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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)

#61

Post by deron12 »

kgwxd wrote: post #36
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…

Sounds like he just read history, noticed repeating patterns, and believed his own eyes. It sucks that makes him some kind of special person, instead of "people" just being the kind of thing that commonly does stuff like that.

Is it possible to get people to think critically and self-reflect, as a third party?

The answer to that question lies in the bottom of a cup of hemlock.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

palmotea wrote: post #52
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…

> 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 repre…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by palmotea »

krapp wrote: post #58
palmotea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 repre…

> when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on their personal self-interest. That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism. For all of capitalism's faults, you can at least…

>> when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on their personal self-interest.

> That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism.

I think you (and Sagan) are getting the causality backwards. Unrestrained capitalism doesn't serve people, it serves money. "Widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism" is a reaction to an economic system that doesn't serve the common person and is very resistant to change.

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

#65

Post by palmotea »

pjmorris wrote: post #59
palmotea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 repre…

> capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.

>> capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization

> For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.

Come on, they are not. One is a value system, the other is a technology/practice.

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

#66

Post by ceejayoz »

zyxzevn wrote: post #16

While skeptical, he did not have much skepticism against mainstream theories. I think it needs another item in the list: For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory? And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premi…

> And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them

We still use Newtonian physics plenty, despite bits of it not working due to relativity.

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

#67

Post by swed420 »

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…

> Somewhat relatedly, the ancients viewed Rhetoric as the purest expression of intelligence. It required you to have deep knowledge of a topic, including all arguments in favour and against (implying deep empathy with the audience), and the ability to form coherent and meaningful argument. Modern political "debate" is ludicrous in comparison.

"Rhetoric" is an unfortunately overloaded term, as modern political "debate" is often nothing more than (the other definition of) rhetoric.

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

#68

Post by swed420 »

goobert wrote: post #63

A significant amount of modern academia would dissolve if this was applied

> A significant amount of modern academia would dissolve if this was applied

You could go one level higher with this observation, since "modern academia" is just another business.

Rephrased: A significant amount of businesses would dissolve if this was applied.

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

#69

Post by hearsathought »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #17
chistev wrote: post #3

Acclaimed science author Carl Sagan illustrated this challenge with his “dragon in the garage” analogy. If someone claims to have a dragon that is invisible, silent, intangible, and undetectable by any means, there is no practical difference between the dragon’s existence and non-existence. Similarly, without verifiable evidence, the existence of an immortal soul remains unproven. https://www.rxjourney.net/the-possib…

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.

> Doesn’t silent, invisible, intangible also apply to software?

No. Because software is hardware.

> You can’t really tell a particular piece of hardware is running software by a direct physical measurement. You can only infer that indirectly.

You can literally step through code. Have you ever used a debugger or a profiler? You can dump memory, check the registers, read off the disk, etc.

If software was silent, invisible and intangible, you couldn't store it on disk, or copy it to memory. A computer wouldn't work if software was as you describe it.

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

#70

Post by nobody9999 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #66
zyxzevn wrote: post #16

While skeptical, he did not have much skepticism against mainstream theories. I think it needs another item in the list: For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory? And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premi…

> And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them We still use Newtonian physics plenty, despite bits of it not working due to relativity.

>We still use Newtonian physics plenty, despite bits of it not working due to relativity.

Absolutely. And since no one else has trotted this bit out yet, I guess it will be me:

All of our science is based on imperfect models of how the universe works. Every single one is wrong.

However, the models we use today are less wrong than those we used in the past. We know this because we (as you pointed out about Newtonian physics) can more accurately describe the universe than we were able to do previously.

That doesn't mean we've found "the truth." Nor does it mean that we have all the answers.

This is an important concept for baloney detection as those who are peddling baloney will (often, but not always) purport to know "the truth."

Anyone who makes such claims is either knowingly attempting to mislead or is lying to themselves and others.

Which, IMHO, is a pretty big red flag in baloney detection.

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