Well, it's been quite a while. Been offline all week, not by a slow cable modem, but going a bit obsessive about organizing my new place. I'll get some pics for you, later. For today, to make up for my absence, you'll be getting a long stream of posts, some in a stream of consciousness manner, likely topped off at the end of the day with a new Oprah-inspired Doggerel. The word: "Empowering". Don't expect me to be up to date, though. The mysteries of how to get the dishwasher to produce clean glassware was where my head was during the dead week.
I will banish myself to a much smaller doghouse if I don't get up to ten posts today, and only one or two will be Pointless Questions.
No, this post isn't about some herbal Enzyte or whatever. This is about sexism in woo. Granted, I do have a stereotype about some female woos who worship Sylvia Browne and Oprah, who allegedly have some kind of superior "women's intuition" that trumps the scientific method because they say so, but I do my best to prevent that from influencing my arguments. One thing that really sickens me in various threads, usually about female frauds claiming to be psychic or Oprah herself is that inevitably some woo, flailing desperately to find something to latch onto will sputter out an accusation from nowhere: "You're just bashing them because they're women!"
This sounds sexist to me for the same reason "You just voted for Obama because he's black!" is racist. When we complain about woos, we complain about their departure from the knowledge we've acquired through science, and the harm such an ivory tower attitude can bring. And then some troll comes along and tries to make the argument about who has what genitals, or what hue and value a commentator's skin is. That's what sexism and racism are: Ad hominem fallacies based on meaningless biological factors. In the real world, arguments rely on logical soundness.
I think from now on, if a troll comes along and makes that accusation, I'll call them sexist to their face and demand apologies for attempting to derail the thread.
I left a comment recently after my moving-related absence, expecting to get on with posting, soon. You may have to wait a bit longer. My cable modem's gone as slow as molasses, which has severely hampered my ability to catch up with the blogosphere. Cable guy's coming tomorrow to fix it, and given how quickly and effectively the first guy handled some TV issues, I think I'll be up to high speed, soon.
Despite not being up to the minute, I think I can tell you I've got some Oprah-inspired posts to make. I've gotten plenty of reason to despise her, lately.
Well, I'm not completely a believer in the title. In fantasy games, I'm usually one to take up spellcasters. I guess I'm a sucker for scholarly people making explosions and creative sorts of battlefield manipulations. This, however, is a post about the real world. There's a real talent involved in stage magic. It takes dexterity, planning, coordination with Lovely Assistants, showmanship, and an understanding of human perception. I'm especially fond of "street magic," where the magician has to perform under conditions he can't control as easily, and often alone. We know we're going to be fooled somehow, and yet a good magician still manages to fool us.
It's fun in a humbling manner. A guy gets to show off our perceptual flaws with good humor. When we don't know the trick, we can make educated guesses as to how he pulled it off. Maybe he palmed the watch when he was asking for a handkerchief and we were distracted. Maybe instead of sticking our chosen card into your back pocket, he put one in there at the start and manipulated our choice in a separate deck. That sort of "magic" is solvable. We can look at the results and figure out answers. When we do, it's often surprisingly simple and clever.
The other kind of magic woos are fond of usually isn't like that. It isn't something to ponder, just to blindly accept. Questions about conditions and details are discouraged. Don't try to measure it. Don't try to understand it, except for the vague jargon they throw out. And don't you dare suggest there's something going on other than what your eyes see. Your eyes can't deceive you, so trust them.
I like the magic of fantasy worlds because there's usually an implication that there's something to be studied. Arcanists have towers full of books for a reason. Magical power is associated with knowledge, and it's dangerous to let an uneducated apprentice play with your pointy hat for the same reason you don't lend a child your power tools. Fantasy magic requires you know what you're doing. Bring a fantasy wizard's library into the information age, and I wouldn't be surprised if some careful, studious individuals could learn their own spells and give us some breakdown of the principles.
Yet with woos who claim to wield magic or psychic powers, they tend not to be terribly forthcoming. They're just not interested in basic tests that exist just to show that they're doing something science doesn't know about, yet.
A while back, I ended up trying to think of some little meme-worthy slogans about morality. One that came to mind was something along the lines of "If morality is objective, it's random."
The rationale behind it is essentially this: I think morality is more or less "technically relative": It's based on our instinctive needs and desires. Presumably we all want to live, therefore we outlaw murder. Essentially, we can deduce general principles to use to maximize everyone's satisfaction in life. It's messy at points, but it's fairly firm. Much more so than the typical fundie's morality.
Objective morality, well, if there's a "Don't murder" objective moral law out there... How do we find it? If magic men in the sky are supposed to tell us, how did they figure out that law? If the magic men define it, well, what gives them the ability to do so? What's the basis behind the existence behind these laws? Are they completely baseless?
I've ended up with an odd desire to run some sort of continuous simulation of some sort on a spare computer. I was thinking some kind of community/city simulator that can be left alone for extended periods of time. Of course, other simulations are welcome. Any suggestions?
I mentioned a while back in another meatspace thread that I've started on Vyvanse for ADHD. I'm good at spotting fundamental fallacies in altie talk about drugs that tweak our heads, but I thought I'd see if I had any medical-leaning readers who might know something right off I probably wouldn't find in simple searches. I'm currently got my mind on other things like moving, so those of you willing to save me some time sifting through the good and bad information will be appreciated.
I'm also on (a generic substitute for) Lexapro, and the drowsiness from it has done okay so far to cancel out insomnia.
I should probably bring this issue up more often with fundies: The various gods of the various fundies are universally too small for me to respect, much less worship. Cue many of them going on about omnipotence, dropping the word "infinite" several times, and an attempt to appeal to my selfishness instead of my morality. They don't seem to get it. When someone can put aside their anger to seek a peaceful solution while an adversary continues to be aggressive, there's a reason we refer to that peacemaker as "the bigger man." People we regard as having moral fortitude are able to put the greater good of the community above his own, whether that means sacrificing wealth, opportunities, freedoms, or simply swallowing his pride. Many people out there find it easier to die than to be humble. I suspect that's one common reason why some people are willing to "die for their faith."
