The article links to an article about Sagans' prediction of the decline of america. Strangely fitting nowadays.
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
Sounds like he just read history, noticed repeating patterns, and believed his own eyes. It sucks that makes him some kind of special person, instead of "people" just being the kind of thing that commonly does stuff like that.
Asimov and Feynman also spoke about similar things (along with many others)
In 1980, Asimov famously wrote The Cult of Ignorance[0], criticizing the rise of anti-intellectualism. Where there was a strong political push of "don't trust the experts". He criticizes claims that sound familiar today "America has a right to know" on the basis of this being meaningless without literacy. He clarifies that literacy is far more than being able to actually read words on a page, but to interpret and process them. Asimov isn't being pretentious, his definition is consistent with how we determine reading levels[2] and his critique would be that most people do not have that of a Freshman in High School. Hell, it is even in his fiction! It is even in The Foundation and is literally the premise of Profession[3].
Feynman is a bit more scattered, but I think his discussion about the education system in Brazil (in the 50's) says a lot[4]. He talks a lot about how the students could recite the equations, ace all the tests, and achieve everything that looks to be, at least on paper, perfectly academic; but how the students did not really have the deeper understanding of the equations. It is a discussion about literacy. Were he around today I'm sure he'd use the phrase "metric hacking". Anyone that knows Feynman may also be thinking about his Cargo Cult Science[5](a commencement speech at Cal Tech (1974)). This is where his famous quote
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.
comes from. But there is a lot of important context surrounding this and it is worth knowing about.
[3] Profession has been in discussion lately, directly relating to this topic. If you haven't read it I'll say it is one of my favorite's of his. Not as good as Foundation but up there with Nightfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)
I wanted to add Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. Sometimes I feel it should be required reading before arguing on the internet. I find myself coming back to read it at least once a year
> The article links to an article about Sagans' prediction of the decline of america. Strangely fitting nowadays.
>> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
Not really. His prediction actually seems pretty off-base, with only some bits that are coincidentally correct. For instance, he seems to attributing the cause of that decline to superstition, when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on pursing their narrow self-interest.
I don't know the full context of that passage, but my read comports with my understanding of Sagan's biases.
- 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 than their proponents. See also "Argue Well by Losing" by Phil Haack [1].
Somewhat relatedly, the ancients viewed Rhetoric as the purest expression of intelligence. It required you to have deep knowledge of a topic, including all arguments in favour and against (implying deep empathy with the audience), and the ability to form coherent and meaningful argument. Modern political "debate" is ludicrous in comparison.
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.
I've also found simply testing a hypothesis without reasoning about it can quite often outdo your own reasoning and the reasoning of everyone else. Sometimes you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong, and only an empirical test can separate the wheat from the chaff.
Although maybe this method only works for me because I am a moron, and many people can out reason me, so the only way I can discover anything is to do something all reasonable and rational people are already sure is wrong.
> Somewhat relatedly, the ancients viewed Rhetoric as the purest expression of intelligence. It required you to have deep knowledge of a topic, including all arguments in favour and against (implying deep empathy with the audience), and the ability to form coherent and meaningful argument. Modern political "debate" is ludicrous in comparison.
"Rhetoric" is an unfortunately overloaded term, as modern political "debate" is often nothing more than (the other definition of) rhetoric.
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.
>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.
“Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad
> 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.
Unsurprising that the longest subthread here is one criticizing the premise.
A parking lot dragon? This sounds familiar. [Assuming not a Dragon of Eden, nor one who farts nerve gas] I believe it is a parable about cause and effect; consistency of the world's state.
A parking garage, poured in modern times from reinforced concrete, might have been found to be structurally unstable during a renovation. If this turned out to be rooted in a massive [dragon, dinosaur, etc] skeleton being embedded in the concrete (As it was being poured?) surely this would be a contradiction, if people (workers, onlookers) witnessed the garage's construction.
There would be evidence from the reinforcement efforts; materials sourced to reinforce it due to structural flaws introduced by the skeleton; wear on the truck tires carrying them, memories in brains etc. If suddenly the skeleton were to have vanished, would there be logical consistency problems with the world state? Quite a thing to ponder!
I would like to clarify that this is purely a thought experiment. It is not possible that any group of people, no matter how secluded, could either A: Will such a reptile into existence while maintaining cosmological consistency, nor B: Remove it from our cosmos after evidence over its existence has propagated.
