Why Skepticism? (Part 4)

Yes, it seems I keep finding new subjects to shoehorn into this series. Sooner or later, I'll probably either make up an index post for it or give it its own unique label (as previously done for my Skeptic's Circle posts). Anyways, this time I'm going to be discussing the subject of skepticism as we use it in contrast to other theories, and talk about what might rightly be termed "pseudoskepticism."

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Since getting back to work for the summer, I've had a lot of free time on my hands to randomly browse the portion of the internet that isn't filtered (Hey, I get the job done; that's the important part). Much of my time has been spent doing various things on Wikipedia, from reading up on random information I'll likely never use (though Tremaux's Algorithm might come in handy in some video games if I can figure out a way to leave markings) to helping out improve some articles.

From the very concept of Wikipedia - "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit" - you might suspect that it would get overwhelmed by childish vandals changing random articles to say "Bob is a faggot!" and idealogues changing articles to state their distorted picture as fact. However, 99% of the time when you're on it, you'll tend to find a stable, neutral, well-written encyclopedia article. If you start to look behind the scenes, you'll get an idea of how this works: There's an immense bureaucracy set up to stop vandals, mediate disputes, and even ban unrepentant editors if necessary.

Of course, as old bad users are kicked out, new bad users will inevitably join in. So there's always going to be two editors fighting over the George W. Bush article on whether the lead should call him the "Greatest President" or the "Worst President," overwriting all the revisions of others to "Current President." It should come as no surprise that debates between woos and skeptics also flare up constantly.

Take a look at this case currently in arbitration (the highest level of dispute mediation): Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paranormal. Essentially, the case is a battle between skeptics and woos both trying to get certain articles the way they want them. I won't comment too much on the specifics of the case here, go and read about it yourself if you're interested, but there's one particular part I'd like to point out. For a while, one of the woos was throwing around the term "pseudoskeptic" at all the skeptical editors, partly as a tu qoque for their use of "pseudoscience." Eventually, one of the skeptics decided to see if it was possible to include in this case a ruling relating to the use of this term:

"Pseudoskeptics"

24) "Pseudoskeptic" is a pejorative term and per WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL shouldn't be used to describe other editors or people mentioned in articles (unless it's a quote cited to a source). --Minderbinder 22:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The entire debate on this section is quite long, so I won't quote it all here. However, you can go read it for yourself if you wish. If you do so, here's a little task for you: Using only the bold "Support" or "Oppose" statements, try to guess whether each editor is a skeptic or a woo. This particular issue unsurprisingly fell straight down party lines. There are also a bunch of people neutral to the issue who chimed in, and they all ended up against the word "pseudoskeptic" as well.

The debate here centered around two issues: Whether it's civil, and whether it's accurate. The debate on its civility wasn't as interesting, and is mostly just a Wikipedia let's-work-together-instead-of-fighting thing. It basically just amounted to some claims that it was civil because it had a clear definition and that it wasn't civil, but labels of "pseudoscience" were just as bad. A couple quick counterarguments and we can move past this part: "Bullshit" has a clear definition, but is uncivil. People involved in the debates were never called pseudoscientists; only certain subjects were called pseudoscience.

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The question of whether it's accurate is the real meat of the issue. First of all, let's go to the original definition: "Someone who claims to be a skeptic but isn't." Seems simple enough, and a nice parallel to "pseudoscience." However, the way the term's come into popular usage derives a bit more from the way Marcello Truzzi described it: "Some who claims to be a skeptic but holds a position of denial rather than doubt; who takes the negative position rather than an objective position" (paraphrased from his explanation).

Is this an accurate description? Well, that's debatable. I'd go with a "sometimes" here, but before we get into that, I think it's important to know where Truzzi's coming from. Taken from Wikipedia:

Truzzi founded the skeptical journal Explorations and was invited to be a founding member of the skeptic organization CSICOP. Truzzi's journal became the official journal of CSICOP and was renamed The Zetetic, still under his editorship. About a year later, he left CSICOP after receiving a vote of no confidence from the group's Executive Council. Truzzi wanted to include pro-paranormal people in the organization and pro-paranormal research in the journal, but CSICOP felt that there were already enough organizations and journals dedicated to the paranormal. Kendrick Frazier became the editor of CSICOP's journal and the name was changed to Skeptical Inquirer.

After leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar. He popularized the term Zeteticism as an alternative to Skepticism, because the term Skepticism, he thought, was being usurped by what he termed "pseudoskeptics". A zetetic is a "skeptical seeker." The term's origins lie in the word for the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho in ancient Greece and was used by flat-earthers in the 19th century. Truzzi's form of skepticism was Pyrrhonism, as apposed to the Academic tradition founded by Plato, which is followed by most scientific skeptics.

Truzzi was skeptical of investigators and debunkers who determined the validity of a claim prior to investigation. He accused CSICOP of increasingly unscientific behavior, for which he coined the term pseudoskepticism. Truzzi stated,

"They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts. Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say it's a mere anomaly."

So, the rough story is: Truzzi got tempted by some pro-paranormal advocates and tried to get them a voice in the journal. CSICOP lost confidence in him and kicked him out for this. He then lashed back at them with "Well, you guys go too far in denying things! This one might actually be true!" and came up with a pejorative name to call them.

An important note to this story is that Truzzi actually abandoned using the term "skepticism" to describe what he did, instead referring to it as "zeteticism." Now think about it: He's differentiating himself from those who described themselves as "skeptics" by describing himself as a "zetetic." He left the descriptor of "skeptic" intact, and just used a different term for his practice. If he wanted to just claim that his method was better, that would be one thing, but somehow, he then jumped to the claim that the skeptics weren't true skeptics - despite the fact that he just ceded the term to them. If you can follow the logic here, you've got one up on me.

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But let's put aside his poor logic in coming up with the term "pseudoskeptic" for the time being. Let's also put aside the issue of the spurious complaints of pseudoskepticism (as Bronze Dog has that covered quite well). Let's talk about what skepticism should be.

Skepticism is a method primarily defined by its goal. This goal is to discern reality. Skepticism (in the theoretical pure form) is the best method of determining what is real and what isn't real. However, we don't know a priori what the best method of determining reality is. Some might even argue that the best method of discerning reality is an aspect of reality itself, and so we'd need to use it in order to best determine it. While this might seem like a Catch 22, we can actually turn this around and use it as a test for a method: The best method to determine reality must, when used to determine what the best method is, result in itself.

Now that we have some actual test to see what might work, let's see how it applies to various methods of gaining knowledge about reality:

Intuition - The problem with using intuition to guess at reality is that it's highly dependant on the person using it. This extends to intuiting the best method for determining reality. While one person might intuit that their intuition is infallible, another might intuit that divine revelation is better, and a third that the scientific method is better. In the end, this fails the test of revealing itself as the best method.

Acceptance - (Essentially, this method is to accept any proposition about reality as true until evidence contradicting it has been found (weaker forms will accept only any plausible explanation, any likely explanation, or any probable explanation).) Using this to determine the best method only results in every proposed method being considered the best. Obviously, this won't work.

Denial - (The opposite of acceptance, this method will never accept anything to be true.) Applying it to this question will then result in denying that it's the best, so this one flies right out the window.

Divine Revelation - (Accept the word of deities on reality.) If we apply this to our question, we run into a problem that the deities might not actually say anything on this subject. For people who claim they have, some say that deities have claimed this method as best, while others have given other answers (such as the scientific method) as best.

Reverse Science - (When given a proposition, attempt to find evidence that it is true. When sufficient evidence has been found, accept that it is true. If sufficient evidence can't be found, declare it false.) This method is the first one that will actually result in itself, mostly due to a huge bias towards confirming propositions inherent in it. If we take the proposition that "Reverse Science is the best method for determining reality," it's simple to find many cases where people operating under this principle have ended up with the correct answer and to contrast it with cases where other methods have resulted in wrong answers. There is one little problem in that if you start with a proposition such as "Divine Revelation is the best method for determining reality," you'll end up declaring that as true, so we'll have trouble arguing that this method is truly the best.

Pyrrhonism - (Also what Truzzi calls "Zeteticism.") This method is characterized as constant inquiry while never accepting anything as true or false. The problem when it comes to our current question is that it then gives us nothing to go on - we have no idea whether it's the best method or not. However, this alone doesn't rule out that it could be (though I'll talk about other problems with it later).

The Scientic Method - (When given a proposition, design an experiment that will return specified results if the proposition is false. If these results are obtained, declare it false. If not, design further experiments to test other ways it might be false. If not of these reveal it to be false, tentatively accept it to be true. Add in replication of experiments for added reliability.)

