nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Preaching to the choir

"Preaching to the choir" or "preaching to the converted" is a figure of speech that refers to a situation when someone is making an argument to an individual or group of people who already agree with that argument. The opposite is evangelism, missionary work, or proselytization, which refer to winning new converts.
Such a rhetorical strategy is meant to minimize or further solidify a view. The range of responses to this, from fervent nodding ("So true, so true!") to disgruntled remarks ("Thank you for wasting my time, Captain Obvious!"), may all be expressed by commenting that that's preaching to the choir. The term implies that individuals who would be willing to sing in a church choir would be favorably inclined to whatever point of view the preacher was espousing.
As well as in churches, the practice is common in political meetings — for example, at a party conference or political rally, where everybody who attends is likely to already be a supporter of the party or politician. In a political context, the phrase "energizing the base" is often used, which has a slightly more positive connotation: rather than denoting futility, it suggests attempts to encourage the faithful to go out and do stuff.Abortion campaigners seek to learn from gay marriage debate, Irish Times, Feb 4, 2017
The phrase "preaching to the choir" apparently dates from the 1970s; "preaching to the converted" is much older, from the late 19th century.Preaching to the choir, Phrase Finder The concept is older still, however. Christians argue endlessly whether and to what extent they should preach to the converted or to the unconverted; the suggests that God's word won't is at best unlikely to have any effect on unbelievers (and might get you shredded for your trouble),When they say "Do not cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their hooves, then turn and rend you", it doesn't mean you're going to get a pleasant massage! but if it falls on the believer's ground (or ears), it will flourish (, , and ).Should you preach to others?, The Restored Church of GodShould Christians preach to others, Awake!, Jehovah's Witnesses, June 8, 2002
==See also==
*Apologetics tend to do a lot of this
*Cognitive dissonance — a problem for any argument's acceptance that this neatly avoids
*Backfire effect — what you risk by preaching outside the choir
*Fox News
*Groupthink
*MSNBC
*Religious leaders
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Rhetoric
Precious Metals Nano Water

Precious Metals Nano Water is a substance put forward by Bruce McBurney as a panacea. He has hyped it as curing all ailments, including bacterial infections, the H1N1 virus, as well as indigestion and prostate trouble. 
He came to international prominence in early 2010 after appearing on the Canadian version of Dragons' Den, where he offered the investors (the titular "Dragons") a 25% stake in his company for "only" $2.5m."Snake oil salesmen shouldn't meet dragons" Discover Magazine. February 5th, 2010.Precious Metals Nano Water on Dragons Den They laughed at the general claims, until he claimed the product could cure cancer, at which point they just tore into him with more pointed derision.
What is "Precious Metals Nano Water"? It is "ultradistilled" water with tiny bits of silver in it. That's it. This is intended to cure every ailment known to man.
The same crank has also put forward a "supercarburetor" that will prevent people from getting cancer by cleaning most of the emissions from cars.
==Note of caution==
Drinking colloidal silver can be hazardous to your health. The World Health Organisation does not recommend drinking water with more than 0.002mg/litre of silver and never ingesting more than 52μg/kilogram of body mass.WHO: Guidelines for drinking water quality (silver) It can also turn your skin — and internal organs! — blue.The Dangers of Colloidal Silver (On the other hand, body mods don't come much more extreme than this... if that's what you're into.)
==See also==
*Colloidal silver
*Ormus
==External links==
*His company's website
*Colloidal Silver MSDS sheet
*His famed Dragons' Den appearance (posted by the show's official YouTube channel, no less)
==References==
Category:Alternative medicine
Category:Cancer woo
Category:Water woo
Predestination

Predestination refers to a group of largely religious concepts regarding free will and the role of God. Specifically, it refers to the Calvinist idea that God has already determined who will be saved. It is one of the "Five Points of Calvinism".
 
==Questions==
This idea generally leads to endless (and useless) philosophical discussions about free will and the role of God. Also, it leads to questions about whether God can be considered "just" if some people are preselected for damnation and never given a chance to be saved.If you ask too many questions about whether all this is logical or whether a god who allows predestination deserves worship, this could mean you are a sinner predestined for damnation. Therefore do not question! 
If God has already decided in advance who is going to be saved, then humans can do whatever they want on Earth without affecting whether they will be saved or not. If someone has already been chosen to be saved, then that person can live a life of sin and would still be saved. If someone has already been chosen not to be saved, that person can live a life free of sin and would still not be saved. You can sin as much as you want, and it doesn't affect whether you're saved or not. This totally undermines any religion based on predestination.Generally, the idea is that those who are saved will demonstrate this through good deeds, while those who are damned will demonstrate this by behaving like jerks. In practice, the logical foundation of this notion strangled itself in the womb. In fact, why even follow the practices of such a religion? Why bother being a Calvinist? If God already decided you are saved, then you can follow any religion you want, you can even be an atheist(!); you are still saved no matter what you do! If God already decided you are not saved, then you are still not saved even if you choose to be Calvinist; you are still not saved no matter what you do!Also, taking the idea of predestination seriously does not reflect well on God's character.
However, there are those that would argue that true believers wouldn't even think of sinning, believing that those who do sin and take predestination for granted were never truly saved to begin with.
==The Bible==
-21 can be interpreted to support predestination: 
 Thomas Paine argued forcefully that any god that treated human souls which are capable of suffering the same way as a potter treats unfeeling clay would not be righteous. Paine also points out that potters of Paine's time selected different types of clay for different uses. Was that true in Paul's time? Remarks on Romans IX. 18-21
On the other hand, -4 goes against it:
==You know it had to happen...==
Predestination is not the same as prestidigitation, which is a simulation of magic.
==See also==
*Double predestination
*Cognitive dissonance
==Notes==
==References==
category:philosophy
Prediction

Prediction in an informal sense means something like "guess" or "idea". If you want to stretch a bit, it can also mean "prophecy" (in the temporal sense).
In a scientific sense, prediction refers to the ability of a hypothesis to accurately forecast what will happen under specific conditions. In order to test a hypothesis, a scientist will make a prediction based on the hypothesis. If the result of the experiment is in accordance with the prediction, then the hypothesis has not been disproven. (It has not been proven either, rather supported.) The scientific method is built upon repeated iterations of this process.
Hypotheses which are not able to make such testable predictions are frequently pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is almost universally characterized by the inability to make meaningful, specific predictions constructed from the core pseudoscientific theory.
Note that scientific prediction is not the same as alleged precognition or divination.
==See also==
*Instrumentalism
*RationalWiki:Predictions
*Cyclical theory
*List of predictions of the end of the world
category:Science
category:Philosophy of science
Prem Rawat

Prem Rawat is a religious teacher from India who moved to the West in 1971. His "teachings" seem to be some sort of new age woo about releasing your "inner light, love, wisdom and clarity" through meditation. He has run a religious group called, at times, 'The Divine Light Mission', 'Elan Vital', and 'DUO'.Forget Transmitted Memory: The De-traditionalised ‘Religion’ of Prem Rawat, Ron Greaves, Journal of Contemporary Religion.
Some people have accused him of being a cult leader and generally batshit insane.
==External links==
*Ex-member page, claims it's a cult
*Book by an ex-member
==References==
Category:Living people
Category:Cult leaders
Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis

The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis is a proposal regurgitated by John A. Davison in 2006.
In simple terms it suggests that evolution by mutation and natural selection is incorrect, and that although the information for the organism is contained in the genome, parts of it are suppressed in the oldest forms and slowly revealed as the organism evolves. The mechanism for this is the rearrangement of chromosomes within the gene.PEH Paper JA Davison
This is not as new an idea as the paper claims.Leo S. Berg, 1922 , Nomogenesis or Evolution According to Law
"Evolution is in a great measure an unfolding of pre-existing rudiments."
==References==
category:Evolution
category:Blogs
Press TV

Press TV is a 24/7 English-language international news channel based in Tehran and owned by the Iranian government that tries to present itself as an independent alternative to other international English-language media (Like Al Jazeera, but perhaps closer to RT). If you are in Iran and you would rather avoid floggings or worse, you’d better not criticise Press TV too much.
The channel has a heavily antisemitic stance, something which has even led its website to run an article by the white nationalist Mike Stathis. In it, he argues that a Jewish mafia has taken over America and is discouraging whites from feeling pride in their race.http://presstv.com/detail/2013/01/03/281521/jewish-mafia-tied-to-death-of-america/
Press TV had a subsidiary owned and operated in Britain, Press TV Limited which produced programming for it. The channel was investigated by the U.K.'s broadcasting regulatory body Ofcom after airing a staged interview. Press TV responded by conducting a survey: "77.82 percent of participants stated that the primary objective behind the UK government’s intensifying pressure on the Iranian news network was to silence the broadcaster because it sheds light on the dark side of British policies within and outside its borders" claimed Press TV.
The channel also stated that Ofcom "is mostly made up of former Channel 4 and BBC executives, some of whom are well-linked to and influenced by powerful pro-Zionist politicians" and that Ofcom's chairperson Colette Bowe "enjoyed the exclusive support of Peter Mandelson, the main economic planner of the Labour party who is a Jewish politician with an obvious Zionist mindset."
http://justjournalism.com/the-wire/press-tv-peter-mandelson-is-a-%E2%80%98jewish-politician-with-an-obvious-zionist-mindset%E2%80%99/
Ofcom later went after the channel on the grounds that its licensed-in-Britain, owned-in-Iran set-up violated the Communications Act. Press TV was given the choice between either transferring editorial control to the UK, or transferring its broadcasting licence to Iran. Press TV did neither, and its license to broadcast in the U.K. was subsequently revoked.http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/enforcement/broadcast-licence-conditions/press-tv-revocation.pdf?utm_source=updates&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=press-tvhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/20/iran-press-tv-loses-uk-licence?newsfeed=true
Press TV is still broadcasting 24/7 on satellite and streams over the Internet.
==See also==
*Russia Today
==External links==
*Official site
==References==
Category:Anti-Christian bigotry
Category:Antisemitism
Category:Fascism
Category:Iran
Category:Iranian politics
Category:Media
Category:Propaganda
Category:Racism
Presumption of innocence

The presumption of innocence is the legal version of the skeptical position that the burden of proof rests with the person making an accusation — or a claim — rather than the person who must refute it.
In other words the law accepts as a null hypothesis that everyone is innocent and only compelling evidence to the contrary can overturn this assumption. It is considered to be a fundamental human right and article 11 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly states that everyone should have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. 
In this sense, a criminal trial represents a formalized process during which the evidence is presented, evaluated and publicly tested. Only if the evidence is found to pass the required tests can the accused be regarded as "guilty". Until this process has been gone through the accused is innocent.
Although the presumption of innocence is declared to be a fundamental human right, it is not always practised, even in first-world countries which supposedly base their judicial systems on this concept. For example, suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay have endured long periods of incarceration without being proven guilty of a crime in a court. Some proposals grounded in feminist thinking also seek to undermine this principle by setting up inquisitorial trials. According to one such proposal, if the prosecutor could prove that a sexual encounter had occurred and the defendant's identity, the defendant would be forced to (somehow) prove it was consensual or be found guilty of rape.Rape accused would have to prove consent under Labour plan, NZ Herald, retrieved 6.9.2016.
==References==
Category:Human rights
Category:Law
Presupposition

Presupposition is not directly related to Presuppositionalism, which is a religious belief, although presuppositionalist beliefs are certainly full of presupposition.
A presupposition is a linguistic term for an implicit assumption in a phrase, usually a claim or a question.
Presuppositions can be used in a fallacious manner by playing on these assumptions, e.g., by asking a loaded yes-or-no question that will implicate the speaker in something disagreeable no matter which way he answers.
The appropriate answer to a question based upon a false presupposition is "mu".
==Examples==
* Phrase: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
* Presupposition: 1) You, at some point, have at least one wife. 2) At some point you have beaten your wife (regardless whether that is the same wife as the first presupposition).
* Phrase: "I have quit smoking."
* Presupposition: I used to smoke.
And from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:
"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.
"Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman. "That's the first question, you know."
==No direct relation to==
*Presuppositionalism
==See also==
*Begging the question
*Loaded language
*Loaded question
==References==
category:logic
Category:Evaluating arguments
Pretender

Someone who thinks they are the rightful king or queen, or pretends other things (e.g. to be ill).
* For Britain, Monarchy#Pretenders
* For Medieval France, Charlemagne#Pretenders
* And for large parts of southeast Europe, Mensur Omerbashich
* In hospitals, Factitious disorder
* Various types of cultural appropriation, especially false claims of ancestry:
**Ward Churchill falsely claimed to be Native American
Preterism

Preterism is the position in eschatology that many of the prophecies of the New Testament (especially those of Matthew and Revelation), which are frequently understood to refer to the end times, actually refer to events in the 1st century CE (such as the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE), and as such have already been fulfilled.
There are a range of preterist views. At the most extreme (hyperpreterism), the Bible is seen as having almost nothing at all to say about the world to come — some preterists have even claimed that the Second Coming has already happened. Most preterists, however, will admit that the NT does contain some as yet unfulfilled prophecies, concerning the endtimes, even as they believe that many prophecies most Christians believe to refer to the endtimes actually refer to the events of the first century.
Category:End of the world
Preuves scientifiques d'une Terre plate

Voici une liste de toutes les preuves d'une Terre plate. Bon courage !
==La liste==
===Si vous pouvez effectivement trouver quelque chose de scientifiquement valable===
Vous aurez tout gratuitement pour le reste de votre vie.[citation NON nécessaire]
==Voir aussi==
===Versions en autres langues===
Category:Français
Primal therapy

Primal scream therapy, or simply primal therapy, was an odd bit of woo popularized by Arthur Janov in his 1970 book, The Primal Scream. His hypothesis was that psychological problems are caused by early childhood trauma, such as during birth. These traumatic incidents could be re-experienced and then emotionally discharged by expressing them during therapy by screaming. John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Steve Jobs were brief adherents of the movement.
Although Janov was then a respected psychologist and did not (as far as is known) derive his hypothesis from superficially similar ideas which were already then regarded as quackery, his focus is somewhat similar to the Dianetics (Scientology) notion of removing "engrams" by re-experiencing traumatic incidents and emotionally discharging them, and to the quack therapy of re-experiencing birth traumas through rebirthing. No empirical studies ever found the therapy useful or sound, and nothing eventually came of his hypothesis except yet another quack movement. Today Primal Therapy is lumped in with other fringe therapies which emerged as part of the Human Potential Movement.
Having said all that, by the band Primal Scream is a fantastic album. named themselves after an idea in primal scream therapy and is likewise a fantastic band. Lennon's album , recorded while he was an adherent of the movement, is often regarded as his finest solo album.
==More claims==
These are all quotes from The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov, Perigree 1981 softcover edition. The wootastic assertion of major physical changes from a psychological treatment, and the sweeping panacea type claims made for it in general, should be a big red flag for everybody.
====Primal therapy makes your boobies grow====
"Perhaps the most dramatic changes which take place in post-Primal patients are physical… For example, about one-third of the moderately flat-chested women independently reported that their breasts grew" (p. 154)
====Primal therapy makes everything else grow====
"Two male patients in their early twenties told of beard growth for the first time in their lives. Several others reported giving off an odor for the first time after perspiring. Several patients noted growth of hands and feet." (p. 154)
"There are neurotic symptoms which are not usually thought of as such—being short, for example… We see that the patient has grown and thus may infer that his being short was indeed a symptom—his idiosyncratic resolution of the inner contradictions which plagued him." (p. 134)
====Primal therapy screams away the gay====
"I do not believe that there is a basic genetic homosexual tendency in man. If this were true, the cured patient would still have his homosexual needs, which he does not. Post-Primal patients who have been latent and overt homosexuals before report no homosexual leanings, fantasies, or dreams." (p. 308)
====In case I missed anything====
"I could go on endlessly listing all the symptoms which Primal Therapy has eliminated, from menstrual cramps to asthma. But that would tend to make Primal Therapy seem some kind of panacea and thus lessen its credibility." (p. 134)
Category:Pseudoscience
Category:Psychology
Priming

Priming is a memory effect whereby exposure to a certain stimulus changes the speed at which a certain memory is recalled or another stimulus is attended to or recognized. Priming works on an implicit level and is involved in a number of cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. A simple example is the familiar "red car" phenomenon where a person who buys a red car suddenly starts seeing red cars everywhere. The familiarity of the red car primes them to spot other red cars faster.
==Positive vs. negative priming==
There are two broad types of priming: Positive and negative. Positive priming involves exposure to a stimulus that speeds up recall or response time, while negative priming slows it down. The most basic form of positive priming is repetition priming, which rather obviously involves the repetition of a stimulus causing recall or recognition of that stimulus to speed up.Haydn Ellis and Andrew Ellis. Why We Study Repetition Priming. The Psychologist, Oct. 1998. Negative priming can involve the inhibition of selective attention or the stimulus being associated with being ignored in the past.Negative Priming, Scholarpedia These priming effects are often modeled on Bayesian principles.
==Other types of priming==
*Associative priming: Two stimuli are unrelated, but due to their common appearance together, one will prime the other. Think of Pavlov's dog.
*Semantic priming: One stimulus primes another in the same conceptual category. For example, the word "cat" may prime the word "lion."
*Perceptual priming: Priming related to the form of the stimulus. A commonly used task that exemplifies this is word-stem completion, where a stimulus (e.g., "goat") is given and then a word-stem (e.g., "_oat") is to be completed. "Goat" would be favored over "coat" because it was primed.Daniel Schacter et al. Visual word stem completion priming within and across modalities: a PET study. NeuroReport 10, 2061±2065 (1999)
*Conceptual priming: Priming related to the meaning of the stimulus. It is similar to (and often enhanced by) semantic priming. For example:
::What mouse walks on two legs?
::Mickey Mouse!
::What duck walks on two legs?
::Donald Duck!
::No, all of them.
==See also==
*Apophenia
*Hindsight bias
*Pareidolia
*Selection bias
*Stereotype
==External links==
*Priming, Experiment Resources
*Life Is One Big Priming Experiment, Association for Psychological Science
==References==
Category:Psychology