While each of these are good to keep in mind while reading, I don't find them very exhaustive or derivable. I prefer the Theory of Constraints (Eli Goldratt)'s "Thinking Tools", specifically the "categories of legitimate reservation". Depending on source, there are between six and eight.
1. Is it clear?
2. Does it actually exist? Is it true?
3. Does the cause actually cause the effect?
4. For the proposed cause, do its other implied effects exist?
While skeptical, he did not have much skepticism against mainstream theories.
I think it needs another item in the list:
For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis?
For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory?
And I would upgrade this one:
If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them
And when breaking these items do not mean that something is false. It means that the arguments and evidence is incomplete. Don't jump to conclusions when you think that the arguments or evidence is invalid (that is how some people even think that the moonlanding was a hoax).
> While skeptical, he did not have much skepticism against mainstream theories.
That's tautological. The definition of a "mainstream theory" is one that is widely believed. And while, sure, sometimes scientific paradigms are wrong (c.f. Kuhn), that's rare. Demanding someone be "skeptical" of theories that end up wrong is isomorphic to demanding that they be a preternatural genius in all things able to see through mistakes that all the world's experts cannot. That doesn't work.
(It's 100% not enough just to apply a null hypothesis argument, btw!)
Really that's all of a piece with his argument. It's not a recipe for detecting truth (he didn't have one, and neither do you[1]). It's a recipe for detecting when arguments are unsupported by scientific consensus. That's not the same thing, but it's closer than other stuff like "trust".
(And it's 100% better th an applying a null-hypothesis argument, to be clear.)
[1] Well, we do, but it's called "the scientific method" and it's really, really hard. Not something to deploy in an internet argument.
> And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them
We still use Newtonian physics plenty, despite bits of it not working due to relativity.
> For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory?
That's an unfortunate choice of example - the problem with string theory is that there is no null hypothesis. We know that our other theories are not self-consistent when unified, but we don't have a theory that is self-consistent, that could serve as the null hypothesis.
> And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them
From The Demon Haunted World:
"In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called “Objections to Astrology” and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign—not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian. It criticized astrology for having origins shrouded in superstition. But this is true as well for religion, chemistry, medicine, and astronomy, to mention only four. The issue is not what faltering and rudimentary knowledge astrology came from, but what is its present validity.
...
The statement stressed that we can think of no mechanism by which astrology could work. This is certainly a relevant point but by itself it’s unconvincing. No mechanism was known for continental drift (now subsumed in plate tectonics) when it was proposed by Alfred Wegener in the first quarter of the twentieth century to explain a range of puzzling data in geology and paleontology. (Ore-bearing veins of rocks and fossils seemed to run continuously from Eastern South America to West Africa; were the two continents once touching and the Atlantic Ocean new to our planet?) The notion was roundly dismissed by all the great geophysicists, who were certain that continents were fixed, not floating on anything, and therefore unable to “drift.” Instead, the key twentieth-century idea in geophysics turns out to be plate tectonics; we now understand that continental plates do indeed float and “drift” (or better, are carried by a kind of conveyor belt driven by the great heat engine of the Earth’s interior), and all those great geophysicists were simply wrong. Objections to pseudoscience on the grounds of unavailable mechanism can be mistaken—although if the contentions violate well-established laws of physics, such objections of course carry great weight."
I think the notion of considering all points of view depends on the assumption that people are arguing in good faith. When this breaks down, I don’t think we can just throw up our hands and give up, but the baloney detection kit needs to be updated. I don’t have a blog-worthy list of answers, but it’s something I at least think about.
One thing we can do is a kind of meta-analysis, where we check on the condition of our own baloney detection kit. For instance, if I reject an idea and it later turns out to be true, did my BDK fail? Does it need to be updated? Or are a few scattered failures OK? You can treat the BDK as a testable hypothesis like anything else.
A key meta-requirement is to want to think critically about issues.
If there is no desire to discover the truth of a matter and evaluate it against supporting evidence and opposing claims, then all efforts at inculcating critical thinking are dead in the water. On the other hand, if there is a genuine desire to assess arguments and claims critically, there are plenty of resources today that can teach you how.
This is a never-ending process. But the desire to think critically has to be in place before it can even begin. Critical thinking cannot occur without a strong commitment to epistemic hygiene.
