BS Detection: How do we know what to believe?

There are sets of questions you can ask:

If scientific, is this replicable; what are the parameters of statistical analysis; does research proceed from an established premise, or are the researchers setting out to prove an hypothesis (which doesn't necessarily invalidate the research, but does require more stringent method and proof)?

In general, for news, biography and history, you can ask yourself the ordinary questions that an educated person should use to evaluate a newspaper article:

What might the author have at stake?
What is the proximity of the author in time and space to an event or an individual?
What is the relationship of the author, in terms of expressed belief, to the individual or group in question (i.e., is there a basis to suspect bigotry or antipathetical prejudice)?
Has the author referred to primary sources (journals, diaries, correspondence, contemoraneous accounts), or simply rearranged and selected from other secondary sources?

Most of these questions are common sense. Were an acquaintance of yours to recount an event to you, it would be natural to want to know if he/she were present, or retailing the information at second hand; you would also take into account how you know your friend feels about the person or persons or type of event involved. Many of the questions you've listed above are of a purely speculative nature ("Are computers going to get smart and take over?), and many of them are sufficiently imprecise as to make them too ambiguous to admit of definitive answers (in the previous example, what makes a computer "smart," and what is meant by "take over.") Some of the questions contain logical non sequiturs (Will stem cell research help us medically or corrupt us morally--it is possible that we could get medical help from stem cell research and still be "morally corrupted" [and morality is the most extremely subjective of quantities], or it is possible that no medical benefit accrues, and yet that the research has no bad moral overtones). How questions are framed is crucial as well. My favorite example of the loaded question is: "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Answering either yes or no implicitly admits to having beaten one's wife in the past; the only reasonable answer to such a question is: "I've never beaten my wife," or "I not married, and never have been."

Believe it or not, these problems confronted the human race in the past with as much force as they do today in the computer age. All computers accomplish in such an issue is an accelerating effect--life was never any simpler than it is now, it was just often enacted at a more stately pace.

Hi Setana,

I know some of the questions are mal-formed, but that almost helps my example given the nature of the question in relation to "information".

My main interest in this has more to do with your last paragraph, "confronted the human race in the past with as much force as they do today in the computer age".

I'm not sure I agree with that statement given that information has become more virutalized now than in the past. Many of the issues we're confronted with today don't have a trusted friend giving us data, and they don't ask questions which are easily answered by daily physical experience. I agree that this problem is not entirely new to the human condition, but I wanted to explore the idea that the *degree* to which this is a problem may be changing due to the proliferation of data due to technology.

Best Regards,

rosborn, Most of those questions doesn't affect how I live now, so their importance to me is relatively minimal. Whether the world is 15 billion years old or 150 million years old affects me very little today. From your list, the only one that had a modicum of interest is "Are my stocks going to go up or down?" I can provide you with that answer; simply, it will go up and down. c.i.

I can't answer your question about "virtualized information"--virtual not being a verb, and therefore not admissable of a participle. I did acknowledge that the computer accellerates the pace of information gathering--but there are many people in this world who have access to comptuers and on-line resources, and yet eschew them. My employer is a good example, and he lives a full and active life with a rich detail of experience. There are many others who live their lives more sedately, through choice and not because their society or economic situation obliges them. Obviously, you are a part of the cyber world--but you ought not to confuse the importance you place on the on-line world with an absolute value.

I would finally note that people are not enamored of answering questions only to find that the person posing the question already had an answer in mind, and was therefore, apparently, not interested in listening. I'll reserve judgment rather than accuse you of being willfully provocative. I will point out that if you just want to put your opinions out there in order that others will affirm them, that you might want to search more carefully for a site where that is likely to occur. And if you have a point to make, then state it outright at the beginning--people don't enjoy the sensation of having been suckered.

Setana,

It was not my intention to "sucker" anyone with my question. However, I do tend to write things in a open ended style to try to promote a wide range of responses.

And yes, I do have answers in mind when I write my questions, but I'm interested in other views (which is exactly why I write ask the question).

Just because I may disagree with you at a given time doesn't mean that I'm not interested. As a matter of fact, you may be right in this particular case. I'm still considering it. I'm just not convinced yet.

Best Regards,

Cicerone,

Some of the questions may not affect you, but they could affect others. Do you buy gimicks to improve your health? How do you know if something is a gimmick? Do you buy vitimins even though you have a perfectly healthy diet? Do you know how much money the vitamin industry gleans from the public every year?

I'm interested in the possible devaluation of information by virtue of dilution of veracity.

I'm also interested in how people choose to measure veracity of information; what frameworks do people choose in order to make this evaluation, and why.

Also I was interested in starting a discussion

Thanks

rosborne, If devaluation of information was important, our country wouldn't be supporting GWBush. I don't purchase "gimicks" to improve my health. I stick with the moderate rule: eat a balanced diet, drink orange juice, take a baby aspirin daily, and excercise. As for the vitamin industry, I don't worry about what anybody else wishes to put into their bodies, and how much they pay for it. Your attempts to measure veracity of information is a useless cause; as Barnam said, "there's a sucker born every minute." One could see it every day in Vegas or buying lottery tickets, throwing their money away. c.i.

