America's Credulity Straining Challenge

I am watching the inexcusable America's Psychic Challenge on Lifetime. It's about exactly what you think it is (to quote that guy from that irritating iPhone commercial), except the 'psychics' ride from psychic challenge to psychic challenge in a Cadillac Escalade. The most amazing thing about the show is the way that the participants couch their guesses and handle their failures. Before every challenge the psychics either offer caveats ("I'm not an empath, so I've never done this kind of challenge before."; "This is the first time I've tried remote viewing.") and afterwards they offer their excuses ("As soon as I started the challenge I got a really strong father figure coming through from the other side and he had a message to deliver, and really that's the most important thing."; "I initially got a message telling me to choose number one, but then I got interference from number five and I went with that one instead, but number one was calling to me the whole time.")
I strongly suggest this show to anyone who's interested in scientific skepticism. After all, you've got to know your enemy.

Perry DeAngelis is dead

I am way behind on this, but I have not been listening to many podcasts these days. I went on iTunes today to fill up my iPod for my flight home when I found that Perry DeAngelis, one of the voices of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast has died. He was ill, but I didn't know how ill. I was really looking forward to his triumphant return to the show after the last two weeks' absence due to illness.
Perry was the irreverent member of the skeptical rogues on the podcast. Imagine what it takes to be 'the irreverent one' in a skeptical organization.
Perry was not a scientist, and he provided a perfect counterpoint to host Dr. Steve Novella's steely scientific view of skepticism, showing that there's a passion to skepticism that persists side by side with it's logic.

Here are some choice quotes from Perry.

Listen to this audio clip of Perry reacting to a question about bacteria and birds. Perry will always be remembered for his staunch support of monkeys in the age-old 'monkeys versus birds' debate.

'The amount of years that she will live longer than us because of her [vegetarian] diet is directly proportional to the horror of her life.'

'Astrology is as vacuous as the space it worships.'


'And remember, "chi" spelled backwards is "crap"'

'How can two mathematicians come to two different conclusions? Well, one of them's a dick.'

From an essay Perry wrote about an illness induced hallucination:

'Stemming, I suppose now, from the dance number that had been on the television, there were two alien woman that haunted me during this time. One was a tall slender Latin woman in a pink body suit, and the other was shorter and heavier. They ridiculed me endlessly because I knew they were aliens, but since I was Executive Director of a Skeptical Society, I couldn’t tell anyone! It was like they were trying to upset me to illicit a reaction. I tried to remain stoic, but I think eventually I broke down and cried.'

I strongly recommend that you go to the iTunes store, search for the words 'Skeptic's Guide' and subscribe to the show or subscribe from their website, and just start at the beginning and work your way up to the present. I have only recently started writing about logical fallacies specifically, but I've been listening to the skeptical rogues gallery talking about them since last April, and it has invaluably enriched my life. And all that time Perry has been a big part of that.

Logical Fallacies

The invaluable New England Skeptical Society has a great article on their website that innumerates the logical fallacies that people, all people, are liable to hear and make. In my attempt to commit all of them to memory and internalize them, I am going to provide them here, each on with an example that I have actually heard in real life or, in the absence of such, a common example. Enjoy them and think of these fallacies the next time some poor misguided person tries to make you believe something that makes no sense.

Non-Sequitur

My face looks puffy today because I went to sleep with the fan on.

Magical Thinking

This root/stem/noodle will make you live a long time because it is
long.

Argument from Authority

Why would the Korean government restrict/ban US beef imports if there were nothing wrong with them?

Appeal to Common Belief

Everybody knows hot spices make greasy food less greasy and kill bacteria.

Appeal to Impending Acceptance

American corporation Lone Star Funds bought Korea Exchange Bank after the Asian Economic Crisis when the bank was in serious risk of going bankrupt. They turned it around and sold it for a large profit. Some in the Korean Assembly and the Prosecutor's office were incensed by the thought of foreigners making profits on Korea's misfortunes, and attempted to prosecute the company on stock manipulation charges. Frequently throughout this period people would defend the investigation by saying "They're under investigation, soon they'll be prosecuted, so of course they're guilty." (see also Argument from authority, Appeal to emotion, Argument from Conspiracy, Argument from benefit)

Appeal to Virtue or Sincerity

She means well and just wants to help, so why don't you let her give you acupuncture on the tips of your fingers and the incredibly sensitive areas right behind your cuticles?

