Refuting frequently appearing bullshit could be made more efficient by having a web page with standard explanations which could be linked from the debate. Posting a link (perhaps with a short summary, which could also be provided on the top of that web page) does not require too much energy.
Which would create another problem, of protecting that web page from bullshit created by reversing stupidity, undiscriminating skepticism, or simply affective death spirals about that web page. (Yes, I’m thinking about RationalWiki.) Maybe we could have multiple anti-bullshit websites, which would sometimes explain using their own words, and sometimes merely by linking to another website’s explanation they agree with.
Yes, it is, and The Counter-Creationism Handbook sits next to Darwin, Dawkins, and Diamond on my shelf. It would be a Good Thing if folks in other bullshit-fighting arenas had the level of scholarship exhibited by Mark Isaak and his collaborators.
(Hell, every time I see a “bingo card” ridiculing an Other Side’s arguments, I wish its creators had the time and scholarly dedication of the talk.origins folk.)
I think that’s a bad description. The kind of people on RationalWiki are very discriminating. When something is said by an Authority they trust they aren’t skeptic and when something is said by someone they don’t trust they are very “skeptic”.
Maybe we could have multiple anti-bullshit websites
I don’t think that framing yourself as “anti-bullshit” is helpful. It’s makes more sense to frame yourself as being pro-evidence.
We already do have multiple websites that do explain issues.
I personally like Skeptics Stackexchange. If I come about a new claim I often simply go and open a question over there.
How does this differ from religious groups refusing to answer questions that dispute things said by their religion, and instead referring you to scripture passages or Christian apologetics?
Of course it’s different in that you will link to refutations that are good arguments, and the religious person will link to apologetics that are bad arguments, but aside from that, how is it different? After all, you can’t very well say that certain tactics are acceptable or unacceptable based on whether the associated arguments are good or bad.
Depends on the audience and topic. Also, sometimes the goal is not to convince your opponent, but to convince the bystanders.
Imagine that you are on a web forum where someone comes and writes a long comment about “Isn’t it horrible that vaccination causes autism, and yet the government wants us to vaccinate our children? I would do anything to protect my child from autism!” and some information probably copied from some other webpage. It’s not just you and them; there are also other readers who don’t have a clue and may be frightened by the message. (And they will not use google, because… well, humans are stupid.)
If nobody opposes the message, it seems like their is a clear consensus among the people who care about the topic. If you opposed them, you are wasting your time. -- But if you post a link to a good explanation, then the people frightened by the message can read the explanation and hear a dissenting voice, while you wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time… assumming there is a good anti-bullshit page where you just enter “vaccination, autism” in the search box, and it shows you a well-written page about the topic. Where well-written means a short layman-accessible summary at the top, and then detailed arguments and references below.
But by that same reasoning, a fundamentalist Christian could come here, see that someone has written a long comment about, say, evolution, and reply with a link to a prewritten web page listing 100 arguments against evolution. He reasons that if he posts a good explanation, people who are frightened by the idea of fundamentalists being a menace can read the explanation and hear a “dissenting voice”,,,.
As far as he is concerned, he has followed your recommendations exactly. Is there something you could say which explains why his behavior is unacceptable, but the behavior you describe is acceptable, that does not involve “our anti-anti-vaccination page is well-written and your anti-evolution page is not”?
(Alternatively, would you find his behavior acceptable? This seems odd.)
A fundamentalist Christian who would post here a link to a page listing arguments against evolution would be more effective than the one who would try to debate, because they would achieve the same (in this situation: zero) effect while spending much less resources. The people who would try to debate them, each of them would waste more of their time by reading the linked page and composing the reply. So, I believe this is a good strategy.
Specifically on LW we have an (unwritten?) norm that if you post a link, you should also provide a summary using your own words. Which probably was designed to counter this strategy. But there are website which don’t have this norm, e.g. Facebook.
Specifically on LW we have an (unwritten?) norm that if you post a link, you should also provide a summary using your own words. Which probably was designed to counter this strategy.
It is not specific to LW, but a custom of good practice that personally, I have followed ever since there has been such a thing as a link (and before then, when the equivalent was posting to an email list a cut-and-paste of someone else’s words without any words from the person posting). I also practice the custom of ignoring links that come to me without context.
I recommend both parts of this practice to everyone.
How does this differ from religious groups refusing to answer questions that dispute things said by their religion, and instead referring you to scripture passages or Christian apologetics?
How does answering questions at length in one’s own words differ from religious groups answering questions at length in their own words?
It doesn’t differ. But it doesn’t have to, since we consider it acceptable behavior for religious people to come here and answer questions in their own words.
We generally don’t consider it acceptable behavior for religious people to come here and respond to posts by giving links to apologetic sites. It should not, then, be acceptable behavior for us except maybe in a few specialized cases (such as where the dispute is purely over facts, like for vaccines).
Refuting frequently appearing bullshit is more than a matter of making the facts available. After all, anti-vaccination folks appear with enough frequency to be a curious news item (which I admit is a horrendous metric, but let’s pretend it means something), and I’m sure that a quick Google search would yield enough facts to disabuse them of their notions. The trick is building up enough credibility and charisma—if such a property could be applied to an argument—to make such a site not just correct, but convincing. That’s where the order of magnitude comes in.
a quick Google search would yield enough facts to disabuse them of their notions
Most people are not strategic enough to use google. Or if they get many contradicting results from google search, they are not smart enough to decide.
Also, there is this bias that if an information was brought to you by a person you know, it has much stronger impact. (For most people, good relationships matter more than truth. If someone brings you an information, disbelieving the information is a potential conflict with given person.) You only get an equal opposing force if another person you know opposes the original information. For example, by saying “it’s bullshit” and posting a link to refutation.
But you still have to find the proper entry. This just shifts the burden around and in total refutation is probably still much more expensive than creation (esp. as the same BS can be copied but the refutation can’t..
Refuting frequently appearing bullshit could be made more efficient by having a web page with standard explanations which could be linked from the debate. Posting a link (perhaps with a short summary, which could also be provided on the top of that web page) does not require too much energy.
Which would create another problem, of protecting that web page from bullshit created by reversing stupidity, undiscriminating skepticism, or simply affective death spirals about that web page. (Yes, I’m thinking about RationalWiki.) Maybe we could have multiple anti-bullshit websites, which would sometimes explain using their own words, and sometimes merely by linking to another website’s explanation they agree with.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/ is considered a good one on the single issue of creationism vs. evolution.
Yes, it is, and The Counter-Creationism Handbook sits next to Darwin, Dawkins, and Diamond on my shelf. It would be a Good Thing if folks in other bullshit-fighting arenas had the level of scholarship exhibited by Mark Isaak and his collaborators.
(Hell, every time I see a “bingo card” ridiculing an Other Side’s arguments, I wish its creators had the time and scholarly dedication of the talk.origins folk.)
I think that’s a bad description. The kind of people on RationalWiki are very discriminating. When something is said by an Authority they trust they aren’t skeptic and when something is said by someone they don’t trust they are very “skeptic”.
I don’t think that framing yourself as “anti-bullshit” is helpful. It’s makes more sense to frame yourself as being pro-evidence. We already do have multiple websites that do explain issues.
I personally like Skeptics Stackexchange. If I come about a new claim I often simply go and open a question over there.
When it comes to an issue such as vaccination I think Vox has a decent primer: http://www.vox.com/cards/vaccines/what-is-vaccine
How does this differ from religious groups refusing to answer questions that dispute things said by their religion, and instead referring you to scripture passages or Christian apologetics?
Of course it’s different in that you will link to refutations that are good arguments, and the religious person will link to apologetics that are bad arguments, but aside from that, how is it different? After all, you can’t very well say that certain tactics are acceptable or unacceptable based on whether the associated arguments are good or bad.
Depends on the audience and topic. Also, sometimes the goal is not to convince your opponent, but to convince the bystanders.
Imagine that you are on a web forum where someone comes and writes a long comment about “Isn’t it horrible that vaccination causes autism, and yet the government wants us to vaccinate our children? I would do anything to protect my child from autism!” and some information probably copied from some other webpage. It’s not just you and them; there are also other readers who don’t have a clue and may be frightened by the message. (And they will not use google, because… well, humans are stupid.)
If nobody opposes the message, it seems like their is a clear consensus among the people who care about the topic. If you opposed them, you are wasting your time. -- But if you post a link to a good explanation, then the people frightened by the message can read the explanation and hear a dissenting voice, while you wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time… assumming there is a good anti-bullshit page where you just enter “vaccination, autism” in the search box, and it shows you a well-written page about the topic. Where well-written means a short layman-accessible summary at the top, and then detailed arguments and references below.
But by that same reasoning, a fundamentalist Christian could come here, see that someone has written a long comment about, say, evolution, and reply with a link to a prewritten web page listing 100 arguments against evolution. He reasons that if he posts a good explanation, people who are frightened by the idea of fundamentalists being a menace can read the explanation and hear a “dissenting voice”,,,.
As far as he is concerned, he has followed your recommendations exactly. Is there something you could say which explains why his behavior is unacceptable, but the behavior you describe is acceptable, that does not involve “our anti-anti-vaccination page is well-written and your anti-evolution page is not”?
(Alternatively, would you find his behavior acceptable? This seems odd.)
A fundamentalist Christian who would post here a link to a page listing arguments against evolution would be more effective than the one who would try to debate, because they would achieve the same (in this situation: zero) effect while spending much less resources. The people who would try to debate them, each of them would waste more of their time by reading the linked page and composing the reply. So, I believe this is a good strategy.
Specifically on LW we have an (unwritten?) norm that if you post a link, you should also provide a summary using your own words. Which probably was designed to counter this strategy. But there are website which don’t have this norm, e.g. Facebook.
It is not specific to LW, but a custom of good practice that personally, I have followed ever since there has been such a thing as a link (and before then, when the equivalent was posting to an email list a cut-and-paste of someone else’s words without any words from the person posting). I also practice the custom of ignoring links that come to me without context.
I recommend both parts of this practice to everyone.
How does answering questions at length in one’s own words differ from religious groups answering questions at length in their own words?
It doesn’t differ. But it doesn’t have to, since we consider it acceptable behavior for religious people to come here and answer questions in their own words.
We generally don’t consider it acceptable behavior for religious people to come here and respond to posts by giving links to apologetic sites. It should not, then, be acceptable behavior for us except maybe in a few specialized cases (such as where the dispute is purely over facts, like for vaccines).
Refuting frequently appearing bullshit is more than a matter of making the facts available. After all, anti-vaccination folks appear with enough frequency to be a curious news item (which I admit is a horrendous metric, but let’s pretend it means something), and I’m sure that a quick Google search would yield enough facts to disabuse them of their notions. The trick is building up enough credibility and charisma—if such a property could be applied to an argument—to make such a site not just correct, but convincing. That’s where the order of magnitude comes in.
Most people are not strategic enough to use google. Or if they get many contradicting results from google search, they are not smart enough to decide.
Also, there is this bias that if an information was brought to you by a person you know, it has much stronger impact. (For most people, good relationships matter more than truth. If someone brings you an information, disbelieving the information is a potential conflict with given person.) You only get an equal opposing force if another person you know opposes the original information. For example, by saying “it’s bullshit” and posting a link to refutation.
But you still have to find the proper entry. This just shifts the burden around and in total refutation is probably still much more expensive than creation (esp. as the same BS can be copied but the refutation can’t..