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Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth. -- Joseph Joubert

Argumentation styles in political discussions

February 2nd, 2012 · Critical Thinking, Model, Politics

Here is a great post from Effective Thinking, on different political argumentation styles.

[P]eople tend to debate politics in terms of a set of basic presumptions that are unexpressed and generally undetectable by one another. These presumptions give rise to a certain approach to political debate — a particular style of argumentation and a particular strategy for working through the issues. These political argumentation styles shape the way in which a person will defend his or her political beliefs, whatever those beliefs are: they cut across the political spectrum.

He then offers a pretty good enumeration of these argumentation styles. Here’s a sample:

The Satirist — One who used the devices of satire in order to provoke another’s recognition of the harmful consequences of a political policy. In political debate, the satirist uses techniques such as reductio ad absurdum and logical analogy to confront another with the implications of a political standpoint.

Don Boudreaux is a good example of the Satirist — he is the master of the reductio ad absurdum. See here and here, for example.

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I think I just convinced myself that these two seemingly contradictory statements on global warming are both true.

February 2nd, 2012 · Critical Thinking, Global Warming, Science, Scientific studies

Here are the two statements:

1. Nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.

and

2. There has not been any warming since 1997.

The first statement is supported by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the U.K.’s Met Office, and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

The second statement is supported by Anthony Watts and other global warming skeptics, and statements made by climate scientists in interviews such as this one:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just.

This source contains more of that interview, wherein Jones goes on to clarify that there is still a slight positive trend since 2000, but just not enough to meet the criteria for statistical significance at the 95% confidence level. For those unfamiliar with statistical jargon, that means you cannot say with 95% confidence that there has been a positive temperature trend since 2000; the trend has been small enough that there is at least a 5% chance it could just be random year-to-year variability.

So. I’m concluding that both of these statements are true. The global temperature has risen very, very slightly since 1997 — not enough for us to say with a statistical 95% confidence that a positive warming trend has continued, but enough so that 9 of the last 10 years since 2000 are the warmest on record.

Consequently, I would point out that:

(1) Climate scientists and informed climate science defenders who are quick to trot out the first statement above in a manner intended to disprove the second are being intellectually dishonest. (Phil Plait, I’m looking at you. And I agree with William Briggs.) And there’s no need to do that; a 15-year hiatus in a (typically) centuries long global warming cycle does not mean that the cycle is now somehow over. The climate science defenders need not feel so defensive about a temporary flattening of the warming trend.

(2) Global warming skeptics and media sources who are quick to trot out the second statement above while neglecting to mention or acknowledge the first, and/or in a manner suggesting that a 15 year flattening period somehow means that global warming is over, are either being ignorant or intellectually dishonest (or both).

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I’m just sayin’, is all.

February 1st, 2012 · Politics

George W. Bush, 2001: You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.
Lefties: FALSE DICHOTOMY! FALSE DICHOTOMY!

Hillary Clinton, 2012: The world faces a choice: stand with the people of Syria or be complicit in the Bashar al-Assad regime’s brutal violence.
Lefties: ::crickets::

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Some interesting findings on dishonesty in scientific research

February 1st, 2012 · Critical Thinking, Science, Scientific studies

Here is a nice graphic on dishonesty in scientific research, from the ClinicalPsychology.net web site. Click for the full-size image.

A brief caveat: I have not completely vetted this graphic (which I believe is a pretty new one) so I don’t know how well the claims below will stand up to scrutiny, but on first blush it seems consistent with the information provided in the reference links (see the bottom of this post). I do wonder if these claims are more limited to research within specific fields such as medicine and psychology rather than to science in general — but human nature being human nature, I would not be surprised if it applies broadly.

Bad Science
Created by: Clinical Psychology

For convenience, here are the links in the References at the bottom of this image:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/health/research/noted-dutch-psychologist-stapel-accused-of-research-fraud.html?_r=1

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738

http://techyum.com/2011/03/omg-aliens1-or-is-it-just-more-fake-science-news/

http://www.badscience.net/2011/04/i-foresee-that-nobody-will-do-anything-about-this-problem/

http://www.citypages.com/2011-03-23/news/women-s-funding-network-sex-trafficking-study-is-junk-science/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/naturally-selected/201109/what-do-about-scientific-fraud-in-psychology

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110914/full/news.2011.536.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/aug/22/riot-control-newspapers-distorting-science

http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/92prom.html

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Today, 2/1/12, is NATIONAL RUSH DAY.