And I've saved the best for last. Here we have a method that seems to have shown great promise in determining reality. However, can we know for sure that it actually has done so, and hasn't just led us off onto the wrong tangent somewhere? We can't know for sure, but we can use our test here to see if it might be viable.

To scientifically test the proposition that science is the best method of determining reality, one method of experiment would be to set up a controlled environment for various people - a virtual reality if you will, such as a video game world. Program in laws of nature for this world that will affect the people interacting with it. Then, select various people to interact with this world and use different methods to determine its laws. Once their determinations are made, have someone who doesn't know which method resulted in which determinations judge the accuracy of the predicted laws.

A finding that some method resulted in closer laws to reality than science would be evidence against the proposition that science is best. However, finding that science came up with the best laws wouldn't prove it's best, as there could be some untested method that's better. However, if we keep going at it and test every conceivable method against science and find that science is always the best, we could tentatively accept that it is the best.

So, it's possible for science to result in the determination that it's the best method. The problem is that this experiment has never been performed, so we can't say for sure that it is. I'd really like to go out and actually do this, but I don't have the clout or resources to do so (if anyone else can and wants to, please go ahead).

However, despite this setback, we can use some inference from the real world to gauge how science has been doing. We could start with the proposition, "If science is the best method to determine reality, then societies that use science will determine reality better and faster than those who don't," and combine it with the proposition, "Societies who have a better grasp on reality will develop better technology which utilizes it." This results in the hypothesis that societies that emphasize science will show better technological advances than those who don't - which is exactly what we see in the world. Now, while this does present some compelling evidence for science, since this wasn't declared an experiment ahead of time, we have to beware of the Sharpshooter Fallacy and not use this as definitive evidence after the fact.

Now, let's get back to Pyrrhonism, the only other method we haven't ruled out. It comes with a few big problems which should really make us wary of it. The first of these is that it never rules out any proposition. This means that as time goes on, we'll amount more and more possible phenomena and explanations, and we'd have to consider more and more in solving any particular problem. In the end, it just gets overwhelming. We have no method of narrowing down the list.

Science, on the other hand, provides us a method of discarding bad theories: By testing them and finding contradictory evidence or not finding expected supporting evidence. This method of discarding theories isn't just something claimed by science, it's also deductively supported by some elementary logic.

In the end, Pyrrhonism gives many explanations of reality, some of which might be right. Science, on the other hand, gives us a few explanations of reality of which most are probably right. Science also allows us to devote time and money on the theories we think are most probably right so that we can delve deeper and expand on them rather than repeatedly performing the same test to show that Astrology still doesn't work.

It should be little surprise then that skepticism as practiced by me and the majority of this community uses science as the core method and is thus commonly labeled "scientific skepticism." There are many other practices that add into this to refine it (such as demanding that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - one of Truzzi's positive contributions to the cause), but at the heart, it's just science.

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So, this leaves us with the question of what exactly pseudoskeptics are. Scrapping Truzzi's biased definition, we go back to pseudoskeptics being people who claim to be skeptics but aren't. As I see it, there are two types of people who might fit into this category.

The first of these is anyone who starts a post with "I used to be a skeptic but..." These people generally use this to try to lend some credibility to whatever woo they're promoting, by implying that there was something that convinced them the woo was superior. Many of them, however, fail to understand what being a skeptic actually means, and that if the evidence actually supports it, it's possible to be a skeptic and believe in anything. When they say they're no longer a skeptic, they're really just shooting themselves in the foot with this line of argument and admitting that they no longer care about what the evidence shows.

The other type of these people is actually not far off from what Truzzi characterized as pseudoskeptics. These are people who use "skeptic" as a euphemism for "denier." A common modern form is the "Global Warming skeptic," who isn't just being skeptical about the issue and looking at what the evidence points to, but is instead denying Global Warming (either on political grounds or because it seems implausible to them at first glance) and using spurious arguments to support their assertion.

It might not be easy, but it's my hope we can retake the term "pseudoskeptic" to refer to these types of people. It might not be easy; the term's picked up a lot of baggage. But if we backed off from a fight because it wasn't easy, we wouldn't be skeptics, now would we?

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Why Blogism?

(Hey, it worked for Skepticism!)

Well I got tagged for this by TheBrummell (yes, it did get around to me), so here goes, a list of reasons why I blog:

• It's something to do. Honestly, this might actually have been the biggest reason for my starting this blog. I had a ton of free time at work (what can I say? I was so good at my job they couldn't find enough for me to do), and I needed something to do. So I blogged. I still have lots of free time around school, and I'm on a short vacation right now, so I still need something to do.
• Community. When I started this blog, I was just losing touch with all my friends from high school. I didn't plan on using this blog to make new friends online, but when it started to happen, it became a reason to keep going.
• Interacting with "famous" people. Sure, anyone can go and post on the blog of someone moderately famous in the blogosphere, but it's an entirely different feeling when they come and post a comment on your blog. (Yes, he was correcting a minor mistake I'd made, but I've corrected him on occasion too, and I maintain that I'd prefer to be corrected than leave a mistake up.)
• I can help grease the wheels of skepticism. I noticed early on that most of the big swaths of skepticism are already covered in various places by very good bloggers. I've found a few subjects that went unmentioned and covered them myself, but that's not my primary contribution to the cause. The most popular posts I've done have actually been what I call "Greasing" posts, where I talk more about the philosophical side of what we're doing. This includes my Why Skepticism? posts and the Distilled Wisdom series, which give explanations of why this is important and how you can argue better, respectively. While these posts aren't directly attacking woo, they serve the purpose of helping other bloggers attack it better. For instance, my second Why Skepticism? post showed how Godel's Incompleteness Theorem actually serves to help disprove faith rather than put a limit on science, as many woos are prone to claim.
• I can teach people about science. One thing I've noticed is that many people are genuinely interested in learning about the scientific picture of the world. The problem is that they see huge barriers such as having to be great at math and studying and getting an undergraduate degree before they can even be told qualitatively what's going on. With this blog, I can create a bridge out to them to teach them roughly what's going on without having to drown them in math. It's no coincidence that my Quantum Mechanics for Dummies post is the most frequent target of Google hits (beating out Faith no More lyrics and Bible quotes by a wide margin).
• I get to randomly reference Terry Pratchett, this note included.
  

I can't think of the expected five people to tag with this that haven't already been hit, but I'll send out a couple to Akusai and Tom Foss. Let's see what you've got.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

The Nature of the Beast

Alright, I feel that enough time has past that people will be willing to explore what could lead someone to do something like the massacre at Virginia Tech, and yet it's still fresh enough of people's minds that they care. Of course, I suspect there are still people who won't be able handle any reality other than the shooter being possessed or inhuman. If you're one of those, then for your own piece of mind, I recommend you don't proceed below the fold.

It takes one to know one

What I'm going to talk about today is what could possibly lead an individual to the depths of insanity seen in the VAT shooter, Cho Seung-hui. But before I get into it, I should explain why I feel qualified to discuss this. Simply put, it takes a certain type of mind and a certain mental state to do what he did. I have that type of mind, and I've come closer to that mental state than is healthy.

My parents suspected me of being autistic for a while, but I didn't quite fit in with any form of it. I had some of the developmental disorders commonly associated with autistics, such as lacking normal social instincts and savant-like intelligence, but too much of the picture didn't fit. There's no real diagnosis for what I have; I've come to believe it's just some unique mental state. For brevity though, I call it pseudo-autism, as thinking of it being like autism makes a lot of things in my life make more sense.

Many people with disabilities like this nowadays are fortunate enough to get adequate help, and come through alright. In my case, since I was never diagnosed with anything in specific, I couldn't get the right type of help. I bounced from psychologist to psychologist and none could ever really do anything for me. On top of my other problems, I faced clinical depression (image manic-depression, except instead of bouncing up and down, you bounce down and down). They tried to medicate me for this, but they couldn't find anything that worked until just last year.

As such, I shared many of the experiences growing up that Cho did. I was a social outcast. I had trouble fitting in with others. I faced emotional crises of my own, and the ways in which I responded bear a striking similarity to how he did. I even reached a breaking point which I'm sure he did too, and it caused both of us to twist - and this is importantly where the similarity ends, as we twisted in different directions here. But I'll go into that in more detail later.

Life at the bottom

To set the stage, there are a few things you should know about his early life. He was at first seen as cold and uncommunicative by his family. When he arrived in the US at the age of 8, this was diagnosed as autism. However, despite this diagnosis, he apparently never received any instruction to help him overcome the drawbacks of it.

