7 ms·

A field guide to bullshit

80 points by sgoraya 15y ago

cj 15y ago
"Intellectual black holes" help a lot of people, in that it gives them a sense of purpose, security, etc. Religion is comforting to those grieving death. However, the danger comes when intellectual black holes are propagated within society and thus accepted as truth, resulting in arbitrary notions of whats right and wrong.
- kylemaxwell 15y ago
  And it depends on the effect of the black hole, as you say. If my neighbor believes in flying saucers, hey no skin off my nose. But when enough of my neighbors believe it that they affect space policy, or my even just that one neighbor starts up a floodlight at night as a signal beacon and thus I can't sleep, now we have issues.
  - wmat 15y ago
    Off topic, but this comment describes how I feel about the Catholic School Board we have in Canada. Because of historical precedent, in Ontario we have two school systems, one that is secular and public, and one that is separate, for people of the Catholic faith. My problem lies in the public funding of this system. A good article about this was recently published in This Magazine: http://this.org/magazine/2011/06/09/abolish-catholic-schools/ http://this.org/magazine/2011/06/09/abolish-catholic-schools...
    - zwieback 15y ago
      Growing up in Germany we had "Religion" as a first-class citizen in the curriculum, all the way through 13th grade. Where I grew up we were almost exactly 50% Protestant, 50% Catholic so we split up in those groups for our classes. You (your parents) could declare yourself non-religious and skip those classes but few did, even though almost nobody I knew said they believed in god. The Religion classes, which were part history, part ethics classes were actually one of my favorite subjects even though I can't remember ever in my life believing in a supreme being of any sort.
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    A lot of those effects are positive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w
- ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
  I agree. My pet peeve with this article is that it isn't pointed in the right direction. So what if someone wants to believe ghosts or aliens exist? He's certainly correct in saying that it CAN be a problem when things get too intense, but that only happens in a relatively small number of cases. The place where the BS meter needs to be pointed is squarely at the people who have influence over our social and political policies. THAT would be an interesting book, though far more difficult to write I'm sure.
  - rwmj 15y ago
    Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is one such book (aimed mainly at the damage caused by quack medical beliefs).
bluekeybox 15y ago
"Then they insist that there are special people who can see - if only dimly - through this veil." I have this pet theory (hey, maybe it's another intellectual black hole) that all religious, mystical, and irrational beliefs derive from this: we human brains have this property (either innate or easily acquired due to existing structure) that leads us to worship other individuals. By "worship" I mean trust without doubt and with unreasonable admiration. I think that the following phenomena are all manifestations of this same property: (1) religious thinking, (2) romantic love, (3) pop culture/culture of cool, (4) family ties. The third and the fourth one would be the most self-aware forms of this type of thinking, but the first two (the first one especially) can take on forms of the self-sustaining "black holes" mentioned in the post. TL;DR: our idols are within us.
- zwieback 15y ago
  Like the "God gene"? I think your #4 may actually be rooted in evolution - there's some evolutionary advantage in family ties.
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    Yes except the God gene hypothesis posits that we evolved to worship something (anything really), while I believe that we evolved to worship specifically other individuals (and God is just a byproduct of abstract thought combined with propensity for belief in magic powers of certain individuals). The #2 and #4 were probably the driving factors (selected for by evolutionary pressure) for structuring the brain such that #1 and #3 also became possible as consequences. I don't literally believe in the God gene because I think that religious and mystical thinking are simply corollaries to possessing a brain structured for belief in magical power of other (attractive or otherwise powerful or desirable) individuals or even objects (idols). I like to imagine this as nodes on a network where nodes are individuals/objects and each connection is a desired property linking the individual/object to other desired individuals/objects. Obviously, some nodes will be more connected than others. Our brains interpret (scan) this network, and past a certain threshold (with very densely connected nodes -- associated with many desired characteristics), religious/magical thinking is triggered such that our brains are led to believe that the very densely connected nodes are so powerful they are out of this world. I thought about this long enough that I no longer find religious thinking perplexing even though I am a staunch atheist. Some people understand/understood how to trigger this religious response -- those people are/were prophets, founders of religions (Hubbard etc.) and, believe it or not, pop stars and certain state leaders... This is also why I think there is a serious danger that a strong AI may learn to exploit this bug in our brain...
gaulinmp 15y ago
Did anyone else get a sense that this article provided no special insight? It mentioned repeated examples like "I just know" works for Ted but not flying saucers. What is the difference between Ted out the window and a saucer? I felt the author relies heavily on the audience sharing his sense of the obvious and absurd, but provides no argument to support his claims.
- brudgers 15y ago
  It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers - unless one has - to a high degree of probability - entered an intellectual black hole of the sort described in the article. The argument is premised on long standing principals of ordinary language philosophy, i.e. "It's not Ted, because Ted is on holiday," is an appropriate response whereas, "It's not Ted, but a robotic doppelganger," is a bullshit response [a recent addition to the philosophical classification of propositions] in ordinary circumstances.
  - kd0amg 15y ago
    It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers On top of that, there have also been many cases of believing incorrectly that somebody else is out of town.
- bigiain 15y ago
  No special insight for most Hacker News readers, sure. Try showing it to that strange religious uncle of yours, or the crazy guy who lives under the freeway, or a typical middle school teacher. I suspect there's some insights for some of those people to think about / argue against...