Worse, many people live their lives and die their deaths only for ethereal rewards. A suicide bomber who acts only for the carnal pleasures he expects after the explosion is hardly a role model: He's willing to inflict suffering on those he injures and onto the loved ones of those he kills for a reward. In my view, he's only a high-priced assassin. There are plenty of others who bring in more subtle forms of suffering for those same rewards, such as those who try to bully non-believers and other religions from living their lives openly and without fear. They often do this by imposing religion on the state, the organization that exists to protect everyone's rights. When the state openly displays such an arbitrary preference, it sends a message that there is no equal protection. It tells us that possible rivals can corrupt the system however they wish. It tells us there is no rule of law.
The gods of the fundies encourage this corruption. Their mighty deities tell them that they've been granted special exceptions and privileges for agreeing with their petty self-importance. That's the defining characteristic of a fundie god: They place their bloated ego above any sort of morality. Peaceful compromises with "the enemy" to reduce the suffering of the world are wrong because it places compassion and empathy above their collective hubris.
Invariably, the gods of the fundies have special torture chambers they enjoy imagining. They love to envision the suffering of "inferior" people when they allegedly find out they're going to pay for not stroking their god's ego. Their petty, small-minded god is incapable of seeing any purpose beyond his self-satisfaction. Sapient beings are only tools to that sort of being's ends. Such a god is too small to swallow his bloated pride.
The excuse fundies use to side with such a being: He's too powerful to oppose. Might Makes Right, and nothing is mightier than an almighty being. I find it hard to imagine an emptier outlook on life.
I've been thinking about making this post for a long time. The thing that got me started today, though, was a though in the shower about Revelations (which Brick Testament seems to be doing a good job of illustrating) and some of the antichrist accusations I've heard. I'll probably cover that in a later paragraph. I use the term "Red Team" and "Blue Team" to invoke the image of online team games. The trope is pretty well distilled in an exchange I remember from Red Vs. Blue that went something like this:
Red Team Member: "Sarge, why exactly are we fighting the Blue Team anyway?" Sarge: Because they're BLUE!
That pretty well covers how I see a lot of Fundie squabbles. There's no real sort of morality, just a vicious desire to ensure their color team "wins". Don't criticize the Red Team members. Unconditionally and instantly forgive whatever a member of Red Team does, even if they don't display remorse or try to make amends. Red Team leaders can do whatever they darn well please, and criticizing them is tantamount to treason.
As for the Blue Team, well, any good they do is obviously a part of a sinister plan to recruit you, and never a sign of being genuinely good-intentioned. Peace treaties are a sign that the apocalypse is coming, and if you sign up, you'll be exterminated alongside the Blue Team for being in league with the Blue Flag. Efforts to outlaw discrimination by team color or restricting Capture the Flag to a board game on a debate table is no different from worshiping the Blue Flag. Those who abstain from Capture the Flag and wearing painted armor or claim there are no Flags are obviously in league with the Blue Flag and will obviously never help out a Red Player. Don't turn your back on the colorless, because obviously without a Team Captain to give them orders, they'll just be happy to act randomly and stab you in the back. They obviously believe that without a Flag to defend or capture, there's no point to anything.
The reason Revelations sped up this rant: I was thinking about some fundies claiming some of my YouTube favorites were a trinity of evil, as well as some claiming that Obama is the Antichrist because he's popular, talks about doing good things, and doesn't look Red enough for their tastes. In short, religion seems like it easily creates the old "Us versus Them" mentality and discourages seeing any good in Them.
I've been trying to get rid of it without hurting anyone's feelings ...or resorting to worse means. I tried reasoning with the team, but they won't hear any of it. Once lucked out and found a community of more rabbit-bear-rat things, and even had an awkward but successful bit of matchmaker to get it a possible love interest and motivation to stay. Everyone said a tearful farewell... Thirty seconds later, it's back, cue the group hug and me banging my head against the nearest tree.
Feel free to skip this post. Though you may want to know that I'm going to be moving into my own place on June 4th. I've been nervous about the move, but I'm now very excited thanks to a bit of a furniture expedition with my mother, who has a degree in interior design and knows a lot of the furniture stores' staff. Got some good deals thanks to the connections. Already bought a few of the smaller items, like dinnerware and a really nice covered basket. The bigger items I'll probably commit to tomorrow are a new headboard, a super-soft black couch, a chest of drawers, and nightstand. Still need a good coffee table and a throw rug. Overall color themes I'm currently going for is indigo and reddish browns.
Of course, one big change I'm starting on is Vyvanse for ADHD. I've usually been pretty easily distracted, and have a bad pacing habit. I've just been able to compensate with a good IQ for a long time, but it's kind of caught up with me. It's a stimulant, so the first pill might be a part of how stoked I am right now. Just letting you know so that if you see me typing up longer, better researched posts than usual, you'll know the likely culprit.
My mother's resting her eyes and feet after the browsing spree, while I'm merely resting my feet. Need to figure out something to do outside the house to further my moving ambitions.
Recently, PZ posted a bit about a woman's diatribe about atheists. Plenty of people made comments about her characterization of us as bores and expressed puzzlement that she'd spend so much ink on writing uninformed statements about us if she thought we were boring. I'll leave the specific refutations for that other thread, but I thought I'd go ahead and say one thing I've been meaning to do a post on:
I find woo boring. That's the overall picture. Sure, there's plenty of trolls out there who can get me to chuckle when they engage in obvious contradiction or projection, or occasionally say something so absurd I can't help but laugh, such as 9/11 nuts who believe it was an R-9 Orbital Wave Cannon that brought down the towers. But that sort of thing quickly wears out, and I'll be explaining why. 1. Woo never defies my expectations: I don't mean on level of absurdity or anything like that. I mean things like success rates. They can't perform under well controlled conditions. They only have inherently cherrypicked anecdotes, not meaningful data. They reject simple, known explanations for mundane phenomena and expect me to believe the ordinary isn't ordinary. In short, their evidence is typically so weak and expected that I think "so what?" It's easy for someone to perform magic tricks under questionable circumstances and then lose those abilities when test conditions are designed to render those known tricks are impossible. It's easy to find at least a few people who praise a quackery treatment, have their statement recorded, and have it turn out that they were a very lucky minority, received actual medicine, or died of their condition after making an inaccurate assessment of their health. That's why anecdotes aren't to be trusted. You don't use any one single subject to make a life-altering decision, especially not when you can't get all the circumstantial information you need to know.
