The newest issue of Skepchick Magazine is now up! Go and browse, but please don't take it into the bathroom.
I'm pretty busy with work today, but I've got a really nice content post coming up, which I'll try to get to today or tomorrow (as I intend to submit it to this week's Skeptic's Circle), so stay tuned.
I mentioned a trollbaiting thread I found via Bronze Dog to some people over our work e-mail chat, so we could laugh over Annie's hilariously bad arguments. One person I sent this to had the following to say in reply: [Links added to provide quick responses to some of his arguments]
I do agree that Annie defends her argument very poorly, however, I find it interesting that people stoop very low in their responses to her. I don’t think there is a need to be little (sic) a person regardless of what they believe. In reality, science has not yet produced complete and total evidence for or against evolution. I think that people are entitled to their opinion and that it should be respected as an idea that is held dear by that person no matter which side it is. I am not saying that one cannot argue against it, but rather that the manner of the argument should be carefully weighed before entered into. There is no reason to become enraged or insult another. This helps no one and will only frustrate yourself and the other person. No one will change their view because they are belittled and called a troll.
Also, as a side note, everyone who comments on the fact that they have heard all the arguments before is probably right, but the person on the other side likely has no idea that they have. Therefore, they are simply building what they believe to be a sound case on those facts, without knowing that this argument has been heard before. For instance, I do not know what arguments people have necessarily heard when arguing creation, but the people arguing evolution often say the same arguments that I have heard time and again. However, that does not mean that one needs to be little (sic) someone for using this argument, but rather it should be treated with the same dignity that it was given the first time it was heard, even if it can be easily refuted. Just a couple of thoughts…
I wasn’t sure but I thought there may have been a history. However, I did not know that she had used those same cheap and pointless arguments before. Some people don’t deserve to be respected, but their right to believe what they want does. I just thought it was kind of cruel to provoke someone like that into starting a debate and then laugh at her stupidity and insult her intelligence, no matter how little there appears to be of it due to her argument. I think one of the biggest mistakes that many creationists make is using emotional arguments to try to sway another person rather than logic and reason. Then, rather simply (sic) asking to have some time to research and find a satisfactory answer when they become stumped or admit that the other person has a good and sometimes valid point, they slink away complaining and demanding that they not be persecuted. This is a sad result of people not owning their faith and taking charge of what they believe. I would bet that if you asked most of these people serious questions about their faith they wouldn’t know the answer because they haven’t ever held it dear enough in order to actually own it and figure out how to defend it intelligently.
I simply sober myself by realizing that in the end, we are not all that different in our beliefs. We believe that one day, the world came into being. Then, life started on its own or at the hands of a mighty and loving creator. Many people believe in evolutionary creationism where evolution was guided by the creator. I know that this is the big separation in our beliefs, but when it comes down to it, we both have faith in something. You have faith that the universe came into being and that life occurred and has progressed until it became man. I have faith that a creator made all of this. You have faith that the scientific evidence that these theories are based on is true and you have judged that this provides enough evidence for you to decide that that is your belief. I can respect your right to believe that even though I disagree with the ideas. I on the other hand have decided on my own, not because a pastor or my parents or a teacher shoved it down my throat, but because I want to that a Creator was involved. I believe this based on the Bible, which for me is my main source of evidence. If there is scientific evidence, I will use it and there is some though very little at all. Not really much when compared to the mound of evidence claimed by evolution. To be honest, I wouldn’t cite most of it as I don’t know that I trust it any more than I completely trust all of the evidence of evolution. I am not saying that all of it is this way, but there have been far too many frauds coming up with evolution and for creation for me to take either sides evidence at face value without extensive research into it.
Given all of this, I classify him in my most reasonable category of opponents. I still think he's wrong about religion, but I suspect that in continued debate I could plant a seed of doubt in his mind (or possibly - dare I consider it? - could realise that he has a good point).
Expect to see more thorough examinations of dropping the point and how to handle different types of people on the other side of the fence in future Distilled Wisdom posts.
I don't want things to get too heavy all at once, so I'm sandwiching in that huge mathy post with really irrelevant things. Today, I'm going to prove that all it takes to be a psychic is a little common sense. To do that, I'm going to make a prediction of my own, one that's virtually infinite in scope and with an estimated success rate of over 95%.
Here's my psychic prediction: While reading this post, you...
Additionally, within the last week you...
And, for the coup de grace, I predict that you will soon think about pink elephants.
To further prove I'm a psychic, if even one of those predictions was inaccurate, I guarantee you double your money back!
