Friday, August 20, 2010

Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick


From Bad Astronomy:
In July, I spoke at The Amaz!ng Meeting 8 in Las Vegas. Sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation, it’s the largest meeting of critical thinkers and skeptics in the world. Unlike my usual talks about the abuse of science that I had given at previous TAMs, this time I wanted to tackle a much thornier issue: how we skeptics argue with believers of various stripes.

My first point was that we must keep in mind our goal. If it’s to change the hearts and minds of people across the world, then at least as important as what we say is how we say it. And my second point was pretty simple… but you’ll get to it around 24 minutes in. It’s obvious enough.
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(Thanks Charles)

20 comments:

  1. He assumes skeptics have some sort of common goal to convert other people to skepticism. Or that there is some sort of war of ideas to win. What if I just like scoring cheap points against idiots?

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  2. When telling the truth causes believers to make a passive-aggressive response of faked pretend offense, then it is they who are being dicks by trying to sell the bullshit idea that the truth-teller is being a dick for being honest.  It's a shame that Phil Plait has fallen for this.  Especially when his Bad Astronomy site has posts by him on it in which he has no qualms about taking the no-nonsense tell-the-truth-even-when-it-offends attitude toward pseudoscience-pushers that he then turns around and decrys here in this talk.

    When honesty causes offense, the one being the dick is the one taking offense, not the one being honest.

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  3. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

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  4. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

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  5. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

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  6. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

    ReplyDelete
  8. In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion. It is not my goal to convert anyone. It is my goal to create an unfriendly environment for irrational ideas, so that fewer irrational people are created. As macabre as it sounds, the world only becomes more rational as irrational people die off. Those who are on the fence need to see irrational ideas getting the disrespect they deserve. Being polite with someone like Deepak Chopra is just giving his disingenuous insanity an undeserved level of perceived equality. That doesn't mean calling him a "retard", but making fun of his ideas--such as Shermer did with "woo woo"--is certainly warranted.

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  9. Sorry for the multiple posts, my browser just kept looping and retrying. I don't see how to delete the extras.

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  10. That's only true for those who, "lie for Jesus" and the like.  If they know they're being dishonest or lying then of course, but we can't always tell the liars from the brainwashed.  I remember during my freshman year of college (I was still a deist at that point) a girl invited me back to her room and without any provocation she asked me what I thought of her poster.  It was of the FSM, but I had no idea what that was, so I asked.  She went into this rant about how all gods are made up and bullshit.  I mentioned I did believe in God and then she looked at me like I must be joking, and what should have been a night of good sex turned into a needless confrontation.  I eventually left because I wasn't willing to compromise my beliefs or lie just for some ass.

    I eventually came around (as most free thinking people do) but it wasn't because anyone pushed their beliefs on me.  Religion works on an emotional level, not a rational one.  So if you want to undo its harm then you need to reach the other pperson emotionally.  The first big step there is to get them to empathize with non-believers.  You'll never do that by ambushing them by pushing them into an argument they're not looking for.  We have to hope that when they're in those moments of doubt, and are looking for something to answer a question that their faith just doesn't satisfy, that they find the compassion of an agnostic friend or the writtings of an atheist writer.

    If people have a cause and think they've found their purpose, then you'll never dissuade them.  Our real advantage is that religion doesn't provide very good answers and it doesn't match up with reality, so eventually they'll want to know why.  And when they ask, that's when we should be there with the truth, not pitting it against their convictions, but offering as our own.  That's how you save people from being saved.

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  11. To the moderator who cleaned up the posts:  Mine was a response to <span>Steven Mading, not ekted.</span>

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  12. <span>"In all my years of reading and posting about skepticism--especially against religion--I have not seen the slightest signs of conversion."</span>

    For the case of religion, I would disagree with you, but for the case of skepticism in general, I second the sentiment a million times over - it's something I think about VERY often. I've never seen any statistics specifically tracking subscription to a scientifically skeptical worldview over time, but I STRONGLY suspect it's a very flat line at around <5% that stretches back centuries.

    I know many people think this view is elitist, but I just don't think it's teachable to the overwhelming majority of the population. You either have the baseline level of intelligence necessary to understand how it works and you receive the necessary instruction in school or elsewhere and then "get it", or you don't.

    Ain't no 'mount a schoolin' ever gonna be gettin' me to be capable of understanding 11 dimensional supersymmetric string theory the way Ed Witten or Biran Green do, and sadly, the more time goes by, the more I resign myself to believing the exact same thing is true for the general population with respect to skeptical reasoning. I honestly believe the only way out of our current circumstance is going to be through direct manipulation of the genome to artificially enhance innate human intelligence, and I'm pretty sure I'll be dead by the time that happens.