2. Woos behave very stereotypically in my experience. That's a big reason for the Doggerel Index: I'm sick of having to refute the same cliches and logical fallacies over and over and over again. I'm sure many of my fellow skeptics feel the same way, which is why I've made it publicly available. I'm sick of woos going in eternal circles based off what the woos from centuries ago made up about their critics, without bothering to look at the world or what their critics really say.
Dealing with the robotic behavior and the same tired old notions with every troll is frustrating. That's boredom's contribution to my passion: I try many ways to break the cycle, and upset the status quo the woos are content with. I want to force them to think when I successfully point out how they're the ones being closed-minded, that they have no idea what skepticism actually means, or whatever.
What it boils down to is that I'm lashing out against stagnation, indifference, and repetition.
One of the primary reasons I rail against believers in the supernatural is that I'm not fond of how hard they work to mentally isolate themselves from the world. I looked up the definition of "Ivory Tower" over at Merriam-Webster Online, and I think they picked out an excellent word to describe the attitude:
1: an impractical often escapist attitude marked by aloof lack of concern with or interest in practical matters or urgent problems
If you've been directed here by one of my readers, please pay close attention so that you can understand the attitudes common to skeptics, or at least those I know, rather than rely on the stereotypes you hear of: 1. Mystery: Many of the believers I've encountered treat mysteries like shiny baubles to be stared and gaped at. Awareness of things labeled "mysteries" is treated like collections to compare against others, like us geeks do with TV series, movies, and comics. They see nothing else to do with them. For a skeptic like me, a real mystery is an opportunity. Science has been steadily charting the universe. A mystery means there is uncharted territory to explore, examine, and understand. Idle, escapist speculation can be fun, but in the case of science, it's a reversal of the Decemberween Present Effect: When we do solve it, the answer is very often more amazing and profound than we could imagine. The universe kept getting bigger and bigger. Stars used to be tiny windows in the sky dome. Now we know they're distant suns that could have whole other worlds orbiting them. For us, science is an amazing, humbling experience.
2. Humility: Science has little tolerance for ego. We may celebrate many luminaries who saw something others didn't notice, but we can't treat them like the heroes of fiction: The universe of the real world doesn't exist specifically for the "main characters" to do heroic things in. Einstein deserves kudos for his research into relativity, but he was no infallible Marty Stu: His reluctance to accept the "messiness" of quantum mechanics caused plenty of problems for him in his later years. Even someone as great as Einstein is fallible and biased. That's why the authority rests in evidence, not individuals. It doesn't matter how high your IQ is, or how many letters you can write after your name. You still need good evidence to back you up, not a sense of self-importance.
3. The Galileo Gambit: There's no shortage of people who are perfectly intelligent but wrong about something. One easy form of escapism from that fact is to blame others for a lack of acceptance. It's often a compelling narrative: Everyone loves an underdog and roots for their success against seemingly impossible odds. Unfortunately, the universe doesn't operate according to the Rule of Drama. The scientific method is also intended to make that sort of suppression hard to pull off: Anyone is supposed to be able to replicate an experiment, and such a conspiracy would require that every scientist in the relevant field be in on it. It takes a special kind of cynicism and ego to wield that broad a brush. Sometimes people just need to accept at least the possibility they could be wrong and address legitimate criticisms.
4. People get hurt: All too often, especially with the topic of psychics, I'm treated like a wet blanket intruding on harmless, escapist fun. And they tell me this in the comments on articles about psychics wasting police resources in the search for a missing child or psychics who charge exorbitant rates for their non-services. The life of a missing person and the life savings of some innocent, if somewhat gullible, person are very real. Having a little innocent fun with a penny fortune-telling machine is one thing. Gambling a person's well being on unproven methods is another. Aside from more quantifiable damage, there's all sorts of emotional harm that can be done: There are plenty of "psychics" of the con artist variety who live by betraying people's trust in them. I want people to be sensible about who they trust: Trust is supposed to be earned, and no simple magic trick should act as a cheap shortcut to your heart.
Well, managed to get myself annoyed at some Creationists, and Jenny McFrankenstein's altie ways ended up pushing my anger to foamy levels. I've calmed down some thanks to my brother sending over a bit of music I was impressed by, but I think it's time again for !fooW.
For those unfamiliar with the series: Ask me a question, and chances are you'll get a silly answer.
Since Star Trek seems to be doing extremely well at the box office, it's got me wondering if the franchise could produce some more series. I ended up with one general concept of my own, and thought I'd share it: It takes place on a small Oberth class science ship, outfitted with cutting edge sensors and other science-oriented equipment. It's focused on planetary study (since I'm not so fond of Negative Space Wedgies). I think the ship type makes a lot of room for writing potential:
1. As a science ship, they're naturally going to gravitate towards scientific curiosities and save the day in the manner of a Campbellian hero, like Star Trek tends to be fond of.
2. The ship works with a smaller crew, so a casual manner among them can be more easily justified. There could be friction between Starfleet and civilian crew.
3. If the ship gets caught up in a conflict, you can easily understand it being outgunned and the crew forced to rely on guile to survive, at least until a bigger class of ship arrives to help. It'd be well established they've got better Everything Sensors than average, so they could detect unusual advantages. One of the things that makes it harder for me to take a number of original series episodes seriously was how often the Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation, was outgunned by various alien species. How's the Federation still around?
Is it just me, or do woos have no sense of humor? I know that some of it's probably biased sampling, since I mostly end up dealing with woos when they're being antagonistic. When they do attempt to make jokes, though, I never see the humor in it. One possibility that comes to mind involves something my brother often said on the subject of humor: It's often based on logical fallacies. The punchline of many a joke ends with someone missing the point, or a reveal that only makes sense if you change your assumptions.
"A man walks into a bar. He says, 'Ouch!'"
This one deals with equivocation and a change in expectation from pattern recognition. First, in interpreting the word "bar", most people understand it to be an establishment that sells alcoholic drinks because many jokes begin with people walking into one as the start of an anecdote. This joke's humor is in the subversion of that expectation via equivocation that changes the definition of 'bar' to a rod.
All that for a very simple joke. The inability of many woos to identify logical fallacies seems like a likely candidate for their lack of humor. Combine this with one belief of mine: That humor requires at least a grain of truth, and the woos' inability to interpret what they see doesn't contribute.
I've seen some pretty bad examples of woo humor, including bad glurge. One particularly nasty example came from Dane Cook, who is not funny. He essentially told an anecdote about an atheist getting poetic about "coming back" as a tree after his body decays. He then goes on a vicious diatribe, fantasizing that the tree gets chopped down and made into the paper for bibles. His manner of saying this "joke" and the cheering fundies of the crowd left a feeling of savage bloodlust in the air.
Welcome to the second edition of Woo Enthymemes, a new series where I cover various fundamental, unstated assumptions in woo. Today's enthymeme looks like a tautology, in the way that "biologists are experts in biology" is expected to be a tautology. It doesn't quite work out, however. For someone to be considered a biologist, they have to demonstrate an expertise in the subject. Biologists have to be familiar with existing literature and theories, as well as conduct biological research. This shouldn't be a surprise. If you don't look closely enough, you might say something similar about theologians.
The problem: How do you conduct research into theology? How do you experiment with gods? A biologist can point to a living creature, examine it, and record observations as well as formulate theories and, by extension, make firm predictions. The subject of biology, life, exists. We can say this with great confidence. Not so much with gods. All the various sciences can demonstrate the existence of the entities they study, even ones that aren't immediately obvious or easily understood. Theology, however, has yet to demonstrate the existence of gods, much less any specific god. Without that fundamental detail, the whole edifice is founded on vapor and wishful thinking.
That's why many of my blogging friends consider theology to be on par with fandom trivia. A fan of Star Trek, for instance, can make logical deductions using the "evidence" of the TV series to explain how warp drive works, but that doesn't prove that faster-than-light travel is possible because there's no evidence that the Enterprise exists as anything more than a fictional star ship made to entertain television viewers. Gods are in no better a position than Kirk, Picard, or Sisko, and theologians are in no better a position than over-obsessed television fans who think a show is real.
May 7th, national day of prayer? Not here. Here comes a wild thread where you can blaspheme whatever you wish. Anarchy is the rule of the comment thread.
Well, since I've bumped into another 9/11 conspiracy nut who ranted on about the fiat money standard, I thought I'd attempt to cover some basic economics from what I remember in my high school classes, since many woos don't seem to recall even that level study. I've heard some people complain about the "fakeness" of fiat money, which is what we're currently on here in the US: Those green slips of paper and those numbers in your bank account are valuable because we say so. For the people who complain about the fakeness of that and want us to get back onto the gold standard, there's a little something I need to drill into your head: The value of gold is just as fake.
Precious metals are only really precious because we agree they're precious. Sure, gold has some value for electronics, since it's a good conductor and is very resistant to corrosion, but stuff like that's only recent in human history: Gold is seen as valuable because it's shiny and rare. That's about it.
For a long time, gold and silver have been good enough to serve as a medium of exchange because they can't be duplicated (sorry, alchemists), they're scarce enough to be conveniently small, and still common enough that you could mint coins and such for public use. That's not much different than paper money: US currency is difficult to counterfeit (duplicated), it's scarce enough to be meaningful, and there's enough of it to be used by the public. That can be subject to change with fiat money, since the government can increase minting or someone can hoard the money, taking it out of circulation. Of course that's not much different than with notes backed with precious metals: How much is "a dollar worth of gold" anyway?
Fiat money just takes out the middleman of shiny metals.
As for the government supposedly taking away the value of a dollar by simply no longer accepting it for transactions, well, that's their loss. How are they going to convince the guy at my local comic shop not to take my dollars in exchange for packs of cards? That's about the same as convincing a nation of internet goers that kitten videos aren't cute. Money is a human construct based on our emotions and perceptions, not a tangible thing.
I play Magic. I have some cards that are worth a fair amount of money right now. A couple decades from now, the game could very well stop being popular enough to justify printing new cards. At that point, a card in my collection, which hasn't changed at all, could very well cease to have any value beyond being a very thin drink coaster. For the government to kill the value of the US fiat dollar, they'd have to somehow make it profoundly unpopular.
Back on the topic of overprinting cash: I'm pretty sure if the government tried that in an effort to devalue the dollar, they'd have mass riots and revolutionaries to deal with on every class level, and probably plenty of foreign intervention, since a lot of overseas businesses use US dollars. Not exactly a competent thing to do if you're trying to control people.
Since my economic education's just limited to high school, some marketing classes, and some rational-seeming blog posts, feel free to bring up points I might have missed.
Remember back when I endorsed shanedk's science videos? I think it's time I unendorsed his political ones, including this one time he took a stab at the FDA, saying it's killed more people than it's saved. I'm worried he might be an altie, relying on bogus ways of measuring how many lives they've saved, so that they can underestimate the value of food and medical regulations.
Here goes a short post on a fundamental difference between science and woo. Science is convergent, woo is divergent. First, science converges. That means that multiple observers and lines of inquiry will lead to a few or even one answer. For example, evolution is backed by genetics, population statistics, geology, fossil records, nuclear physics (via radiometric dating), and so on. There's one objective reality, and all the evidence it leaves for us should point to one answer. That's what we get.
Woo diverges. That means the opposite. Take religion and faith, for example. Belief with faith as the basis has produced thousands of religions and denominations thereof that rarely agree on anything. For another example, take the recent wake of 9/11 twoofers. You've got some who claim the planes were holographic, some who claim the buildings were brought down with hushaboom, some who claim they were brought down by thermite that burns perpendicular to gravity, some who claim it was an orbital R9 wave cannon, and so on and so on and so on.
