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The Perils of Pop Philosophy
ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."
What?
Locking up knowledge so that only specialists get access is a stupid, destructive, elitist practice that is self defeating (who do you think funds most work???) and detracts from the life we're all capable of leading. Those who Suggest that popular accounts can't be good are just making a poor excuse for their own inability to communicate. Over-simplification isn't the whole problem. Poor communication is.
Most people over the age of about 12 (well 16 in some places) understand that you won't get all the detail from a popular article. Popular articles are about giving us the flavour of what's being discussed. Without them a great deal of human knowledge is complete inaccessible to the masses. Hell, even the most intelligent of us doesn't have time to specialise in every field.
It can be done, or it can be done poorly. Done well people get a flavour for the complexity of the topic, understand the limitations of the popular description, walk away with an appreciation for the topic and perhaps get to chat to other intelligent people about the wonders of it. Take a look at Sagan's Cosmos, Brian Greene's Elegant Universe (whether or not you think String theory is the way forward), any Attenborough documentary (if you can stay awake - I must confess the man's voice is a cure for insomnia which is a pity because I think his documentaries are so well done)
Done poorly Joe Schmoe walks way with a misunderstanding based on poor analogies and either thinks the topic is a total waste of time and money or rhat he could do better at the field with no specialist knowledge. See almost any human interest piece on the news, idiotic wildlife entertainment shows like Steve Irwin's tripe, and all reality TV.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
When Planned Parenthood was founded, many people were disgusted at the thought of an agency dedicated to abortion. Worse, though, was the fact that PP was founded in order to control the population of undesirables, and Sanger, the founder of PP, was especially eager to label non-whites as undesirable.
Now, here's the dilemma. If we take the position that speech itself is relatively useless since anyone can do it, and that only actions are important since only those willing to act will effect true change, then how do we reconcile the good which PP has brought while taking into consideration the completely immoral basis upon which it was founded?
Sanchez is wrong in his supposition that speech itself is wrong. Speech leads to debate, and debate can bring out the truth. The ancient Greek sophists knew this, and thus we have the practice of oratory.
Over-simplification isn't the whole problem. Poor communication is.
You got it right there, if you can't communicate complex ideas to interested parties outside your field then you don't properly understand your field. Intelligence comes into it but only to a point . . . why use three syllables when one will do!
"Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place."
The problem I've found, even since my first debate class in 10th grade, is that the vast majority of people have no interest in what the 'right' answer is. They only care that their perspective is correct, and if an inconvenient counterpoint is presented, they discount, rail against, or outright ignore it.
In addition to this, the people presenting the counterpoints often do it in such a condescending manner, any slim hope there was of the other person considering an alternate viewpoint is evaporated in a blast of indignation.
The most productive problem solving I've ever done, and still do, is when I'm surrounded by smart people who don't believe their personal ego should factor into any decision made. We sit down at a table, drink lots of coffee, joke around, and at the end of the day, have solved most of our problems in elegant, efficient ways. We even laugh at our own dumb ideas when we've overlooked something that should have been obvious. I've also been in groups where you are crucified for uttering something that isn't completely accurate. This environment simply leads to a large amount of CYA, because once a person commits to the decision, he then MUST follow through, even if later he realizes it wasn't the best choice, because the environment he's working in is completely unforgiving. Basically if he admits there was a better option, it costs him his job. It's best to not have that type of fear, because no matter how hard you are on people, they will still make mistakes, even the brilliant ones.
The same holds true for personal philosophies; solving the problems that being alive presents. When you are listening to other people, you should actually listen to them. Try to see things their way. Don't bash them, even if you disagree. It doesn't hurt. It can often help. And when you're presenting a counterpoint, be genteel about it. Tact goes a very long way.
The Dude said it best, "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an ASSHOLE!"
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I like the quote on Slashdot, but reading his blog I get the sense that he actively practices what he preaches against. Reducing people and complex issues to simplistic (and usually undefined) categories is the heart of the oversimplification that Sanchez laments. We don't need more fights over how to name our problems; we need to understand them, which means we need to understand our selves.
Here's something interesting:
Following a link from the first article we get:
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
which in turn leads us to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)#The_psychology_of_cranks
which pretty much explains the logic behind at least 10% of the posts here in Slashdot.
Yes it is just you. Slashdot is 'News For Nerds'. Not 'News for IT Professionals', or 'News for Computer Science Graduates'. The article's subject has relevance to Slashdot readers, because many of us are well versed in a particular field, and hate it when the media or pundits use a simple argument to convince lay-people of something which is flat out wrong.
Thanks for mashing your fists on the keyboard. It was a valuable contribution that makes us all intellectually richer.
The expression of ideas in the media IS a big problem. Noam Chomsky (some random guy, don't worry about it) has made similar points on the pitfalls of brevity in the media. I have read articles in New Scientist by a scientist discussing how to debate with creationists, in a limited time frame, when they ask short pithy questions which require long answers to refute. It is a widely recognised problem which, to date, hasn't found a satisfactory solution.
