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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)

#71

Post by palmotea »

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.

> 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.

Yeah, but he's a saint of science-fandom, so don't question him. Instead, admire and follow him, and encourage others to do likewise.

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

#72

Post by akramachamarei »

palmotea wrote: post #64
krapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 causa…

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 validity of money.

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

#73

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

I loved watching Cosmos when I was a kid but as I got older I developed a dislike for Sagan. He strikes me as supremely arrogant and probably insufferable to be around. I don't know that of course, I never met him. Just a feeling.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by SigmundA »

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.

Software can make sound, not silent, software can make things appear on the screen, not invisible, software can affect physical objects through device control, not intangible.

Nothing like an invisible dragon you might claim exists without any of the above.

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

#76

Post by RichardCA »

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.

Sagan made solid contributions to Planetary Science in the 60's and 70's.

His role as PBS educator, SF author, etc. needs to be considered as a separate thing.

I also loved James Burke and his Connections series, but as it got into the later seasons the so-called "connections" got tenuous and sometimes quite strained.

You can go through all the classic PBS science shows and find problems, Stephen Hawking's Universe was basically unwatchable because they refused to engage with the math.

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

#77

Post by nradov »

rhcom2 wrote: post #53
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 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 back room negotiations.

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

#78

Post by dredmorbius »

Sagan's kit is one of several similar resources I'd turned up ... over a decade ago now ... when I'd begun considering the matter of epistemics in media, particularly online discourse. The situation's not improved.

My catalogue is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200121211018/https://old.reddi...> (archive).

It includes in addition to Sagan: Rory Coker's precis on pseudoscience, the Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense, the concept of falsifiability, an informative (if excruciatingly painful) BBC docu on stupidity, Frankfurt's "On Bullshit", Ferguson on why youth culture made everything suck, Brandolino's Law, Silver's Bullshitter's Inequality, a relationship between the Kübler-Ross model and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense, and Adams's 'B'-Ark.

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

#79

Post by palmotea »

akramachamarei wrote: post #72
palmotea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 causa…

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 the amount of money they have. If you don't have money but need something, Capitalism says "kindly FOAD." If you desperately need something, but a rich guy kinda-sorta wants it, rich guy gets it if he's willing to pay more.

So as inequality increases and wealth gets concentrated, a capitalist ceremony (without more restraints that we have) will increasingly neglect the needs of a large fraction of the people in society.

A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs, generally (usually just lazily generalizing from US vs. USSR circa 1980), but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.

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

#80

Post by donkeybeer »

dghf wrote: post #27
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.

What? Yes you can. I know my laptop is running a web browser because I can see it and interact with it. That's a physical measurement.

Won't be surprised if he's one of those that think "radiation" is some kind of harmful beams instead of also what the computer screen emits and we detect it to interact with it.
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