Imagine yourself in his position. You're eight years old, and your family has just moved to another continent where nobody speaks your language. On top of that, you've got a developmental disability which makes it seem like no one speaks your language even when they do. So he has tons of trouble communicating to others, and nobody is teaching him how to in a way he can understand.

So, go back to your own experiences in elementary school. What happens to the kid who can't speak English well, lacks normal social instincts, and has trouble learning? He's designated the official target of not only the normal bullies in the school, but all the other students who need someone to bully as well. This is, of course, what happened to young Cho.

No one responds well to being bullied. The ones who come out best are those able to pass the bullying on to someone with an even lower social status than them. But there has to be someone at the bottom, and what are they to do? Some withdraw into themselves and avoid social contact as much as they can. Some lash back, and are then usually penalized by an oblivious administration for it. Some of them find groups of people in the same situation, and stick together with them.

The latter group often comes out of the experience relatively alright, but the other types of kids aren't so lucky. Those who lash back get in trouble constantly, and take up a role of the outsider, the trouble-maker. These kids aren't to be confused with the popular "bad boys," who break the rules and either get away with it or are applauded for it. Instead, these kids are the criminals. They break rules and are caught and/or reviled for it.

Worlds inside

And then there are those who withdraw, which is where Cho fits in. Socialization is a big part of human life, and someone deprived of it will do whatever they can to fill the void. Sometimes these people will be picked up by cults and find their acceptance from them. Others will try to get involved in organized religion. Both of these types of groups are particularly attractive to a kid in this situation simply because they aren't going to refuse him. But the problem is that the ideals and beliefs of these organization often won't be compatible with the kid's, so it just won't work.

One other substitute that many drift to is a one-sided relationship. Generally, this tends become an obsession with a certain type of music, often from a single artist who the child feels some amount of empathy towards. The messages in the music tell the kid that there's someone that understands their situation (or something similar to it), and they aren't so alone. This doesn't completely fill the void from a lack of socialization as there's no give-and-take, just receiving the messages, so problems will still remain.

Some of them (particularly autistics) go into a maelstrom of creativity within their own minds. They imagine up worlds, and generally find a place for themselves within them. Many write this out, giving the world a window into their minds. Others keep it all within their heads. Sometimes these imagined worlds are obviously fantasy, but other times they're very closely tied to reality. In these cases, as the child spends more time interacting with their imagined world than the real one, the line between reality and fantasy can start to blur.

So where does Cho fit into this? His parents tried to bring him into religion so he could find acceptance there, but the cycle just repeated. Other members of his Christian youth group bullied him as well, so he had to withdraw from this as well. He didn't withdraw entirely from religion, though, but just the community within it.

He then went into a period of internally fantasizing. Being rejected by others of course caused him to be angry and feel persecuted, so this colored his fantasies. When he was asked to do creative writing in school, this anger came out and it scared the teachers involved.

One other potential development within him was the development of a new persona. It's quite possible that he also started to hate himself for being different, and as such wanted to distance himself from himself. The resolution to this would be to try to change himself into someone else. This alternate persona would have to differ from his old self in key ways. For instance, instead of withdrawing, it would be one to fight back. It seems quite possible to me that this persona was the "Ishmael Ax" found scratched on his arm.

Cho was in pain, and he saw others who were enjoying life. This wasn't fair; it wasn't just. How is it that they were able to take enjoyment while he was forced to suffer? He hated those who were rich, who could afford the luxuries in life his family couldn't. He hated those who were in relationships and could find love (notably the physical side of it) from another. Hence, his railings against "rich kids" and "debauchery." As for the "deceitful charlatans," that's most likely rage against those who preached alternative religions. They were the ones who caused people to not get the message that what they were doing was wrong.

And then the dogma of Christianity, which he still believed in, started to color his fantasies. He saw himself as a Christ figure, being persecuted by the sinful. A lone good man in a world of sin, forced to suffer for it.

The breaking point

At some point, he must have faced severe stress from some source. Maybe he saw the girl he fantasized about from afar in a relationship with another man. Maybe it was a particularly nasty bout of the same bullying and persecution. Either way, something put tremendous pressure on his already-fragile psyche.

This breaking point is another fork in the paths of different people who have undergone this type of past. Some of them implode and take their own lives in suicide. Some of them explode back out at the world in a crazed attempt at revenge. Others twist, but I'll describe this last one later. For now, let's talk about what happened with Cho, one of those who exploded.

The crack that happened in his mind occured at the delineation between fantasy and reality. Religion itself had probably weakened this slightly, leading him to believe that the supernatural was possible, but eventually the line went further than that. In his mind, it wasn't just all possible, he was at the heart of it. In his mind, he became Jesus Christ reborn, with the mission to execute justice on the sinners.

Aside: No, I'm not blaming religion here, just describing what likely did happen in this case. If the religion were removed, I have no reason to believe things would necessarily have been better. He could just as well have gone on the same rampage if he were an atheist, if his mind found some other justification for taking this type of revenge.

Judging by the timeline, this probably happened a fair amount of time before the actual attack. He was clearly out of touch with reality for a fair bit before it, as he was planning it and falling deeper into insanity. He wrote up a "manifesto" to tell the world why he had done this. He made a DVD of various pictures of himself that the news would just love to show off, giving him even more fame. After all, as much of the world would have to know of the second coming as possible, right?

And then, at last, he executed his attack. He made an apparently targeted strike against a particular girl, Emily Hilscher. Perhaps she had inadvertently jilted him somehow. Then he went on to take out as many people as possible in the second shooting, ending with himself. After all, you can't be a martyr if you don't die.

Taming the Beast

Now, it wouldn't be fair to talk about how I went through much of that myself and not tell you how I've resolved it and gotten past it. Hopefully if anyone out there is facing a similar struggle, they might be able to learn something. Now, this isn't a full descriptor of what I've gone through, but there are some aspects that I might fill in later.

Not everyone who reaches a breaking point implodes or explodes. I reached that point myself, and I took a third option. In one of my severe attacks of depression, I fell down far, and came face-to-face with the beast within. This is the beast that leads to the uncontrollable rage seen in shooters like this. It's also the source of many primal urges within humanity that nowadays aren't compatible with our society and often are simply unjust (ie. instinctual racism).

Most people (so I believe) have this beast deep within them, and they spend their lives denying it. No, they aren't violent people, they aren't petty, they aren't xenophobic, they say to themselves. They're civilized. But this civilization is built in contradiction to the beast, and they have to deny it as being part of them in order to keep functioning in a civilized manner.

For those who reach the breaking point, the civilized persona has failed them in some way. Those who are capable of giving it up do so, and the beast is released. Those who can't break down and take their own lives. Some people retreat from it and go back to the person they were - often just leading them to face another breaking point in the future.

In my case, I faced the breaking point and retreated many times. I saw the beast within me, and I couldn't accept letting it loose (I was able to acknowledge that many other people were decent and didn't deserve an "explosion" from me). But the civilized persona I'd built up as I grew up wasn't working; it kept leading me back into bouts of depression, so something had to change.

What I chose to do in the end was to rebuild myself. I started out deep down, where I shackled up the beast securely. I wouldn't be able to deny it, but I would be able to build beyond it and create a persona better than what my instincts would have led me to be. This new persona would be based on logic and ration. It would be calm, intelligent, and it would be willing to correct itself when it was in the wrong.

The process wasn't easy; not by a long shot. It started back when I was in my second year of high school, and it hasn't finished yet. It probably never will end, just as most people never finish growing up. But it's only very recently (in the last year) that I've been able to accept myself and be proud of who I am.

The most recent step in this was accepting the mantle of the skeptic. It actually matched up with my goals very well - skeptics acknowledge the flaws in normal human reasoning and work beyond them. They've shackled up the beast of unreason, and built a system of logic and reasoning to operate in its place. I took this on myself, filling in one of the last big gaps in who I am.

On one last note, I have to recommend to anyone who wants a bit more of an idea of what the beast is like that they pick up a copy of the Discworld novel, Night Watch. One of the major themes in is exploring the inner struggles of Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch. He too faces a constant struggle with the beast he sees within him. To keep it in control, he created the persona of "the Copper" (also called "the Watchman" in Thud!). He uses the symbol of his badge to keep himself in control, symbolizing the rule of law over anarchy. I'm much the same way, though with a slightly more intellectual bent to the struggle.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Distilled Wisdom #4: The Principle of Charity

Welcome back to Distilled Wisdom, where I boil out all the impurities and useless information I've taken from the sea of knowledge and serve you up a nice tall glass of distilled wisdom (hence the name).