    This was a good talk, but as long as our prefrontal cortices are as puny as they are, Phil Plait is too optomistic about the prospects of skeptical evangelism. We do need to be dicks sometimes, especially about dangerous BS belief that really causes harm.

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  13. Lots of skeptics do have a common goal of promoting skepticism. It benefits the person you are "converting", society as a whole, and therefore yourself.

    Of course, if you're just trying to win arguments to boost your ego, you might as well be a dick. At least then your motives and your methods will be consistently dickish.

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  14. <span>Lots of skeptics do have a common goal of promoting skepticism. It benefits the person you are "converting", society as a whole, and therefore yourself. 
     
    Of course, if you're just trying to win arguments to boost your ego, you might as well act like a dick while doing so. At least then your motives and your methods will be consistently dickish.</span>

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  15. <span>The moral of your college story, imho, is not that which you imply. The moral, it seems to me, is that, in that instance, on the fateful night in question, if you had allowed the truth to penetrate beyond of the web of bad ideas you had accumulated over a lifetime of irrational cultural indoctrination, you would have gained some measure of enlightenment and had a pleasurable intimate encounter with a another human who was also, seemingly, desired an intimate encounter. Instead, you held fast to your mind viruses and enjoyed yet another exciting knuckle-fuck all alone. </span>
    <span> </span>
    <span>Now you come here and imply that it was she-in-the-dorm who acted badly? I can not understand how. You showed bigotry and pig-headedness in the face of truth to such an extent that you denied the most intimate and pleasurable contact with another person, a person with whom you'd have otherwise been willing to be intimate, and a person you claim desired intimacy with you. You rejected that because she didn't accept your notion of a god. </span>
    <span> </span>
    <span>Now, presumably a significant time later, in metaphysical terms you've come to believe as she believed that night; and yet you still blame her but not yourself for that missed intimacy. How exactly is that her fault?</span>
    <span> </span>
    <span>PS. I refrain from mentioning how anti-humanist (and sexist) it is for you to see the other human character in your story as simply a thing that you chose not to fuck that night, instead of understanding the she is another human with who you denied intimacy for ideological reasons. <span> </span></span>

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  16. Perhaps I was being "a dick." So be it. Sometimes, it seems to me,  the dickarian method is called for.   

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  17. <span>Or would that be "Dickensian" after all?</span>

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  18. Well, I can sympathize with your desire not to have your posts placed in the wrong context by retroactive editing, it doesn't really matter that much in this particular case because it's wrong either way.  You mistook the meaning of the word "honesty" as I was using it.  I was referring to intellectual honesty - not necessarily the same thing as trivial one-level deep honesty, but rather an insistence on using honesty as much as possible all throughout the chain of reasoning.  If you genuinely believe something but at the same time you know that the reason you have FOR believing it is a dishonest one, then there's still a level of intellectual dishonesty going on there.  All you have to do is poke a religious person's beliefs a little bit and very soon you uncover that magic word "faith" that they like to use to create the cognative dissonance that allows them to use reasons they know on some level are untenable to come to the conclusions they want to come to.

    Are they being honest when they use faith?  it's possible - some probably are, some probably are not.
    Are they being **intellectually** honest when they use faith?  No - that's not possible.

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  19. Unless of course they've been lied to about reality, so that (for example) they think that evolution is a fabrication and that their holy book is a credible historical document.  If the flaw is in their premises then it might not be the case that they're being intellectually honest, and they'll come to it from the same perspective as you (thinking that you've been brainwashed and lied to).

    if the flaw is in their premises, then it's akin to being told that 3.14 is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  Sure we could all test this in fourth grade and realize 9before we're todl it) that this is an estimate and that it's actually 3.14159... But how many of us actually do that?  We're presented with so many facts, and if we had somewhat responsible parents, then we're going to be inclined to trust their words.

    It not really the case that people justify their faith as a conclusion very often, but that the faith is set up as a premise, so that they say, "Killing is wrong because God says so."  This means that in their mind, if they let go of God, then they've got to rethink morality and anything else that they based on their faith.  So if you approach it from the point of view that faith is a conclusion they've reached, you'll both be wrong and never identify the real reasons that they cling to their faith.  Give them secular reasoning for the things they currently justify through faith, and their need for faith will diminish over time.

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