The divergence of woo is so bad, that many woos, apparently to tolerate their differences, dive into the belief that reality is different for everyone and that we should give up on science because the answers change, depending on your "certain point of view." My regular readers know I'm not a fan of that sort of pessimism.
Well, it's been a few days since I replied to Dave's spam that went direct into my inbox. Poked him with a few questions, including one at a link about "Disconfirmation bias" from the dark bulbs of Telic Thoughts. If Creationists can't even tell us what evidence would support their theory of randomness, well, how can we be biased into ignoring it? Given the predictability of Creationists, who've been pulling the same tricks for centuries now, I didn't bother to read the link. Until now. Bracing myself...
We've been talking about confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek out data that confirm one's preconceptions, while ignoring data that conflict with those preconceptions. But there is a flip-side to this phenomenon known as disconfirmation bias.
Yes, we're quite knowledgeable about confirmation bias, and we routinely deal with denialism, which is ignoring contradicting evidence. Of course, on the topic of evolution versus creationism, Creationists, to my knowledge, have never bothered coming up with examples of what would be confirming or contradicting evidence for their unfalsifiable "hypothesis."
Quotes from some psychologists:
When evaluating an argument, can one assess its strength independently of one's prior belief in the conclusion? A good deal of evidence indicates the answer is an emphatic no. This phenomenon, which we refer to as the prior belief effect, has important implications. Given two people, or groups, with opposing beliefs about a social, political, or scientific issue, the degree to which they will view relevant evidence as strong will differ. This difference, in turn, may result in a failure of the opposing parties to converge on any kind of meaningful agreement, and, under some circumstances, they may become more extreme in their beliefs.
The history of science says otherwise. New ideas come up quite often, get rigorously tested, and if they keep passing tests, they become accepted. I'm sensing the usual sour grapes involved in psychobabble arguments instead of honest inquiry, but that's mostly because I have a lot of prior experience with Creationists. Cynicism is no substitute for a sound, logical argument based on evidence. Science and skepticism may be conservative, but they're inherently expansive.
More psychobabble follows, including one example involving the death penalty. Of course, that's an ethical/moral argument for the most part, not one of science.
Back to Telic Thoughts' commentary:
It makes sense that a disconfirmation bias would exist. If the human brain is wired to defend its preconceptions with confirmation bias, attacking beliefs that threaten those preconceptions would likely be part of the same strategy. This undercuts Michael Shermer's belief that "Skepticism is the antidote for the confirmation bias." In reality, hyper-skepticism, or selectively applied skepticism, may simply be another facet of the same brain processes that generate confirmation bias.
What is "hyper-skepticism"? Where are Shermer and my fellow skeptics applying our skepticism selectively? That's what I'd like to hear you talk about.
What does disconfirmation bias look like? I would like to propose three possible signs that disconfirmation bias is taking place, where one may be defending their preconceptions more so than playing the honest skeptic who is simply trying to "follow the evidence."
1. According to Edwards and Smith, "When one is presented an argument to evaluate, there will be some automatic activation in memory of material relevant to the argument." Searching one's "memory banks" can easily become relying on stereotypes. A stereotype, after all, is the brain's "summation" of previous experience that is linked by certain cues. Thus, I hypothesize that when one is confronted with an argument that challenges their preconceptions, the more that person relies on stereotypes, the more it is likely they are exhibiting disconfirmation bias to protect a preconception.
The difficulty with this is that sometimes people actually live up to negative stereotypes, and I can't recall the last time a Creationist broke from the mold. In contrast, skeptics rarely ever act according to the predictions of Creationists.
How can you tell if stereotype is involved? Often, it is obvious. For example, if a critic on the Internet poses his own argument against my design hypothesis, and I begin to rail against Richard Dawkins, obviously my brain has been tapping into information about Dawkins to interpret my opponent. Often times, however, the evidence is more subtle. And that takes me to my second sign.
Just a note: I have yet to meet a Creationist who knows anything whatsoever about Dawkins's views. From what I've seen, they've done everything they can to shove Dawkins into their straw man molds and failed. At least he deserves kudos for demonstrating some sliver of self-awareness.
2. If one's brain is on "a deliberative search of memory for material that will undermine the argument simply" and the "search include stored beliefs and arguments that offer direct evidence against the premises and conclusion of the presented argument," it stands to reason the person with disconfirmation bias will have a strong tendency to link a current argument with the perceived failures of previously-experienced arguments. This creates a mental inertia that leads to two expressions of disconfirmation bias:
Oh, boy. Have you ever considered that the presented argument is exactly the same as a previously experienced and refuted argument? That's why we've got things like the Index to Creationist Claims. I haven't seen anything new in Creationism in decades aside from this one guy claiming ice is magnetic. And even then, it seems he was copying Kent Hovind or someone of his ilk, trying to defend the "vapor canopy" tripe.
a. Misrepresentation "“ Let's say that Jones develops an argument that threatens the preconceptions of Smith. But let us also say that Smith had previously successfully dismantled a similar, but different, argument that was once posed by Miller. The memory of this experience will shape the way Smith reacts to Jones. The brain processes involved in disconfirmation bias will cause Smith to morph Jones' position into that of Miller's. Smith will feel vindicated by the disconfirmation bias, while Jones will recognize that Smith is attacking a "straw man."
The problem I experience with this: All subtle variations of Creationism have almost all the same underlying faults. Usually, if they're making a straw man claim on me, it's for an unimportant detail. Even if I concede that minor inaccuracy, they tend to continue whining about it for the rest of the thread while ignoring any questions about their premises.
b. Faulty Extrapolation "“ This is a more subtle version of misrepresentation, where Smith's brain is so highly activated that it is sensitized to "cues" from Jones that lead Smith to believe that Jones is reaching for Miller's point. Smith will not focus on the actual argument Jones is making, but will be trying to "anticipate" where he thinks the argument is going in order to cut it off. In this case, Smith is not really disconfirming Jones' argument; he is creating an illusion of disconfirmation in his mind because he thinks he knows where the argument is going (when it may not even be going in that direction).
I'm sometimes guilty of this, but mostly in an effort to rouse the creationist from his circular mill by shock. Of course, much of the time, the extrapolation is something the creationists never thought of, and never made a cutoff limit for. They tend to make up principles that only seem to apply when it's convenient for them.