The topic today is what's known as the Principle of Charity. Unlike other entries in this series, this particular subject has actually been covered elsewhere on the 'net, but I thought I should at the least bring it to the attention of my regulars. In essence, you can thing of Charity as being the opposite of a strawman argument. Instead of erring on the side of a worse argument for your opponent, Charity demands that you err on the side of the best argument they could have.

What is Charity?

Let's go back to the metaphor from which we got the "strawman" term. A couple of guys get into a fight in a bar. One of them constructs a man out of straw, beats it up, and then declares victory. Obviously, his victory is undeserved. Now, let's say that instead of constructing a man out of straw, he builds a golem out of solid steel, being sure to make it at least as strong as his opponent. Then, the man beats up the golem and declares victory. In this case, even though he didn't beat up his opponent directly, he did prove that he was stronger and thus his claim to victory has some merit to it. (Of course, the metaphor breaks down when the best argument is in fact the opponent's intended argument. Here he just beats the other guy up.)

So, let's go to an example. Say you're debating a Creationist and they make the following argument:

So, do you think all of this just came into existence by chance? Look at how complicated the universe is! You think this could have just occured by some random fluke?

This isn't a very refined or specific argument, so you'll have to take a guess at what the speaker meant. One possibility is that they're talking about the universe as it is now coming into existence by chance. This is obviously ridiculous, but it's a possibility from what they've said. Alternatively, they could be talking about the universe coming into existence in some recognizable form at some point in the near past. If they sincerely believe that the universe is only 6000 years old, it's actually possible they might think to attack the stance that it was created randomly 6000 years ago. It's still a pretty bad argument, however.

Then we come to the best argument they could be making: That the universe was randomly created at the point of the Big Bang. What they're saying then approximates a rudimentary form of the Argument from Fine-Tuning, which states that so many different variable at the creation of the universe had to be set just the right ways for life like ours to be possible. It's a big extrapolation from what was actually said to think that the speaker implied this argument, but it's possible, and since it is possible, Charity demands we defend against this argument.

Why Charity?

To see why Charity is important, let's examine all the possible outcomes when you guess at what your opponent's argument is (first, assuming your opponent will later be honest about what they intended to convey):

1. You guess correctly. In this case, nothing much happens, and the debate carries on.

2. You guess at a weaker argument than they intended. In this case, you're essentially committing the Strawman Fallacy. Not good if you want the audience on your side, especially if you get called on it.

3. You guess at a stronger argument than they intended. In this case, you get a gleeful moment of saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were making a somewhat good argument, while instead, you were making a bad argument. Well, I can address that, too."

Now, this is assuming your opponent is being honest. If they aren't, then you could see them change their argument after the fact just to accuse you of committing a Strawman. Or, if you've already guessed the best argument, they'll change it to that and won't admit they had intended a worse argument. If they also don't understand the subject enough, they might even accuse you of a Strawman if you choose a better argument than theirs. In this case, calmly explain the Principle of Charity to them.

So, how does charity help? First of all, it rules out case #2, as if you choose the best argument, there's nothing better they could have intended. You're left with the following possibilities:

1. They'd intended something worse, and admit it. Result: Positive

2. They'd intended something worse, but don't admit it. Result: Neutral

3. They'd intended something worse, and accuse you of a Strawman. Result: Depends on how you handle it.

4. They'd intended what you guessed at. Result: Neutral.

By accepting the Principle of Charity, you essentially rule out any negative result. The benefit here is obvious.

Possible Problems

But what about situation 3 that I mentioned above? This case does look like it's a possible problem. Even if you explain exactly what you're doing in response, some people in the cyber-audience may think you're just covering and making excuses. Fortunately, there is a way to avoid this. Basically, when you're first making the guess as to their argument, make a little note along the lines of:

(Not sure exactly what argument you're trying to make here, but I'm taking my best guess at it. Let me know if I get it wrong.)

This makes it clear that you weren't clear on what they intended, and any misrepresentation is due to them not being clear enough. The argument that follows is just your charitable guess.

There's another problem you may encounter: What if the best argument they could be making is something you don't know how to argue against? In this case, the first thing you should do is search around the 'net and see if someone else has answered it somewhere, and if so, quote them. If the question is really out of your league, you might want to refer them to someone else who's better equipped to answer an argument on this subject.

But what if no one's answered it, you're as well-equipped to handle it as could be reasonably expected, and yet you can't think of anything wrong with it? In this case, I recommend you seriously consider that you just might be on the wrong side of this debate. Internet debates aren't like high school debates where you're assigned to a side arbitrarily and have to defend it. Here, you should be defending the side you believe in. If you can't defend it, maybe you shouldn't believe in it. If you refuse to consider this possibility, then you're truly being close-minded.

Closing Remarks

Well, that's it for this edition of Distilled Wisdom, but I will give you a little teaser of a planned installment. Basically, it advocates what seems to be the complete opposite of what I've said here (not really, though). Confused? Would it help if I said that I plan to give it the same name as a Terry Pratchett novel? Probably not.

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Distilled Wisdom Index

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Why Skepticism? (Part 3)

And it seems that just a single post later, I'm again continuing a series I'd thought finished. Well, events just made it appropriate. I was actually planning for this to be a stand-alone post at first, but when I realized it worked perfectly as the third part to this series, I figured, "Why not?" (Yes, again.)

If you haven't, I highly recommend you read the first two posts in this series (particularly the second, in which I mathematically disprove faith. Seriously):

Part 1 - "The Dark Room"

Part 2 - "The Uncertainty Proof"

And now...

Part 3 - "The Method Behind the Lack of Madness"

Recently, Skeptico got into a debate with some anti-New-Agers who happened to believe in acupuncture. The basic chain of events you should check out is:

1. The original post by Cosmic Connie
2. Skeptico's complaint of censorship and reply
3. RevRon's critique of skeptics
4. Rockstar Ryan's big "Screw you, too!" to Ron

To sum it up: Cosmic Connie made a post criticizing Gregg Braden and his publicity for his new book, The Divine Matrix. Skeptico stepped in to compliment her for it. After a few rounds of polite discussion of subjects such as "Is it more appropriate to call them 'Newage' (rhymes with 'sewage') or 'New Wage'?" a commenter who had browsed Skeptico's blog took issue with his critique of acupuncture.

From there, it turned into a full-scale debate on the merits of and scientific basis for acupuncture, with Skeptico facing off against Connie, this commenter, and Connie's beau, Ron. Reading through the debate, it didn't seem to really be all that heated or rude, just Skeptico doing his thing. There was mounting frustration on both sides, though (and it seems to me that Ron was the first to get rude). And then after one post by Ron, the thread stopped.

The discussion then continued on Skeptico's blog. Skeptico explained that he had sent in another comment to the discussion which tore apart Ron's last comment, but Connie had refused to post it. She claimed that it was an attack on Ron and that the debate had turned into a "pissing contest" which she didn't want to have on her blog.

Now, I'll interject with my own opinion on the matter here: If you don't want to have heated debates on your blog, that's alright. But don't let it go on for a while and then cut it off after your side gets the last word; that's just poor form. If you do feel the need to cut it off at a certain point, then maybe you should point to some other place it would be appropriate to hold it (the JREF Forums are always a good choice for stuff like this), and leave a comment at the end that the debate continues there.

The debate then did continue over at Skeptico's blog, and there was now a debate about the debate (which reminds me of the US Congress's recent idiocy when they held a vote on whether or not to hold a vote, but I digress). Ron made not one, but two posts which said they would be his lasts words on the matter. And then after that, he made a big post on his blog criticizing skeptics. This particular post is the subject of this entry here, so I highly recommend you read it before continuing.

What is a skeptic?

Skeptics nowadays suffer from a poor public image, though it's not for lack of trying (and it is improving, we just haven't gotten the label to stick in the public's mind yet). When the average person thinks of a skeptic, it's generally what we call the "Hollywood Skeptic" they think about. This is the person you see in the average monster movie who denies the monster exists right up until he's eaten by it. From this, the public develops an image of the skeptic of being an irrational denier.

This is quite similar to Ron's view of skeptics. He sees us as being like intellectual cliques from high school. These were people he saw who "emerged from the Science or Philosophy Clubs" and would "gather to reaffirm their uniqueness in a culture which demanded a conformity and social finesse they somehow lacked." As he says:

These self-proclaimed intelligentsia were admittedly interesting to talk to, until they began their cerebral wagon-circling, bemoaning the inferiority of those outside their circle. At that point, they became pretty toxic and frankly, boring, and those of us who merely visited on their periphery would inevitably wander off in search of more positive interactions, leaving the kids (typically labeled losers or weirdos) to their cerebral circle jerk.

