Categorie: Tutti - debate - hypotheses - fallacies - evidence

da meena ishak mancano 16 anni

365

Baloney detection kit

Baloney detection kit

Baloney Detection Kit.

What Not to do (Fallacies)

• weasel words
• suppressed evidence,
• straw man
• confusion of correlation and causation
• slippery slope
• short-term vs. long-term
• excluded middle, or false dichotomy
• meaningless question
• post hoc, ergo propter hoc
• non sequitur
• inconsistency
• misunderstanding of the nature of statistics
• statistics of small numbers
• observational selection
• begging the question
• special pleading
• appeal to ignorance
• argument from adverse consequences
• argument from authority
• ad hominem

Tools for Skeptical thinking

• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified
• Occam's Razor
• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work
• Quantify
• Not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours
• Spin more than one hypothesis
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence
• Arguments from authority carry little weight
• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."