31–40 of 107 posts
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…
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…
"The mainstream media misled me about Iraq, therefore I'm going to get my information from Facebook articles posted by Russian intelligence!"
"There was once a batch of contaminated vaccines, so now I'm going to risk the lives of my and other children by not vaccinating them"
"The banks were unfairly bailed out, so I'm going to keep my money in Quadriga"
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…
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…
I don't think it's useful or wise to just throw our hands in the air and claim we should no longer give these institutions any respect or credence. Humanity has made real, amazing gains in knowledge, understanding, and culture, and these imperfect institutions have played an important role. It is easy to forget that sometimes.
I disagree that it's a waste of effort. It may be considered a waste of effort from the experts perspective, but from everyone else perspective, it is a guard against experts keeping the truth for themselves.
Experts together are a "black box" to non-experts. If we let them continue refining their ideas, they might forget to think about the common good. Even if they are good intended, at some point the knowledge has to flow between people, but experts often use their own domain language to communicate, and no one but them can argue anymore about their ideas.
What people defending X are asking to the experts is that the latters should make their finding understandable by everyone, or some people will be exploited. If a piece of knowledge is true, but not useful to people problems, it doesn't matter to them.
To me, people defending X are asking experts how does Y (or even X) is relevant to their lives, and it actually show that neither X or Y matter to them.
From there, experts have to admit their are not HELPING people anymore, because they don't solve real world problems, in humanitarian term.
Why would you care about the shape of the earth when you are dying because you have no water or food to live ? That's the life of some people on Earth. Why aren't experts thinking about giving them food and water rather than arguing that they are wrong about the shape of the earth ?
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…
Even if your claims are true m, which is definitly debatable, I’d argue that the lies of a populist and the peer review crisis in particular fields are part of the same problem (lies pay off).
These problems are not inherently problems you would get rid of if we stopped giving people a formal education.
On the other hand a lot of problem humanity has at the moment are impossible to solve without rational scientific solutions that also kerp side effects in mind.
There is definitly a need for many fields of science to rethink their checking processes and their incentives and they should start with it now.
But we have more pressing issues: politicians that paint up a idealized nostalghic dreamland of yesterday as a fiction people can kling to. At the same time they drain more money out of the people and blame it on something that interferes with that nostalghia (migrants, environmentalists, leftists, ...)
We know from any focal extreme movement that for a radicalized base it doesn’t matter if there is proof.
My respect for academia is magnitudes higher than for any poplist. The problem is not academia the problem is a whole society which wants easy answers to be true — because they want to integrate the whole world into their world view and if the thing you say is complex and nuanced it is hard to integrate.
Academia sees this every day: some extremely shortened claim gets pushed through the world by journalists and gets a huge echo. Their nuanced points get butcherd if they even ever get any publicity. That means as a scientist if you want public attention you have to give good simple answers and ask good simple questions. If you manage to stay true and relevant — good. If not, who cares, journalists will print everything if it is simple and spectacular.
This means to solve the problem with science we need more formal education and not less. This doesn’t mean that everybody without a formal education can’t understand complex ideas or everybody with a formal education honours them. But raising the level in a communication is always good.
A dumb belief oriented population doesn’t care about your argument, it cares about how you sell it. A clever evil populist is the same.
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…
The alternative is often worse. "The mainstream media misled me about Iraq, therefore I'm going to get my information from Facebook articles posted by Russian intelligence!" "There was once a batch of contaminated vaccines, so now I'm going to risk the lives of my and other children by not vaccinating them" "The banks were unfairly bailed out, so I'm going to keep my money in Quadriga"
There's the middle ground of simply not believing anything coming from either the mass media or the independent media.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The alternative is often worse. "The mainstream media misled me about Iraq, therefore I'm going to get my information from Facebook articles posted by Russian intelligence!" "There was once a batch of contaminated vaccines, so now I'm going to risk the lives of my and other children by not vaccinating them" "The banks were unfairly bailed out, so I'm going to keep my money in Quadriga"
>The mainstream media misled me about Iraq, therefore I'm going to get my information from Facebook articles posted by Russian intelligence! There's the middle ground of simply not believing anything coming from either the mass media or the independent media.