I’d frankly forgotten about these kids, having long ago discovered that actually living a life was more rewarding than sitting on the outside taking shots at it, and that a sense of wonder was more enriching than pessimistic disenchantment. The other day, however, I discovered that the kids are still around, and just as alienated as ever. Only now, they call themselves skeptics or critical or rational thinkers.

To sum up his beliefs about skeptics:

• We're clique-ish. That is, we won't let anyone in who doesn't conform to everything we do and believe.
• We're stuck-up and egotistical.
• We're rude to outsiders.
• We're boring.
• We're negative.
• We have no sense of wonder.
• We don't actually live life; we just take potshots at it.

His problems in characterizing skeptics are immediately obvious. First, he's basing his opinions off of one interaction with one skeptic. Secondly, he's trying too hard to shoehorn us to match his metaphor of the intellectual cliques he saw in his high school (I'll also digress to note that not all intellectual groups are like this at all, particularly the people I hung out with when I was in high school - though of course, I may be biased). Ron also goes on to accuse skeptics of being more interested in being "more concerned with being right than with enjoying a discussion." In this, he's accusing skeptics of being overly dogmatic, as if there are a ton of skeptical tenets that are not to be questioned.

But this isn't what a skeptic is at all. If you want to get an idea of what real skeptics are like, head on over to Google Videos and watch an episode of Mythbusters. Yes, they're skeptics. Other things to note:

• They aren't clique-ish.
  
• They aren't stuck-up or egotistical.
  
• They aren't rude.
• They aren't boring.
• They aren't negative.
• They have senses of wonder.
• They do indeed have - and enjoy - their own lives

And here's the big one: Their goal is never to be right with their preconceived beliefs. Their goal is always simply to find out the truth. Their predictions are very often proven to be wrong, and they're never ashamed of it. This is what truly defines a skeptic. We have no big list that says something like "Astrology bad, Astronomy good, Acupuncture bad, Big Pharma good, Chiropractic bad, James Randi good, etc." Instead, a skeptic is defined by someone who wants to find out what is real using the best means at their disposal. Simply put, we care about reality, and we want to find out what it is.

This is what differentiates skepticism from most belief systems: We don't have beliefs, we have methods. We use methods such as the Scientific Method, logic, and Occam's Razor in order to determine what indeed is real. The reason skeptics tend to be uniformly against fields such as acupuncture is because these methods have revealed them to not actually work (or to work no better than a placebo).

The Scientific Method

I can anticipate the objections to this already: "But science doesn't know everything! Science was wrong in the past! Science doesn't apply to this! Now you're just being dogmatic about your method!" As you can see from the links, all of this has been said and addressed many times before. Nevertheless, I'll take some time to address it myself (I know there are a few trolls who refuse to click on links which may lead them to information or arguments they won't like).

The key point here is that science has proven itself to be the best method we have at discovering reality. A simple look at human history will reveal this to you: From the dawn of civilization until the early 17th century, humanity's understanding of the world remained in a rather stagnant state. There were advances here and there, but they were mostly through luck. The would-be-inquiring minds of the day were stuck in the old method of "Here's what we believe; how do we prove it?"

It was then that things turned around, thanks in large part to one relentlessly skeptical mind: Galileo Galilei (one of the few non-royal people to be so famous they're known by their first name). Galileo realized that reality was best determined by asking it questions. That is, he came up with an unknown about the universe, and then conducted an experiment. The experiment was designed so that its result would be self-evident from the data, and that either result would be theoretically possible. In retrospect, in seems obvious, but it was a critical step towards our understanding of the universe.

Galileo was shortly joined by the greats Francis Bacon and René Descartes, who supported and refined the scientific method. From there, things just exploded. Our knowledge of the world went into a hyper-exponential climb, and it was science that led to every great breakthrough. In that time, no other method led to a single significant breakthrough. It was science all the way. Is it any wonder we use it now to determine reality?

But even with all that, we aren't close-minded about it. If there's a method of determining reality better than science, I'd genuinely like to hear about it. But be warned, you're going to have a hard road ahead of you. You'll first have to describe it (something a lot of people actually fail to do), then you'll have to describe how it's better than science, and then you'll have to show that it's better than science. Frankly, I don't think anyone will be able to do it (refining the scientific method, on the other hand, is quite possible), but I'll admit it's a possibility.

Clearing the Skies

There's one last criticism of skeptics I'd like to address: That we only try to shoot things down and never try to expand our knowledge of the world. First of all, this simply isn't true for me. Personally, I'm actively engaged in trying to expand our understanding of the world, working on a research project that has to do with designing photonic crystal waveguides for use with quantum computing and quantum cryptography. I know most of you probably won't have any idea what I was talking about there, but I in fact wrote it to illustrate exactly that point: Modern science is hard, and is far beyond the understanding of most people. This is why you don't see every Average Joe on the street contributing to the expansion of human knowledge.

Skepticism, on the other hand, is a fair bit easier. In order to be a good skeptic, one really only needs a good understanding of logic, the scientific method, and common fallacies. With just this, you'd be surprised how much pseudoscience you can take down. A moderate or advanced understanding of science helps as well, but it's far from critical.

But just because skepticism is easier and involves shooting down ideas doesn't mean it's inherently bad or worthless. Take a look at the way the modern world works: We just don't have room for everything. When it comes to scientific pursuits, there's limited funding available. If money is spend researching claims that are obviously bogus, less of it is available to be spent on pursuits that would actually be beneficial. On the more human side, what happens when people choose a bogus medical treatment over a scientifically-established one? In the worst case, they can die from it (okay, the worst is actually when they take others with them. That's actually happened a few times). And when pseudoscience and mythology lead people into a religion, which leads them into a religious war, the value of realism becomes very apparent.

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Meat Puppets

Before I started this blog (in fact in the events that directly caused it), my major internet hangout was Wikipedia. My main project for the short time I was there was turning the Telepathy article from a piece of wooish propaganda and something respectably neutral. I've since become a bit disillusioned with Wikipedia's insistence on being neutral over everything, even reality, but that's another story.

Anyways, on Wikipedia as with everything that reaches a certain level of popularity, there were trolls, vandals, and ideologues. Most of them got banned sooner or later, and then most of them created a new account to try to circumvent the ban. Some of them would create multiple accounts in order to give a false appearance that their opinion was more popular. Either of these types of new accounts became known as a Sock Puppet (a term also used in various other places on the net).

But it turned out that not all of the accounts that appeared to be sock puppets actually were, even when they acted just like sock puppets. These accounts turned out to be piloted by people who were recruited by the suspected sock puppeteer for the sole purpose of supporting their view. These accounts became known as "Meat Puppets," as they were essentially people turning themselves into puppets for someone else to act through. Wikipedia eventually came up with a policy regarding meat puppets, which essentially amounts to treating them exactly as sock puppets. They may be piloted by an actual person, but that person isn't bringing their own views to the table; just parroting another's. This way, meat puppets get no votes.

Unfortunately, modern democracy hasn't recognized this problem, and would likely be hesitant to do anything about it even if it did. You can see meat puppetry on the small scale where people recruit friends or family who wouldn't otherwise vote to vote their way. The vote they cast isn't an informed vote, but it's treated as such by the system. Not too long along, I was pressured by one of my friends to do just such a thing and vote for her preferred candidate in a university election. Deciding to avoid looking like a jerk, I evaded the issue, implying that I would do so. It's hard to resist the pressure, but I feel it's important.

Sometimes, though, it gets even worse, and there are full-scale campaigns for meat puppetry. Ever heard of Revenge of the Cradle? It's a political tactic that involves a minority group having significantly higher birthrates than the majority group in order to eventually become the majority. The term was first used by the French Canadians in Quebec as the name for their tactic to gain a majority. You can see the results today, with French-Canadian families commonly having 10-15 children.

The tactic goes back even further than this though. It has been used both by Christian and Islamic groups as a tactic to gain a majority of the population in many areas. They don't come out and say that's what they're doing, but it's the result of their religious commands to "Go forth and procreate" which are reinforced by the religious leaders. (Note that nowadays it's going on much more in the Muslim world. Their birth rates are significantly higher than those of other groups in many mixed areas.) Natural selection acting on societies has led to the societies that produce more children being more survivable and common, so even without intending it in the first place, their procreation has become a political tool.

I'll make no bones about it, this practice is despicable. Imagine a child in a French-Canadian Revenge-of-the-Cradle family. She's young and naive, and she asks her mother about the meaning of life and her purpose in it. What's the mother to say? The child's entire purpose in life, the reason that she was born, was so that when she reached the age of majority, she'd vote French. She's not allowed to think for herself; she's only meant to vote the way her parents intended her to. And they say atheists don't have respect for life.