Argument from Conspiracy or Anti-authority

The Korean government recently closed government offices to media, which had previously had free run of all government buildings, roaming the halls with cameras and demanding interviews on the spot. They also consolidated the forty-odd press rooms they operated into a few big ones. The media reported this as a bid by the government to destroy the fourth estate and return Korea to dictatorship-like state where the government has a stranglehold on the press. the government, for its part, claims that the exorbitant price of having press rooms in every government building was prohibitive and they want to save money by consolidating those rooms.

Appeal to Emotion

People are inherently good, because it would be a horrible world to live in if that weren't so.

Argument from Final Outcome or Consequences

Oriental Medicine is real because it handles all the things that Western Medicine can't do anything about, like back pain and fatigue.

Argument from Benefit

The Bush administration must be responsible for the September 11th attacks because it allowed them to seize unprecedented power.

Appeal to Fear

Korean farmers often use the fear of disease and contamination to justify trade barriers that allow them to uneconomically persist in their vocations. Note, however, that some of these fears (i.e. fear of contaminated food from China) turn out to have been well grounded.

Appeal to Flattery

People who drive hybrid cars are smarter or better than other, more polluting people.

Appeal to Pity

The clearest large-scale example of the appeal to pity is applied to the comfort women who were enlisted to sexually service Japanese soldiers during World War II. Any serious enquiry into the question of whether they were forced into servitude or whether they went willingly is effectively shut off through appeals to pity.

Post-hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (A preceded B, therefore A caused B)

I took Oriental medicine, had acupuncture, and after a month my chronic stress-related sluggishness went away. Oriental medicine cured me.

Confusing Correlation with Causation

"Long ago we lived in homes of red earth and we didn't have skin conditions, so if you use sheets dyed with red earth, you won't get skin problems."

One of the most interesting correlation/causation arguments I've heard is the one against the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". We don't know whether the habits are causing the effectiveness or if both phenomena are by-products of some root cause.

Special Pleading, or Ad-hoc Reasoning

Well of course that wish didn't come true, you didn't believe in it
enough. You gotta believe!

This is a special favorite of John Edward and other psychic mediums, who claim all sorts of 'interferences', 'static' and communications difficulties as the reasons for inaccurate readings.

Argument from Prior Error

Scientists used to think that pesticides were healthy when in fact they held health risks, therefore we shouldn't trust what they say about genetically modified foods.

Ad Hominem

Al Gore is stiff and boring. Michael Moore/Rush Limbaugh are fat. George Bush is dumb. Dick Cheney is oily and cold. Lynn Cheney is married to Dick Cheney. All the Republican presidential candidates are divorced. Joh Edwards gets expensive haircuts.

Tu Quoque

America is not without sin, so it is inappropriate for America's congress to condemn Japan for refusing to cop to its wartime offenses.

This is also used by Oriental Medicine proponents a lot.

Ad Ignorantum (Something is true because we don't know that it's not true)

Dog meat gives you vitality because it has good protein. What, it
doesn't? It's still awesome, I can feel it.

Confusing Absence of Evidence with Evidence of Absence

The galling thing about this fallacy is that many times the people using it are claiming an absence of evidence when evidence in fact exists. The best example I can think of is "There are no transitional fossils from dinosaurs to birds/apes to man/fish to land dwelling creatures." Creationists use this argument all the time in conjunction with the moving goalpost ("Show me the transitional fossil between ape and that transitional fossil!")

Argument from Personal Incredulity

Evolution is impossible. I can't see how a monkey could turn into a
person.

Appeal to Ridicule

You're telling me that cow flatulence could somehow produce enough methane to contribute to global warming? Cow farts?! Yuk yuk yuk!

