Philosopher of B.S.
Sep 4, 2011 10:00 AM EDT
British academic Stephen Law is intent on warning people about the perils of bullshit.
First, a credulity test. Do you believe the Bible foretold the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Or that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy? Or that, despite the fossil record, the world is less than 10,000 years old?
If so, the news is bad. Chances are you’ve tumbled into “an intellectual black hole,” the favored term of British philosophy professor Stephen Law for a mental accident that’s dangerously common and is “capable of sucking people in and holding them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap.” Your wacky belief may seem reasonable to you; be assured, it isn’t.
Now, the good news. Law’s latest work, Believing Bullshit, sets out a spotter’s guide to the standard techniques of intellectual quackery, to help the unwitting among us.
Continues here...
The riots-not-linked-to-poverty fallacy
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 11:03 PM
Did poverty play a significant causal role in the riots?
Those who would prefer this was not true often employ the following argument - they say, "ah, but these other poor people didn't riot, so poverty cannot be the cause."
So for example, David Cameron: "These riots were not about poverty. That insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this."
Letter to Newsweek magazine: "Saskia Sassen blames conditions in disadvantaged areas for the UK riots, ignoring urban areas for the UK riots, ignoring that other deprived regions - Glasgow, Tyneside, South Wales - didn't riot."
By the same logic we could also show that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. "Smoking clearly wasn't the cause of Dave's lung cancer. After all, Mary, John and Peter also smoke and they didn't get lung cancer, did they?"
Poverty may or not be a causal factor re the riots (obviously it was a factor), but this sort of logic reveals nothing other than the desperation of those who see the obvious potential link and want to bury it.
Those who would prefer this was not true often employ the following argument - they say, "ah, but these other poor people didn't riot, so poverty cannot be the cause."
So for example, David Cameron: "These riots were not about poverty. That insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this."
Letter to Newsweek magazine: "Saskia Sassen blames conditions in disadvantaged areas for the UK riots, ignoring urban areas for the UK riots, ignoring that other deprived regions - Glasgow, Tyneside, South Wales - didn't riot."
By the same logic we could also show that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. "Smoking clearly wasn't the cause of Dave's lung cancer. After all, Mary, John and Peter also smoke and they didn't get lung cancer, did they?"
Poverty may or not be a causal factor re the riots (obviously it was a factor), but this sort of logic reveals nothing other than the desperation of those who see the obvious potential link and want to bury it.
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