Jef's web files - Fallacies

Traditional Norms, Animal-style

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:01:23 -0400

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." —from an article describing how some religious leaders and conservative magazines are embracing the blockbuster documentary.

Well, it’s 2010, and what a remarkable five years it’s been. The blockbuster success of March of the Penguins in 2005 triggered a flood of wonderful documentaries about animal reproduction, all of which provide us with inspiring affirmation of the correct way to live our lives. Here are just a few of the movies that can guide you on your path…

Dinner of the Redback Spiders: This documentary follows the heartwarming romance between two spiders that ends with the male somersaulting onto the venomous fangs of his mate, his reproductive organs still delivering semen into the female as she devours him.

"..if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat..."

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:43:08 -0500

The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

... My answer to him was, "... when people
thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

- Isaac Asimov

A kind of Gresham's Law prevails in popular culture...

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 20:31:29 -0400

If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham's Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.
- Carl Sagan

My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes...

Tue, 27 May 2003 20:50:38 -0400

Robbins and Ross guess wrong when they say I feel 'threatened' by science-studies scholars. My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. Like innumerable others from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, I call for the Left to reclaim its Enlightenment roots.
- Alan Sokal

The Woolly-Thinker's Guide to Rhetoric

Tue, 27 May 2003 20:47:15 -0400

Here you'll find top tips for besting your enemies. As employed by the world's best woolly-thinkers. Learn, for example: how to play the 'biological reductionist' card to maximum effect; how 'language games' can help you out of a sticky situation; and how lucky it is that 'truth' is relative to particular discourses (especially yours).

Fashionable Dictionary

Tue, 27 May 2003 20:38:39 -0400

Your guide to the language of pseudoscience and fashionable nonsense. Written by woolly-thinkers for woolly thinkers. A must read for post-modernists, dialectical biologists, Gaia theorists and Freudians.

Butterflies and Wheels

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 12:10:31 -0400

Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:

Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.

post hoc ergo propter hoc (Coincidental correlation)

Sun, 09 Mar 2003 23:14:22 -0500

Definition: The name in Latin means "after this therefore because of this".
This describes the fallacy. An author commits the fallacy when it is assumed that because one thing follows another that the one thing was caused by the other.

Examples: (i) Immigration to Alberta from Ontario increased. Soon after, the welfare rolls increased. Therefore, the increased immigration caused the increased welfare rolls.(ii) I took EZ-No-Cold, and two days later, my cold disappeared.

Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 15:48:30 -0500

On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
- Charles Babbage

CSICOP

Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:13:46 -0500

CSICOP encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark

Sun, 30 May 2004 14:46:29 -0400

The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark
Carl Sagan
Copyright 1997

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Sun, 30 May 2004 14:23:04 -0400

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter
Copyright 1979