In India, the problem is that many people do not even want to think critically. We tend to gravitate toward beliefs that buttress our tribal affiliations. Our tribes are defined by our worldviews, and our tribes must prevail. Hence our worldviews must be proven true, regardless of whether they are in fact true.
There is a striking indifference toward truth as a value - ironic for a country whose national motto is "Truth alone triumphs." Many people have yet to realize that truth - satya - is not something you place on a pedestal and worship, but something you actively pursue, overturning long-held beliefs where necessary.
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.
"As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.”
Mike Judge's satire was lost on Sagan. Carl took his knee-jerk reaction and ran with it.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
The people for whom this stuff isn't glaringly obvious, relatively early in life, will never get it. Except, maybe, specific instances that directly affect them in a bad way. Switch "brands" and they'll be fooled again. They'll probably even double-down on it.
Hard disagree. I grew up with parents who LOVED science; my earliest memories in the 80s are my mom checking out Cosmos from the library on VHS and binging it. It is a big reason I have an engineering PhD. At the same time, they were 60s hippies and into meditation woo-woo, as in "visualize a beam of light coming from your stomach and you can instantly travel to Jupiter!", being able to walk through walls because of quantum physics, etc. Tons of pseudoscience. So, I grew up in both worlds, while always somewhat skeptical of the woo, still was sort of in it through high school. I read Demon Haunted World in college, and the woo was eradicated overnight. I think part of this also has to do with PhD programs, particularly reviewing papers, where it is basically BS detection. But, DHW framed it spectacularly for me, and is one of the most influential books I have read.
Spot on. I just finished reading the demon haunted world to my daughter. She’s 13 and we have been very concerned about her going on social media.
I framed it as being more important than ever to be skeptical of what you see. Everything online is fake in some way. Every picture is touched up at best, AI slop at worst. You need to question everything.
I honestly fear her generation is just cooked. They were forced into online learning during covid, have socialization issues, and are coming of age in an era of rampant disinformation and generated content that is too good to spot and designed to addict and influence.
You joke but you’d be amazed at the Reddit front page. It’s hard to tell anymore if the comments are even people, but I have noticed many fake posts of some Trump tweet he never actually made getting traction.
It’s so easy to verify his public statements. Did he really say that? Just go look.
Yet time and time again people get baited into rage mode. It’s more satisfying to post than it is to do 30 seconds of research.
[+] [-] scns|1 month ago|reply
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
https://www.openculture.com/2025/02/carl-sagan-predicts-the-...
[+] [-] mdelias|1 month ago|reply
https://youtu.be/utjK0EtkU8U?si=vWYdumffcgxKvkFV
[+] [-] kgwxd|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] fmlpp|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] godelski|1 month ago|reply
In 1980, Asimov famously wrote The Cult of Ignorance[0], criticizing the rise of anti-intellectualism. Where there was a strong political push of "don't trust the experts". He criticizes claims that sound familiar today "America has a right to know" on the basis of this being meaningless without literacy. He clarifies that literacy is far more than being able to actually read words on a page, but to interpret and process them. Asimov isn't being pretentious, his definition is consistent with how we determine reading levels[2] and his critique would be that most people do not have that of a Freshman in High School. Hell, it is even in his fiction! It is even in The Foundation and is literally the premise of Profession[3].
Feynman is a bit more scattered, but I think his discussion about the education system in Brazil (in the 50's) says a lot[4]. He talks a lot about how the students could recite the equations, ace all the tests, and achieve everything that looks to be, at least on paper, perfectly academic; but how the students did not really have the deeper understanding of the equations. It is a discussion about literacy. Were he around today I'm sure he'd use the phrase "metric hacking". Anyone that knows Feynman may also be thinking about his Cargo Cult Science[5](a commencement speech at Cal Tech (1974)). This is where his famous quote
comes from. But there is a lot of important context surrounding this and it is worth knowing about.[0] Note: 1980 was an election year, and one with a sweeping victory...[1] https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnsbr/papers/Asimov-Newsweek-Janua...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia...
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/achieve.aspx
[3] Profession has been in discussion lately, directly relating to this topic. If you haven't read it I'll say it is one of my favorite's of his. Not as good as Foundation but up there with Nightfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)
[4] https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...
