Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit by 1KIKI

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Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Friday, January 10, 2020 05:52
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Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:25 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").

Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.

Quantify, wherever possible.

If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.

Occam's razor - if there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.

Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

http://carlsagan.com/index_ideascontent.htm

He apparently didn't think it was even worth considering:

claims that have ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE ATTACHED TO THEM AT ALL (I'm looking at YOU, WISHY!)
appeals to anonymous claims (looking at YOU THUGR and SECOND!)
appeals to 'trusted' 'sources' (you like that best of all, CRUNCHY!) ...

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Friday, January 10, 2020 12:19 AM

WISHIMAY

I was going to look for one about cooking up baloney, like y'all do by the gallon, but this sums it up pretty well, too

Oh, I found one!

Frying up some tiny fascist people sounds good!

Blowing their indignant little minds in 3....2....1...

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Friday, January 10, 2020 12:28 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You GO, girl!

Keep up the great work being irrational!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Friday, January 10, 2020 12:37 AM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You GO, girl!

Keep up the great work being irrational!

I have not yet BEGUN to irrational.

When people try to manipulate, it makes me cranky!

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Friday, January 10, 2020 1:09 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Hey, how about that conversation that Signy and I never had?

Belief is for wimps and mental midgets!

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Friday, January 10, 2020 5:52 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

1kiki seriously misunderstands what Carl Sagan was writing about in his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”.

I’ll quote a long sample from chapter 10, titled The Dragon In My Garage. Maybe then you will understand that Sagan was not talking about a weapon/checklist to attack your political enemies.

There is more at www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ , including chapters on being abducted by aliens, belief in speaking to the spirits of the dead, fortune tellers, palm-readers, astrology, witchcraft, etc.

Here is the quote:

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."
Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle—but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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