11/27 Open Thread: Bullshit Season is Upon US, Arm and Defend Yourselves

I recently stumbled across an article Titled The Baloney Detection Kit by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, which appears to be a website, blog, newsletter or some sort. It holds out the promise of explicating how Carl Sagan’s rules for critical thinking offer cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood. I never saw his show, for reasons, largely the fact that it was on TV and I have never been much into TV. Be that as it may, he seems justifiably well respected for his output, insights and critical thinking. The above article is based on a chapter in his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark which was titled, oddly enough “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,”. The article in question cannot be adequately abstracted withing the confines of fair use, so you'll have to read it yourself.

Right then, here is the link: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan-s-rules-for-bullshit-busting-and-critical-thinking . It seems that Sagan had 9 "Tools" and then warned of 20 of the most common fallacies in logic and rhetoric. So, go read it. When you do, please pay special attention to rule number 9, number 9, number 9 ... .  

Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

This particularly sagacious piece of advice is held in high esteem by epistemologists and empiricists and can be has been and will no doubt continue to be quite a workhorse. Some have gone so far as to declare that statements which fail this test are nonsense. That term, as used in this instance is a term of art not a mere pejorative, meaning that such statements are senseless, or devoid of cognitive content, and cannot enter into meaningful discourse in any way whatsoever. If you simply get into the habit of viewing every statement by every politician, pundit, media source, talking head and expert through this lens, you will have gained much. That applies especially to stuff that is known with certainty because of evidence that may not be disclosed because of national security concerns. When anybody trucks out any such statement or argument, simply chant the mantra "riiiight, WMD galore" and ignore it and all that allegedly follows from it. The classic formulation of this principle requires that the statement must intrinsically, inherently or logically impossibly to falsify. For almost all practical purposes, however, the formulation in the article is sufficient.

All 20 of his selected fallacies bear watching out for. All of them are all too frequent, but a pair that I find particularly frequent are:  

non sequitur — Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;

and  

post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or: Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons)

Non sequiturs, upon consideration, are invariably irrelevancies, and post hoc ergo propter hoc would have us believe that the sun rises because of any pre-dawn phenomena of your choosing. One that I find more insidious and concerning, however is  

excluded middle, or false dichotomy — considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”) (emphasis added)

This is in part tricky because there is a "law of the excluded middle" in logic, and that is why I added the emphasis in the quote above. In a case where there is not a continuum of possibilities, then it is valid to assert that a thing is or is not, is true or false. Because we are inherently familiar with such situations (the kitchen light is either on or off) we can fail to detect when somebody improperly assigns binary truth values to a non-binary situation. I find myself constantly mentally yelling "SOME dammit, some" and some pronouncement or assertion because it is a pet peeve of mine; because so often the set up for this fallacy is an assertion of the form "xis/are y" which should be of the form "SOME x is/ re y. SOME is the most misused word in the English language, misused by its absence, by not being used where appropriate. (Next time you listed to a political speech try counting the number of omissions.) The classic square of opposition in logic contains 4 "forms"; all S is P, No S is P, Some S is P, and some S is not P. Two out of four, or 50% of the assertion types are indefinite, beginning with some. (End of mini-rant.)

So read the article and then go forth and pay attention, for there is a horrendous tsunami of illogic, semantic trickery, and other psychotropic disinformation, illusion, hyperbole and other sophistry bearing down upon us. In fact, there are many little precursor eddies and backwashes already swirling about us.

And Now, the News:  

And some old news:  

Lest we get, you know, conned, or sumptin  

Aaaand, for a different take on both Bullshit and Clarity, a brief but valuable read and reminder https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/11/15/so-about-that-moment-of-clarity-you-experienced-that-one-time/. Remember, epiphanies are as real as anything else, perhaps, I think.

Title Image is Bullshit  

It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours .

Cross posted from caucus99percent.com