The fact is, some things are too complicated to form an informed opinion on without graduate level study. It is OK to have elites. As someone with no medical training, I am very grateful that there are elite surgeons around to perform any procedures on me I might need in the future, rather than some bloke with 'common sense' who saw an episode of Casualty and reckons he can have a go at it.
Being able to spell 'sophisticated' is not a sign of being an intellectual elitist.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
> 3) The brain is still nothing more than a mass of cells.
As a programmer, I must point out the obvious analogy: "the computer is still nothing more than a collection of transistors", and reply that if that were so, nobody would have to argue whether it is better to run Linux or Vista. Philosophers would do much better once they explicitly state that there is a difference between hardware and software, that they are, respectively, the brain and the mind, and that anyone trying to conflate the two is either a con man or an idiot.
"Isn't it odd? When a politician or a movie star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it."
"They do, eventually."
You may want to be more specific. I don't think anyone really argues against (3). The issue isn't whether the brain is a mass of cells, but whether (3a) the mind is anything over and above that mass of cells. Both the physicalist and the dualist can accept (3), but they would vehemently disagree over (3a).
I'm not sure why you think philosophers think too highly of functionalism. It is a philosophy that works for many areas of interest. I personally don't think that functionalism fully captures all the relevant issues in the philosophy of mind, but there is still a coherent and compelling argument from that side. Functionalism can help the physicalist account for subjective experiences like qualia.
I also don't think that it's fair to say that only religious people have a problem with (3) (or more precisely, my revised version, (3a); also, I'm aware you didn't say "only", but given the context, one would likely imply as such). I'm non-religious, but I tend to lean more towards the dualist position. Furthermore, the great empiricist David Hume may have argued against a substantivalist immaterial mind, but given his other philosophical works, I think he would not necessarily disagree with a property dualist position.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that your post shows exactly the problem with which the article is concerned. Incomplete oversimplifications of the matters at hand will tend not to be very substantially rich. I'm sure you have arguments to support your positions, and I have little doubt that they will probably be good arguments, but because you have oversimplified your position, the arguments become weak and insubstantial. In fact, in previewing my own post, my own briefly extended arguments are very philosophically weak as well. The important questions are as follows: Is it possible to reduce philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) complex arguments to newspaper- or blog-sized articles without undermining the sophistication and nuances of such arguments? Is it possible to do so keeping in mind that the readers or consumers of such articles have little to no background information about the matters at hand?
I'm currently working on a side project about the ethics of information dissemination and this is exactly the type of question in which I am interested. Is it ethical for a journalist or blogger or what-have-you (hereafter collectively known as "journalist" for ease) to provide incomplete information? This question is somewhat less controversial, because a journalist's job is, basically, to summarize and disseminate. But is it ethical for a journalist to disseminate incomplete information in a way that disproportionately favours one set of arguments over others? For example, if a study shows that a certain compound that is richly found in food xyz is good for you but other studies show that food xyz taken as a whole is bad for you, is it ethical for the journalist just to mention the first study without mentioning the latter studies? We hear about such stories all the time in headlines such as "Red wine may increase your life span!" or "One aspirin a day may reduce risks of heart attacks!"
To tie it back to your post, was it ethical for you to simplify the issues so much so that it seems to disproportionately favour your conclusion? The article's worries are not unfounded, and your short and succinct post shows exactly why that is so.
Without divinity, I don't see how any of those things are theological (or rather, absent divinity, I don't see what theology brings to them).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
...and uninformed.
And I vote.
That is all.
Certainly people can be persuaded. It happens all the time.
I used to be a death penalty supporter. Now, I'm not. Of course, I can't put my finger on any one thing that changed my mind, but the arguments were certainly there.
I also used to be significantly more inclined to see offensive war as a legitimate tool of policy, now I don't. Believe it or not, the Iraq war had nothing to do with that, as I honestly expected that a Mideast war was inevitable anyway. I just wish we had been a lot more justified and a lot better at managing the aftermath.
So, yes, people can change their mind. It just doesn't happen suddenly, so you might get the idea that no one is listening. They certainly are.
No. Wrong.
The things we argue about tend to be very very simple. It is the application to the real world that gets very very complex.
Take abortion for example. The real question is "When do we get a soul?"
The standard arguments make it more complex. You only need to get that complex if you are trying to deal with the real world and counter examples. But the heart of the matter is a simple question, that anyone can hold an opinion on, and can try to prove or dis-prove.
Another great example is say the rule of the law vs a case by case situation. Do we care about the minutia of legal proceedings more than the right/wrongness of the actual actions. Yes, you can get very very specific about whether or not the fact that a man was convicted on an illegal wire tap, should he go free, or variably, a man convicted but later another man proven to have done the crime. But we really are arguing about a basic concept, not the evidence that people cook up to support their viewpoints.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
We differentiate between them by requiring them to have their research published and subjected to peer review. The financial sector preferred to keep secrets rather than publish and never had any peer review, so when they thought they had the brightest mathematicians and physicists, they were only fooling themselves.