Monthly Archives: April 2011
Bertrand Russell – to our descendants
The 3rd Earl Russell offers two bits of advice for future generations, one intellectual and one moral, both of which I find agreeable.
Authors@Google: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil Tyson discusses his book, “The Pluto Files,” at Google’s New York office.
Web Picks Sceptique for April 29, 2011
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A little science humor on YouTube, Geeking Out on Falling in Love…
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on Stu Barton’s blog…God, Karma, Punishment, & You…
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two entries on Martin S. Pribble: May 21st is the Rapture… & It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)…
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on Cosmic Log… Is creationism headed to Texas classes?..
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on The Science Bit… Towards a quantum theory of everything (including dirty dishes)…
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on Mad Art Lab… On The Frivolous Use Of Advanced Technology…
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on Dexterity Unlimited… Help! Help! I’m being repressed!..
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on Bad Astronomy… Calling Dr. Oz: defend alt-med on the Skeptic’s Guide…
Spencer Wells builds a family tree for humanity
Spencer Wells discusses his Genographic Project, to show how we are all connected in the most meaningful ways by the shared DNA we all inherit from our ancient African ancestors.
A Wee Bit-O Pedantry on My Part: What do I call a ‘Functioning Democracy?’
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One of my friends recently left a comment on an earlier post in my argumentation series, and raised a few points, one of which I thought I would address here in more depth.
Now, I’m not certain, but I suspect that regarding his use of the term “republic” and my use of “democracy,” we could very well be using two different terms to say the same thing, based upon our own personal usages and definitions of them.
It even seems to me as though members of our country’s own Senate cannot agree amongst themselves as to what these words actually mean.
He’s generally more prone to vote Republican, myself, Democratic. I suspect that we are bandying semantics in favor of our chosen political ideologies.
I suspect this, because for my part, without resorting to the possibly confusing use of the term “democratic republic” — a term often used by nations that are neither democratic nor republics, and thus laden with more baggage than I’d like — and since terms like “democratic liberalism” are also laden (Language is almost never neutral, after all…), I’ll lay out below in more detail the specific meaning I intend to convey when I use the phrase “functioning democracy.”
When I say, “functioning democracy,” I’m not talking about a literal participatory democracy. Of course 300 million people aren’t going to be able to meaningfully discuss a subject, at least not coherently, or in a reasonable amount of time. We’re not talking a nationwide telepathic Overmind here…
I’m talking about any society with a system of governance in which a citizen electorate votes their chosen representatives into public office to enact legislation, set and administer policy, and to interpret and enforce the law, to be put to the duty of governing society (preferably) fairly, and with some measure of accountability, with the “functioning” part also denoting a relatively free, open, pluralistic society in which the citizen electorate has available the willingness, the means, and the opportunity to effectively reason through their positions on most voting issues.
In short, to think with some clarity through the essentials on important matters (such as which candidate or referendum to vote for, based on their record or the nature of the matter voted on), with themselves and each other as the audiences for their arguments, to arrive at the best decision given the information at hand.
But maybe that’s a bit too much to hope for…
In any healthy functional democracy, citizens would be more willing to talk to each other constructively, a situation I see as somewhat lacking in our current crop of strongly opinionated, one could even say extremely opinionated, citizenry and elected representatives in both of the major parties.
Note that a dysfunctional democracy has few traits found in the above definition, and one with none of them, it goes without too much saying, is by that definition a democracy only in name.
Hopefully, this sheds some light on my system of meaning regarding certain terms.
I do try to be reasonable, after all: I have standards I try to abide by, and shoddy, knee-jerk skepticism on my part is not something I care for, even on social issue topics like politics, which I consider to be a compound word with distinctly unfavorable connotations — Poly, meaning many, and ticks, meaning a subset of blood-sucking arachnids. I did say that language is often loaded…
Heads Up on the Call for April 27, 2011
Well, I just updated the theme for at least the next six months, since I was beginning to have formatting issues with the last one. This is one I’ve used before though, and it fits my current esthetics much better, so I needn’t update it again until at least this November, maybe more.
Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster — from scratch
Why it takes an entire civilization to build something as simple as a toaster, as Thwaites discovered the hard way…
Personal Experience & Self-Deception
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A few months back, I got a comment from a visitor to this site on one of my older posts on SF psionic abilities, and thought I’d have a little fun replying to it here in more detail now that I’ve finally come up with a suitable response that doesn’t involve undue rudeness and snarkitude.
Here is the comment in its entirety:
As a healthy skeptic, why don’t you try it out yourself? Google psi beginner exercises or go to psipog.net and do it there. See if maybe you can do some of the things described. If you can, great, you’ve just proven (to yourself) that it is real. If you can’t, well then it reinforces your viewpoint. It’s a win-win situation all around.
This is, with all due respect to the commenter, a good example of the pragmatic fallacy, which basically amounts to, “If (fill in the blank) works for you, then it must be true.”
But this argument puts too much unwarranted trust in personal experience, as useful as it normally is, as being more reliable as a way of knowing than it often is.
Though we get most of the content for our thinking about reality from both direct (from our personal sense data) and secondhand experience (reading and hearing about things from others), as someone with the occasional tendency for self-deception, it’s ironic that my own firsthand experience has itself shown me how unreliable it is in some circumstances.