February 1st, 2012 · Music, Prog Rock, Rush

In honor of the band’s seminal prog album 2112, today — 2/1/12 — is National Rush Day.

Here’s a great story I posted a couple years back about one fan’s first encounter with Rush.

… here is Geoff Reading’s Rush story.

I found a 2112 cassette tape in my P.E. locker midway through seventh-grade. I got home and put it in my mom’s shoebox-sized player recorder – the kind with the little toggle switch. Just play, stop and forward. The tape was already rewound to the beginning of side one.

“Overture/Temple of Syrinx” blew my little sevey head CLEAN OFF. It was the most stunning thing I had ever heard. It screamed at me, “ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?!! LIFE IS ALL AROUND US BEING LIVED!! DON’T SLACK! LIVE!!!!”

…

Twenty-five years after our first introduction, Channing was coming over to my house to show me the Rush in Rio DVD. It was a beautiful sunny winter day in Southern California. In a few weeks my son would be born; a few months later I would re-relocate my cuddly little family to the lying cruel beauty that makes up the seven week Seattle summer…

Channing and I sat in my living room watching the DVD talking about how huge the Rio crowd was, how “Closer to the Heart” is basically the national anthem down there and had to be added to the set at the last minute, and then about all that Neil Peart had been through losing first his daughter (in a car crash) and then his wife (from a broken heart) in the same year. We talked about the books Neil had written, some about joy some about grief – books that Chan had read all of. It was just he and I.

Then “The Pass” came on. The first resolution from the verse into the chorus caught me completely off guard. The chord change. It was like I had been punched in the stomach with emotion. My eyes welled up and I instinctively looked over at Chan to see if he had seen me nearly burst into unexplained tears. He hadn’t…

Here is “The Pass”, from the Rush in Rio DVD, that Geoff is referring to. The chord change, in case you care, comes at about 1:08.

Um, ‘scuse me, I must have something in my eye.

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An example of reasoning by analogy

January 31st, 2012 · Critical Thinking, Economics, Global Warming, Politics

Go read this post on QandO wherein Billy Hollis makes a great argument by analogy. Here’s a summary, but seriously, go read it all:

Consider the following generic proposition:

“System Y is a complex system, and its destabilization would have a dramatic negative impact on society. Factor X is known to influence System Y, and the growth of Factor X is believed to destabilize System Y and even make it possibly vulnerable to catastrophic Failure Mode Z.

“Therefore, for the good of society, it’s extremely important to reduce Factor X. Everyone must make sacrifices to avoid Failure Mode Z.”

… Let’s take a look at a couple of real cases of the proposition.

First, let’s consider

System Y = global climate

Factor X = carbon dioxide

Failure Mode Z = significant global temperature rise with attendant sea level rise and other forms of extreme environmental degradation

With this particular substitution, most of those on the left would vigorously assure us that the proposition was valid. They would then tell us that, in order to reduce carbon dioxide, drastic measures are needed, even though those measures have some very undesirable side effects on various members of society.

Next, let’s consider

System Y = US or world financial system

Factor X = government spending and debt

Failure Mode Z = financial system meltdown, in which financial institutions fail en masse, and normal commerce is halted or seriously disrupted

Now, if we make this substitution and present the proposition to a typical leftist, their reaction would be quite different. They would very likely not agree that drastic measures are needed to reduce spending and debt. Based on recent arguments from the left, they would look to comparatively small changes to address any dangers, such as raising taxes on rich people, or “rooting out fraud and waste”. Such changes have been tried before, and clearly are not a long term fix, yet the left keeps insisting that they are sufficient to head off potential financial catastrophe.

Leftists would probably argue that government spending and debt isn’t what would lead to financial meltdown, but rather unethical and greedy behavior on the part of corporate leaders, bankers, and investors, combined with insufficient (rather than too much) government regulation and oversight. Consequently, they could claim — fairly, I think — that from their point of view, the second case doesn’t fit the model.

Even though this particular example may be a bit flawed, this illustrates a great way of reasoning by analogy.

Here’s a better example:

System X is comprised of so many interacting parts and is so complex that it is beyond our ability to understand it or manage it or control it.