3. Finally, to put this lengthy blog (and tired blogger) to bed, there is the dead give-away of personal attack. When someone attacks another person by questioning their motivations or with ridicule (and more), they are seeking to discredit the argument by discrediting the person who makes the argument. If such personal attacks are linked to stereotypes, it becomes clear the person's brain is adopting an "end justifies the means" approach to disconfirmation bias.
There's a difference between an ad hominem fallacy and an insult. None of my arguments are based on the stupidity of the opponent. Sometimes I have to use ridicule to shock someone awake at the absurdity of their arguments. Or to keep my sanity with laughter when faced with someone who parrots debunked arguments over and over and over. When I lob an insult at someone, it's a conclusion based on their poor logic, stereotypical robotic behavior, ignorance of the most basic knowledge, etcetera. I never use it as a premise to disregard someone's opinion.
In summary, skepticism is a good thing, but skepticism can be just another facet of the way brains defend "their territory." Add tribalisitic group behavior to the picture and the whole process is amplified and entrenched. I propose that you can detect disconfirmation bias at work, in individuals or groups, when hyper-skepticism, stereotype, misrepresentation, faulty extrapolations, and personal attacks occur more often than not.
There's a difference between skepticism and rationalization. Skepticism requires that someone make an escape route in the form of specific types of evidence that would openly contradict a false belief. Without leaving room for falsification of a bias, you can never get out of it.
That's why Creationism is a bad idea: It's unfalsifiable. There's no telling what kind of evidence would support or contradict it, since they tend to fall quiet or change the subject in the matter. That's why Creationists use stereotypes, misrepresentation, faulty extrapolations, straw men, and ad hominem fallacies to defend themselves.
There was a time in my life when I was willing to entertain some of the fluffier forms of Creationism like theistic evolution. The fact that I could be convinced to join the ranks of atheism means that I was perfectly able to listen to the other side. Cynicism is no substitute for a collection of good, logical arguments. I write the way I do because I seek to emulate the wonderful people who won me over with unapologetic vigilance and irreverence in the face of would-be PC Police.
I've got a diverse collection of stuff in mind for this session. I'm working towards 4th Edition, but feel free to make up stats for other editions or systems you like. 1. Icy Manipulator: Artifact I'm going to try to pick up a few copies of. For non-Magic players, tapping something pretty much means using up something's power for the turn. Continuous effects aren't affected.
2. Clockwork Steed: Could be an interesting mount. Winding it back up could be annoying.
3. Crosis's Attendant: Not interested in D&Difying it. I just found a Japanese one in a commons box. Looks awfully like someone who did well in theaters about a year ago.
4. In the original Armored Core, there's a pair of arms with the highest defensive stats. They've got a big pair of long horizontal cylinders for the shoulders. Big enough to prevent the use of most weapons in the two back hard points. Don't know why, but I liked the idea behind 'em, even if the loss of two weapons crippled you in those old days. I've been trying to think of some defensive magic item to go with the idea, up to including a pair of those cylinders that hover by the user's shoulders. It's mostly about the aesthetic.
5. Those of you who have Arcane Power, it'd be nice to hear some familiar ideas. I haven't been able to settle on a standard one for a desert sorcerer/ranger of mine.
Played a pirate game today as the French and somehow resisted the urge to describe my cannon assaults as farting in my opponents' general direction. Had the upper hand for a while, but the tide of battle turned pretty quickly. Can't remember the game's exact name, but the ships were made from punchout pieces of plastic cards.
More importantly, got some Alara Reborn cards. My current favorite: Vedalken Heretic.
This one may potentially fall into Pointless Debate: What do you think about Super Registration Acts if the real world suddenly started producing supers?
Just letting you know I've thrown down the gauntlet to an email I received. Chances are, you'll be seeing the results somewhere down the line. Okay, I admit it, it's Dave Mabus. He decided to go directly to my personal email instead of comment spam, so it's a bit more personal, and I've been wanting him to throw down. I wouldn't be surprised if he chickens out of answering some simple questions:
1) If he's saying Nostradamus predicted a swine flu epidemic, why wasn't he sending emails about it years ago? The real answer, of course, is that it's a postdiction made after swine flu hit the media blitz.
2) How can us skeptics have "disconfirmation bias" in regards to the evidence for ID/Creationism if they can't even figure out what sort of evidence they're looking for?
It's a subject I don't see covered very often, except in threads that tend to attract bad examples of Libertarians. (I'm currently unable to think of a good example of a Libertarian, unfortunately.) I'm mostly familiar with some fairly obvious stuff, like MLM scams and Ponzi schemes, but I'm not all that great at understanding economic problems. Suggestions for websites with good explanations of economic principles and some counter-intuitive things would be greatly appreciated.
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.
The completely honest answer is simple: We don't know that science can find an answer to a problem. We won't know until we looked for answers and found one. We can't know whether or not something is impossible, so I prefer the optimistic route with science: Keep dreaming up good ideas, and never be content with bad ones. Of course, just because scientists are having a hard time finding an answer doesn't mean that unscientific modes of thought stand a chance. Usually when people endorse "other ways of knowing," they're asking us to be governed by biases. Science is about the removal of bias so that we can have genuine confidence in the conclusions we arrive at. Gut instinct, "common sense," and so forth can be useful for snap judgments, but when you're exploring the unknown, the weird, and the unanswered, you can't let your thinking by handicapped by your usual biases.
Just saw this at TIGS. Haven't played it yet, but thought I'd give some indirect linky support. Update to come after I've played it. Hope Anubis is on the roster, since most of you humans tend to over-represent your own species when you invent deities.
What got me started on that earlier longer-than-usual post was this by Steven Novella. He addresses some old, outdated cliches by alties who apparently don't pay attention to the current medical scene:
At Georgetown Medical School where I trained (I graduated in 1991) we were taught the “biopsychosocial” model of medicine - which means we view the patient in the context of their biology, their psychology, and their social situation. This was not just a slogan - it was a central part of the clinical culture that we were taught. It is simply a straw man to say that scientific medicine does not consider the whole patient - even 18 years ago this was already being fully integrated into mainstream medicine, before it became fashionable among the promoters of dubious treatments.