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I'm not sure, but I think we may have just gone nuclear...
projectileboy 15y ago
This is somewhat tangential, but I get mildly irritated reading articles like this when they equate medicine with hard science. If the physics community operated like the pharmaceutical community, I think our knowledge of the universe would be less than it is today, to put it mildly. (As a reference, check HNSearch for "Prozac" and "placebo".)
- nanerj 15y ago
  The 'need' for breakthroughs in physics isn't quite the same as the 'need' for medicine. That said, 'back off man, I'm a scientist'! I just don't think the general public gives a damn about things that don't directly affect them... things like CERN. I told my parents the other day about the breakthroughs in quantum superposition and they could not possibly have cared less. Now if there were some miracle weight loss breakthrough they'd be all ears!
TikiTDO 15y ago
I feel this article is guilty of exactly what it argues against. Many of the views he writes off as ridiculous may be the results of countless thought processes working in any number of contexts. Instead of accepting this, he simplified each view that contradicts his own down to an obviously ridiculous claim, then makes use of what is effectively a traditional straw man argument. Sure, it's true that if your views are rationalized the way he expects them to be then you have no logical let to stand on. On the other hand should you have any sort of more complex and rational approach to the matter it appears that he will still gladly lump you with the lunatics. That said, I do agree that the issue he is trying to point out is of vital importance. The fact is that most of the people that believe in mysticism, religions, UFOs, psychic powers, and other things to that effect are completely disconnected from the physical reality that they inhabit. However, I do not think the solution is to tell these people that their views are ridiculous, before quoting scientific facts the implications of which you might not even understand yourself. You would be better off establishing a rapport, and gradually introducing more and more facts that do not agree with their interpretation of the world. In the end you may both find some wisdom in the result.
- jerf 15y ago
  "I feel this article is guilty of exactly what it argues against.... Instead of accepting this, he simplified each view that contradicts his own down..." Do you know what a "field guide" is? They're not generally full course textbooks on zoology. If you want a more full treatment, I hear there's this "Believing Bullshit" book by, I don't know, some guy or other, I heard about it somewhere. (Haven't read it, so I can't guarantee it has any given thing, but I bet it's a good deal longer than that article.) I think one is generally allowed to allude to belief in extraterrestrial visitation and psychic powers being a bit on the poorly-grounded side without popping open a footnote and pouring 150,000 words on the topic into it, especially in what is basically a sales pitch for a longer work.
  - TikiTDO 15y ago
    Sure, if I wanted the full treatment, I also hear there's this "Believing Bullshit" book. Unfortunately, I recall reading a synopsis, and I get the feeling that I would be wasting my money were I to buy it. The tone and content of the article in no way suggested that the book would be anything but more of the same. This isn't something you could fix with a footnote, or by writing 150,000 words on the topic. It is, I feel, a fundamental flaw of the author. Maybe I'm being too hard on the book, and it is actually much more interesting than the article gives it credit for. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly interested in looking into the matter, and that is where the article failed for me.
tokenadult 15y ago
A good example of applying reality tests to controversial ideas is the Science-Based Medicine blog, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ which corrects quite a few mistaken ideas found in the popular press (and, thus, here on HN) about medical research.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
fourk 15y ago
Isn't most science the result/process of having ridiculous beliefs and scientifically validating your theories? Remember that, at one point, Heliocentrism was universally considered to be an utterly absurd idea.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Scientists only have beliefs in falsifiable theories and are always working towards proving or disproving said theories. But yes, theories that are really hard to prove either way, like the string theory, quickly become what the article names intellectual black holes for same people. On the other hand, believing in homeopathy is tricky as there have been evidence that it doesn't work that well. I do take issue with this statement: Any theory, no matter how ludicrous, can be squared with the evidence, given enough ingenuity Well, yeah, but it can take hundreds of years for said evidence to emerge. We still have no clue about how to predict natural disasters, we barely know the reasons for why tornadoes happen and we haven't yet fully cracked the human brain -- we have a long, long way to go before fully understanding the phenomenons around us. It's also not only about ingenuity - sometimes you have that, but don't have the proper tools yet. Proving Einstein's theory turned out to be quite a challenge and the theory itself is so groundbreaking that many thought Einstein is a nutjob. Personally, I admit theories that have no evidence yet, such theories only have to pass the falsifiability test.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    You can never prove scientific theories, only disprove them.
mikk0j 15y ago
"-But even scientists admit that they can't explain everything. -There probably are questions that science cannot answer..." I would love to get rid of this intellectual appeasement of supernaturalists. It is only there to avoid accusations of scientism so I find it an argumentative cop-out. Sure, science can't answer some questions. Like: "what hair colour is bald?", "where does god live?" and "what is the meaning of life?". But is the problem with science or with the question? Always challenge the question, especially if it contains assumptions.
athst 15y ago
Sometimes an article is worth writing just for the title you can put on top.
losethos 15y ago
God says... recoveredst experience lifts announced page lineage leaning awe rectify neither infancy Paulus reposeth digest gnashed sighing True diversifiedst added dispraisest charioteer resistest mournful etexts Else distinguish earnest agonised AD overthrow regular redoubling depart steeping serves five unassuming preference owed Rhetoric religion Whose win enmity horse perceived weal beguiling deridedst flashes ransom USE folly prerogative betters defence turning thousand pitied master bewail foolishly use endearments gasped dotards

