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Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

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Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#61

Post by leereeves »

ben_w wrote: post #57
leereeves wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be unwise to blindly trust these institutions, or to grant them respect or credence as a whole without considering the problems and biases of specific fields. And it should be remembered that the amazing gains in knowledge humanity has made have often been opposed by academia, as Max Planck observed: science advances one funeral at at time.

If you trust it blindly, it’s not science, it’s a cult of title and rank. Unfortunately, trusting it blindly is also necessary when you’re not active in the field. Even worse, nobody can spend enough time to be active in all fields. I don’t know how best to balance Mr (formerly Dr) Andrew Wakefield versus Dr Ignaz Semmelweis.

But blind trust is what this article is suggesting by comparing demands for evidence to "denial of service attacks":

> Quickly, the 80% can overwhelm the 20% with demands for explanations and evidence. ... Every minute spent refuting X takes away energy that could be spent refining Y.

Sorry, but providing explanations and evidence to the 80% is necessary. The fact that academia doesn't reward this behavior is a problem with academia, not with the people demanding explanations and evidence.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#62

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
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…

The best mental DOS attacks all center around the exact same thing: fear. Press the fear button and even generally well educated and intelligent people will start to act like complete morons.

This doesn't really explain anything, does it? Fear is such a universal emotion that it can be present in any are of life, and more importantly not going anywhere any time soon. It can also be easily adjusted to any topic, because every topic can be viewed from the two perspectives - if something is good, we can strive towards it or be fearful of it's lack, and vice versa. The more important the topic, the more chances of being fearful about it.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#63

Post by luc4sdreyer »

titanix2 wrote: post #42
luc4sdreyer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can do your own research about that by yourself if you have a real interest in the topic. Anyway, here is a book about this issue in sociology (written by two researchers of the field): Gérald Bronner et Étienne Géhin (2017), Le Danger sociologique , Paris, Puf, 252 p.

I have done some research, and it sounded like you're overstating or making false claims, so I'll called you on it. "Do your own research" is just another easy way to dismiss criticism. I can't prove that no researcher has ever been banned on ideological grounds. You made the claim that this is the norm, I don't think it is, so I simply asked for a reference.

Thanks for providing the above citations though.

I've indexed the statements I have a problem with, because you seemed to have missed the last and most egregious one.

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

This claim seems to be supported by evidence. I think it's important to add that while we should encourage higher standards and alternatives to p-values, replication is a critical part of the scientific process. Biases will inevitably creep into study design and analysis. This implies that even with extremely high standards, a significant portion of studies (hopefully not the majority) will still fail replication, because it was conducted by humans.

Psychology studies are notorious for this. I don't think they represent the majority though. I could point to particle physics that have a convention of five-sigma (99.99994% confidence). Let's not resort to cherry-picking.

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

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

I didn't see any citations backing these claims.

In your added citations you point to a correlation between conservatism and academia. Implying that the difference is because conservatives are forced out of academia is jumping the gun. I have an alternatives theory: people that think science is important don't want to associate themselves with group that are considered anti-scientific (public perception is key here).

There is no place for _any_ ideology in science anyway.

> 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

This is flawed, they did give participants the option to abstain from picking a side. "Moderate" is also a position.

Many of these references focus on social sciences. Do you that is representative of all the sciences?

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#64

Post by roenxi »

ben_w wrote: post #57
leereeves wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be unwise to blindly trust these institutions, or to grant them respect or credence as a whole without considering the problems and biases of specific fields. And it should be remembered that the amazing gains in knowledge humanity has made have often been opposed by academia, as Max Planck observed: science advances one funeral at at time.

If you trust it blindly, it’s not science, it’s a cult of title and rank. Unfortunately, trusting it blindly is also necessary when you’re not active in the field. Even worse, nobody can spend enough time to be active in all fields. I don’t know how best to balance Mr (formerly Dr) Andrew Wakefield versus Dr Ignaz Semmelweis.

> If you trust it blindly, it’s not science, it’s a cult of title and rank.

A true but slightly inflammatory first line for something that everyone does. There aren't enough hours in a 70 year lifetime to make every decision using critical thinking - everyone uses title, rank and social proof for shortcuts.

My experience is that there are many people who claim to be arguing from scientific evidence when they are in fact not - and I think it is because they don't realise that (a) being smart is no defense whatsoever against using cognitive shortcuts and (b) thinking non-critically is actually likely to be a better personal strategy for most decisions.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#65

Post by martincmartin »

The hyperpartisan politics in the U.S. has been fostered since long before the internet. On the right, "rage radio" has been big since the early 90s. After listening to conservative outrage, it's hard to then listen to the other side of an argument and think "they may have a point."

Similarly, left wing comedy-news shows make fun of the other side. When you see the other side as ripe for ridicule, its hard to then say, "but they may have a point."

Source: I've known many people on both sides, and it always saddens me that discussions don't boil down to "let's both look at the arguments from both sides." Instead, there's an emotional "the other side is nuts" response that blocks all attempts at even discussing things fairly.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#66

Post by zimablue »

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…

I agree that non-STEM fields are less credible, but the "X% of field X are conservatives" argument seems totally pointless to me. Your political leanings shouldn't matter, otherwise it's not truth-seeking. And most of these fields don't seem truth-seeking to me, but that's a consequence of them being harder to do test-and-iteration that's the core of finding out truth about stuff, and also they're not valued in society so they don't get the cream of the crop.

So political distribution is 1. Not that cause of the problem, 2. Probably not even a symptom, it's more to do with the fact that most science is state-funded and right wing ideology broadly seeks to diminish the state. The right are also anti-science in broader ways (religious, climate change etc etc). It's a trend across science, not just in bs subjects: http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-...

I just think whenever you're having this discussion, which is important, throwing political distributions in muddies the water and polarizes it for no upside.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#67

Post by pjc50 »

jpttsn wrote: post #54
pjc50 wrote: post #34

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"

That’s a false dilemma; as long as I’m not resigned to hopeless infotainment addiction, I don’t have to believe the “least bad” reporting about events that don’t concern me.

It may not matter what you believe, but it matters what the aggregate total of your fellow voters believe.

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#68

Post by lp2019 »

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…

Some of the misunderstandings I see in this comment -

1. Winning a debate has something to do with political success.

Not true. Connecting with people does. There are many ways (good and bad) to connect with people that have nothing to do with pandering to them. To get understand that deeper take a social psychology 101 course.

2. Centralized media produces better politicians/political debate. No it does not. Chomsky's classic "Manufacturing Constent" will give you a good model to think about the media. Or here's a modern iteration by Matt Taibbi - https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway They will also show that winning a debate is not the point of the story.

3. Modern Populism created via social media/news media programmed to chase likes+views, and politicians pandering to their fan clubs is unbeatable and can't be intellectually honest.

This is half true in the sense there is a modern dimension. Namely the Internet. Thanks to which Information(good and bad) is flowing at unprecedented and uncontrollable rates through the population. Everyone assumed this would be good thing but the last 10-15 years have shown the negative consequences. The good news is there are many lessons in how society handled such events in the past. History is full of these transition moments. They also show how populism was beaten or broke down. Decent coverage of the subject here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSacH_1BtVA

Re: Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks

#69

Post by NikolaeVarius »

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.

I find it mind boggling that people have such strong opinions about policy debate when they have no idea of the work and skill required to be competitive in it. Policy debate is literally teaching you how to deal with "intellectual DOS attacks". It explicitly trains you how to deal with large amounts of arguments being thrown at you and how to parse out important refutations with limited time.

Being fast is a side effect of optimization.

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