Alright, I'm finally getting around to this. When reading what I have below, please keep in mind that I haven't done much work with formal proofs (I'm a scientist, not a mathematician), and this is aimed at a less math-savvy audience, so there may be a few things in it a pure mathematician wouldn't like. This part of the Why Skepticism? mini-series deals with philosophical skepticism; that is, the doubt of any form of knowledge.
I'm going to make an incredibly bold claim here. I intend to mathematically prove the Agnosticism is the only viable philosophy (if one accepts some basic tenets of Mathematics and Logic). You're of course invited to argue with it (and by argue, I mean make formulated arguments, not simple denial), but please make the effort first to understand it, and question any part you don't understand.
I was Wiki-surfing at work the other day, and I came across this page (it's long, so I'll be summarizing the key parts): Gödel's incompleteness theorems
The first theorem it contains is: "For any consistent formal theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, it is possible to construct an arithmetical statement that is true but not provable in the theory. That is, any consistent theory of a certain expressive strength is incomplete."
The statement refered to here generally takes the form "This statement cannot be proved within this paradigm."
Here's the proof sketch of this given in Wikipedia:
The main problem in fleshing out the above mentioned proof idea is the following: in order to construct a statement p that is equivalent to "p cannot be proved", p would have to somehow contain a reference to p, which could easily give rise to an infinite regress. Gödel's ingenious trick, which was later used by Alan Turing to show that the Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable, will be described below.
To begin with, every formula or statement that can be formulated in our system gets a unique number, called its Gödel number. This is done in such a way that it is easy to mechanically convert back and forth between formulas and Gödel numbers. Because our system is strong enough to reason about numbers, it is now also possible to reason about formulas.
A formula F(x) that contains exactly one free variable x is called a statement form. As soon as x is replaced by a specific number, the statement form turns into a bona fide statement, and it is then either provable in the system, or not. Statement forms themselves are not statements and therefore cannot be proved or disproved. But every statement form F(x) has a Gödel number which we will denote by G(F). The choice of the free variable used in the form F(x) is not relevant to the assignment of the Gödel number G(F).
By carefully analyzing the axioms and rules of the system, one can then write down a statement form P(x) which embodies the idea that x is the Gödel number of a statement which can be proved in our system. Formally: P(x) can be proved if x is the Gödel number of a provable statement, and its negation ~P(x) can be proved if it isn't. (While this is good enough for this proof sketch, it is technically not completely accurate. See Gödel's paper for the problem and Rosser's paper for the resolution. The key word is "omega-consistency".)
Now comes the trick: a statement form F(x) is called self-unprovable if the form F, applied to its own Gödel number, is not provable. This concept can be defined formally, and we can construct a statement form SU(z) whose interpretation is that z is the Gödel number of a self-unprovable statement form. Formally, SU(z) is defined as: z = G(F) for some particular form F(x), and y is the Gödel number of the statement F(G(F)), and ~P(y). Now the desired statement p that was mentioned above can be defined as:
p = SU(G(SU)).
Intuitively, when asking whether p is true, we ask: "Is the property of being self-unprovable itself self-unprovable?" This is very reminiscent of the Barber paradox about the barber who shaves precisely those people who don't shave themselves: does he shave himself?
We will now assume that our axiomatic system is consistent.
If p were provable, then SU(G(SU)) would be true, and by definition of SU, z = G(SU) would be the Gödel number of a self-unprovable statement form. Hence SU would be self-unprovable, which by definition of self-unprovable means that SU(G(SU)) is not provable, but this was our p: p is not provable. This contradiction shows that p cannot be provable.
If the negation of p= SU(G(SU)) were provable, then by definition of SU this would mean that z = G(SU) is not the Gödel number of a self-unprovable form, which implies that SU is not self-unprovable. By definition of self-unprovable, we conclude that SU(G(SU)) is provable, hence p is provable. Again a contradiction. This one shows that the negation of p cannot be provable either.
So the statement p can neither be proved nor disproved within our system.
Let p stand for the undecidable sentence constructed above, and let's assume that the consistency of the system can be proven from within the system itself. We have seen above that if the system is consistent, then p is not provable. The proof of this implication can be formalized in the system itself, and therefore the statement "p is not provable", or "not P(p)" can be proven in the system.
But this last statement is equivalent to p itself (and this equivalence can be proven in the system), so p can be proven in the system. This contradiction shows that the system must be inconsistent.
I finally got around to looking up the definition of "antidisestablishmentarianism," and interestingly enough it's:
A political philosophy opposed to the separation of church and state, esp. opponents in 19th century England against separating the Anglican church from the state.
You've surely heard by now that Mel Gibson, who recently produced an entire movie seemingly devoted to perpetuating the misconception that the Jews killed Jesus, was recently arrested on suspicions of drunk driving. He then let loose a series of profanities and anti-Semitic slurs.