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Upcoming: The Principle of Charity

I'm taking a quick break from working on my research project to note an idea I had for an upcoming installment of Distilled Wisdom: The Principle of Charity. It keyed in my mind after reading the following comment over at Dangerous Intersection:

To really “fight fair,” Step One is to put one’s opponent’s best foot forward. Otherwise, every argument is a straw man argument.

I can't guarantee this will be out soon, as I still have one more sample article and a cover letter to write, but I thought I'd give those of you waiting a little taste of what's up next.

Proceed with your information binge...

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Distilled Wisdom #3: How to Sound Reasonable (Part 2)

Welcome back to Distilled Wisdom, where I boil out all the impurities and useless information I've taken from the sea of knowledge and serve you up a nice tall glass of distilled wisdom!

We return now to a glass of Distilled Wisdom so large I had to pour it out into two smaller glasses to make it manageable: How to Sound Reasonable. Last time, I discussed the proper use of emphasis and the value of answering all questions. If you haven't read it yet, go check it out right now.

This time, I'll be addressing the following topics:

3. Don't pursue
4. Explain your logic
5. Hold back your insults

3. Don't pursue

Throughout the course of an online debate, it will inevitably spread out. Instead of an initial one or two points in contention, you may end up with five or six. Once it reaches this point, some threads will end up being dropped by one party or the other. They may have simply overlooked it, they may be planning to get back to it later, or they may just lack a reply. When you see this happen, you may feel the urge to pursue the issue and point out that this thread has been dropped. Don't.

If you're a skeptic, you should know that the human mind isn't a very good judge of evidence. It has many inherent biases, and the one relevant here is the bias towards the last thing it's heard. Even if the last thing was an argument that had already been made and debunked, it might still hold weight in the mind of the audience. This makes it very important to never let them get the last point in. If it's a point they've already raised, then say so, but don't just let it stand.

Now, let's apply this to the case where your opponent lets a point drop during a debate. If no one addresses this point again, your last argument will stand, and it's as good a victory as you're going to get short of them explicitly conceding. There's no need to pursue the issue and either challenge them about it or simply point out they've dropped it, and in fact this may be harmful to your position.

How can it be harmful? Well, let's examine what might happen in different cases, depending on why they dropped the point. The first way this could happen is if they've simply overlooked or forgotten about it. When you go to point out they've dropped it, you're just reminding them to argue it. If your tone is harsh or critical enough, you may also end up looking like a jerk. Now, let's take the case where they were planning to get at that point later. In this case, you don't run the risk of reminding them of it, but you're almost guaranteed to come off looking bad when they explain that this was the case.

Then there's the final case in which they didn't respond because they didn't have a response. If you're facing a somewhat dishonest opponent, they may come out and use one of the above two excuses to cover this up. They then might come up with some bullshit argument, which just results in the debate continuing, and you've given up your victory.

What about an honest opponent? They may just ignore it again, in which case you're back to square one, except with more risk of sounding unreasonable if you decide to pursue again. They might come up with some rationalization on the spot, which leads you back into debating with them. Or, finally, they may actually admit that they don't have a response.

So let's go over all the possible results. The majority of them are bad for you, a few are neutral, and only one provides a slight benefit. The chance of a pursuit being beneficial just isn't worth it in the end.

Now, that applies to the bulk of cases, but there are a couple exceptions. The first is if you had originally asked them a question intending to show that they couldn't answer. In the case, it's best to come straight out and say this is what you're doing, plus keep reminding them of it. When you're trying to make a point in this manner, pursuit is critical or the fact that they didn't answer this question will likely be forgotten.

Another exceptional case is when the point dropped lies at the heart of the argument, and all other threads are tangential. Unless you want to get sidetracked debating less relevant matters, it's quite reasonable to pull the debate back to the main issue here. Just be careful how you do it.

4. Explain your logic

Imagine you're reading an online debate. One of the debaters was just challenged by the other to show evidence against the existence of God. They come back with the following reply:

Alright, if your vision of God is true, then there would be testable effects. We've tested for those effects, and we haven't seen them. There's your evidence against God.

That argument actually is logical, but the logic isn't made clear. Because of this, the other debater replies:

That's not evidence, that's absence of it! Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

So now the first person is on the spot. They could go back with "In this case, it does work," which is true, but not helpful. Instead, it's best to make the logic used as patronizingly clear as possible:

That's often true, but there is an important exceptional case: when it can be put into a Modus Tollens form. In this case, here's what the argument looks like:

If God exists as you describe him (A), and if we perform experiment B, we would get result C. (If A and B, then C.)

We performed experiment B, and didn't get result C. (B and not C)

Not C implies not both A and B. Since B is true, A must false. No evidence was found for God's existence, so this serves as evidence against it.

Exposed like this, the argument is quite reasonable. When it comes to explaining logic, don't be afraid to go into the details, logic can be surprisingly counterintuitive at times.

Aside: I call the reasoning used above the "Modus Tollens Exception." It has yet to catch on, but it's an important exception in these cases, so hopefully it'll get more regard under some name.

5. Hold back your insults

There's a time and a place where it's appropriate to insult people who come to your blog espousing woo. The place is, of course, The Two Percent Company, where it's always appropriate to insult woos who comes by. But for the rest of us, we have to find an appropriate time.

Let's start at the beginning. You make a post, and someone comes in and comments on it. It's obvious from their post that they don't agree with you. Your tone in responding to them should depend on a few different factors. The first of these factors is the tone of the commenter. If they're harsh and ridiculously rude, you have leave to be as well. If they're quite polite about their disagreement, you shouldn't go in insulting them off the bat. That'll just drive them off, and make you look quite unreasonable and hotheaded. In general, my recommendation is to be just one notch more polite than them. It leaves you room to react appropriately to rude commenters, but you'll still always look like the reasonable one.

Now, there are a couple of other factors that can come into play as well. The first is the general tone of your blog and your normal personality. If your blog is generally quite harsh and critical, it won't seem as out of place if you're rude in a comment. The reverse is true if you're generally very polite; any rudeness stands out like a sore thumb.

The other factor that can affect this is the tone of the specific post. If this post was a lot more insulting than is normal for you, then you have to take this into account when considering how it was replied to. If the commenter is harsh and insulting in response to this, it may just be because they were angered over this post. In this case, it's a good idea to respond calmly and politely, and possibly even apologize.

All of this just applies to the first post. Once you've argued with someone for a while and they still don't get it, insults become more appropriate. Here are a few signs of when it's quite appropriate to insult someone:

• Blatant mindlessness. For example, a pathetic quote-mine.
• Blatant lies.
  
• They make it personal, such as by ridiculing your ailing cat.
• They insult you first.
• They make insulting insinuations. (Pot calling the kettle black anyone?)
  
• They make legal threats. (Same vid as before; last scene this time.)

Now, all of this is assuming that you've been somewhat reasonable to start with, and they're the one escalating it. You should be careful that you aren't the one who's unreasonably escalating the debate into an argument.

All of this being said, it's also worth noting that even in some very long debates, insults never become appropriate. For instance, you could be debating with an ultimately reasonable and polite person who has been fed a ton of misinformation. It could take a long time to get through all of it, and any insults will undo any progress you've made. Yes, it may be frustrating to you, and yes, it may be regurgitated arguments you've heard thousands of times before, but this doesn't mean that this person knows all this. S/he might actually be willing to listen, so don't squander your opportunity.

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Distilled Wisdom Index

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The First Lever

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "Men are moved by two levers only—fear and self interest." Today, I'll be (quite appropriately) talking about the first of those two levers: Fear.

Fear is our most primal emotion (possibly tied with lust). In a hostile environment, fear is what alerts a creature that it's in jeopardy and triggers its "fight or flight" reflex. Fear is the emotion responsible for keeping you alive. In the wild, when your life is frequently threatened, fear is your most valuable emotion.

But we don't live in the wild. Our world is a lot safer, and there's a lot less we need to fear. Of course, there still are cases where you should be afraid. If you're crossing the street and notice a car speeding towards you, apparently not having noticed the red light, you're right to be afraid, and the reflex to run will be quite useful (just don't try to fight the car). But these cases are a lot rarer than they would be in the wild.

This doesn't mean that people don't find much to fear, however; it just takes on a different form. Instead of a primal fear of danger, we have more abstract fears. The problem is that our fear reflexes didn't evolve to handle these more abstract fears, and it can often lead to people acting irrationally.

Take the case of someone who is afraid to be wrong about a certain subject. Them being wrong is akin to the death of their worldview. So, if their worldview is threatened by someone espousing a different view, fear may kick in. Their instincts tell them to do whatever they can to preserve their worldview, and their actions from this point on are guided by this. They look for arguments that will support their worldview in an attempt to defend it. Their goal doesn't become determining whether it's right, it becomes proving it is right.

