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Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

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Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#101

Post by bigbadfeline »

palmotea wrote: post #79
akramachamarei wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values. I think it's also worth dilating on this notion of "unrestrained capitalism". Capitalism is after all a product of restraints, namely the enforcement of property, contracts, and the va…

> Can you explain what it means for capitalism to "serve money"? That sounds exactly backwards to me; money serves capitalism, that is, it is the breath expelled when people speak the language of prices to understand each others' values. Capitalism doesn't work to satisfy the wants and needs of the people in a society, generally. It works to satisfy the wants and needs of the people who have money, in proportion to t…

> A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs,

An apologist here. "Capitalism" is a legion - a near continuum of systems - some of them can meet people's needs quite well.

> but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.

It's not an intrinsic part of its popular tradition but there's noting preventing us from adding it to the program in some sensible manner. The lack of guarantees isn't mandatory either, such can be added within the framework of capitalism.

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#102

Post by bigbadfeline »

nradov wrote: post #77
rhcom2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt like Congressional debates should begin with each side trying to explain the opposing position, with debate only beginning when each side agrees with the opposition's framing of their PoV. I also recognize how naive and idealistic this sounds.

The public Congressional debates are performative, intended to curry favor with key voters, campaign donors, and media personalities. The substantive debates happen in private using completely different rhetoric. This is mostly fine in that it allows for policy decisions to move forward with compromises. The problem is that some members of Congress are unable to shut off their deranged public personas even in private…

> The public Congressional debates are performative, > The substantive debates happen in private using completely different rhetoric.

If we can't hear the substantive debates, voting becomes meaningless and performative too. Are we supposed to believe that we vote better when we don't know the truth?

> This is mostly fine

Is it?

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#103

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Zigurd wrote: post #19
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t silent, invisible, intangible also apply to software? You can’t really tell a particular piece of hardware is running software by a direct physical measurement. You can only infer that indirectly.

Having debugged code with a logic analyzer, I'm pretty sure the voltage on those CPU pins is real, and really the consequence of the code I think I'm running.

This is like arguing I can hear humans talk, therefore the souls must exist.

You can wire voltage to CPU pins without software.

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#104

Post by bigbadfeline »

mothballed wrote: post #35
kitd wrote: post #29

- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. - See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will. This is good advice IME. Get well acquainted (like REALLY well acquainted) with opposing viewpoints, such that you could argue them better th…

I've also found simply testing a hypothesis without reasoning about it can quite often outdo your own reasoning and the reasoning of everyone else. Sometimes you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong, and only an empirical test can separate the wheat from the chaff. Although maybe this method only works for me because I am a moron, and many people can out reason me, so the only way I can discover anything is to do so…

> Sometimes you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong,

Happens all the time.

> and only an empirical test can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Not for the vast majority of political issues and indeed for most of Social Sciences. In these cases, empirical evidence is just an accessory, it's still evidence but it's never conclusive, you need reasoning to sort out the complexity.

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#105

Post by Fricken »

eafer wrote: post #41

I wonder how well Sagan's own "baloney" holds up against his kit. Historians despise the guy for all the stuff he made up about the library of Alexandria, Hypatia, Eratosthenes, etc... People still repeat a lot of that to this day.

"As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.”

Mike Judge's satire was lost on Sagan. Carl took his knee-jerk reaction and ran with it.

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#106

Post by qsera »

andsoitis wrote: post #13
qsera wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dragon in the room is the hidden qualifier for "undetectable by any means" is "that is currently known to humanity". That makes Carl Sagan's claim some what Balonish. Not sure why the smart Sagan fell for it.

> The dragon in the room is the hidden qualifier for "undetectable by any means" is "that is currently known to humanity". > That makes Carl Sagan's claim some what Balonish. Not sure why the smart Sagan fell for it. The point is that if someone does claim that the dragon exists, they better be able to explain how they know it exists.

Subjective experience.

Imagine you are a pigeon with navigation magnets in your head. And imagine asked by your friends without it "How do you know it is the right direction?", at some point you have to say "I just know it dammit!"

And imagine pigeons haven't yet figured out magnetism. So it ain't possible to explain it by any means known to them.

Carl sagan's logic breaks down at this point.

