Intellectual Black Holes

[Ray Moscow]

This sounds like an interesting book. Interview with Stephen Law:

A field guide to bullshit (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028160.200-a-field-guide-to-bullshit.html?print=true&full=true)

Q: You describe your new book, Believing Bullshit, as a guide to avoid getting sucked into "intellectual black holes". What are they?

A: Intellectual black holes are belief systems that draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap. Belief in homeopathy, psychic powers, alien abductions - these are examples of intellectual black holes. As you approach them, you need to be on your guard because if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Private Eye's Francis Wheen did an excellent book on this very topic - recommended reading:


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZHB399SGL._SS500_.jpg

[davidpbrown]

I saw Stephen Law talk on this 'Believing Bullshit', last weekend at the BHA conference (http://bhaconference.org.uk/programme/).

I can't say I'd recommend the book based on that. Much of it was a rather simple proposition that people need intellectual defenses against our natural inclination to accept meaning, which flowed from a number of the other talks. His talk, and I suspect the book, was largely it seemed reframing well known logical fallacies, though I suspect it doesn't acknowledge it's doing that directly.

One interesting thought was that those who lack defenses get sucked into the intellectual black holes that are in our environment. That those are then self reinforcing and hard to get away from.

He suggested that the notion that you can't prove a negative is false because you can prove certain simple negative declarations. It's more accurately that it's usually extremely hard to prove the negative and it obviously a fool who opts to prove the negative.

He also suggested that one counter to theists might be contesting that they should prove there is not an evil god, if they are challenging we should prove there is no god.

He reinforced another speakers comment that oversensitivity to agency in objects may stem from survival. Those who run when they imagine there might be a tiger, survive more often than those who seek the prove of it.

It was entertaining enough but I suspect the book will be more use to those who like to use narratives to reinforce ideas, than that it offers something new.


Easy to be critical of course.. and maybe that is harsh from someone who's not seen the book itself..

[Rodney Dobson]

....whence the tag "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"?

Google gives Carl Sagan either alone or quoting Martin Rees which is plausible - but I have a clear memory of it being used in a 1930's detective novel and it would seem to have overtones of the dog who didn't bark and/or logic-chopping in a lawcourt.
The whole thing is closely related to "you cannot prove a negative" which is, on the surface, a ridiculous proposition - heads one wins, tails the other loses: and it is probably equivalent to the basic rule - If A then if not A then B: variously expressed but always a reductio ad absurdum.

And the difficulty with the above is that those are obviously very useful rules. IF used correctly with reasonable propositions. And the only answer I can think of is Popper's - his position on "falsifiability" - but many people do not accept this.

Over and above all this: it might be possible to hold a reasonable, intelligent - even an enjoyable discussion with a person but only if he accepts certain basic rules of evidence. You will never get a fundamentalist (of any religion) to the discussion table: they rely on revelation and, for them, there is nothing to discuss.
And, yes, any discussion spirals round and round and eventually into a black hole.

[davidpbrown]

....whence the tag "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"?

Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence (http://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/absenceofevidence.html)

The report by Dr. Fritz Reuter, published in 1933 [4], describes conclusions he had made earlier in 1927. He wrote, "There are no common guiding rules on how to identify existing bloodstains on cloth or hands of the accused. ..
...
4. Reuter, F., "Foensische Wertung von Blutspuren", Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin, Berlin und Wein, Urban und Schwarzenberg, 1933, p 301.