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Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

techiavellian.com

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Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#21

Post by raverbashing »

b0rsuk wrote: post #17

I think the worst kind of intellectual DOS attacks are those with high compression rate. Those that sound vaguely plausible at first ("Just do away with ALL the taxes, people will sort it out and enterprise will skyrocket") but require many more words to refute . When the politician in question is also a fast talker, and has a master's degree in Philosophy, he can appear to be smarter because no one can keep up with…

And even worse, "traditional media" is going downhill and promoting those same cheap arguments

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#22

Post by leereeves »

b0rsuk wrote: post #17

I think the worst kind of intellectual DOS attacks are those with high compression rate. Those that sound vaguely plausible at first ("Just do away with ALL the taxes, people will sort it out and enterprise will skyrocket") but require many more words to refute . When the politician in question is also a fast talker, and has a master's degree in Philosophy, he can appear to be smarter because no one can keep up with…

Why should people respect formal education?

Even in many "scientific" fields, standards are so low that most published research is wrong. The non-scientific parts of academia are dominated by in-group politics and shallow status seeking. And in much of academia, evidence is less important than ideology: research and researchers are banned not because they are wrong, but because their ideas are unacceptable.

If academia wants respect, it should work on improving itself instead of trying to find a "strategy that works against populism".

Edit: Citations

> Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

> Scientists Replicated 100 Psychology Studies, and Fewer Than Half Got the Same Results

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-rep...

> 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility

https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on...

> Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.

> Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents).

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessi...

> In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate.

http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf

> When Inbar and Lammers contacted [social psychologists] ... they found that ... the climate in social psychology was harsh for conservative thinkers. ... Participants were asked about the environment in the field: How hostile did they think it was? Did they feel free to express their political ideas? As the degree of conservatism rose, so, too, did the hostility that people experienced. Conservatives really were significantly more afraid to speak out.

> Over all, close to nineteen per cent [of social psychologists surveyed] reported that they would have a bias against a conservative-leaning paper...and thirty-seven and a half per cent, against choosing a conservative as a future colleague.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-psy...

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#23

Post by zorked »

barry-cotter wrote: post #13
jdietrich wrote: post #10

See also the Gish Gallop - a debating technique named after the creationist Duane Gish, which involves making as many specious arguments as quickly as possible. An unprepared opponent is likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of points they need to refute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop A variant of this technique is now standard in competitive debating, creating a truly absurd spectacle; most teams…

> A variant of this technique is now standard in competitive debating Not outside the US it isn’t. Policy debating is a special US abomination, with unfortunate extensions into the cultural colony to the north. Everywhere else does parliamentary debating.

It's more than just what the arguments are about. Anywhere else in the world someone making points so quickly as in the videos would sound desperate and instantly "lose" the debate. Nobody is expect to refute point by point a nonsensical diatribe.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#24

Post by leereeves »

zorked wrote: post #23
barry-cotter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A variant of this technique is now standard in competitive debating Not outside the US it isn’t. Policy debating is a special US abomination, with unfortunate extensions into the cultural colony to the north. Everywhere else does parliamentary debating.

It's more than just what the arguments are about. Anywhere else in the world someone making points so quickly as in the videos would sound desperate and instantly "lose" the debate. Nobody is expect to refute point by point a nonsensical diatribe.

Even in the US everyone but the participants and judges thinks these nonsensical diatribes are absurd. No one is convinced, the players are just scoring points in some arbitrary game that happens to be called "debate".

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#25

Post by bcaa7f3a8bbc »

Related: I don't recall it was djb or Bruce Schneier, but I remember, after Snowden's revelations, one of them criticized the NSA/NIST was using a "denial-of-service" technique to push flawed standards. That is, it's relatively easy to draft a protocol but hard to analyze them. You would publish a dozen of ciphers and protocols at once, then the cryptographers would busy working on some of them. Eventually, flawed standards went through without being noticed...

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#26

Post by 0db532a0 »

taneq wrote: post #11
m3nu wrote: post #2

So true and a great way to think of it. I moved to weighing the benefits of proving someone wrong vs. ignoring and nodding. Will help to reduce the number of arguments you get into and make room for the important ones.

I realised a while ago that I was spending way too much time and energy getting into pointless online arguments about social justice issues. I now have a pretty low threshold of disagreement above which I'll immediately (and politely) disengage, and if it escalates at all from there, just block the person. I no longer care if someone is wrong on the internet, it's not my job to re-educate them, and the less energy I…

You might find this interesting: The Ego and its Own, by Max Stirner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#27

Post by luc4sdreyer »

leereeves wrote: post #22
b0rsuk wrote: post #17

I think the worst kind of intellectual DOS attacks are those with high compression rate. Those that sound vaguely plausible at first ("Just do away with ALL the taxes, people will sort it out and enterprise will skyrocket") but require many more words to refute . When the politician in question is also a fast talker, and has a master's degree in Philosophy, he can appear to be smarter because no one can keep up with…

Why should people respect formal education? Even in many "scientific" fields, standards are so low that most published research is wrong. The non-scientific parts of academia are dominated by in-group politics and shallow status seeking. And in much of academia, evidence is less important than ideology: research and researchers are banned not because they are wrong, but because their ideas are unacceptable. If academ…

You're making a lot of wild claims.

>Even in many "scientific" fields, standards are so low that most published research is wrong.

Citation needed.

>And in much of academia, evidence is less important than ideology

Citation needed.

>research and researchers are banned not because they are wrong, but because their ideas are unacceptable.

Citation needed. Maybe it has happened to a couple of people at a few screwed up universities, but you're implying this is common.

EDIT: I predict you're going to use the exact methods described in the article to "win" the argument.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#29

Post by [deleted] »

luc4sdreyer wrote: post #27
leereeves wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should people respect formal education? Even in many "scientific" fields, standards are so low that most published research is wrong. The non-scientific parts of academia are dominated by in-group politics and shallow status seeking. And in much of academia, evidence is less important than ideology: research and researchers are banned not because they are wrong, but because their ideas are unacceptable. If academ…

You're making a lot of wild claims. >Even in many "scientific" fields, standards are so low that most published research is wrong. Citation needed. >And in much of academia, evidence is less important than ideology Citation needed. >research and researchers are banned not because they are wrong, but because their ideas are unacceptable. Citation needed. Maybe it has happened to a couple of people at a few screwed up…

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