Are our current methods of getting information really that much different from what we've had in the past? How long have we been hearing "4 out of 5 doctors recommend..." in our TV commercials? It's an advertising gimmick that marketing weenies use because some people still buy the line even though most people just filter it right out - kids learn that it's a gimmick when they're still 5 or 6 years old.

I think most people tend to pick up on a lot of that and the same filtering goes on when they read things on WWW sites. Some of these sites are a little more sophisticated and their stories sound more plausible so more people probably do get hooked. That's where sites like Snopes.com come in where people take the time to carefully scrutinze the urban legends and such and debunk the myths.

For most any of the stories you listed above you can do a quick Google search and find sites that attempt to debunk each story (prolly not for The Onion one since it's understood that The Onion is parody but..). BY reading those other sites you can find some of the misrepentations and misleading info that is used.

The same critical thinking skills that have kept us going all along still apply.

One clue is to look at the author of the piece. Who are they? Do they have a reputation? Do they have experience or education in what they're writing about? A medical doctor isn't an expert on global warming. An artist is not an expert on politics. So expertise is specific, and the reader should understand that. The reader should understand that, for example, historical information from an historian is generally more reliable than historical information from a dentist.

Also, from the answer given, use a standard acid test - is it plausible? For example, the question of whether we landed on the moon - the counterarguments point to a large hoax by the government and NASA. Can the US government keep this kind of a secret for this long? What about NASA? There are dozens of former employees of both entities. Disgruntled former employees (and not-so-disgruntled ones) gab all the time. Look at all of the books out about Princess Diana or JFK, from gardeners and footmen and valets and the like. But not one person from NASA or the US government has opened his/her mouth in the past 34 years. If you add in another variable, that all of the former employees have been silenced somehow, through murder or intimidation or bribery or the like, the fact is that this is a far too airtight conspiracy of silence. It just doesn't make sense that whoever is allegedly responsible for keeping the lid on the moon landing hoax has the lid on that tightly.

Remember kids, four out of five doctors represent eighty per cent of a statistically insignificant sample.

Oooo! I like that. I'm gonna steal it!

LOL . . . help yerself, you inspired me with your post . . .

BS detection is really easy. When somebody tells you he has a bridge to sell you that's located on the shoreline of Montana and Arizona, you kind'a know by instinct it could be true! c.i.

Is is possible that the sheer quantity of information available will eventually overwhelm our ability to do effective research (the type of research which is limited to the process of examining existing knowledge)?

Will it eventually be necessary to "qualify" all data with some type of validation mechanism, ie, scientific, theological, mass appeal, historic, etc? Or, as some have suggested, are we dealing with an age-old problem which has not changed significantly due to the "information age"?

Thanks,

For what purpose? People will continue to buy all those vitamins, try to win the lottery, believe in the bible as the word of god, think cows are sacred, eat snake and dog, keep revising the age of the earth, and prove we're all a revolutionary accident of a protein. c.i.

In London, a hundred thirty years ago, there were 12 to 13 mail deliveries per day. Telegrams could be sent for immediately delivery anywhere in the world at any branch office of the Royal Mails--and in London of that day such an office was within a short walk of every residence in that city. The largest, busiest, most influential stock exchange in the world was in the City, a golden square mile, with access to even better facilities of communication. The British Museum and libraries across the city contained copies of virtually every book known in the western world. Public and private transport were available to carry a woman anywhere in the city at a pace not to be imagined as less than that which obtains in the traffic choked contemporary city.

George Bernard Shaw was able to send two theater tickets and a message to Winston Churchill in 1890's London: "Enclosing two tickets to the opening of my new play. Please attend, and bring a friend, if you have one." Winston replied: "Cannot possibly attend first performance. Will attend the second, if there is one." They were able to conclude that transaction in under 20 minutes. Not the speed of e-mail--although e-mail would not have delivered the theater tickets--so the computer only shows itself an accelerant here--rather like benzene is an accelerant.

In St. Petersburg in 1720, merchants from across the span of Europe hawked the goods of every western market, and traded for the raw materials of the vast interior of the continent, and the rare and exotic producitons of the mysterious East. Every major and petty ruler of Europe had embassies or missions in the city, and the tiniest details of life in the city are known from their journals and correspondence. Water taxis were everywhere available, and any boat on the Neva or any of the canals was required by Autocratic fiat to ferry for a reasonable fee anyone applying for service, unless able to prove that they were in productive pursuit of fish. The streets were broad and well laid out, crossed by narrow alleys which troops regularly patrolled to enforce Petr Alexeevich's decree that they be unencumbered. The finest examples of the Italian architechtural arts were everywhere evident in the multitude of palaces on Vasilevsky island and the south bank of the Neva, and the finest French ornamental gardens sheltered the drunken stupor of suddenly wealth Russian nouveaux arrivés. Public baths proliferated, and disgusted Western Europeans with their unhealthy spectacle of weekly baths for even the peasants. Georgian cutpurses on horseback threaded the market throngs, heading out only when the Guard came in sight or they could carry no more ill-gotten gains. The most modern navy in the World sat anchored at Kronstadt, or stood out into the roadstead to ply the Baltic, and even mighty Britannia's fleet eyed them cautiously.

