Punisher! I mean, technically, he's a crime fighter. Technically. Kinda if you squint.
(I have my own theory on aspects of that storyline, but they're pretty fucking out there and hard to explain, so I'mma just shut up and see how it all plays out.)
Anyone who's been known to wear black shirts with skulls on them and white boots at the same time can and should fight crime.
<shifty-eyes>
<burns that shirt>
...what? Criminals are scary, man! And it's hard to find white boots in my size. 
Though there is now a part of me visualizing a goth crime-fighting squad, and I feel this is something that really does need to become a comic. A comic in which the heroes asses get kicked as much if not more than the criminals' do, specifically. But imagine the dialogue!
A tag with the show title would be a good idea, yep. A spoilers tag wouldn't hurt. Search for the combo, and boom, done. 
@Vorpal I don't, personally, see the harm in "this conclusion is interesting to me, I'm going to try to find out if it is true or not". I don't see that (beyond lip service) on television shows about the subject, which tend to be sensationalist if not thoroughly staged for profit, but I've known individuals who take that approach. They don't know, they want to find out one way or the other.
Typically, "Well, we just don't really know, but we now know it isn't <thing brought on by black mold infestation>, <thing occurring because of faulty wiring>, <thing that happened because somebody took LSD>, or <thing brought on by floors that aren't level>, etc." (unless it is one of those things, in which case they drop it, because it has been identified) is as far as anyone gets with that. Really? I don't see an issue with that. They're not championing the reality or falsehood of <thing>, they find <thing> interesting, and want to further explore the possibility of that explanation being real or not.
It's intellectually honest, even if it isn't terribly effective.
The only difference here is that they haven't decided one way or the other 'ghosts are real' or 'ghosts are not real' before deciding, 'this explanation is interesting, let's find out if there's anything to it'. They leave the explanation on the possible list of explanations, but they're doing the same examination and investigation as someone who dismisses it from the outset.
Sure, maybe it's a waste of their time as far as most folks are concerned, but I'm pretty sure most folks would say the same of the M* hobby.
Sure, hoaxers will make people look ridiculous; that's often enough their intent. Hoaxing is more or less one of the oldest forms of trolling, after all. Serious people tend to be pretty good at spotting them, though, and investigate before rushing off and claiming, "See! PROOF!" -- and that's where folks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell short.
The television shows that approach this tend to pay lip service to this, particularly in cryptozoology, but there are folks who accept the possibility that there's stuff out there that are properly trained in real science who happily point out the frauds, and simply separate things into, "This is fake because X, this is a misidentified Y, but this? I don't actually know what this Q over here is, and that's interesting! Let's see if we can find out what it is."
The difference here is that they're not saying, "It can't be a C because C isn't real," as their step #1. Bear in mind, these are also people who have enough understanding of animal anatomy that they're going to know what can't exist anatomically speaking, and what people may be misidentifying. If they know C cannot anatomically be real, they have an intervening step here in which the physical possibility of C existing is in fact examined. OMG GIANT SIX FOOT SPIDERS! ...well, no, we know spiders can't grow beyond a certain size because of the limitations of their anatomy, for instance. (Thank goodness, can't we limit them further?! ...please? <whimper>) OMG wolf man! ...well, no, we know there are no bipedal canines -- and so on.
In a sense, it's not functionally terribly different. If C isn't possible, they're approaching in an intellectually honest and realistic fashion and dismissing the possibility of C existing. They're just taking the step to do that, rather that starting from there. It sounds super nit-picky and subtle, and on some level it is -- but it is a difference in that there are no foregone conclusions going in in either direction and there's direct examination of the possibility of C before C is eliminated as a possible explanation. Basically, IMHO, starting from 'giant spiders are real, let's prove it' or 'giant spiders aren't real, let's see what else it is' both skip this step, and both end up being flawed methodologies on account of it.
It's worth noting -- tangent alert -- this is much easier when it comes to animals that may or may not exist. This is because we know how to deal with/examine/identify animals. Things purported to exist that are incorporeal? Giant question mark there. I don't fault the 'you have to prove there's a there there to begin with' perspective on this front, principally because we don't have the same kind of direct evidence that things of that kind exist as we do in the case of animals. If someone was to say animals (broadly) don't exist, we'd laugh at them; plenty of us probably have a pet in the room with us right now.
With animals, we have means of eliminating the actually impossible; we don't really have that for things purported to be incorporeal. It's a complication, and it's a complication piled on top of well is there anything incorporeal there really or not in the first place? -- so I don't find it exactly unreasonable for people to say, "You have to prove there's something there before we can determine if we can even determine if that's the answer or not." Basically, even if there's a there there, we don't have hundreds of years of direct study of it to be able to make the same kinds of determinations.
Historically speaking, every new science or new medicine looked bonkers to the masses at some point, too. The earth moves around the sun? CRAZY TALK! What we know evolves this way. It changes. So the whole 'Joe's gonna look like an idiot' issue... well, yeah, Joe might actually be an idiot, but he might be a genius, too. Usually? Joe is an idiot. This is known, to quote GoT. He isn't always, though, and sometimes Joe is going to have to bear the burden of looking like an idiot when he posits the earth moves around the sun, or we're not going to learn anything.
@Vorpal I think what a lot of people miss -- on both sides of the debate, really -- is that if you're going to approach it from a perspective of, say, 'prove werewolves are real', it's going to fail.
'It's werewolves!' is an explanation for a series of experiences.
Rather than looking for werewolves (not recommended for oh, oh so many reasons, not the least of which are ticks and poison ivy), people need to look at the experiences that people were having that led them to the conclusion that 'it's werewolves!'
We have some records of werewolf scares; some have been linked to ergotism. We wouldn't have found that, however, if we were running around in the woods searching for hair samples rather than going back to the 'symptoms' of the experience, and considering an alternate conclusion.
Folks weren't, it's pretty safe to say, encountering werewolves. They were having a very real experience, however, and a dangerous one. It's a problem we're better off for having solved. We wouldn't have found it if we were chasing werewolves -- but we also wouldn't have found it if we decided, 'werewolves don't exist, therefore this experience could not have occurred'.