It feels great when I read something that, somehow, I always believed but could not exactly articulate.
I know people that believe that, most of the time, the best way to respond to unreasonable or irrational petitions is to do it by means of answering the actual points made, even if completely unwarranted and time consuming.
For instance, claims of some random paranormal effect should be put to the test with proper scientific investigation, like that would satisfy the claimant and not take us in a never-ending endeavour...
Sometimes, the best way to answer the problem is to make use of well tested heuristics that, instead of going into the specific details, just make the elephant in room more evident: some problems are simply not well put, or some answers miss the point (e.g. the paranormal claim is pseudo-scientific therefore will never accept a negative result, whichever it may be; to feed the troll will not satiate the troll, etc).
Mm you should spend some time with in a flatearther fb group. Thats when i learnt the true sentence "dont wrestle with pigs, you get dirty and the pig likes it" ><
Could have started that way, but it seems to have gone beyond that. I'd recommend watching Beyond the Curve (2018) -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/
I pay no attention this stuff so it's all unfamiliar to me, hence my curiosity I guess...
But how do you know that the people you're interacting with on FB aren't trolls having a joke at your expense?
I get that there are some people who take it seriously, but I'm not sure it'd be easy to tell the difference between a believer and a troll in an online forum.
I don't know they have normal profile of middle-class americans. Why so many people would they lose time doing so much trolling without clear profit ? Occam razor is my call here.
Also as Einstein said: there really only two things infinite: the universe and people's stupidity.
As an alternative to a bad map or no map, sometimes alternative solutions get shot down over pure arrogance, as with Musk's clear jealousy of that swim team guy who saved the kids from the cave. Musk wanted to be the hero, that mattered to him more than actually saving anybody, and so he went out of his way to critique and defame. Instead of appreciating the job well done and lives saved, he inserted himself into the situation. Jealousy can be a powerful motive all by itself, and is too often weaponized.
Also, I wonder where the dividing line between epistemic humility and thinking outside of boxes rests. I mean, is it purely circumstantial, or dependent upon personality traits?
> Because of an epidemic of suicides and mental health issues, the government should provide unlimited free candy to every citizen, to make everyone happier.
I just noticed there are actually full performances on Youtube of Erik Satie's Vexations-- a piece written in the 1890s in which the player is asked to repeat a dissonant chorale theme 860 times.
That is a common, effective, and ethical rhetorical tactic people use every day in conversation.
It's common because people aren't automatons who must respond to every potential point of debate.
It's effective because it forces the would-be debater to reveal information. Either they roll with the subject change and reveal their utterance as light novelty and disarm, or they attempt to switch the conversation back to their novelty, revealing themselves as a zealot (in this case).
It's ethical because if anyone in the group wants to participate in that zealotry they can continue on the original topic. But everyone else has an easy out through the non-sequitur. And it works just as well if the initial utterance was a truth told to an ignorant crowd. Those who want to know more can break off without the entire group being forced to become students.
Finally, if the interlocutor misjudged the situation, the non-sequitur is ignored and the conversation continues unabated.
In all cases DOS is avoided.
If a medium doesn't support this tactic you might want to question the efficacy of the medium.
I think you forgot to write what should have been paragraph three of your comment, but from context I'm guessing that your proposed effective, ethical response to repeated nonsense is just to change the subject and see who goes with you on the new track?
I have a funny feeling that this guy is going to push an agenda, particularly with his "free candy" example.
The trouble with the "the revolt of the masses" theme is that institutions are failing us, experts are frequently wrong, and if you want to see fake experts turn on cable news and there you are... Cokie Roberts is always warning democrats to turn the right or otherwise we'll have to have somebody like Pinochet purge the left (she won't tell you her husband was a foreign agent for the Pinochet regime.)
All b.s. All the time was not invented by Facebook, look at how the rush Limbaugh show was reality free before the web was invented.
Experts are frequently wrong, because they are frequently either not experts at all, misrepresented or haven’t learned not to make wild guesses on the media.
The media doesn’t care about anything, they want a face who can act as an expert of the matter at hand, they don’t care if the expert has real expertise — they care if the expert can say something experty that simple minds understand.
Everbody who has seen known experts in a field on TV knows that they will tell you afterwards that of that long interview session they just had to take the two sentences were you made the mistake of speculation. A mistake that stops many real experts from speculating on TV or stops them totally from ever doing TV stuff at all.
Of course you will always find real experts who enjoy it to have their voice heard and their face seen, and they will abandon all ideals to get their egos massaged — these will be kept on fast-dial by TV producers.
I certainly agree that experts of various calibers and professions are frequently wrong. However, if I have an agenda, I haven't figured out what it is yet ;)
>Experts wielding their jargon and credentials as devices to shut up non-experts, even if non-experts have credible critiques and ideas to offer
I don't know if I can agree with this: a layperson might make some ridiculous claim about vaccines causing autism, and a medical doctor absolutely has the right to dismiss them based on credentials.
At this point, there is no _credible_ evidence I'm aware of that suggests vaccines cause autism. Hence, a doctor dismissing those claims is reasonable and expected. There is no claim here that non-experts necessarily have the same credibility as experts.
My statement was more in reference to e.g. the use by some experts of esoteric and potentially inaccurate models to silence critique by overwhelming non-experts with jargon. "I spent years developing this model, what do you know?"
> At this point, there is no _credible_ evidence I'm aware of that suggests vaccines cause autism.
This is true, but is the data upon which the statistics "proving" no causative relationship at all between vaccines and autism completely comprehensive and absolutely correct? I wonder how many people who consider themselves educated on the matter of vaccines have bothered to actually do any significant reading on the subject.
> Hence, a doctor dismissing those claims is reasonable and expected.
Reasonable and expected sure, but objectively correct is another thing.
Similarly, asserting that vaccines do cause autism is a very different thing than simply asking for evidence that they do not, ever, and wanting to know specific details on the source/methodology behind the evidence.
I do not consider myself educated on the matter of vaccines and am ill-equipped to defend any position on either side :) To your point, proving a negative such as "vaccines definitively do NOT cause autism, ever" with 100% certainty is nontrivial. I simply haven't seen any compelling evidence that they are causally linked to autism, which is usually the claim.
> I simply haven't seen any compelling evidence that they are causally linked to autism, which is usually the claim.
Nor have I, I am referring more so to the general public census (and accompanying confidence level), and a very careful and critical reading of the "facts" as presented by the medical "community".
Just as a fun mental experiment, imagine a purely hypothetical scenario where vaccination reaction data is not comprehensively collected, where the methodology behind the statistical reporting involves an element of personal judgement (and therefore to some degree inconsistent and subject to personal error), and the reporting guidelines are written in a way that there is a relatively high bar before an adverse reaction incident should be reported. In this hypothetical scenario, might it be possible that the statistics necessary to suggest a possible causative relationship literally do not exist?
Now, go do some reading on the details of the actual reality of the data and the methodology behind its compilation. Then compare that to what is written about it in literature, or how it is discussed.
Mistermann: “...asserting that vaccines do cause autism is a very different thing than simply asking for evidence that they do not, ever...”
Logically, this doesn’t seem true—100% causality or 100% non-causality. The very premise doesn’t seem “scientific”. Are you serious about this claim or laying the groundwork for a different punchline?
I don’t know—maybe you should write an article outlining your response? I’ll read it ;)
I know people that believe that, most of the time, the best way to respond to unreasonable or irrational petitions is to do it by means of answering the actual points made, even if completely unwarranted and time consuming.
For instance, claims of some random paranormal effect should be put to the test with proper scientific investigation, like that would satisfy the claimant and not take us in a never-ending endeavour...
Sometimes, the best way to answer the problem is to make use of well tested heuristics that, instead of going into the specific details, just make the elephant in room more evident: some problems are simply not well put, or some answers miss the point (e.g. the paranormal claim is pseudo-scientific therefore will never accept a negative result, whichever it may be; to feed the troll will not satiate the troll, etc).