The Baloney Detection Kit

[Comshaw]

Now, today, in the emotionally super-charged political atmosphere we have, it is especially important to try to discover the facts behind all the dross of what passes for information floating around. To do that we must resort to and use critical thinking. Here's a link to an article about Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit". I think it's just what we need in these trying times. I realize that many will ignore it, demean it, call it bullshit. Those we can do nothing about. But many thinking people I believe want to know the truth, even if it conflicts with what they want to believe. This is for them. Anyway it's a great read.

The Baloney Detection Kit

Comshaw

 

[jaF0]

If it's posted by a BB, it's baloney.

 

[phrodeau]

If it's posted by a BB, it's baloney.

That’s Sagan’s fallacy number one.

 

[HisArpy]

The baloney has a first name.
It's

C
O
M
S
H
A
W...

 

[Comshaw]

The baloney has a first name.
It's

C
O
M
S
H
A
W...

Hmmmm...I see your dementia is getting worse.

Comshaw

 

[Paul_Chance]

Sagan's article is fundamentally a good survey of all the tools available to us to be skeptical.

One of the things I learned years ago was a quote from a professor I had (that he drove home in his lectures). Not sure if he was quoting someone else or if it was his own:

"It is an excellent practice to apply the same level of skeptical scrutiny to the things you want to believe that you apply to the things you don't want to believe."

That's been a usual adage over the course of my life.

 

[Dribble]

I can't argue any of his points. I would add question any position based on political party view.

 

[Comshaw]

Sagan's article is fundamentally a good survey of all the tools available to us to be skeptical.

One of the things I learned years ago was a quote from a professor I had (that he drove home in his lectures). Not sure if he was quoting someone else or if it was his own:

"It is an excellent practice to apply the same level of skeptical scrutiny to the things you want to believe that you apply to the things you don't want to believe."

That's been a usual adage over the course of my life.

If what we believe to be a truth can not stand up to scrutiny, being questioned, being held up to the light, it really isn't a truth but a blind belief.

Comshaw

 

[Paul_Chance]

I can't argue any of his points. I would add question any position based on political party view.

If what we believe to be a truth can not stand up to scrutiny, being questioned, being held up to the light, it really isn't a truth but a blind belief.

Comshaw

The main thing I would add, which Sagan didn't, is the classic maxim of approaching every question by asking "cui bono" - who benefits from this argument as presented. That illuminates a lot of the lines of argument. (Doesn't necessarily move a thing from a true/false column, but does help to understand arguments.)

Another thing that helps is remembering "Ismay" (the difference between an argument that says something "Is" true and an argument that says somethiing "May" be true.