[5] https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html
[Edit]
I wanted to add Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. Sometimes I feel it should be required reading before arguing on the internet. I find myself coming back to read it at least once a year
https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
[+] [-] clawlrbot|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] palmotea|1 month ago|reply
>> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
Not really. His prediction actually seems pretty off-base, with only some bits that are coincidentally correct. For instance, he seems to attributing the cause of that decline to superstition, when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on pursing their narrow self-interest.
I don't know the full context of that passage, but my read comports with my understanding of Sagan's biases.
[+] [-] kitd|1 month ago|reply
- 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 than their proponents. See also "Argue Well by Losing" by Phil Haack [1].
Somewhat relatedly, the ancients viewed Rhetoric as the purest expression of intelligence. It required you to have deep knowledge of a topic, including all arguments in favour and against (implying deep empathy with the audience), and the ability to form coherent and meaningful argument. Modern political "debate" is ludicrous in comparison.
[1] https://haacked.com/archive/2013/10/21/argue-well-by-losing....
[+] [-] rhcom2|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] mothballed|1 month ago|reply
Although maybe this method only works for me because I am a moron, and many people can out reason me, so the only way I can discover anything is to do something all reasonable and rational people are already sure is wrong.
[+] [-] swed420|1 month ago|reply
"Rhetoric" is an unfortunately overloaded term, as modern political "debate" is often nothing more than (the other definition of) rhetoric.
[+] [-] godelski|1 month ago|reply
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46997906
[+] [-] renato_shira|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chistev|1 month ago|reply
https://www.rxjourney.net/the-possibility-of-life-after-deat...
[+] [-] nobody9999|1 month ago|reply
“Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.” ― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad
[+] [-] krapp|1 month ago|reply
Unsurprising that the longest subthread here is one criticizing the premise.
[+] [-] unknown|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] CGMthrowaway|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|1 month ago|reply
You can’t really tell a particular piece of hardware is running software by a direct physical measurement. You can only infer that indirectly.
[+] [-] qsera|1 month ago|reply
That makes Carl Sagan's claim some what Balonish. Not sure why the smart Sagan fell for it.
[+] [-] the__alchemist|1 month ago|reply
A parking garage, poured in modern times from reinforced concrete, might have been found to be structurally unstable during a renovation. If this turned out to be rooted in a massive [dragon, dinosaur, etc] skeleton being embedded in the concrete (As it was being poured?) surely this would be a contradiction, if people (workers, onlookers) witnessed the garage's construction.
There would be evidence from the reinforcement efforts; materials sourced to reinforce it due to structural flaws introduced by the skeleton; wear on the truck tires carrying them, memories in brains etc. If suddenly the skeleton were to have vanished, would there be logical consistency problems with the world state? Quite a thing to ponder!
I would like to clarify that this is purely a thought experiment. It is not possible that any group of people, no matter how secluded, could either A: Will such a reptile into existence while maintaining cosmological consistency, nor B: Remove it from our cosmos after evidence over its existence has propagated.
[+] [-] tunesmith|1 month ago|reply
1. Is it clear?
2. Does it actually exist? Is it true?
3. Does the cause actually cause the effect?
4. For the proposed cause, do its other implied effects exist?
5. Is the cause sufficient for the effect?
6. Are cause and effect reversed?
[+] [-] zyxzevn|1 month ago|reply
I think it needs another item in the list: For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory?
And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them
And when breaking these items do not mean that something is false. It means that the arguments and evidence is incomplete. Don't jump to conclusions when you think that the arguments or evidence is invalid (that is how some people even think that the moonlanding was a hoax).
[+] [-] ajross|1 month ago|reply
That's tautological. The definition of a "mainstream theory" is one that is widely believed. And while, sure, sometimes scientific paradigms are wrong (c.f. Kuhn), that's rare. Demanding someone be "skeptical" of theories that end up wrong is isomorphic to demanding that they be a preternatural genius in all things able to see through mistakes that all the world's experts cannot. That doesn't work.
(It's 100% not enough just to apply a null hypothesis argument, btw!)
Really that's all of a piece with his argument. It's not a recipe for detecting truth (he didn't have one, and neither do you[1]). It's a recipe for detecting when arguments are unsupported by scientific consensus. That's not the same thing, but it's closer than other stuff like "trust".
(And it's 100% better th an applying a null-hypothesis argument, to be clear.)
[1] Well, we do, but it's called "the scientific method" and it's really, really hard. Not something to deploy in an internet argument.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|1 month ago|reply
We still use Newtonian physics plenty, despite bits of it not working due to relativity.