I suspect the "holism gambit," as Dr. Novela puts it, has been around for decades, rather than something new. Could probably be traced back to homeopathy, since that made a lot of spiritual claims in the early days. It's probably just one the cliche meme that's resurged in popularity, and based only on the fact that the alties of the past invoked it, not because they could identify a genuine, systematic fault in the system.
Here's another comment from Dr. Novela:
Dixon confuses the ethics of informed consent and patient autonomy with the scientific basis of medical treatments. Medical ethics already dictate that patients are in control of their own medical decisions. Also, as I said above, the old paternalistic model of “doctor knows best” has been gone for a generation. The current model of practice is one of patient collaboration and informed consent.
The idea that this Dixon character would expect anything else these days is worthy of headdesking. Seriously, who's ever run into a doctor who won't accept questions or discuss your condition? Methinks this might have gotten started with closed-minded alties misrepresenting their doctors in order for them to fit their comfortable stereotypes.
One of the worst parts with this Dixon guy is he tries to present science-based medicine as treating people as a bunch of "lab rats." Apparently, he's completely oblivious to how alternative "medicine" works. From my standpoint, they're typically the sort who push for the deregulation of human experimentation. I tend to notice it more in the vaccine-autism crowd, who want to be able to perform all sorts of experiments on their children with dangerous, debunked, wholy implausible "treatments." Worse, the quacks involved often aren't interested in keeping detailed records. Real doctors keep track of their patients so that if a treatment has previously unknown side effects, interactions, or something else, they can be more readily spotted and compared to find correlations. Neglect of that sort of resource is fairly common among quacks, who are often after positive testimonials so that they can feed their prejudices and/or make more money.
I am writing this post in hopes that many woos - fans of creationism, "alternative medicine", conspiracy theories, psychics, alien visitations, cryptozoology, and so forth are directed here. I'll be speaking to you as best I can.
There is a phenomenon among antkind known as the "circular mill." (more here) This happens when part of an army ant colony ends up going in a circle and each ant follows the ants in front of it. As a result, they continue traveling in a circle, usually until they die of exhaustion. I've read about this as an illustration of the dangers of groupthink: The circular mill happens because each ant's decision becomes dependent on other ant decisions, and not on the environment or the end goal of their activities. Given ants' comparatively simple nature, you can't expect them to have a reflective moment. You're different. You're a sapient being. You're capable of introspection, self-doubt, and reevaluation. That's why many of us skeptics get easily frustrated when we see you going in circles and repeating cliches as justification for your behavior. I hate when someone doesn't exercise their ability to think independently, and, unfortunately, there aren't "woos" who express themselves in a manner that convinces me that they've given the matter any genuine thought.
I'll be forming an informal list of some of the priorities you should focus on: First: You do not argue from authority in a scientific blog debate.
In an ideal world for scientific discourse, there would be no need for the concept for authority. Unfortunately, we live in a world where snap decisions must be made. If, for example, a spider bites me and my arm goes numb shortly thereafter, I would go to the nearest hospital's emergency room and trust the doctors to pick out the right treatment (and hopefully expedite that decision by describing the spider that bit me). If the world didn't have such time constraints, it'd be reasonable to argue over the matter, compare evidence for various antivenom concoctions, get an education in toxicology, and so on. In the real world, where there are time constraints, other things to do, etcetera, authorities in various fields are a handy time saver.
What separates a scientist from a layperson isn't a magical property that renders one beyond question. A trained scientist is a person who knows how to evaluate evidence, where to look for evidence, and has a large collection of the conclusions from that evidence memorized, usually for quick decisions. The latter two traits are time saving measures. If the doctor treating my spider bite knows what kind of neurotoxin the described spider secretes as well as a drug to counteract it right off the top of his head, he can treat me that much faster. In a life or death situation, his memorized knowledge or ability to quickly locate the appropriate recorded knowledge would be invaluable.
Extend the example to longer time periods: If I have a condition that could irreparably harm me over days instead of hours, he could tell me what he thinks is happening, what he plans to do, and why he thinks it's the appropriate treatment. If I happen to know about some factor in myself or my medical history that could affect that treatment negatively, I'd be able to tell him, and he'd be able to change his decision accordingly. Of course, having a medical history that can be provided while he makes the decision saves more time. As an authority, he's expected to have the knowledge of what conditions to look for.
Extend it further: I have a slower condition that'll cause problems over the course of decades. At that level of time, I should be encouraged to research that condition for myself so that I can reasonably discuss it with my doctor. If I find good evidence that raises questions about a decision, I can bring that to his attention, get second opinions from other experts, etcetera. That's how doctors do things these days. That's pretty much how skeptics like me expect our doctors to work these days.
So, to hammer the point home: Authority is a time-saving tool, not an absolute source of information. In my typical blog conversation, I am not interested in saving time. I'm interested in learning.
The danger in blindly trusting in a person's authority is that you're basing your decisions purely on someone else's. In a pinch, that may be a useful quality, but if you have time to think, you should keep an eye on the environment and the larger picture so that you can respond appropriately if that person's actions don't fit what's going on.
Second: Know how to evaluate evidence.
This is a common failure point I get frustrated dealing with a number of you. There are different levels of quality when it comes to evidence. To continue on a medical side, a large repeated double-blind, placebo-controlled study is golden. Each part of that is designed to reduce or eliminate bias. Many people underestimate the body's ability to heal itself, the mind's ability to deceive itself or rationalize away symptoms, unaccounted for factors, and plain dumb luck and coincidence. Large studies with many subjects are better than small studies or individual anecdotes because a larger number of subjects will dillute coincidences. Patients must be blinded to which treatment they get (with their consent, of course) because knowing they've gotten the "real" treatment will change how they look at their symptoms, usually for the better. The experimenters must be blinded so that they won't consciously or unconsciously fudge the results in one direction or the other. The experiment must be repeatable so that other, independent researchers with different biases can see if they can get the same results.
Sometimes, compromises have to be made. In medicine, it's often for ethical considerations. You wouldn't test a vaccine against placebo because it'd be unethical to ask parents, children, and those around them to risk death or disfigurement by infectious diseases for the sake of testing a vaccine that might be only slightly more effective or less prone to side effects than the standard of care. In other cases, it might be limitations on evidence. For example, there might only be one known fossil of a newly discovered species to work with.
Anecdotes and eyewitness tales are the worst kind of evidence because they involve the highest number of compromises, and often when those compromises are unnecessary. They leave in the biases of the witnesses, which leads me to my next point:
Third: Everyone is biased.
Everyone. Ev-er-yone. Yes, that includes you and me. Albert Einstein is attributed as saying "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." The sentiment is essentially correct. We learn by observation, but if we don't temper our minds with reason, those prejudices can never be overcome. Skepticism is anathema to closed-mindedness.
Most people who call skeptics closed-minded seldom understand what the word really means or why we've rejected certain ideas. (It's important to note that rejection is a tentative state, not an absolute.) To deal with the topic of open-mindedness, I'll refer you to QualiaSoup's excellent YouTube video, which also covers many of these points:
It's because of our biases that we need to use the scientific method. Science is essentially about the minimization and removal of biases. When someone asks me to trust in "other ways of knowing," the only alternative they typically offer me is another set of biases. One of the particular galling sets of biases are those of "faith," which just strike me as putting oneself up to be a god. I'm just another fallible being, and I don't have the arrogance to assume I'm right before I even look at an argument. I may have a great deal of confidence in my position, but I always allow for the possibility that I'm wrong. And with a number of topics, if I'm wrong, it's cause for celebration.
Fourth: Please don't quote stereotypes.
A major irritation for me in blog discussions is that "woos" will often refer to stereotypes they have of skeptics they've learned from television, even if there's blatant contradiction. If you want to impress me, try asking questions about what I think instead of relying on what others in the circular mill say I think. There are far too many internet trolls who spend their time telling me what I think or what my position is and ignoring my protestations when I explain what I truly believe and why I believe it. If you think I've performed a stereotypical, irrational thing, tell me exactly where it happened and get me to explain that action or quote.
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.
This particular doggerel was once spouted by an old troll named John Best. It demonstrates just how poorly he grasps science. "Probably" is what science is based on. Certainty is only for religious fanatics and mathematicians. Only the latter have a legitimate claim. Whenever you conduct an experiment, you have to keep open to the possibility something unknown is influencing the results, that factors outside the lab might produce exceptions, and so forth. I can drop apples all day to measure the effects of gravity and derive various laws and principles from the act, but there may very well be some sort of undiscovered anti-gravity phenomenon somewhere out there in deep space. That's speculation right now, but with any scientific knowledge, any new discoveries can change our understanding of the universe. Additionally, with repeated experiments, especially "noisy" ones like medicine, statistical analysis becomes paramount. If you're trying to see if a chemical causes a response, you can't just try it on one person or cell culture and say it's so. You have to try it on multiple subjects and see if it's different from those not affected by it. That's what double-blind control studies are about. There has to be a statistically significant difference between the two groups. If you find one big enough to pass that bar, you haven't proven without a doubt that it has an effect, just that there's a very big chance it does. That's what the "p-value" is about: The chance that the effects could have been attributable to random chance. There's a chance if you repeat the experiment, you might find you just got lucky. It's unlikely but possible. That's one more reason why experiments are supposed to be replicable: Each successful replication makes it more unlikely to be chance.
Science is all about "probably." No matter how thinly you slice it, you can't arrive at perfect knowledge without being omniscient in the first place. Woos may love to depict that as a weakness of science, but it's not. Science is always open to change and growth. Those who claim to have certainty, especially if they maintain lower standards than science demands, are closing their minds.
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.
"Common sense" is a very nebulous term. And when it comes to science, woos find it easy to use "common sense" to reject what the evidence tells us, or to reject further analysis of a situation. The problem with this is the universe isn't necessarily what it seems to be. When you get down to tiny particles on the quantum level, well, common sense is bunk. (And no, that doesn't invalidate what science says) Our minds evolved to survive long enough to have and raise children. We have to look beyond the ego involved in assuming your intuitions and biases are infallible. To continue with the quantum example, we don't easily understand the quantum world because we evolved in the "middle world" filled with medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds over medium periods of time. Quantum events usually go unnoticed in our world because they tend to average out. When dealing with events outside that frame, we have to resist our Newtonian biases and follow the evidence where it leads. Even if it doesn't make sense at first.
Another frame we're often stuck in is a matter of numbers. We often think in very personal terms, making us vulnerable to anecdotes. The plural of anecdote is, of course, not "data." Statistics are more abstract and impersonal, so many of us have a hard time relating. Instead, if we're, say, treated to a horror story about a child developing autism right after getting a vaccine, those who trust in the infallibility of "common sense" won't ask critical questions about timing, epidemological studies, memories biased by catastrophic, conspiratorial thinking, or ignorance of other possible explanations. In the case of autism, symptoms tend to become more noticeable around the age of vaccination, not because some eternally changing and/or unspecified "toxins" alchemically altered the child's brain. As for alternative medicine "treatments," it only takes one apparent success story to spread the good word while all the failures tend to keep quiet and just move onto other forms of woo until they get some small improvement to champion.
Common sense still has its place in the world, such as for snap judgements, and matters where little is as stake, but in a world where scientists continuously reveal deeper levels of complexity and develop better tools, scientific thinking, not gut instinct is the best method for protecting yourself. If you want to question the experts, you must approach the matter scientifically instead of spouting a collection of prejudices often called "common sense."
Well, it's been quite a while. Been offline all week, not by a slow cable modem, but going a bit obsessive about organizing my new place. I'll get some pics for you, later. For today, to make up for my absence, you'll be getting a long stream of posts, some in a stream of consciousness manner, likely topped off at the end of the day with a new Oprah-inspired Doggerel. The word: "Empowering". Don't expect me to be up to date, though. The mysteries of how to get the dishwasher to produce clean glassware was where my head was during the dead week.