An outside observer should immediately see the problem here: What if the person actually was wrong in the first place? How would they ever learn this, if this is the approach they're taking? The answer is that they probably won't. They'll see only evidence that supports their worldview, and they'll either deny or twist any evidence that contradicts it.

But even when you realize that, you most likely still don't want to be wrong. That's perfectly fine, as I have an alternative approach for you. If you're afraid of being wrong, focus you efforts on finding out what's right, and then advocate that. Once you've done that, congratulations! You've now accepted the key tenet of the Scientific Method.

Of course, there's another big area in life where fear plays a role: Religion. Almost every religion has as one of its key tenets the belief that those who don't believe are faced with certain doom. Nothing illustrates this better than the Christian belief that those who don't accept Jesus Christ as their savior are doomed to eternal torture.

If you view this as some sort of actual justice system, it doesn't make much sense. Why would a loving god give out infinite punishments for a finite sin? On the other hand, if you look at this as an invention of humans in order to scare people into believing, it makes perfect sense. What better way to make people believe than by telling them that they're in for eternal torture if they don't? And while they're at it, they pull the second lever as well. They promise those who do believe an eternity of bliss, effectively doubling the stakes. People are simultaneously scared of the consequences of not believing and enticed to believe.

Of course, the problem with this is that it's all an argument from consequences. The consequences of something being true or believing something to be true have no bearing on whether or not it actually is true. The human mind is normally set up against this; it naturally believes what it sees evidence for, not what it wishes were true. Sure, it would be nice if you could walk through walls, but there's no evidence for it. So your brain believes that you can't, even though it being true would have good consequences.

So, why then do people end up actually believing in religion, rather than simply paying lip-service to it? Well, part of it is indoctrination from birth. Another part is people lying and using logical fallacies to convince them. But this doesn't cover all of it; there are still people out there who believe that the evidence out there actually supports religion.

What happens here is just the same as in my previous example, only these people are coming at it from a different direction. People want to believe in religion because they're afraid of the consequences of not believing. But if the evidence they've seen causes a contradiction in their minds, they have to find some way to resolve it. What often happens is that they start to look for evidence to justify their beliefs. Their goal is no longer to determine whether they're true, but to find reasons that they are true. Once they've done this, they've successfully fooled themselves into believing.

The solution here is even easier than in the previous case. Here, all it takes is to be aware of what's going on. If someone tries to seduce you with a belief by appealing to the consequences of it, point out that the hypothetical consequences have no bearing on whether or not it's true. All that should determine whether or not you believe in something is whether or not it's true. Keep this in mind, and you'll never end up trying insanely to prove something insane just because you wish it were true.

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Distilled Wisdom Index

Well, I've hit the third post in my Distilled Wisdom series, and the first two are buried deep within my archives. So with that, I think it's time to create an index post I can use to keep track of them, and you can use to check out any you might have missed.

Also, if there's an aspect of debate you think would make a good entry, the comment thread here is a good place to let me know. Just remember that this all comes down to my own knowledge and experiences, so there may be fields I can't cover.

The Index

1. How to Sound Intelligent
2. How to Sound Reliable
3-1. How to Sound Reasonable (Part 1)
3-2. How to Sound Reasonable (Part 2)
4. The Principle of Charity

Coming Soon

?. (Title held secret)
?. Trolls

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Distilled Wisdom #3: How to Sound Reasonable (Part 1)

Welcome back to Distilled Wisdom, where I boil out all the impurities and useless information I've taken from the sea of knowledge and serve you up a nice tall glass of distilled wisdom!

Yes, it's been a while, but I'm finally getting around to doing the third part of this series. This time I'll focus on how you can be (or, failing that, sound) reasonable in online debates. This subject is quite a big one, so I'm going to have to split it into two sections.

Some of the advantages to sounding reasonable are obvious, such as that it makes people more likely to listen to your arguments. If you debate reasonably, people with opposing views might actually listen to you. If you debate unreasonably, they'll ignore or even mock you.

For instance, ever heard of Fritz Zwicky? No? That's because he wasn't very reasonable. He'd made a huge scientific discovery back in 1933, deducing the existence of Dark Matter, but he didn't get much regard for it, and the theory stagnated for quite a long time. No one was willing to work with him on it, so it got nowhere. The reason for this is that Zwicky was, quite simply, a jerk. He called all of his colleagues "spherical bastards" because "They're bastards whatever way I look at them."

Another important advantage to appearing reasonable has to do with the fact that internet debates take place in front of an audience. If you debate reasonably while your opponent is frothing at the mouth, the audience is more likely to assume that you've come to the reasonable conclusion.

So, enough with the "Why?" and onto the "How?":

In Part 1:
1. Don't yell
2. Answer all questions

In Part 2:
3. Don't pursue
4. Explain your logic
5. Hold back your insults


1. Don't yell

IS YOUR SHIFT KEY STUCK DOWN? THEN WHY ARE YOU TALKING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS? One of the first things you should learn in internet discussions is that Caps Lock is the equivalent of yelling. Many veteran 'net users (myself included) mentally read capitalized words as yells. This is helpful if you want to illustrate that you actually are yelling about something, but incredibly annoying if you do it for no reason.

This can even be bad if it's used on individual words to add emphasis on them; they aren't interpreted as being emphasized, but instead being yelled out. Take the following paragraph, excerpted from a comment on Wikipedia's Telepathy talk page:

Selmo, this quote, "No amount of evidence is enough to convince a skeptic," further suggests you really don't understand how science and scientists work. Scientists are expected to remain skeptical until they see compelling evidence. And compelling evidence is NEVER based on the "amount of evidence." It is based on the QUALITY of evidence. While one well-designed and well-conducted experiment can convince most scientists, a million badly conducted experiments will convince almost none. And another point is in order: Wiki editors are NOT supposed to edit based on "faith." They are supposed to edit based on the best-sourced evidence they can find.

I happen to agree with the argument that this guy is giving, but his style leaves much to be desired. I chose this paragraph as it illustrates this particular point: Three words are capitalized for emphasis. They probably should be emphasized, but italics is much more appropriate. As it is, it's like he's yelling out those words rather than stressing them. Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the matter (hey, this whole blog is my opinions!), so you can take it or leave it.

Okay, so I've said that capitalization isn't appropriate for emphasis there, and that italics is. To give you a complete picture, here's my personal guide to different forms of emphasis:

Italics - Use italics whenever you want to simply stress a word as it's being read. Italicized words don't jump out at the reader until they come to them, so they don't divert attention like capitalization and bolding do. For instance, instead of the capitalization used in the paragraph above, the words should be italicized like, "It is based on the quality of evidence." Doesn't that look much better, yet still get the point across?

Other uses for italics:

• In narrative writing, a character's thoughts are often italicized instead of put into quotation marks in order to distinguish them from what the character says aloud.
• If the <blockquote> tag isn't available, italicizing a large block of quoted text helps distinguish it from your own.
• Titles of books, movies, television series, and the names of newspapers and magazines should be italicized.
  

Italics can be applied in html by surrounding the text you wish to be italicized with the <i> and </i> tags. Some message boards require you to use the bracketed tags [i] and [/i] instead, and wikis let you use pairs of apostrophes ('') instead of html tags.

Bold - Use bold text when you want a particular word or phrase to stand out. Watch how this jumps out at you. Be careful, however, as it can easily be overused. Making your entire post bold is like begging for attention, and just annoys people.

Other uses for bolding:

• Bolding can be used as a virtual highlighter. If you're quoting a large section of text, and you want a particular section to stand out, you can make it bold. Just be sure to add [emphasis added] at the end.
• Bold text is also convenient for titles, subtitles, and section titles. This helps make the titles stand out to the reader.

Bold can be applied in html by surrounding the text you wish to be bolded with the <b> and </b> tags. Some message boards require you to use the bracketed tags [b] and [/b] instead, and wikis let you use triplets of apostrophes (''') instead of html tags. In general, text that you wish to be both bolded and italicized can be formed simply by using both tags (in wikis, putting five apostrophes (''''') before and after the text, the combination of the two tags, does indeed work).

Underlined - In general, underlining should be avoided on the internet, as it's easily mistaken for hyperlinks. However, it is generally appropriate in titling, either alone or combined with bolding. One other rare use of underlining is when your text will appear in a typeface which doesn't italicize noticeably. Here, it can be used as a substitute for italics.

