How to Argue
This is a great short podcast on how to argue that talks about a lot of the same points I made earlier. It goes into additional detail about how to prepare and conduct arguments so that everyone benefits.
Argument > Debate
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Debating
Like most sports, I’m not much good at debate. I say it’s a sport because it’s a competition with a winner and loser where the participants’ skills have the largest bearing on the outcome.
I think that most people casually lump debate and argument into the same mental bin; if not as exact synonyms, then as different degrees of the same thing. But they are really quite different! A debate has almost nothing to do with logic or the correctness of stated facts, but these things are crucial to the outcome of an argument.
Dishonesty in science: we still win
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As Orac states:
Science as it is practiced today relies on a fair measure of trust. Part of the reason is that the culture of science values openness, hypothesis testing, and vigorous debate. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest and, although we all generally try to present our data in the most favorable light possible, we do not blatantly lie about it or make it up.
Science is a massively collaborative endeavor, with each researcher relying on the existing mesh of literature as a starting point for their own contributions. When everyone is being honest, a good methodology and peer review will prevent most obvious problems of bias and rigor. In other words, the facts are pretty well understood, and everyone has a pretty good idea about how robust various theories are.
This is important, because it means when research is invalidated (or some theory is shown to be inferior to a new one), it tends to be an incremental change, not a destructive one. Anything we learn will update, clarify, and add to our existing understanding. Any new theories we employ will work at least as well as the old ones they unseat. Relativity is more correct than Newton’s laws, but that doesn’t mean apples must be re-checked to verify that they do in fact fall toward the earth instead of levitating or falling toward the moon.
When a researcher repeatedly confabulates data in a case of massive fraud, it knocks everyone for a loop.
The emotions of energy
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Hybrid fusion-fission energy generation a possibility via Futurismic.
Isn’t it interesting how this story swept through the internet? Everyone, of course, wants to get rid of nuclear waste right? Awful, evil stuff. Bury it in the earth if you have to. Making it disappear in a magic theoretical reactor is even better, what great news! But what struck me is how no one seems to realize that this is by no means the first idea for a reactor to deal with nuclear “waste”, and that the stuff isn’t really waste at all once you understand a little about it.
Read on, and discover a whole nuclear world that you’ve probably never even heard of.
Closed-minded, all
Photo credit: garryknight from flickr
We suck at thinking, all of us– humanity. It’s poetically tragic given that we haven’t met any life forms who can do a better job of it yet.
We skeptics enjoy thinking of ourselves as rational and reasonable, smugly superior among a vast sea of credulous, closed-minded believers. But we’re not nearly as clever as we think, nor are we very different from the true believers.
A critical baseline
There are so many fallacies and biases that I can’t keep them straight, even though critical thinking is something I value highly. I’m not much good at debate, and although I’d love nothing more than to engender critical thinking and skepticism in others, I don’t have any good ideas on how to do that, except maybe hitting them with a WWIT? question.
But what about aspiring skeptics– people who already have the spark of reason but haven’t yet learned to see the fnords on their own?
What would it take?
I saw this somewhere on the Internet a few days ago and have since forgotten the source. But it’s so elegant that I want to spread the meme. Plus, a post on Friendly Atheist reminded me again.
“What would it take to convince you that you’re wrong?”
That one sentence is all you need to figure out whether someone is capable of being reasonable about any particular subject. In fact, making people admit to themselves that they’re not willing to entertain any possibility of being wrong, could be enough to break the spell.
Willing to be wrong
From Skepchick:
I love that most everyone here is willing to be wrong about everything.
Through disagreements, we are able to see our views reflected back at us and change them if necessary. Or, even if they don’t change, we may gain insight into just why we hold a particular view.
That’s how I try to approach my whole life. It’s just as rewarding to “lose” an argument as to be right in the first place. Either way, it means I come out of the discussion feeling smart.
Dangerous faith-based mechanics
There are many confirmation biases and magical thinking tendencies that fuel testimonial and anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of woo, from acupuncture and chiropractic all the way up to the giant woo umbrella of “complementary and alternative” medicine (CAM) or “integrative” medicine.
But that’s not why these things are a threat to actual real scientific medicine (ARSM?). The real danger is when CAM seems to get real results.
Turns out God doesn’t want dead animals
Jesus died for our sins. Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. As much as that was repeated to me growing up, and as innocently as I believed it, I never really comprehended how it could work. Why should killing God produce any positive effect at all? Wouldn’t that be rather a black mark? Anyway why does someone dying impact someone else’s sin?