The Cold Equations: Part 2 (Trust but Verify)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

As one delves deeper into Math and Logic the hardest concept for many students to wrap thier head around is that an argument being true does not make it logical. (and vice versa)

Almost every common fallacy derives from the failure to keep this truth in mind.

I have stood by while clearly intelligent and well-spoken individuals make stupid and fallacious arguments and quite frankly I'm sick of it.

People will naturally listen to what others tell them. We are social animals and a certain level of communication and trust is intrinsic to our nature. This tendancy is what makes social interaction possible but there there is also a potentially damaging side effect known as "groupthink". The term "Groupthink" was coined by Yale research psychologist Irving Janis, in referance to a tendancy of social groups to value unamity and consensus more than the critical evaluation of ideas.

To illustrate, I pose the following question, "What shape is our world?" (The Planet Earth)

I'm guessing that most of us know that the answer is "Round" (aka Spherical)

But then I'll ask another question, "But how can you be sure?"

Now the answers become more interesting, but I'd be willing to bet that the majority will be something along the lines of "Where are you going with this? Everybody knows the Earth is round!" I may even be accused of being "Anti-Intellectual" or a "Flat-Earther" as a bonus.

Where I'm going with this, is that unless you, yourself, have watched a ship go hull-down on the horizon and derived the implications thereof or have flown to the edge of space to look for yourself, you do not know that the Earth is round. Somebody told you that it was and you chose to believe them.

The vast majority of people believe what they believe not because they have actually reasoned through the available evidence and alternatives themselves but because other people believe it. Now in the case of "What shape the planet Earth?" trusting authority works out. Earth is in fact round and anyone can go see for themselves if they are so inclined (bust out a sextant or watch a ship on the horizon). The problems arise when the "authority" is unreliable or opinions diverge. Rather than applying reason to figure out the answer for themselves, people instead use it to figure out who they agree with. It is in this enviroment that Groupthink eventually becomes toxic.

As Htpcl already touched on. We are approaching a crisis of credibility. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the emperor is naked, the status quo is unsustainable, and that the "experts" don't know what to do.

Peer review is meaningless if those reviewing make the same mistakes.

Comments

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

The earth is an obloid.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Oblate spheroid.

Round still describes its 2D geometry though.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Geoid?

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

"Somebody told you that it was and you chose to believe them."

That's an especially bad conclusion given that this post starts out with "Math and Logic". I agree with your post in general, but the earth being round is not a good example.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I think he should have gone for 'not flat' ;)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I chose it specifically because it is something that everyone "knows" but if you were to ask them how to prove it they might look at you like you had two heads.

The position of someone who believes the world is round simply because everyone says so is no better than a child who believes in Jesus because mamma taught him so.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Particularly since people have agreed with the notion that it is round, not flat, since the 3rd Millennium BC when the conditions of space were at most hypothetical.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

"Peer review is meaningless if those reviewing make the same mistakes."

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, or worse yet, anti-intellectual, I have been assured that that never happens.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Peer-review, in the right institutional environment, is self-correcting albeit sometimes after furious debates.

One of the better documented examples of this was the development of plate tectonics and continental drift. Another, perhaps even more controversial example (given political allegiances) is the history of the 'great famine' and the 'great terror' of the Soviet Union in the '30s.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

It is only true in some cases that the experts don't know what to do.

Don't conflate everything into one thing like that. It's not logical.

Some experts know precisely what to do to get a specific result. Experts are only experts in certain fields. Don't have a biology expert give you your theology. Don't have a theological expert give you your statecraft. Don't have your chess experts give you your nuclear reactors.

Also: what you say here is not true. "We are approaching a crisis of credibility"
This has been true for a long time.

over 2000 years ago Zhuangzi wrote this:

"Whom shall I ask as arbiter between us? If I ask someone who takes your view, he will side with you. How can
such a one arbitrate between us? If I ask someone who takes my view, he will side with me. How can such a one arbitrate
between us? If I ask someone who differs from both of us, he will be equally unable to decide between us, since he differs
from both of us. And if I ask someone who agrees with both of us, he will be equally unable to decide between us, since he
agrees with both of us. Since then you and I and other men cannot decide, how can we depend upon another?

this isn't totally new.