Confusing Currently Unexplained with Unexplainable

This is also known as the 'God of the Gaps' fallacy, i.e. whatever is
unexplained is the province of God. What happens after we die? Must be heaven, because science provides no answers to this question.

False Dichotomy

The Goguryeo kingdom is either part of Chinese history or part of Korean history. It can not be included in both, because to allow the other side to claim it as their own would imply that it is not one's own.

False Continuum

Everybody has an opinion and all opinions are equally valid in all situations, and so we have to respect people whose opinions are different from our own, even in issues such as science in which opinions matter less than testable hypotheses and established facts.

The Moving Goalpost

You're saying that you have proof that sleeping with a fan in the room will not eat all the oxygen and kill you, nor will it 'supermix' the air so that you consume the oxygen too fast and suffocate? Well, it still can give you hypothermia, even in the summer. Oh, it can't? Well, it'll give you a sore throat. And make your body swell. (See also special pleading)

(I realize this is a little different from the original meaning of the moving
goalpost, in which increasingly elaborate proof is demanded, but in this case
the thing proved is moving, so it seems to me the term should still be
applicable)


Reductio Ad Absurdum

If we allow gay marriage, we will have to allow people to marry anyone or thing, resulting in marriage to animals and inanimate objects.

False Analogy

Vietnam and Iraq often form a false analogy for many reasons. The
different natures of the civil wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the way that
America got involved in each conflict, and of course the number of parties involved, the stakes, and the global climate at each time are substantially different. That's not to say that the analogy must always be false, as it may actually be fairly accurate in terms of the political climate in the US, in reference to which the Vietnam-Iraq War analogy may be useful.

Incidentally, there are many other lists of logical fallacies available on the web. This one is incredibly extensive and has lots of nifty latinisms, like argumentam ad misericordiam for appeal to pity, as well as a few that are not included here, such as the appeal to nature (natural things are inherently good) and red herring (introduction of irrelevent facts).
I encourage you strongly to check out the full article by Dr. Steven Novella. He is a very smart man (argument from authority) doing a lot of good work for the skeptical movement (appeal to virtue) and I know a smart person like you will be able to get the most out of these tools for rational thought (appeal to flattery).

Ignorance (even the fake kind) is no longer acceptable

I was just listening to an interview on The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe with a Brian Trent, who wrote a book about the cultural ramifications of immortality. I found it an interesting topic.
Then he mentioned the passage in Gulliver's Travels about the people who were immortal but never ceased aging. He called them 'The Struldbrugs or Struldbugs or something like that', stating that it had been some time since he read the book but that he 'did recall that very vividly.'
Maybe I'm alone on this, but to me in a world with Wikipedia and Google and any kind of information, particularly this kind, basically at your fingertips at all times, this kind of ignorance, especially in a writer who uses this as an example in a book that he wrote, bespeaks a real intellectual laziness. It led me to immediately write off the guy. Usually the people the Skeptic's Guide has on are not the type who do a lot of interviews but they certainly know their topics.
Lack of attention to detail in a world where the details are now the easy part will, I think, become increasingly unacceptable.
Incidentally, after a quick Wikipedia search, I can confirm that they are called Struldbrugs. Perhaps fault here lies not with lazy scholarship, but rather with that other great vice of our time, feigned lack of specific knowledge. Too often do we hear 'or something' appended to a statement with the express purpose of trying not to sound like a knowitall?

Mr. Deity

"Next up, torture. Broad brush here, you got men, women, children, animals--"
"Babies?"
"Babies, yes."
"Yeah, I'm gonna leave it in."

Genius.