In Grenada in 1450, the Nasrids were at the beginning of their third century of rule over a city which held more books, and more types of books, than any other city in history had known, not even excepting the Library at Alexandia. Christian, Muslim and Jew pushed one another to hurry through the busiest and richest markets on the European continent, and no greater variety of goods were to be found anywhere else in the world west of the Caspian Sea. Quadi and the Alima rested from their labors to study in the minutest detail the allegations of statements of the Prophet and his companions, and the hadith, the actions of those men, so as to perfect the sharia--and took their ease on silk-brocade cushions to enjoy the shirops (modern sorbets) of fruit juice and fruit pulp, chilled in the ice and snows brought daily from the Atlas mountains by relays over hundreds of miles, served by Circassian slave girls. In the great universities, students from across the length and breadth of the continent waited quietly in their shabby infidel alcove for the oppotunity to study the obscure texts of their own professed creeds. Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew and every fluent or halting toungue west of Mother Russia was to be heard there and in the streets of the bazarres. The accumulated wisdom of the ancient world unknowingly awaited the Reconquista and their appointment with eternity in Lombardy and Tuscany--enough on their own to have spawned the Renaissance, when combined with the literary and archaeological bombshells being unearthed by Romans and Florentines and Milanese, they would produce an explosion of knowledge which it is reasonable to posit the world had never known the like of. In Constantinople, the last Roman Emporer sat down to endure the seige which would one day kill him--and the Quadis and the Alim would find, and preserve, in Hagia Sophia, every missing piece of the Ancient puzzle not supplied in Al Andalus's glorious Grenada, or destroyed forever by the rampaging Christians who burned the Alexandrine Library and the woman who ran it and died defending it. In Cairo, the most accute philosophical discussion and legal researches and the most arcane theological debates in the world took place in the University, l'université de Paris not excepted. In Baghdad, slumbering in its decline under a desert sun, the last of the Seljuk masters dreamed of their ancient glories, and reveled in the sybaritic pleasures left to them. In fact, Grenada stood on the western end of a mono-lingual, mono-cultural, religiously pluralistic and racially diverse "non-empire" whose eastern terminus was lapped by the waters of the Torres Straits north of Australia, still dancing in its Ancestral Dream Time.

In the Forbidden City of 13th century Yuan China, a clock kept the hours, to help the keep the watch on the rockets in the armory alert--a difficult enterprise for the sleepy peasants dragooned from their homes a thousand leagues away on the borders of the highest mountains of the Earth, as Mandarins prepared new students for the now ancient civil service examinations, and the Imperial Eunuchs plotted with the women of the palace in a confused coterie, not knowing how to deal with the strange Mongol horsemen who had turned their world upside down. In their homes, the wise had shrines to every god they had ever heard of, the Ancestors first and foremost, and then the delicate statue of Confusius atop the I Ching (illegible to the majority of a largely illiterate but extremely clever and intelligent population), with a Christian Cross from their nice Nestorian neighbor, and a plain green silk cloth for the Allah who eschews representational art, and so rudely jostled by a laughing Buddha. The rare goods of a distant and despised, but oh-so-intriguing Europe were displayed with the exotic fish and shells of the Pacific and the rare gems of the Subcontinent. Simple and deadly Muslims of the Golden Horde warily eye the swart, smiling horse archers who patrol the streets, and dream of their homes in Gansu, on the shoulders of the Himalayas. Vietnameses Pirates slip through the crowd to seek a buyer for their more valuable plunder, slipping past the Bengali seller of chicken basted in strange curry, and the friendly, little brown Moluccan tribesman with his bushels of cloyingly aromatic spices.

I can go right back like this for millenia, and across the face of the globe. So i would like you to tell me when in history there was not a possiblity, for some individuals, that



The human race stands atop an incomprehensibly vast pile of "knowledge rocks," piled up higgledy-piggledy by our uncounted billions of ancestors, and those more recent ancestors still known to us or the historical record. Some have placed small stone on the pile, others have rolled up great boulders of wisdom too heavy for mere human disaster ever to topple, many a rare jewel sparkles on the face of the slopes; how many more lie hidden, crushed in the weight of all the accreted knowledge? The human has been the clever, curious, industrious and sly creature we know today for tens of thousands of years. I contend to you that there have always been in those many millenia more questions than answers, and that this will continue to be the case. When the day comes that the last question is answered, the next sound anyone will hear will be the Crack of Doom.

Computers are toys, don't overrate them.

Set, Just one correction; we can now get 'tickets' by email, the airlines call them e-tickets. c.i.

They hafta fax 'em into ya, c.i., i do it all the time, and they don't come in within twenty minutes.

Set, Very well done! Bravo. c.i.