Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

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You'll see someone like this in every global warming discussion that happens with an educated audience. They'll put on all the plumage of reasonable dissent: "I don't think that the argument for AGW takes into account <pet theory>." In an audience of non-experts, they will go unanswered, and appear to have a point, until you spend an hour or two digging through the relevant IPCC reports and discover that not only has <pet theory> been investigated, it has been extensively investigated by dozens of labs across hundreds of studies using methodologies you never dreamed possible, along with 3 or 4 variants of the argument, all of which were quite thoroughly put to rest.

If you confront them with this evidence, citing all the reports and papers, they'll just switch from <pet theory> to <pet theory 2>, possibly after firing off a final riposte defending <pet theory> that makes it abundantly clear they couldn't even be bothered to read the links you dug up, forcing you to ask yourself if you really want to do all that homework again.

Fake-reasonable arguments are easy. Countering them is hard. If you don't discard them as a matter of policy (peer review or STFU), they will dominate the decision making process with 100% certainty.

This has been the "go to" method of people like this who argue positions that rail against established science or history, from evolution to trickle-down to holocaust denialism. They cannot win on the basis of honest and sincere debate, so they play underhanded confidence games along with gaslighting in order to convince you to their side.

Honestly, if you are engaging in this, consider whether your side really is the right side to be on in the first place.

I assume you intend evolution denialism.

Yes. Thank you.

A trap most of us will fall in to is to assume intents of the anonymous strangers with which we talk on these message boards. In serious academic-ish discussion, I think we should stick as closely to the topic at-hand and avoid pointing out patterns of argumentation where we're easily led into the abyss of us-vs-them and accusations of manipulation. (Manipulation might be rampant, but hard to objectively define anonymously.)

The GP does some finger pointing ("you know that they are not being honest with you.") which might have detracted subsequent (and valid) questions that could be answered in a more pleasant sense by other HNers. We should set an example, if we're feeling superior.

> In serious academic-ish discussion, I think we should stick as closely to the topic at-hand and avoid...

So does that mean you're willing to do the legwork to dig up the IPCC reports, chase down the studies they reference, and put together an academic-quality rebuttal? Or are you just asking for someone else to do it?

In either case I offer my sincere gratitude to anyone willing to fight the weighted odds. It ain't gonna be me, though. Been there, done that. I've got a few hours of weekend left, and I aim to enjoy them.

I'll rephrase: I'm asking for less speculation on the [malicious] intent of someone with whom one may disagree on HN. Poisons the discussion even worse.

It's easy to hand-wring about conflict. It's hard to fight a dishonorable opponent honorably.

You have the power to make this change. Not retroactively in this discussion, of course, but in the next. Spend the time to research the truth, the effort to write a scholarly reply, and there will be no need for responses like the one you saw me make.

I'm with you on almost all those points! Getting older I realize more and more the importance of realizing the energy "the fight" has taken out of me, and opening up grounds for others with energy reserves to carry on the intellectual battles. I think I'm on the sidelines for a while.

I like the response peer review or STFU. Maybe PRoSTFU.

What is that technique the fake-reasonable argument makers use? It's like a Gish gallop but slower. Maybe that's the best description of it.

The Gish Trot, then?

I joke, but the whole point of the Gish Gallop is to rapid fire weak arguments. I don't think it exactly fits.

As an aside, does anyone know of a good source that categorizes and explains these modern underhanded argument techniques?

I've seen the term "Rhetological Fallacies" used - there's no shortage of resources enumerating them online. Wikipedia has a whole section, there's a website called rationalwiki and commonly cited (though I have yet to read) is Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit".

For a more askew look at the topic check out Derailing for Dummies :)

http://www.derailingfordummies.com

FWIW I think its important to be careful with these concepts. I often see a perfectly valid point though a poorly constructed argument blown out of the water by reference to these techniques. There's an awful lot of subtlety to this stuff which if misapplied can cause you to miss out on certain valuable points being made just because of how they're being made. Also important to remember that these "weapons" can also be abused by the hypothetical ne'er-do-wells to prevent novel contributions to discussion ...

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