Yes, all it takes is for one premise to be shaky for every step of the sequence of inferences to change. And “documentation” is not as solid as people may think it is.
I agree. The conclusion I am using currently is that people aren’t smart enough to recognize good arguments vs bad arguments. Just like some people, myself included, aren’t smart enough to tune their own guitars or keep the beat in dance.
You weren’t satisfied with the theories of cognitive bias as an inherent product of the biological neural networks inherent to our species?
Yes. But this has nothing to do with my question. I’m not arguing the infallibility of deductive reasoning. I never was.
So, you are saying that assuming everyone agrees on every single premise, that there will arise a flaw in the sequence of logical inference?
I was. Yes. I accepted it. If you re-read our replies, I think you’ll see that. But others came along and you also continued to chime in and I continued to reply. And I kept bringing it back to the original question as people were repeatedly inferring other motives they thought I had.
Well discussions don’t always follow a straight linear path, so other things arose that brought comment.
Well discussions don’t always follow a straight linear path, so other things arose that brought comment.
They sure did. And I responded in good humor and good faith. Always bringing it back to the original question lest people continued to think I was saying something I wasn’t.
Understandable
Here’s a new branch of discussion. (Since that other branch was settled)
If you accept that cognitive bias is inherent to our species, then why don’t you accept that all humans are subject to it?
You said that it is not the case that all humans cannot distinguish between good and bad arguments. Meaning that there are some humans out there that can distinguish between the two all the time.
Jon, I think it’s a good question and a vexed one. Agree with Henry that the issue more complicated than just logic and mathematics. And with Rick that bias is baked into human intelligence i.e. it’s a feature not a bug of human intelligence. It’s what allows us to select out information from the vast sea we are immersed in. Any minimally functioning human being has to be biased. But that means it can turn on us in all sorts of ways.
The list of contentious views that Richard and Vineeto have on a number of subjects are fairly long - climate change, smoking, NWO (didn’t know about that one) and a fair few others. But this isn’t something unique to them. There does seem to be something in the culture whereby alternative narratives are springing up against mainstream scientific/political views and if anything the process is accelerating. Probably something to do with the democratisation and fragmentation of information since the internet age - sped up now by social media.
Then there’s the thornier question of whether this sort of contrarianism (assuming it’s not entirely correct) has anything to do with actual freedom or not, its progenitors or actually free people in general. Maybe the better question is why are actually free people not protected from the sorts of everyday selection biases and logical leaps that we associate with conspiracy theorists - or even just normal feeling being persons? Does actual freedom give one a privileged and neutral POV in terms of weighing evidence? But if so why do these ideas sound like recycled conspiracy memes, rather than something refreshingly novel - like actual freedom itself? Given I haven’t heard these views from anyone other than Richard and Vineeto, I don’t think it’s something related to actual freedom. My guess is it’s something to do with their individual personalities and histories. But maybe there is a contrarian pull that is part of the territory of actualism. I tend to hold views on things that are quite different from friends and peers I’ve noticed - although not like the ones here mentioned.
I already did accept that. I accept that all feeling beings are subject to emotional bias. And all actually free people are subject to limitations in cognitive function. I am surprised that extremely smart people capable of nuanced opinions that don’t fit any one ideology can still display a severe limitation in a cognitive function that frequently use to great effect. Iow, an AF person who has repeatedly demonstrated skill in deductive reasoning can still persistently hold on to an argument with a shaky premise and/or common logical fallacy.
Possibly something to do with fact that actual freedom is so different from anything else out there and was unknown to humanity for so long? What other things could then be wrong?
Science is problematic. It isn’t value free or apolitical. In modern science, evidence especially with studies of harm, is usually cumulative and consensus driven – rarely is there a smoking gun. Conclusions are probabilistic and provisional - waiting to be disproved by new research. It’s so specialised now that even an expert in one area of medicine say, will be hard pressed to make sense of something in a very closely related area. There are vested interests of all sorts - careers, grants, institutional support etc. Science, is the dominant system of our time and the dominant ideology.
Many people are troubled by this over-reach. They find their lives been profoundly controlled by something they don’t understand, that is so patchy and so compromised. So they question scientific studies, the integrity of scientists and find alternative evidence. Mostly I think they lack skills to evaluate the data and make erroneous conclusions e.g. such as finding a big malevolent person responsible for the problem like Bill Gates - or dismissing consensus claims outright based on isolated data events. But I wouldn’t say they are entirely wrong. At minimum they’re pointing to the holes in the evidence and the unacknowledged political dimension of science. I just think they tend to lack sufficient critical thinking and default to ‘Emperors got no clothes’ a bit too much.
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That’s not the same as cognitive bias, though. It’s unclear whether you accept that all people (AF folks included) are inherently subject to cognitive bias – given its biological foundation in the neural networks. And you don’t have to accept it (of course), I’m just seeking to gain clarity on your position.
Amazing, isn’t it.
Precisely. Thanks for seeing my intention. I’m perfectly fine with a accepting cognitive limitation model. I just wanted more input.
And this is the type of input I was looking for. But it’s still not satisfying is it? Even this comment, which is exactly the type of reply I was hoping to find, is just a rehash of the problem. Why continue to be ideologically contrarian in the face of good arguments. Vexing indeed.
