I admit it seems like a noble pursuit, but from what I can see here it's all done quite poorly. In reality it's a terrible idea. It only trains those of you playing the devil's advocate to think unscientifically, illogically, and to argue for something quite clearly wrong. That may serve you well if you are in training to be a lawyer or are planning to go into advertising, but if you wish to accomplish anything in life with critical thinking this only impairs you. I'm not sure what anyone hopes to accomplish with this, but it's fascinating to continue to observe.
Actually, I think it speaks more about the people who are on here arguing for the RE with lame arguments and such a narrow-view. Of course, some aspects of this forum and the theory are weak, but most of it mainly comes from non-FEers, narc and Tom.
I'm more worried about people that cannot accept possibilities than I am of people that think outside the box, no matter how far it may seem.
I understand the desire to think outside of the box, and its appeal. Contrary to what I may display on this forum, most of my life and methodology and work is based on thinking outside of the box. It's something I enjoy, and find to be more natural than the restricting alternative. But there comes a point where it is just thinking outside of the box for the sake of thinking outside of the box, not because that particular thought holds any ground. That is what this forum is an example of. It is in my nature, and in the nature of my field, to question things, and to assume they are not as they appear. It's in my nature to dig deeper and to find answers. But with this responsibility also comes discretion. I could list hundreds, if not thousands of examples where one could easily question an accepted axiom of daily life merely for the purpose of questioning it and thinking outside of the box. But as a scientist, I have a problem with questioning something so basic and so universally shown to be true, only to offer to replace it with something so bogus and falsifiable.
I will argue to defend things such as gravity until I see evidence of a better idea that works and explains things better. This is not because I just have faith that whoever said gravity works was right, but because in my own studies and work gravity has proven to be flawless and has worked every time. I have seen it first hand, I have read countless papers utilizing gravity, explaining gravity, and demonstrating effects of gravity to remarkably accurate degrees, with results that thus far no alternative theory has been able to reproduce.
There is a great number of flawed ideas about science out there, and a disappointingly high reception to pseudoscience in the world, so when coming across a forum such as this my first instincts were not "this isn't as it seems" but "this is just another example of fringe science gone bad".