B.S.

Here's avideo of Jon Stewart interviewing Harry Frankfurt about his book On Bullshit (which you can read online for free here).


What do you think? Is not caring about whether you're telling the truth worse than deliberately lying?

Intellectual Humility

I think there’s an important connection between intellectual honesty and humility. A simple goal of this class is to get us all to recognize what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence for a claim. I think we've gotten pretty good at this so far. But this doesn’t guarantee that we’ll care about the difference once we figure it out.

Getting us to care is the real goal. We should care about good evidence. We should care about evidence and arguments because they get us closer to the truth. When we judge an argument to be overall good, THE POWER OF LOGIC COMPELS US to believe the conclusion. If we are presented with decent evidence for some claim, but still stubbornly disagree with this claim for no strong reason, we are just being irrational. Worse, we’re effectively saying that the truth doesn’t matter to us.

Instead of resisting, we should be open-minded. We should be willing to challenge ourselves--seriously challenge ourselves--and allow new evidence change our current beliefs if it warrants it. We should be open to the possibility that we’ve currently gotten something wrong. This is how comedian Todd Glass puts it:


Here are the first two paragraphs of an interesting article on this:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. “Absolutely not,” he said. “No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct.”
I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It’s clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man’s mind.

Ironically, having extreme confidence in oneself is often a sign of ignorance. Remember, in many cases, such stubborn certainty is unwarranted.

Jock Math

Statistics in sports is all the rage lately.  Here are some links on the topic.

• Statistical analysis can justify counterintuitive decisions, like going for it instead of punting on 4th down... though don't expect the fans to buy that fancy math learnin'.
• There are a lot of odd statistical myths about what happens on the day of the Super Bowl that deserve to be debunked.
  
• "Realistic Announcer Shouting How Kevin Durant Making His Last 4 Shots Has No Bearing On Whether He Will Make Next Shot"
• "Cornell Drains Fun Out Of Cinderella Run By Explaining How On A Long Enough Timeline The Improbable Becomes Probable"

And here are some nice audio and video on statistical reasoning:

• That radio show I love recently devoted an entire episode to probability:
  
  
• That other radio show I love ran a great 2-part series on the screening for diseases called "You Are Pre-Diseased":
  
  Listen to Part 1
  Listen to Part 2
• Here's a cool visualization of the president's promise to cut $100 million from the U.S. budget:

Homework #3: Advertising

Homework #3 is due at the beginning of class on Monday, December 2nd. Your assignment is to choose an ad (on TV or from a magazine or wherever) and evaluate it from a logic & reasoning perspective.

• First, very briefly explain the argument that the ad offers to sell its product.
• Then, list and explain the mistakes in reasoning that the ad commits.
• Then, list and explain the psychological ploys the ad uses (what psychological impediments does the ad try to exploit?).
• Attach (if it's from a newspaper or magazine) or briefly explain the ad.

Hearsay

-via GraphJam

Mr. Crispino heard it through the purple monkey dishwasher:

Misidentification

Here's an excellent, short video explanation of the unreliability of memory that ends with a dog licking peanut butter off a guy's face:


And here's a more serious video (that we watched in class) on the tragedy of misidentifying a suspect:

Deoderant Norms

If you don't buy these products, you're being unnatural:

An Expert for Every Cause

Looking for links on appealing to authority? This is your post! First, here's an interesting article on a great question: How are those of us who aren't experts supposed to figure out the truth about stuff that requires expertise?

Not all alleged experts are actual experts. Here's a method to tell which experts are phonies (this article was originally published in the Chronicle of Higher Education).

We should judge experts who are into making predictions on how accurate their predictions turn out.  Well, most experts are really bad at predicting.

It's important to check whether the person making an appeal to authority really knows who the authority is. That's why we should beware of claims that begin with "Studies show..."

And here's a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Christopher Walken completely flunks the competence test.

Begging the Hot

I couldn't resist giving you some stuff on begging the question:

• Here's a psychology paper (pdf) about the success of offering question-begging reasons to use a copier.  The psychologists dubbed these nonsense reasons "placebic information."
• Warning: my explanation of that study is a bit oversimplified.  Here's an excellent explanation of what the study actually showed in the service of a larger point: even the most careful of us unintentionally distort and oversimplify the results of scientific studies.
• Here's a video for Mims's logically delicious song "This is Why I'm Hot":

That's an Ad Hominem, You Jerk

Here are some links on the ad hominem (personal attack) fallacy:

• Sure, some critics of Obama are racist, but does that mean we can dismiss their arguments? As much as we might want to, logically, no we cannot!
• Some variants on the personal attack: tu quoque (hypocrite!) and guilt by association (she hangs around bad people!).
• I should note that tu quoque isn't always fallacious reasoning.
  
• "The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders!"
• Remember our rallying cry: "STUPID PEOPLE SOMETIMES SAY SMART THINGS."
  

Get to studying, you dodo-heads.

Ockham Weeps

I think abductive reasoning is the most effective tool we have when faced with the myriad uncertain, ambiguous issues and decisions that everyday life throws our way.  Here are some links:

• Here's a paper (pdf) that explains why I disagree with our textbook's explanation of the scientific method. It's important to consider and test multiple possible explanations rather than a single hypothesis. 
• (NOTE: Platt uses the word "inductive" in a more general way than we do in class, to refer to any non-deductive kind of reasoning--that is, arguments that don't attempt to absolutely prove their conclusion.) 
• I'm 75% through reading this book: Inference to the Best Explanation by Peter Lipton. 
• Remember when I was talking about Einstein's theory of general relativity having predictive power? This is what I had in mind.  
• Everything you ever wanted to know about William of Ockham and his famous razor. 
• What do you think: is this woman's explanation below the best? Let us know in the comments to this post.
  
  
  

Breaking Bad Arguments

Here's that awesome video from the presentation on the ad hominem and appeal to force fallacies by Dan M., Devon, Jesse, Marisa, and Sonya. Tread lightly.

Correlatious

Here's yet another stick-figure comic (for those keeping track, that's five total on the blog so far). This one's about correlation.

Inductioneering

Here are two dumb things about inductive arguments. First, a video of comedian Lewis Black describing his failure to learn from experience every year around Halloween:


Next, this stick figure comic offers a pretty bad argument. Why is it bad? (Let us know in the comments!)

Quiz You Once, Shame on Me

The first quiz will be held at the beginning of class on Monday, October 14th. You will have about 25 minutes to take it.

There will be a multiple choice section, a section on understanding arguments, a section on evaluating deductive arguments, and a section where you provide examples of specific kinds of arguments. Basically, it will look like a mix of the homework, extra credit, and group work we've done in class so far.

The quiz is on what we have discussed in class from chapters 6, 8, and part of 7 of the textbook. Specifically, here's a lot of the stuff we've talked about in class so far that I expect you to know for the quiz:

• definitions of: logic, reasoning, argument, support, sound, valid, deductive, inductive
• understanding arguments
• evaluating arguments (truth and support!)
• deductive args (valid & sound)
• inductive args

The quiz is worth 7.5% of your overall grade.

That Beyoncé Video WAS Great...

Why doesn't Kanye give a toast to the tools?

Maybe Kanye should just eat some cookies.

Howard Sure Is a Duck

Howard the Duck is my favorite synecdoche for the 80's: