Doubting Marcus

I am a Simpleton, Therefore Your Argument is Invalid

Shorter Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “If you feign ignorance of basic economic concepts you can win debates by appealing to the stupidity of the audience.”

This is (dated) via Noah Smith who explains the the economic problems with Hoppe’s tactic but belief in the prowess of ignorance to win an argument is not exclusive to Hoppe and certainly not to economics. Normally though this type of ignorance isn’t advocated by a professor emeritus rather it’s shouted by heckling creationists saying “If evolution is true how come you can’t put a gorilla in a cage and turn it into a person?” (Which, by the way, I was once asked by a relative).

As Smith points out if all knowledge must conform to common sense you could also say:

“Explain how you can possibly float just by heating up the air in a balloon. If this were the case, couldn’t our tea kettles levitate?”

“Explain how you can possibly stay healthy by washing your hands with water. If this were the case, wouldn’t people who drank out of rivers never get sick?

This is a similar to the often deliberate misunderstanding which leads some people to conclude we must accept arguments with intuitive premises. It’s as if some people think “If a child wouldn’t believe it, then reality can’t be that way.” is a valid argument.

The Self-Defeating Nature of Modern Conspiracism

The first rule of the conspiracy theories is you need neither expertise nor information to jump to incorrect conclusions. So it comes as no surprise immediately following the first reports of explosions in Boston some conspiracists, including infamous radio host Alex Jones, began claiming it was a false flag action.

Just as the last time a national tragedy sparked the conspiracists to claim nonsense, I have no intention of debunking the individual claims of these conspiracists (though Snopes is already on the case) but rather I think it’s worth highlighting a glaring flaw in their worldview which even I usually overlook. If these people think essentially all tragedies are today are part of a conspiracy what about historic acts of terrorism and mass violence?

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Terrorism Makes Us Irrational

In the wake of yesterday’s bombings the tendency of terrorism to exploit our cognitive biases is worth examining. Though frightening, terrorism is quite rare but like state lotteries, it exploits our tendency to think in possibility instead of probability. We just don’t scale our emotional response to danger based on the actual frequency of casualties but rather are greatly influenced by the availability heuristic. If it’s easy to think of examples of some event we tend to judge its frequency as higher than it is in reality.

Because of this tendency to overestimate the likelihood of high-profile events, as terrorist attacks tend to be, we can have significant distortions in our decision making. In one famous study participants were asked how much they were willing to pay for insurance coverage of death by terrorist attack and it was more than how much participants were willing to pay for it is for insurance which covered death by any cause, which necessarily includes death by terrorist attack. Obviously, this is irrational and highlights the need for calm reflection when considering the response to highly emotional and vivid events like terrorist attacks.

In fact, if you live in the U.S. the chance of dying by lightning strike is similar to the chance that you’ll die in a terrorist attack and, a case could be made, it is only because terrorism plays on some of our greatest cognitive failures that we pour vast resources into preventing the latter but not the former. This is not to say we shouldn’t devote significant resources to preventing the risk from terrorism, only that we are likely to systemically overcompensate for that risk because of the shocking nature of such events.

We Are The 88%

…who do not believe shape-shifting reptilians taking the form of humans secretly control the world. That is according to a PPP poll out this week on conspiracies which revealed uncomfortably high levels of belief in conspiracies on everything from JFK’s death to belief in chemtrails.

However, because of the substantial list of totally unsupported claims needed to believe in David Icke’s theory of shape-shifting reptilians, that 4% of respondents think it is actually happening was most surprising to me (7% comically said they are not sure). Admittedly, this is just one automated poll of voters but I would have wagered a significant amount that such belief was less than 1% of the population (and thereby may have demonstrated the overconfidence bias). I’d thought these were outcasts among outcasts as even “THE FEMA DEATH CAMPS ARE COMING NAO!!!” radio host Alex Jones once belittled such claims as “asinine.”

To even begin to give credence to such claims first you must accept an Illuminati type conspiracy which would itself require tens of thousands of people to keep complete silence. Check. Then, despite there being no credible evidence for such creatures, you must accept either terrestrial or alien shape-shifting reptilian beings exist. Double check. Finally, you must believe, for reasons unspecified, that these creatures are using their, literally, comic book powers to control Earthly politics and as opposed to, say… you know, simply profit. Quadruple check.*

Admittedly this poll uncovered absurd levels of credulity and doublethink among the voting population—according to this data some of those who thought Obama was the anti-Christ still voted for him!—but to think that 1 in 25 people who actually vote are so far removed from reality should be terrifying for American democracy. At least you could say this about Icke’s followers, unlike most other conspiracists they may have come to the realization that the Cthulhu meets a Bond villain evil claimed to be behind these international conspiracies doesn’t exist among humanity. They just missed a bit on the conclusion that follows from that fact.

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*Only an exponential scale could hope to keep up with the crazy here.

But I Can Explain That

If ever there was a central thread that tied proponents of the pseudoscientific method it is in their ability to ignore or discard and disconfirming evidence by changing their theory. You hear this every time someone says “I swear my theory is true except when you are looking, except the aliens confused you into thinking otherwise, except look over there!”

The problem with these types of excuses is that proponents seem to be thinking  “Can you come up with a reason that would make it logically possible for this theory to be true and the evidence we have to exist?” instead of “Is the evidence likely on the theory and how plausible is the theory?” This amounts to an attempt to make a theory consistent with the evidence while ignoring the prior probability of the theory.

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Darwin Day and the Creationist Cause

Four score and seven eight years ago our intellectual fathers brought forth the famous Scopes “Monkey” Trial, a legal battle over the teaching of evolution, and those dedicated to the proposition that nothing shall be taught that does, or seems to, undermine popular religious teachings initially won.

Having failed at overt censorship in the intervening decades, however, the creationist cause has recently turned its focus to evermore indirect ways of challenging evolution. When there are not bills being proposed to “teach both sides” (as there are in “across America”) there is still ceaseless pressure on teachers to simply not discuss evolution.

This is why, aside from the joys of learning and discovery, Darwin Day is a reminder to me that the fight against anti-intellectualism, in all its forms, is an ongoing struggle. Simply having the facts be against them isn’t enough to halt the creationist cause. Particularly because, as anyone who has spent time debating professional creationists will acknowledge, honesty apparently isn’t something they hold as important, especially when preaching to the uninformed.

So take the day to enjoy some science, learn something new about life but also remember to stay vigilant in the fight against replacing hard-won knowledge with dogma.

Happy Darwin Day!

The Only Three Numbers That Ever Matter

Practically every argument you’ve ever had is the same. Not because no one ever changes their mind, yelling or any other cliche about confrontational discussions but because all arguments about evidence ultimately focus on just three numbers.

Admittedly this sounds simplistic but it turns out all empirical arguments are about the prior probability of a theory, which is how typically is the hypothesis being proposed true and the two consequent probabilities of a theory, which, respectively are how likely we are to see the evidence we see if the theory is true and how likely we are to see the evidence if the theory is false. Once there is agreement on these we could simply plug those numbers into Bayes’ theorem and out would come the answer to how confident you should be in the proposed hypothesis.

Strangely even arguments over deduction could be said to be a mere abstraction from these three numbers which deal with what would be the case if we could know with certainty that something is definitely true or false.* Indeed all arguments over whether or not a theory is falsifiable, and all arguments with people who don’t value evidence, are ultimately arguments over the two consequents. Likewise all arguments about the empirical utility of faith are arguments about systemically skewing these three numbers such that someone overestimates the prior probability of their theory (sometimes going so far as to assign a probability of 1**), overestimates how well their theory predicts the evidence and underestimates how well alternative theories account for that evidence.

The usefulness of acknowledging this simple fact is in clarity. It’s much harder to talk past each other in a debate if you make it clear which of these three numbers some piece of evidence is supposed to effect. As far as I know, while some people belittle the utility of science, very few will consciously attack the usefulness of math. Oh wait.