Looking for a conversation and wound up being grilled. I did enjoy the challenge of refuting all accusations against my motives, some condescending replies, one attempt at belittlement (i think?) and the various straw men thrown my way. I have to admit. I do enjoy a good fight (that i can win!) But that was not ever my intention. Would have preferred an honest to goodness convo instead.
In that case, no. I don’t fully accept cognitive bias is inherent biologically (completely open to it). I only fully accept that we have limited cognitive abilities.
And that’s just as good an explanation as any for the weird things you observe. The cognitive bias theory was just offered as a placeholder anyway. In lieu of the sentient lawn bowl theory I offered with all earnest, which you rejected.
I’ll part from this discussion now.
I’m not sure I’d use the word bias when it comes to an actually free person. Opinion / Idea / preference / conclusion - sure. But for the sake of this discussion, I think they could hold on to what appears to be a bias simply because their understanding is limited and shaped by their knowledge and life experience. They may not have been able to ascertain all of the facts surrounding a particular situation. They may be trusting research / news / or information that seems reasonable but is wrong. They may believe something to be true that in the end turns out to be a lie or a mistake. I don’t think becoming Actually Free would prevent someone from these mistakes.
I couldn’t find anything on the website regarding bio-diversity. Perhaps this is a topic you discussed in person with them.
The primary reason that Richard/Peter/Vineeto do not agree with anthropomorphic climate change seems to be that when they researched the topic what they found were that scientists were coming to their many of their conclusions not based on physical evidence, but mathematical models. Much like the evidence for the big-bang.
Peter quotes Enclyclopedia Britanica here:
Unfortunately, there is no period in Earth history that investigators can examine when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were, say, twice what they are today and whose climatic conditions are known with a high degree of certainty. For this reason, investigators cannot directly verify their quantitative predictions of greenhouse warming on the basis of historical analogs. Instead, they must base their estimates on climatic models. These are not laboratory models, since no laboratory could approach the complexity of the real world. Rather, they are mathematical models in which basic physical laws are applied to the atmosphere, ocean, and glaciers; the equations representing these laws are solved with computers with the aim of simulating the present terrestrial climate.
Peter goes on to say:
Thus the estimates arrived at by these models are entirely dependant on the guesstimates of data fed into the models and the guesstimated mathematical equations involved. Neither the data is reliable, nor are the equations that form the model reliable, and the models are purely mathematical and not physical.
Here is a take by Richard:
RICHARD: Presuming that you are referring to anthropogenic global warming (and not geological global warming) you may find the following informative:
• [Richard]: ‘… what I was mainly searching for, over about three weeks, were the facts upon which the currently-popular ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ hypothesis was (purportedly) based … and the reason why it took that long was because I could not find any (being based upon unverifiable-in-the-laboratory quantum mathematics it is not all that surprising, with the benefit of hindsight, that there be none)’.
What I did find, however, was that in 1900 Mr. Knut Ångström put as much carbon dioxide in total as would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere into a tube and sent infrared radiation through it yet the amount of radiation which got through scarcely changed whether he cut the quantity of gas in half or doubled it.
Whether or not they’ve seen the full picture is a fair question. Richard has said:
In regards to verification (as in your ‘what is real science and what is distortion’ phrasing): one of the problems with science today is that, as there are over 100,000 scientific journals published each year, containing more than 6,000,000 articles, no single person can ever even read them all … let alone make sense of them (no single person could possibly have cross-disciplinal expertise in all areas of scientific research as there are over 1,000 areas of specialised study).
If the AF-trio have any bias, I think it’d be because of the general doom-and-gloom attitude that can saturate these topics. They seem to err on the side that humans tend to often get things wrong because of it, and rightfully so when you look at many historic predictions that have not came true. And perhaps also because they’re acutely aware of just how pervasive and influenced a person is by feeling doomed.
In my research for this post, I happened to look up Knut Ångström since Richard referenced him. It seems Knut is often pointed to as evidence against climate change. I found this article which points out some flaw’s in Knut’s conclusion:
This all might be getting away from the topic a bit too much, turning this into a debate about their stance on climate change. But I hope that it illustrates how they may have arrived at their current conclusion - especially in Richard’s case since he researched while Actually Free.
I think Actually Free people can still hold opinions that influence how they approach a subject. In Richard’s case, I think he’s keenly aware of the doom-and-gloom that effects all humans, so he tends to contradict whatever hot-topic is trending in the alarmist circles. Climate change and smoking are good examples. I do think this could present him with blind-spots, but it’s a much smaller blind-spot than what we tend to deal with as feeling-beings.
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Thanks Nick. Right. My emphasis has been on their arguments. George Soros and the earth is too big were my two examples. I have fully acknowledged that there are good arguments disputing climate change.
This has been my take as well. They quite reasonably have a selection bias that down plays doom-and-gloom scenarios. I really have no problem with this. We are more inclined to read sources that seem more credible to us. There is no way around that. And it would be foolish to continue reading sources that do nothing but push refutable premise and logical fallacies. What confuses me is the tenacity in holding on to bad arguments. They hold onto bad arguments, pretty much any argument at all, that agree with their anti-alarmist bias. It’s as if they can’t distinguish between a good argument and a bad one. Which is my working hypothesis - that they can’t.