80 points by sgoraya 15y ago

cj 15y ago

"Intellectual black holes" help a lot of people, in that it gives them a sense of purpose, security, etc. Religion is comforting to those grieving death. However, the danger comes when intellectual black holes are propagated within society and thus accepted as truth, resulting in arbitrary notions of whats right and wrong.

kylemaxwell 15y ago
And it depends on the effect of the black hole, as you say. If my neighbor believes in flying saucers, hey no skin off my nose. But when enough of my neighbors believe it that they affect space policy, or my even just that one neighbor starts up a floodlight at night as a signal beacon and thus I can't sleep, now we have issues.
- wmat 15y ago
  Off topic, but this comment describes how I feel about the Catholic School Board we have in Canada. Because of historical precedent, in Ontario we have two school systems, one that is secular and public, and one that is separate, for people of the Catholic faith. My problem lies in the public funding of this system. A good article about this was recently published in This Magazine: http://this.org/magazine/2011/06/09/abolish-catholic-schools/ http://this.org/magazine/2011/06/09/abolish-catholic-schools...
  - zwieback 15y ago
    Growing up in Germany we had "Religion" as a first-class citizen in the curriculum, all the way through 13th grade. Where I grew up we were almost exactly 50% Protestant, 50% Catholic so we split up in those groups for our classes. You (your parents) could declare yourself non-religious and skip those classes but few did, even though almost nobody I knew said they believed in god. The Religion classes, which were part history, part ethics classes were actually one of my favorite subjects even though I can't remember ever in my life believing in a supreme being of any sort.
- lucasjung 15y ago
  A lot of those effects are positive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w
ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
I agree. My pet peeve with this article is that it isn't pointed in the right direction. So what if someone wants to believe ghosts or aliens exist? He's certainly correct in saying that it CAN be a problem when things get too intense, but that only happens in a relatively small number of cases. The place where the BS meter needs to be pointed is squarely at the people who have influence over our social and political policies. THAT would be an interesting book, though far more difficult to write I'm sure.
- rwmj 15y ago
  Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is one such book (aimed mainly at the damage caused by quack medical beliefs).