The Brights

What have you heard about the brights? According to their website

• A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
• A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
• The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

You may be a bright and not even know it. The brights movement is an effort to put a positive spin on atheism (or at least agnosticism), rationalism and science. The movement faces an uphill battle. These things are, unfortunately, not nearly as positively viewed or consistently connected as many people (myself included) would like. There are many who believe in science and reason but their rational world-view and critical faculties aren't applied to their religion. This means scientists who tie themselves in knots trying to explain why science and religion are in fact compatible. The other major stumbling block for the movement is the name. It's supposed to be light, fun, and positive but instead it comes off as somehow more self-congratulatory than Mensa. Who would have the gall to tell someone "I'm a bright."? Another problem facing the would-be leaders of the brights movement is that the people who fit the above description of brights actually constitute a few very distinct groups. There are scientific minds who are interested in finding truth through evidence, there are angry atheist former believers with a chip on their shoulders about God and their childhood, and there are debunkers who orient themselves against flimflammers, con-artists and true believers. These three groups have different constituencies, different attitudes towards the world, and different goals, but they all share the space in this broad tent, at times comfortably, at times less so.
The one thing they all have in common, and also the greatest threat to the brights movement and any similar movement likely to appear, is that they are the kinds of people who don't cotton to joining big groups. They are individualists who have formed their personalities being smart enough to see through the lies that everyone else believes. They are the absolute worst possible people to try to assemble into any kind of cohesive group. And that is the greatest challenge to taking the skeptical/rationalist/naturalist movement to the inevitable next level of organization that all putative movements tend unswervingly toward.

My stars and garters

I went to an astrologer with my wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her husband tonight. I am a hard core skeptic and expected to be cold read and told what I wanted to hear, subconsciously or otherwise. Nonetheless I was inspired by the words of Richard Wiseman in his interview on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe Podcast. Dr. Wiseman explained that one should not close themself off to a realm of human experience just because they know it's not real or true. He also suggested that going to astrologers, whether you believe it or not, has a positive affect on one's mental state because the mind functions better in the absence of unknowing about the future, even if the "knowledge" one has is based on nothing. I have been experiencing some anxiety of late about my future and thought it might help.
So I went and watched a master at work. Korean astrology is interesting. Her technique reminded me of John Edwards. She mixed things she knew from knowing my mother-in-law from the neighborhood , things she could easily see, and logical answers to straightforward questions and mixed them together. She noticed me rubbing my neck during my sister-in-law's reading and later told me that I have to be careful about my neck. She saw my size and told me (when I asked) that I won't get cancer or have a stroke but my heart is weak and I have to be careful and exercise. She even name-dropped trans-fats ('you know, the foreigners eat a lot of trans-fats, so . . . '). I decided to ask her a lot of questions and see what she'd say. Accordng to her I'll get into the grad school of my choice and move to America, where Miyoung will live a hard life but become rich eventually. My career will be very successful but I must never start my own business. Questions about starting one's own business seem to be a big part of what she does, as she ran down the chances of success as a small business owner of everyone in my wife's family. I'm going to have two kids, and Miyoung is going to be a devoted parent (literally saying she would "donate her body" to her children). We will spend our lives going back and forth between our two countries.
Her biggest failure was when I asked about my immediate job situation. I didn't mention that just last night I found out that my school is changing ownership and I'm going to lose the big perk, a huge free apartment next door to the school. She said that I had gone through a lot of hardships and tough times at work in the last year (I hadn't), but that next year I will make a lot more money (almost certainly impossible) and have a smoother year (also not likely).
Her biggest success was when, out of the blue, she said "You have weak bronchial tubes". I have a history of chronic bronchitis, but I hadn't had it for at least 5 years until about two weeks ago. Nonetheless, I am fully recovered and there is nothing about me that says 'weak bronchial tubes'. To put it into perspective, I just learned this word in Korean when I got bronchitis. Bronchitis is not a well-known condition in Korea and people generally don't speak in that kind of doctory way that we Americans do. I was really surprised to hear that bit. Now note that I'm not saying she figured that out through some supernatural means, but I must concede that I have no clue how she did figure it out.
For all you rationalists out there, I highly recommend going to an astrologer and seeing what your future holds. It is fascinating to watch a career manipulator at work, especially when you can stand back and catch a glimpse behind the curtains at what she's really doing. And I'll tell you honestly that just because some old lady that I never met before told me that I'll get into the grad school that I want to get into, I feel somehow much better about the future.