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#107

Post by qsera »

technothrasher wrote: post #30
qsera wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dragon in the room is the hidden qualifier for "undetectable by any means" is "that is currently known to humanity". That makes Carl Sagan's claim some what Balonish. Not sure why the smart Sagan fell for it.

> That makes Carl Sagan's claim some what Balonish. His claim wasn't that invisible dragons don't exist. His claim was that you cannot tell the difference between a dragon that doesn't exist and one that is, to use your qualifier, currently undetectable by any means known to humanity. If you cannot tell the difference between existence and non-existence of something, any claims to its existence are vacuous.

Can you really prove that the last second really existed? I don't think so. It is like taking a frame from a movie reel and from that alone trying to prove that the previous frame really exist. You can't, there is always a possibility that it is the very first frame, or is just a photograph.

But does that stop you from claiming its existence (last second's)?

So as I said in another thread. This logic is completely ignoring the sea of subjective experience that we live in.

It is funny, Because these types of arguments arise because there is no real understanding of the nature of reality. And people have different assumptions on how deep the rabbit hole goes. So every one have a different definition of "existence" when they argue about it. I think Carl Sagan also had one, and it is a shame that he didn't make it explicit when he was talking about it.

It appears that he considered something to "exist" if it can interact with this world in a way that human beings can observe.

That is somewhat a narrow point of view. But it suits scientists because it adds to their authority, instead of taking away from it by implying that there could be a realm of existence that they can't reach or reason about. They say "Oh it is useless to muse about that, so don't do it. Limit your imagination to what we say!".

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#108

Post by godelski »

scns wrote: post #20

The article links to an article about Sagans' prediction of the decline of america. Strangely fitting nowadays. > I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one represen…

Asimov and Feynman also spoke about similar things (along with many others)

In 1980, Asimov famously wrote The Cult of Ignorance[0], criticizing the rise of anti-intellectualism. Where there was a strong political push of "don't trust the experts". He criticizes claims that sound familiar today "America has a right to know" on the basis of this being meaningless without literacy. He clarifies that literacy is far more than being able to actually read words on a page, but to interpret and process them. Asimov isn't being pretentious, his definition is consistent with how we determine reading levels[2] and his critique would be that most people do not have that of a Freshman in High School. Hell, it is even in his fiction! It is even in The Foundation and is literally the premise of Profession[3].

Feynman is a bit more scattered, but I think his discussion about the education system in Brazil (in the 50's) says a lot[4]. He talks a lot about how the students could recite the equations, ace all the tests, and achieve everything that looks to be, at least on paper, perfectly academic; but how the students did not really have the deeper understanding of the equations. It is a discussion about literacy. Were he around today I'm sure he'd use the phrase "metric hacking". Anyone that knows Feynman may also be thinking about his Cargo Cult Science[5](a commencement speech at Cal Tech (1974)). This is where his famous quote

  The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.
comes from. But there is a lot of important context surrounding this and it is worth knowing about.

[0] Note: 1980 was an election year, and one with a sweeping victory...[1] https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnsbr/papers/Asimov-Newsweek-Janua...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia...

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/achieve.aspx

[3] Profession has been in discussion lately, directly relating to this topic. If you haven't read it I'll say it is one of my favorite's of his. Not as good as Foundation but up there with Nightfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

[4] https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...

[5] https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html

[Edit]

I wanted to add Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. Sometimes I feel it should be required reading before arguing on the internet. I find myself coming back to read it at least once a year

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#109

Post by renato_shira »

kitd wrote: post #29

- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. - See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will. This is good advice IME. Get well acquainted (like REALLY well acquainted) with opposing viewpoints, such that you could argue them better th…

[flagged]

Re: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)

#110

Post by rhcom2 »

nradov wrote: post #77
rhcom2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt like Congressional debates should begin with each side trying to explain the opposing position, with debate only beginning when each side agrees with the opposition's framing of their PoV. I also recognize how naive and idealistic this sounds.

The public Congressional debates are performative, intended to curry favor with key voters, campaign donors, and media personalities. The substantive debates happen in private using completely different rhetoric. This is mostly fine in that it allows for policy decisions to move forward with compromises. The problem is that some members of Congress are unable to shut off their deranged public personas even in private…

While I accept that this is how it is done in practice, I think the unintended consequence is it raises the partisan temperature and further ruins the already abysmal trust of Congress.
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