The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking

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• PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

  I really don’t like the quantification criteria. Yeah, qualitative hypotheses are open to many explanations. That’s a given. But following the rest of the rules of logic is just as good for detecting qualitative bullshit.

  Asking for historical evidence, which is qualitative, for evidence that the modern era features a lot of fascist tendencies is completely reasonable as long as the premises agree with the conclusion in the way of classical logic. And that conclusion can then be a premise in an extended argument that a certain politician is a modern rendition of a fascist leader.

  Furthermore, I find quantification misleading more often than not. Economics is full of it: cost minimization and profit maximization has real consequences in real people’s live. But quantification abstracts conscious decisions into necessities, where someone must be fired to ensure that the returns to shareholders remain high. Let’s just overlook the realities of unemployment on the human psyche…

  Still though, other than that, this BS detection kit is fantastic, im ho.

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