[cheeesuschrist.livejournal.com]

I'm still wondering where you're going. You've mentioned the argument from authority and groupthink. Now what? It's true fallacies exist. Do you have suggestions on how to avoid the problem? It just feels to me that the post has an air of condescension to it for no particular purpose other than to say that you're right and other people are wrong. The link to the 'fallacy' wikipedia page that you include towards the beginning covers everything you said in a much less patronising way.

Don't get me wrong. I think a post on these fallacies could be very useful, but why not write an in-depth post on the part it plays in politics or in a particular argument? It becomes a little grating when reading something that's written as though the reader is an idiot.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I think it's more a problem about truth via consensus as opposed to truth via truth. We don't trust experts because they're experts, necessarily - we trust experts because other experts agree with them, and when enough experts agree with each other, we run with it anyway.

It's typically a safe assumption, but can lead to bad groupthink.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what your proposition is, if there even is one.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

My hunch would be "I don't agree with the theory of AGW."

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

My position is that "If are to take a position you need to be able to defend it with something better than the intellectual equivilent of 'you're a poopy-head'."

The state of western political movements, both left and right, is summed up in the film Thank You for Smoking.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Is this about gravity being "just a theory"?

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Calling something a theory doesn't mean that it isn't true, and it doesn't mean that we don't apply it. "Just a theory" makes it all sound so inadequate and shameful.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Everything is theoretical, that is another thing the newbies have trouble with.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Gravity as you call it is the theory that a given mass will impart energy in the form of acceleration proportional to it's size and proximity to any and all masses around it.

This adequetly explains numerous aspects of the observed universe but there are some holes.

That's why it's a theory.

Even flat-earthers can imagine a round Earth.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Imagine that the Earth is a round disk. It was once believed that the Moon and Sun were disks. A disk shaped flat Earth was not out of the realm of the imagination.

I could tell that the emperor was stark raving naked when he claimed that justice had been done by assassinating bin Laden.

Re: Even flat-earthers can imagine a round Earth.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Justice is revenge? Lot of people think so.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

OK, rephrase this post so even Under L can understand. I see four separate issues here, not one interconnected post.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

not my best work I know.

Wrote it in a hurry while waiting for the bus.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

We know the earth is round because about a zillion things we take for granted, from television to gps, to how time measurement works rely on it. We have so many collaborating theories that it would take a very strong proof to show it is not round when so many things exist because it is so. Kind of like climate change.

I have a question for you. Gravity. At one point we thought that F=M*A. Then we realized that this wasn't quite right. The fact that it wasn't quite right didn't make people go OH GOD GRAVITY DOESNT EXIST AND ITS ALL A LIE, THINGS FALL UP etc. Why do people do that with climate change?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Forgot a paragraph. The knowledge of the general shape of the earth is not undermined completely by not knowing the literal shape of the globe (its not perfectly a sphere of course). Just like the knowledge of climate change isn't undermined by scientists not being in agreement exactly how fast it happens or the literal effect from the causes.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Greatest advertising claim ever was that Pepsi challenge. Millions (billions) of people have seen the Pepsi challenge... a kind of very public peer review that was even taken up personally by the millions (billions) who have been taken in by this advertising ploy.

Look at the Youtubes yourself (the ones with Gabe Kaplan are very early in the campaign). At no point does Pepsi claim to taste better then Coke! The implication is that Pepsi tastes at least as good Coke.

The ah-ha moment was when Coca-Cola blinked and introduced NEW COKE. The new and improved taste of Coke lasted just 77days before Classic Coke was (re-?)introduced on the market.

They that blinks first does the dishes in my house. Coke's penalty was a loss of market share. The claim that the tides will wipe out all the seaboards if we don't cut back on carbon emissions only holds remains valid until the Al Gore types blink... or the other guys do. This applies to round/flat earthers, WMD's in Iraq, etc, etc, etc.

World leaders... like Obama, even Omar Quadaffi, know this all too well. Today Libya may be liberated, but if Quadaffi doesn't blink and accept defeat, neither will his supporters. If Obama doesn't accept the downgraded rating, investors who believe him will still support Wall Street. This is the political game.

Quadaffi may be forced to blink, by bullet or by handcuffs. Obama may be forced to blink too.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I really like this.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

All of which reminds me of a wonderful apocryphal quote: "Science advances one funeral at a time."

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Conclusion: Killing people advances science.