bluekeybox 15y ago

"Then they insist that there are special people who can see - if only dimly - through this veil." I have this pet theory (hey, maybe it's another intellectual black hole) that all religious, mystical, and irrational beliefs derive from this: we human brains have this property (either innate or easily acquired due to existing structure) that leads us to worship other individuals. By "worship" I mean trust without doubt and with unreasonable admiration. I think that the following phenomena are all manifestations of this same property: (1) religious thinking, (2) romantic love, (3) pop culture/culture of cool, (4) family ties. The third and the fourth one would be the most self-aware forms of this type of thinking, but the first two (the first one especially) can take on forms of the self-sustaining "black holes" mentioned in the post. TL;DR: our idols are within us.

zwieback 15y ago
Like the "God gene"? I think your #4 may actually be rooted in evolution - there's some evolutionary advantage in family ties.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  Yes except the God gene hypothesis posits that we evolved to worship something (anything really), while I believe that we evolved to worship specifically other individuals (and God is just a byproduct of abstract thought combined with propensity for belief in magic powers of certain individuals). The #2 and #4 were probably the driving factors (selected for by evolutionary pressure) for structuring the brain such that #1 and #3 also became possible as consequences. I don't literally believe in the God gene because I think that religious and mystical thinking are simply corollaries to possessing a brain structured for belief in magical power of other (attractive or otherwise powerful or desirable) individuals or even objects (idols). I like to imagine this as nodes on a network where nodes are individuals/objects and each connection is a desired property linking the individual/object to other desired individuals/objects. Obviously, some nodes will be more connected than others. Our brains interpret (scan) this network, and past a certain threshold (with very densely connected nodes -- associated with many desired characteristics), religious/magical thinking is triggered such that our brains are led to believe that the very densely connected nodes are so powerful they are out of this world. I thought about this long enough that I no longer find religious thinking perplexing even though I am a staunch atheist. Some people understand/understood how to trigger this religious response -- those people are/were prophets, founders of religions (Hubbard etc.) and, believe it or not, pop stars and certain state leaders... This is also why I think there is a serious danger that a strong AI may learn to exploit this bug in our brain...

gaulinmp 15y ago

Did anyone else get a sense that this article provided no special insight? It mentioned repeated examples like "I just know" works for Ted but not flying saucers. What is the difference between Ted out the window and a saucer? I felt the author relies heavily on the audience sharing his sense of the obvious and absurd, but provides no argument to support his claims.

brudgers 15y ago
It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers - unless one has - to a high degree of probability - entered an intellectual black hole of the sort described in the article. The argument is premised on long standing principals of ordinary language philosophy, i.e. "It's not Ted, because Ted is on holiday," is an appropriate response whereas, "It's not Ted, but a robotic doppelganger," is a bullshit response [a recent addition to the philosophical classification of propositions] in ordinary circumstances.
- kd0amg 15y ago
  It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers On top of that, there have also been many cases of believing incorrectly that somebody else is out of town.
bigiain 15y ago
No special insight for most Hacker News readers, sure. Try showing it to that strange religious uncle of yours, or the crazy guy who lives under the freeway, or a typical middle school teacher. I suspect there's some insights for some of those people to think about / argue against...
burgerbrain 15y ago
I'm not sure, but I think we may have just gone nuclear...

projectileboy 15y ago

This is somewhat tangential, but I get mildly irritated reading articles like this when they equate medicine with hard science. If the physics community operated like the pharmaceutical community, I think our knowledge of the universe would be less than it is today, to put it mildly. (As a reference, check HNSearch for "Prozac" and "placebo".)

nanerj 15y ago
The 'need' for breakthroughs in physics isn't quite the same as the 'need' for medicine. That said, 'back off man, I'm a scientist'! I just don't think the general public gives a damn about things that don't directly affect them... things like CERN. I told my parents the other day about the breakthroughs in quantum superposition and they could not possibly have cared less. Now if there were some miracle weight loss breakthrough they'd be all ears!