Underlining can be applied in html by surrounding the text you wish to be bunderlined with the <u> and </u> tags. Some message boards require you to use the bracketed tags [u] and [/u] instead. Wikis generally have no special tags for underlining, though html tags may be used. Some message boards and websites prevent you from using underlining since it may be confused with hyperlinks.

CAPITALIZATION - Capitalization is very rarely appropriate. In most cases where you'll be tempted to use it, bold is a better choice. It can, however, be useful in titling on occasion. Also, when writing in a plain text medium that can't support other forms of emphasis, capitalization can be appropriately used instead of bolding.

Of course, if you actually are yelling, then go ahead.

EDIT: Ow, my mental ears! I found this excerpt from a chain letter presented in a post at the recent Skeptic's Circle. This is a really good example of what not to do:

These are just SOME of the things our Doctors never tell us. ONE out of every 55 women will get OVARIAN or PRIMARY PERITONEAL CANCER! The "CLASSIC" symptoms are an ABDOMEN that rather SUDDENLY ENLARGES and CONSTIPATION and/or DIARRHEA.

And that's not even the worst of it. For those equipped with mental-ear plugs, go check it out at the post.


2. Answer all questions

If you have the time, check out this trolled thread at Rockstars' Ramblings. In in, the troll tries to claim that Intelligent Design is scientific and "takes the supernatural out of the equation." I eventually got him to admit that ID requires a supernatural designer, but he then immediately started pretending he'd never claimed it didn't in the first place. (Hey, here's an extra tip to sound reasonable: Don't lie. I know I had it in my last Distilled Wisdom as well, but it fits here, too.)

At one point, Bronze Dog challenged the troll's claim that ID is scientific by asking him to show that it's falsifiable (one of the core criteria of science). For a long time, he completely ignored the question, even though it was repeated many times. Then, he eventually said that he'd answer it if we answered one of his, which had to be over on his blog (a ploy to get more traffic there, I suspect). His question turned out to actually be three, but I answered them anyways.

He still didn't answer. More arguments ensued. He used a ton of other poor arguing tactics, with plenty of deliberate misrepresentations of the truth (read: lies). Eventually, I gave up in disgust with his repeated lies and refusals to act rationally, so I left. Not long after, so did Austin Atheist Anonymous, who was also over there arguing with him.

Weeks pass. He realizes that we actually did leave, so in a desperate ploy for attention, he acts all magnanimous and answers the question he should have answered the first time it was asked. Except, there was still a little problem: he answered the wrong question. We asked what evidence would falsify ID. Here's what he gave:

To falsify intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum).

Notice what he's asking for there. That's not evidence, that's an explanation. An extremely long explanation, at that. For the pathways to be "fully articulated," they'd have to include every single organism along that path, plus all of its competitors, and show why each step gives an advantage. Given the timeframe that evolution takes, this is obviously unreasonable. No human could possibly set this up within their lifetime. Ever heard the phrase "Moving back the goalposts"? Well, his goalposts just broke the speed of light.

* * * * *

Questions posed in a debate generally serve one of two purposes. The first and most common purpose is when the opponent is asking you to clarify some aspect of your position. Why should you do this? Well, first of all it's just plain courteous. Secondly, if you don't answer it, you're denying him or her information about your position. Doing this makes it harder for him to argue with you, but it's likely that anyone reading the exchange won't care about that at this point. What they will care about is that you're refusing to answer a simple question about what you're saying, and then using that lack of information on your opponent's part to squeeze out an advantage.

The other purpose a question in a debate can serve is to demonstrate that you can't answer it. If you ignore the question (like the troll mentioned above did), you're just proving your opponent's point. On the other hand, if you can answer it, doing so is significantly to your advantage.

There are problems with some questions, however, which makes a simple, direct answer impossible. Sometimes the questions will be assuming a false premise, such as in one question this troll gave: "Do [the new fossil finds] overturn Darwin’s bleak assessment of evolutionary theory?" The invalid premise here is that Darwin had a bleak assessment of evolution, which is patently false.

The question should still be addressed, however, and in this case it's best to first explain why the premise is false, and then address concerns in the question. In this case, I ended up answering this question as follows: "As I showed above, Darwin didn't have a bleak view of evolution... What these finds did do was support his hopeful view of evolution."

Other problems with questions should be addressed differently. For instance, if the question uses ambiguous terminology, it's best to ask for clarification on it. Use your best judgment, but never leave a question unaddressed.

* * * * *

Distilled Wisdom Index

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The Ultimate Answer

This is it, people, a landmark post. Nope, it's not some cliché post number like 25, 50, or 100. This is bigger than that. This post number is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.

This is post 42.

Now, of course, the problem becomes, what's the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, to which this is the answer? Most who've read through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series come out saying, "It was never revealed. And no, 'What do you get when you multiply six by nine?' is the corrupted answer." But they're wrong.

You see, Douglas Adams was clever. Marvin, the android with a brain the size of a planet had actually scanned Arthur Dent's brainwaves, and after some planet-sized calculations, come up with the real Ultimate Question. It's revealed in the following piece of dialog between him and the mattress:

"...I am at a rough estimate, thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." [said Marvin]
"Er, five" said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

The Ultimate Question is thus "Think of a number, any number" and the answer is 42. Of course, since this is a bizarre universe, this doesn't all make perfect sense. First of all, the question isn't really a question. Secondly, the "question" asks for "any number," but only 42 is correct.

(Aside: Yes, that's only a theory as to the ultimate question, but it's by far the best theory.)

Now, back to our universe. For a while yesterday, I spent some time force-feeding logic to a creationist troll over at Rockstar's Ramblings. He eventually trotted out the tired old line "Science doesn't have all the answers!" Of course, neither does religion. In fact, there's huge debate among Christians as to the ultimate meaning of life. "Why the hell did God put us here?" they wonder. Yet they can't come up with an answer.

This problem exists in almost every religion and non-religion. It's the ultimate "Why?" of existence that plagues everyone. And today, in retaliation for this troll's claim that Science doesn't have all the answers (and his assumption that his religion is better), I'm going to finally lay the matter to rest.

The Ultimate Question: What is the meaning of existence?

My Ultimate Answer: It's epic.

"Wait, what?" you ask. Let me explain.

Let's take a trip through history. We don't have to go back to Biblical times for this, or even Medieval Times. Nay, our answer is found in 1990. It was in this year that the band Faith No More (awesome name) released their breakthrough hit single "Epic" (awesome song).

"Wait... you're saying that song's the meaning of life? Am I missing something here?" you're likely wondering now. Well, no. It's a good song, but not that good. Let's delve into the lyrics a bit.

Can you feel it, see it, hear it today?
If you can't, then it doesn't matter anyway
You will never understand it cuz it happens too fast
And it feels so good, it's like walking on glass
...
You want it all but you can't have it
It's in your face but you can't grab it
...
What is it?
It's it

The song seems obsessed with some mysterious "it" which is never explicitly defined. There are many theories, though. Some think it's sex, masturbation, or rape. Others say it's the current hit trend. Still others think it's referring to life itself, or possibly the meaning of life. So, is that what I'm claiming now, that it's the meaning of life? Close, but nope.

The truth eventually did come out, but most people never heard about it. Mike Patton explained in one interview:

I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.

All that wondering, and there really was no answer. The lyrics to that song were just put together because the rhythm felt right. No reason, just rhyme.

And here we get to the answer. The answer to the ultimate "Why?" is the same as the answer to Epic's "What is it?" That is, despite all the debate that's been going on, there truly is no answer. The assumption that there was an answer was faulty.

So, let's go into why this must be. First of all, let's take on the question of whether there's an ultimate beginning to time.

First, imagine the case where there is no beginning to time. In this case, it extends infinitely into the past. For every point back, there's something even further back that led to this. Even if everything has a reason, there's no stop to this, no ultimate reason. This infinite amount of time, in the end, just exists. But let's say we go into another time-like dimension that somehow caused this one to come to be. Then there's a reason for all of this infinity, but we've got something else to find a reason for, and we're back to square one.

On the other hand, time might be finite. It might have simply started at one point, before which there's nothing. What is the reason for this point of beginning? Reason implies some form of intelligence, or at least a cause. But we've already stipulated that there's nothing before this, no intelligence, nothing to cause it. It just exists. That's all.

Now, let's apply this to the Christian universe. According to them, within our universe, time had a finite beginning and will have a finite end. Causing this beginning was the omnipotent God, who they define as infinite. What caused God to exist? Nothing. He simply does. There's no ultimate meaning to his existence, and thus to our own.

And there we have it. I've gone and solved the problem of the ultimate answer to the meaning of life using nothing but logic. Do I expect people to like this result? Not at all. The link to the comments section is below. Criticize away.

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