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*For example take the classic syllogism “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.” This could be said to demonstrate if we new with 100% that all men are mortal and that Socrates is indeed a man we would know with 100% certainty that Socrates is mortal. Given we can’t actually know this, or anything else about the outside world, with 100% certainty all of deduction could be said to be a big “what if.”

**It turns out if you insert a prior probability of 1 no matter what you put in for your other two variables (other than zero) the posterior probability you get out is 1. In other words, it is a mathematical certainty that if you go in thinking “no evidence can change my mind,” that in fact no evidence will change your mind even if your theory predicts the opposite of the evidence we observe. This, needless to say, guarantees unshakable faith is not a path to truth.

Prove You Wrong? Bayes Says We Already Did

One of your employees marches into your office convinced he has a brilliant idea. He’s not only convinced his idea will work but that it will revolutionize your industry. What is this brilliant idea? He’s delighted to inform you that if you spend company funds to purchase him a Ferrari office productivity will increase 500%. Should you take this idea seriously? In the highly competitive business world should you spend the money in order to test this theory?

Of course not. Indeed, some of you might be tempted to fire this employee on the spot. I can scarcely think of anyone who would defend such a clear waste of time and resources on something that has no plausible chance of success. The simple fact that the idea hasn’t been formally attempted lends no justification to trying it.

You need not formally test every wacky idea in order to conclude they are false. We all do this regularly, and rightly so. Otherwise we would be demanding the British royal family be publicly DNA tested in order to prove they aren’t reptilian humanoids.

Nonetheless, the demand science prove some obviously silly therapy doesn’t work never ceases. Everything we’ve ever learned about physics counts against claims of levitation through meditation. Each bit of knowledge of human biology ever gained tells us a “beam ray” light won’t get rid of the swine flu or heal a broken neck. You don’t need to actually run a new test to prove such claims wrong because our prior knowledge counts and it emphatically says such ideas are wrong.

This is why the demand we treat every idea as equal is a demand we wipe away everything we’ve ever learned before we address any claim. Some theories about reality are genuinely superior to others because, given our previous knowledge, they are more likely to be true than others. It is a simple fact that evidence accumulates over time. If you disagree, then I demand you take seriously the claim that donating your life savings to me will eradicate all disease and suffering from the planet.

Sandy Hook Truthers

The internet is a terrible place, were it real I wouldn’t visit, and nothing reminds me of this more than the ludicrous Sandy Hook conspiracies which have emerged since the tragedy there last month. Ludicrous though they are, and easy to debunk in detail, I have no intention of debating the details because, like most massive conspiracy theories, the details are hardly important and are self-contradictory while the edifice as a whole appears invulnerable to evidence.

More importantly, while the most popular conspiratorial video on this has gained nearly half a million views a just a few days, this is but a symptom of a larger problem of conspiratorial thinking. There exists a population for which every major news event is claimed to be further proof of a huge conspiracy. Aurora shooting? Conspiracy! 7/7 bombings? Conspiracy! Pointing out flaws in conspiracy theories on the news? Conspiracy! Newtown is but the latest in a never-ending parade of these farcical claims.

For these people everyone is either complicit or foolish, there are no coincidences and no one ever makes mistakes, unless those mistakes come in the context pulling off a conspiracy, and everything is a plot to take their guns away. I’m no mental health professional but I certainly don’t want someone so paranoid as to believe everything is a plot to take their precious guns away actually wielding a gun. The fact they’ve been yelling this imminent demise for years but the day keeps not coming demonstrates nothing to them.

In fact, they point to these previous tragedies, which they believe were conspiracies, as signs of strength as though a failed prediction becomes stronger the more often it is refuted. To them it must be their detective work which is keeping the UN takeover at bay.

And who could disagree? After all, that’s the same reason everyone knows my blog is Death Star repellant. Since it’s been up Earth has yet to be attacked even once by a laser from outer space. You’re welcome.