Normally I wouldn't bother posting on something like this, which is common knowledge by this point. But on the radio this morning, I heard an interview with someone involved in the case (I missed the beginning, so can't say who it is), and this person is claiming that it gets worse. A lot worse. But apparently the evidence of this is being covered up. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, but with Mel, I'll give the conspiracy theory the benefit of the doubt. We'll apparently be "shocked" when the tape is released.
This person seemed to have some affiliation with TMZ.com, which looks like a tabloid site but is backed by AOL/Time Warner. These were also the people who broke the original transcripts of Mel's remarks, so they might be trustworthy here. Either way, take this new development with a grain of salt.
So why do I care about this at all? Well, I've had it in for Mel since The Passion, which as I mentioned seemed to promote the misconception that the Jews killed Jesus. This misconception is particularly notable as it's been the excuse for countless acts of anti-Semitism throughout history, including the Holocaust itself (Granted, Hitler's motives may have been more political, but he played off the latent anti-Semitism). That belief is now widely disregarded by scholars, as a Roman governor such as Pontius Pilate was unlikely to hesitate to execute anyone who presented potential threat to Roman rule, as Jesus did.
Also, a clerical note: I've been having some problems with comment spam recently, so I've turned on Word Verification for commenting to temporarily block it out. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I'll try turning it off in a bit to see if the spammer has cut off. Also, it seems that Blogger for some reason doesn't tell you which post a comment is posted on when it's e-mailed to you, which makes it all the harder to find and delete it. If anyone knows a better way to handle this, please let me know.
The 40th Skeptic's Circle is now up at Daylight Atheism. Follow Ebonmuse on a tour of the newly-opened Daylight Atheism Museum of Superstition and Pseudoscience (and don't be put off if you hear a random "Quack!" in the distance; it's all part of the experience).
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 useful advice. (No mixed metaphors this time, good!)
Today I'll be covering what you can do to sound reliable. Why is this important? Because if you don't sound reliable, people won't listen to you. Your arguments may simply be hand-waved away, sound as they may be. At the worst, people may come to suspect the opposite of what you say, simply because you said it.
This time, I've actually got a few different tips for you:
1. Don't lie
2. Watch for logical fallacies in your reasoning
3. Cite your sources
4. Admit your errors
1. Don't lie
As one professor at my university said, "The most common fallacy is the 'fallacy of lying.'" People often have hidden agendas behind their arguments. To fulfill these agendas, they'll sometimes make arguments that they know to be fallacious in order to lead people to think what they want them to think (see: Sophistry). More often, they simply take the easy route and lie about the facts.
Neither of these should be done, but lying is the more counterproductive of the two. When an opponent spots a lie, it is a lot simpler to simply point it out than it would be to explain a logical fallacy. The public is also a lot more likely to be able to comprehend the explanation of the lie and what was done wrong. You'll simply be labeled a liar by them and that will be the end of it. Being known for lying is also generally perceived as worse than being known for making deliberately fallacious arguments (even though both are ways to deliberately misrepresent reality).
So, in short: Don't do it.
2. Watch for logical fallacies in your reasoning
Many people make logical fallacies simply because they don't know any better. The only way to fix this is by learning what they are, and for that I refer you to The Fallacy Files. There's a lot there, but it's all worth reading when you have the time.
The rest of the time, logical fallacies are committed intentionally in order to lead the audience to your desired conclusion. This is often harder for the opponent to debunk than simple lies, as the audience must be educated in why what you did constitutes a fallacy rather than simply pointing out a contradiction between what you say and reality.
The flip side to this is that it is a lot easier for a smart opponent to spot a fallacy than it is for them to spot a lie. In order to spot a lie, they need to be educated in that particular field. In order to spot a fallacy, they merely need to be educated in logic and critical thinking. For instance, I know little about evolutionary biology, but I'm still able to spot fallacious reasoning used by many creationists.
So, in short: Don't do this either.
If you're wondering what you are supposed to do if you can't support your point without lying or using fallacious arguments, I have a simple response. You shouldn't be arguing that point. Find a point that is arrived at by using facts and good logic and support that.
3. Cite your sources
A recent study shows that negative speed (that is, going backwards in time) is a reality - for light if nothing else.
Believe me on that? Probably not. It seems outrageous, and I'm just a random blogger. However, what if I said:
A recent study shows that negative speed (that is, going backwards in time) is a reality - for light if nothing else.1
Know what that little superscripted 1 is? It's a citation. My seemingly outrageous claim is backed up by a reputable source confirming it. The "Yeah, right!" response has turned into a "Whoa!"
The first rule I use for citations is, "Assume no one has any reason to take your claims as truth." Of course, this may not work for you, particularly if there is a good reason for people to take your claims in a particular area as truth. This doesn't mean that every claim about reality should be cited, as many are simply common knowledge. You can't be expected to provide a reference confirming that the sky is blue, now can you?
The second rule I use for citations is, "When presenting matters of fact, cite the enemy if possible." This way, even if the source is proven to be inaccurate, it's a point in your favor. If it's not possible to cite the enemy, use a neutral source. Using a source that supports your position will open you and them to claims of bias.
For an example of this, look back to my Render unto Caesar [nothing] post. I used citations for two quotes from the Bible. What words are in the Bible is a matter of fact (well, a particular version of the Bible, at least), and any site should agree on this. Since my argument could be perceived as anti-Christian, I used a distinctly pro-Christian website as a source. If they turn out to be wrong or purposely distorting the quotes, I can turn this around into a point against them anyways. Plus, Christians are a lot less likely to attack the credibility of my source this way.
The final rule I use is, "When explaining the theory or opinions of a group, cite that group if possible." The reasoning behind this is that if you cite their enemy's description of them, you run a high risk of describing a Straw man argument. Unfortunately, some theories, such as Time Cube, are simply incomprehensible from the explanations of their proponents. Others are veiled in secrecy by their proponents, like Scientology. For either of these cases, a second-hand source must be used in order to give an accurate description, and a neutral, non-critical source is best. (Wikipedia is generally good; neutrality is one of their main goals.)
4. Admit your errors
One thing I really respect about The Bad Astronomer is that he'll always publicly admit when he makes a mistake on his site. He'll edit it in so that it shows the correct information, but he'll make a note that it's been changed and preserve the original text. Contrast this with what you see happening on too many woo sites to mention, where the claims are changed frequently when they're found to err (often towards being vaguer rather than truer), yet no mention is made. These people are trying to present themselves as infallible, which is a lie itself.
Imagine you're in a position of hiring one of two people for a job. You ask each of them, "What do you do when you find out that you've made a mistake?"
The first says, "That never happens; I don't make mistakes." ("...one time I thought I did, but it turned out I was actually correct.")
The second says, "I correct it and take note of it. If the mistake was told to anyone else, I make sure that they know I was wrong so that they won't pass it on even further. I also try to figure out what might have caused me to make that mistake in the first place, so I won't do it in the future."
If you believe that human beings can be perfect, then you might hire the first person. But if you admit that everyone has some flaws, you'll hire the second person without another thought. The person who learns from their mistakes and tries to correct them is going to a lot fewer mistakes slip through in the end than the one who denies making mistakes at all.
I figured that after my recent rant about comment deleting, I owe you guys the courtesy of explaining my position on the matter. Simply put, I try to avoid doing it; it keeps things more honest. But, there are some times I will.
I may delete your comment...
However, I might not delete your comment...
I'll leave on the "recoverable" option for most deletions, though I won't bother for deletions of double posts and some really outrageous spamming.
Having my comments deleted. I don't spam, I don't flame, and I don't make irrelevent personal attacks. I do occasionally make double posts when faced with technical problems, and that's the only time I'll accept (and even encourage) one of my comments being deleted.
I was wandering around blogspace yesterday, and came across a person who was having some personal problems (keeping stuff anonymous; I don't want to be a jerk here). I had some relavent experience to share, so I went out of my way to make a long, hopefully helpful comment to their blog. I came back today and checked on them, and I found that the comment was deleted with no mention of it (I'd seen it previously up there, so I know it hadn't gotten eaten by a spam filter). I checked my e-mail in case this person had bothered to leave a note, but nothing. Then I checked my other e-mail account just in case, but still nothing (I'm somewhat inconsistent in which I use and display, so they theoretically might have found either).
I put a lot of effort into that particular comment. I was trying to help. Even if I failed in that measure, at the very least you should respect my intent and leave it there. Maybe add a note saying "Thanks, but I don't think that'll work for me." I can't fathom what mental process may have led to you thinking that deleting it was the best path.
If the problem is that you don't want random people coming in and commenting, then there's a simpler solution: Close off or moderate commenting. Blogger lets you turn on comment moderation so that all comments will be sent to you first to check if you're okay with them appearing. Other blog servers have different things you can do. A lack of moderation or limited commenting is telling people that it's perfectly fine to comment here.
When I get around to part 3 of Distilled Wisdom (How to sound reasonable), you can be sure that unnecessary comment deleting is going up there as a huge DON'T. Oh yeah, and I'll try to get part 2 up sometime soon today. Sorry for the delay and interruption.
+10 points if you caught the Family Guy reference in the title.
