Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

quillette.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 163 posts

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#11

Post by tempestn »

s_m_t wrote: post #8
nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

If your desired outcome is to merely discredit your opponent and win the argument, maybe. If you are in pursuit of truth, no.

Once it has become clear that someone is a "Lord Voldemort", it seems to me there's little value in continued careful consideration of their positions. At that point, if it's possible, why not discredit them and allow the rest of the world to start ignoring them and spend time on more promising endeavours?

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#12

Post by sharkjacobs »

nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

Arguing against the speaker instead of the argument itself is bullshit too.

Having a vested interest doesn't automatically discredit the things one says for their cause.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#13

Post by lauritz »

nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

Of course, that would be the ideal way of combating this. If you're talking about financial stakes in certain findings however, these might be hard to prove (and stalking colleagues to prove they're playing dirty is not and shouldn't be in the spirit of the academic debate).

I think the procedure itself entails a conflict of interest: If you dispute certain findings by certain researchers (and you have a clear agenda), how can you be trusted to write an objective year-end summary of relevant findings in the field? I think these kinds of articles are the root of the problem. Of course, it would be far from easy to find an objective voice interested in writing these without having an 'ulterior opinion'. Still, I think editors should at least bar researchers from summarizing what they have a stake in (or summarizing a debate that they have taken part in during the last couple of months).

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#14

Post by notahacker »

nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

Frankly, in some cases that's likely to backfire. Point out that a global warming sceptic accepts huge amounts of money from an oil-company linked foundation and they'll take great pleasure in pointing out which green advocacy groups fund an awful lot of research on the other side of the debate. If the net effect is less trust in any climate science, they win.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#15

Post by seren »

spacehome wrote: post #10
nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.

I am not saying this is the case for YEC, but usually when you hold and defend some fringe belief, you often have books, videos on Youtube, dvds to sell, conferences to give, in some case museums [1]. (See conspiracy theorist Alex John films [2])

So yes, for some people there are some financial interest. But I would say this is not the main factor. If you have defended an idea for a long time, maybe you have sacrificed some part of your life like family or friend to your passion, and at some point it becomes so tied to your identity, that it must be impossible to realize how wrong your were.

The latter is true for any kind of belief, religious, political or even scientific.

[1] http://creationmuseum.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29#Fi...

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#16

Post by jacalata »

nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

Absolutely, but then a dozen people who don't even know what you're arguing will pop out of the woodwork to say "ad hominem fallacy!"

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#17

Post by vog »

trav4225 wrote: post #2

"There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science." Amen to that. :) I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".

> I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".

While this is certainly an issue, more often than not I see "critics" claiming broad statements without even trying to verify/falsify their claims scientifically.

And if I have to choose between two sides, where one tries hard to fulfill scientific requirements while the other doesn't care, I'm certainly on the scientific side - even though our current academic landscape is far from perfect.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#18

Post by pjc50 »

tempestn wrote: post #11
s_m_t wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your desired outcome is to merely discredit your opponent and win the argument, maybe. If you are in pursuit of truth, no.

Once it has become clear that someone is a "Lord Voldemort", it seems to me there's little value in continued careful consideration of their positions. At that point, if it's possible, why not discredit them and allow the rest of the world to start ignoring them and spend time on more promising endeavours?

"Discrediting" only works on some people. If it was universally applicable then Donald Trump wouldn't be the leading Republican candidate.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#19

Post by brownbat »

The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications.

If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use those tools to test their own ideas, where they will have a strong emotional preference for how the study will come out.

If universities hired grad students based on their replication work, not on their eye-popping original research, we'd have better science and better scientists.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#20

Post by Eupolemos »

Well, it is still a variation "On Bullshit" (Harry Frankfurt's excellent article). If someone in science is more interested in a position than whether the presented arguments individually holds up or not, that person is unscientifically invested and we should have some kind of mental allergic reaction to that.

The "Publish or Perish" has made Gish Gallops much harder to catch and almost impossible to punish.

Post reply on HN