Therefore we should not intervene in System X.

In general, liberals believe this proposition about foreign wars and interventions but not about the economy; conservatives believe this about the economy but not about foreign wars and interventions. Hence, both of them are guilty of inconsistent thinking, driven by their ideologies.

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The Daily Mail misrepresents the latest climate data.

January 31st, 2012 · Asshat, Critical Thinking, Global Warming, Politics, Science, Scientific studies

From the Daily Mail:

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

This contradicts what has been widely reported elsewhere, usually sourced from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies: that nine out of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.

Now, it is curious that the Daily Mail did not provide any links back to the Met Office or U. of East Anglia data it is interpreting. According to the Met Office itself,

2012 is expected to be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a predicted likely range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.

The middle of this range would place 2012 within the top 10 warmest years in a series which goes back to 1850.

This same Met Office article also includes a table of the warmest 12 years on record, and it does turn out that nine of the ten hottest years on record occurred after 2000 — consistent with the NASA claim, not with the Daily Mail’s. So it appears that the Daily Mail has misrepresented the new 2012 data — and in so doing, has called into question the credibility of their reporting on climate science. I am now spring-loaded to be highly skeptical of any future articles on climate science.

Indeed, I now need to expend effort to see how past Daily Mail articles may have influenced my thinking on climate science, and revise my opinions accordingly. Otherwise I’ve fallen victim to the spread-the-lie strategy.

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Groupthink, revisited: forget what you think you know about brainstorming

January 30th, 2012 · Critical Thinking

I opined here that “[m]any people — the ‘lone genius’ types — can be creative in isolation in ways that group interaction stifles for them, but other research has shown that the interaction of multiple personality types in a group environment can often produce creative results that could never have been achieved alone.”

But now I’ve learned, via Overcoming Bias, that this conventional wisdom on group creativity may be wrong.

The usual wisdom says we are most creative when working in groups that avoid criticism. This is wrong:

… Osborn’s most celebrated idea was … the essential rules of a successful brainstorming session. The single most important … was the absence of criticism and negative feedback. … Brainstorming was an immediate hit and Osborn became a popular business guru. …

But … brainstorming … doesn’t work. The first empirical test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was performed at Yale University, in 1958. … The solo students came tip [sic] with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups, and a panel of judges deemed their solutions more “feasible” and “effective.” … Numerous follow up studies have come to the same conclusion. …

Nemeth … divided two hundred and sixty-five female undergraduates into teams of five. … The first set of teams got the standard brainstorming spiel, including the no-criticism rules. Other teams were told … “Most studies suggest that you should debate and criticize each other’s ideas.” The rest received no further instructions. …The brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, but teams given the debate condition were the most creative by far. On average, they generated twenty per cent more ideas…

“There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings. … Well, that’s just wrong.”

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Everything is amazing, but nobody’s happy

January 30th, 2012 · Happiness

This video hilariously explains so much of what’s wrong with the world today.

HT to Steve Horwitz on FB.

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What liberals think conservatives get right, and vice-versa

January 26th, 2012 · Civility, Critical Thinking, Politics

On CivilPolitics.org, Jonathan Haidt passes along the results on an investigation conducted by journalist Tom Edsall. Edsall asked some liberals what they think conservatives are right about, and then asked some conservatives what liberals are right about.

Here’s what the liberals praised conservatives on:

They appreciate more instinctively the need for fiscal balance.

They understand people’s more innate belief in hard work and individual responsibility and see government as too often lacking that understanding.

They are more suspicious from a philosophical point of view of big government as an answer to many issues and are suspicious of Wall Street institutionally and not just their high salaries, and bad practices.

They respect the need for private sector economic growth (although their prescription is lacking).

They are more pro-small business.

And here’s what conservatives praised liberals on:

Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and the socially destructive force of increasing inequality.

Liberals do not dismiss or treat as ideologically motivated scientific findings, especially the sharpening scientific consensus that human beings contribute significantly to climate change.

Liberals stand with those most in need, and believe in the inclusion of such previously marginalized groups as blacks, Hispanics, women and gays.

Fascinating. Both sides see good in the other side’s positions, but usually seem unable to take those positions themselves. I’m not sure whether to be encouraged or troubled. Perhaps both.

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