We can and often do misinterpret our experiences under surprisingly common conditions, causing us to think or believe we are perceiving and experiencing, often in vivid detail, something that we in fact are not, not as it may seem to us. Optical and auditory illusions, including various forms of pareidolia are obvious examples.
And, we may even have experiences of things that do not involve any external stimuli at all.
We humans have a pronounced tendency to hallucinate more frequently than most of us feel comfortable admitting we do.
This last can easily occur under conditions of great stress, fatigue from sleep deprivation, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dreams during sleep paralysis, and even various combinations of our expectations, heightened emotional states, and preexisting beliefs.
To some, seeing is believing, but more accurately, believing is seeing, even when what is seen is not really there.
Our subjective experience can be especially misleading when it involves inferring phenomena, such as those of complex causation by those factors not immediately apparent to us, nor directly apprehended by the physical senses, as is the case with alleged psi-abilities, because of our propensity to see causal patterns in events, oftentimes patterns that do not truly exist, this false pattern discernment involving a number of logical fallacies and cognitive errors that come into play.
So, no…I’d like to, but it’s not a good idea with me.
My propensity to occasionally hoodwink myself in coming to conclusions from untrained, uncontrolled, personal observation under questionable circumstances and of equally questionable sense data, coupled with my hobby of skepticism, and my own consistent experience with how the world appears to work, informs me that just ‘trying something to see if it works for me,’ like claims of psi-abilities, is more than likely to cause me to fool myself.
And that’s something I can do well enough without if it can be helped, thank you much.
How to Argue: Argumentation’s Basic Assumptions
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We persuade others through our arguments, preferably to get them to accept the statements and claims we make as probably true of their own free choice, as justified to a degree of probability on the basis of the reasons we give rather than prove them with certainty. Argumentation contributes to healthy deliberation and debate, to let those so arguing find common ground, and to facilitate a willingness to compromise.
People argue daily, though seldom with skill, and in my view, argumentation as a well-honed tool of a functional democracy is needed more than ever with the increasing decay of social discourse, political polarization and interpersonal conflicts that ever more are seen as irreconcilable.
In this post, I’ll describe the basic assumptions and basic conditions that go into any attempt at constructive argument, and before I do, I’ll note here, as in the previous post of this series, that good argument is intellectual in nature, not forceful or deceptive, and is an ethical means of influencing others, limiting their freedom of choice without imposing on their freedom of will, not appealing to the dictates of an authority nor by playing on their prejudices or whims.
First, argument is carried out under conditions of uncertainty: We generally don’t argue about things we think certain, though that doesn’t prevent us from pontificating on them.
We argue about things because we think it important enough to convince others of them, and things may well turn out to be otherwise, hardly self-evident in nature. After all, if things were self-evident, they would be so to all, and there would be no need to convince others of them.
These differences may be implicit and apparent to an analyst, concealed in the context of an argument, or explicit, obvious to an audience. Bear in mind that even the concept of certainty can depend on the audience addressed and the assumptions they bring to the table as to what constitutes certainty.
Second, people argue about things that matter to them, attempting to resolve what they think are conflicting positions that cannot simply be settled by any non-argumentative means, as by appealing to common knowledge, or widely-shared empirical methods, but that above all, things they consider to be non-trivial, matters important enough to need resolution.
After all, one does not argue about things unimportant, unless merely being contrarian.
Third, we make choices in arguments, choices in what arguments to select, and how to arrange and present them, based upon the audience we are addressing, for good argumentation, effective reasoning, must take the tendencies of the intended audience into account.
This is not to pander to their biases, or to say that one belief is just as good as any other, merely that in being ethical, we must consider what is likely to persuade a given audience as if they were exercising their critical judgment on the merits of the arguments we give, and the soundness of the justifications we offer for our claims.
Note that the audience is the final arbiter of whether an argument is strong or weak, justified or not, assenting to it if it is strong or justified, rejecting it if not.
Fourth, argument entails a cooperative effort between arguer and audience, despite the contentiousness often associated with most everyday argument.
We must abandon the negative stereotype of argument being mere bickering, for skilled arguers seek first to find common ground which is itself the bedrock upon which they can meaningfully discuss their disagreement.
Arguers must share a common system of language, assumptions, and meanings, without which they merely talk past each other like two people speaking separate tongues unshared.
Fifth, and finally, argument implies risk. This is the risk of losing the argument, the risk of being shown wrong, the risk of having to alter one’s views and position, and in either case possibly damaging one’s self-esteem or losing face.
But the cooperative aspect of argument means that in willingly accepting these risks, each arguer is respecting the rights and personhood of the other, and in so doing, claiming that same privilege of respect from the other for him or herself.
This should be a good rundown of the basic premises and conditions behind all skilled argumentation.
These are good circumstantial ideals, situational benchmarks, and are the optimal conditions under which can be made any serious attempt to argue constructively, for the purpose of reaching the best possible conclusions given the means at hand, increasing the rigor of an exchange, and improving our confidence in the results, rather than merely quibbling, haranguing, or abusively bludgeoning someone with words. Fnord.
[Last Update: 2011/04/25, Text Added, Grammatical Corrections]
Richard Dawkins – The universe is queerer than we CAN suppose [Reposted]
Dick Dawkins discusses why the findings of science so often run counter to human intuition, and why this is to be expected given the limits of our ability to conceive things.