TikiTDO 15y ago

I feel this article is guilty of exactly what it argues against. Many of the views he writes off as ridiculous may be the results of countless thought processes working in any number of contexts. Instead of accepting this, he simplified each view that contradicts his own down to an obviously ridiculous claim, then makes use of what is effectively a traditional straw man argument. Sure, it's true that if your views are rationalized the way he expects them to be then you have no logical let to stand on. On the other hand should you have any sort of more complex and rational approach to the matter it appears that he will still gladly lump you with the lunatics. That said, I do agree that the issue he is trying to point out is of vital importance. The fact is that most of the people that believe in mysticism, religions, UFOs, psychic powers, and other things to that effect are completely disconnected from the physical reality that they inhabit. However, I do not think the solution is to tell these people that their views are ridiculous, before quoting scientific facts the implications of which you might not even understand yourself. You would be better off establishing a rapport, and gradually introducing more and more facts that do not agree with their interpretation of the world. In the end you may both find some wisdom in the result.

jerf 15y ago
"I feel this article is guilty of exactly what it argues against.... Instead of accepting this, he simplified each view that contradicts his own down..." Do you know what a "field guide" is? They're not generally full course textbooks on zoology. If you want a more full treatment, I hear there's this "Believing Bullshit" book by, I don't know, some guy or other, I heard about it somewhere. (Haven't read it, so I can't guarantee it has any given thing, but I bet it's a good deal longer than that article.) I think one is generally allowed to allude to belief in extraterrestrial visitation and psychic powers being a bit on the poorly-grounded side without popping open a footnote and pouring 150,000 words on the topic into it, especially in what is basically a sales pitch for a longer work.
- TikiTDO 15y ago
  Sure, if I wanted the full treatment, I also hear there's this "Believing Bullshit" book. Unfortunately, I recall reading a synopsis, and I get the feeling that I would be wasting my money were I to buy it. The tone and content of the article in no way suggested that the book would be anything but more of the same. This isn't something you could fix with a footnote, or by writing 150,000 words on the topic. It is, I feel, a fundamental flaw of the author. Maybe I'm being too hard on the book, and it is actually much more interesting than the article gives it credit for. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly interested in looking into the matter, and that is where the article failed for me.

tokenadult 15y ago

A good example of applying reality tests to controversial ideas is the Science-Based Medicine blog, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ which corrects quite a few mistaken ideas found in the popular press (and, thus, here on HN) about medical research.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

fourk 15y ago

Isn't most science the result/process of having ridiculous beliefs and scientifically validating your theories? Remember that, at one point, Heliocentrism was universally considered to be an utterly absurd idea.

bad_user 15y ago
Scientists only have beliefs in falsifiable theories and are always working towards proving or disproving said theories. But yes, theories that are really hard to prove either way, like the string theory, quickly become what the article names intellectual black holes for same people. On the other hand, believing in homeopathy is tricky as there have been evidence that it doesn't work that well. I do take issue with this statement: Any theory, no matter how ludicrous, can be squared with the evidence, given enough ingenuity Well, yeah, but it can take hundreds of years for said evidence to emerge. We still have no clue about how to predict natural disasters, we barely know the reasons for why tornadoes happen and we haven't yet fully cracked the human brain -- we have a long, long way to go before fully understanding the phenomenons around us. It's also not only about ingenuity - sometimes you have that, but don't have the proper tools yet. Proving Einstein's theory turned out to be quite a challenge and the theory itself is so groundbreaking that many thought Einstein is a nutjob. Personally, I admit theories that have no evidence yet, such theories only have to pass the falsifiability test.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  You can never prove scientific theories, only disprove them.

mikk0j 15y ago

"-But even scientists admit that they can't explain everything. -There probably are questions that science cannot answer..." I would love to get rid of this intellectual appeasement of supernaturalists. It is only there to avoid accusations of scientism so I find it an argumentative cop-out. Sure, science can't answer some questions. Like: "what hair colour is bald?", "where does god live?" and "what is the meaning of life?". But is the problem with science or with the question? Always challenge the question, especially if it contains assumptions.

athst 15y ago

Sometimes an article is worth writing just for the title you can put on top.

losethos 15y ago

God says... recoveredst experience lifts announced page lineage leaning awe rectify neither infancy Paulus reposeth digest gnashed sighing True diversifiedst added dispraisest charioteer resistest mournful etexts Else distinguish earnest agonised AD overthrow regular redoubling depart steeping serves five unassuming preference owed Rhetoric religion Whose win enmity horse perceived weal beguiling deridedst flashes ransom USE folly prerogative betters defence turning thousand pitied master bewail foolishly use endearments gasped dotards