[+] [-] like_any_other|1 month ago|reply
That's an unfortunate choice of example - the problem with string theory is that there is no null hypothesis. We know that our other theories are not self-consistent when unified, but we don't have a theory that is self-consistent, that could serve as the null hypothesis.
[+] [-] BeetleB|1 month ago|reply
From The Demon Haunted World:
"In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called “Objections to Astrology” and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign—not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian. It criticized astrology for having origins shrouded in superstition. But this is true as well for religion, chemistry, medicine, and astronomy, to mention only four. The issue is not what faltering and rudimentary knowledge astrology came from, but what is its present validity.
...
The statement stressed that we can think of no mechanism by which astrology could work. This is certainly a relevant point but by itself it’s unconvincing. No mechanism was known for continental drift (now subsumed in plate tectonics) when it was proposed by Alfred Wegener in the first quarter of the twentieth century to explain a range of puzzling data in geology and paleontology. (Ore-bearing veins of rocks and fossils seemed to run continuously from Eastern South America to West Africa; were the two continents once touching and the Atlantic Ocean new to our planet?) The notion was roundly dismissed by all the great geophysicists, who were certain that continents were fixed, not floating on anything, and therefore unable to “drift.” Instead, the key twentieth-century idea in geophysics turns out to be plate tectonics; we now understand that continental plates do indeed float and “drift” (or better, are carried by a kind of conveyor belt driven by the great heat engine of the Earth’s interior), and all those great geophysicists were simply wrong. Objections to pseudoscience on the grounds of unavailable mechanism can be mistaken—although if the contentions violate well-established laws of physics, such objections of course carry great weight."
[+] [-] analog31|1 month ago|reply
One thing we can do is a kind of meta-analysis, where we check on the condition of our own baloney detection kit. For instance, if I reject an idea and it later turns out to be true, did my BDK fail? Does it need to be updated? Or are a few scattered failures OK? You can treat the BDK as a testable hypothesis like anything else.
[+] [-] Arun2009|1 month ago|reply
If there is no desire to discover the truth of a matter and evaluate it against supporting evidence and opposing claims, then all efforts at inculcating critical thinking are dead in the water. On the other hand, if there is a genuine desire to assess arguments and claims critically, there are plenty of resources today that can teach you how.
This is a never-ending process. But the desire to think critically has to be in place before it can even begin. Critical thinking cannot occur without a strong commitment to epistemic hygiene.
In India, the problem is that many people do not even want to think critically. We tend to gravitate toward beliefs that buttress our tribal affiliations. Our tribes are defined by our worldviews, and our tribes must prevail. Hence our worldviews must be proven true, regardless of whether they are in fact true.
There is a striking indifference toward truth as a value - ironic for a country whose national motto is "Truth alone triumphs." Many people have yet to realize that truth - satya - is not something you place on a pedestal and worship, but something you actively pursue, overturning long-held beliefs where necessary.
[+] [-] eafer|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] RichardCA|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Fricken|1 month ago|reply
Mike Judge's satire was lost on Sagan. Carl took his knee-jerk reaction and ran with it.
[+] [-] eafer|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] BeetleB|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] SoftTalker|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] palmotea|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kgwxd|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] philipallstar|1 month ago|reply
How do you know this?
[+] [-] jawilson2|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] mingus88|1 month ago|reply
I framed it as being more important than ever to be skeptical of what you see. Everything online is fake in some way. Every picture is touched up at best, AI slop at worst. You need to question everything.
I honestly fear her generation is just cooked. They were forced into online learning during covid, have socialization issues, and are coming of age in an era of rampant disinformation and generated content that is too good to spot and designed to addict and influence.
[+] [-] goobert|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] swed420|1 month ago|reply
You could go one level higher with this observation, since "modern academia" is just another business.
Rephrased: A significant amount of businesses would dissolve if this was applied.
[+] [-] donkeybeer|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] nobody9999|1 month ago|reply
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It
[+] [-] th0ma5|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jgalt212|1 month ago|reply
As a committed centrist, I am very good at fairly scrutinizing everything. /s
[+] [-] mingus88|1 month ago|reply
It’s so easy to verify his public statements. Did he really say that? Just go look.
Yet time and time again people get baited into rage mode. It’s more satisfying to post than it is to do 30 seconds of research.
[+] [-] coolhand2120|1 month ago|reply