A denialism taxonomy: FLICC (fake experts, logical fallacies, ...) | Hacker News Reader

A denialism taxonomy: FLICC (fake experts, logical fallacies, ...)

doctorow.medium.com

27 points_Microft15 comments

These would be more interesting if he used them to steelman his outgroups arguments instead of writing a system of tropes as an ideological immune system for his less thoughtful allies. The resistence to evidence in a conspiracy theory he identifies is a useful rule, but it's mainly just the artifact of any ideology (the logic of an idea) whereby the iteration of the idea substitutes itself for experience.

The main question I really care about the answer to anymore is whether or not a person believes in truth. It's divisive, but very efficient in determining the weight one can assign to an opinion.

It is exactly meant as a way to discover denialism. Check the link at the end of the third paragraph for the paper that it comes from (or use [0]) if you aren’t content with the barebones version.

[0] „Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?“, https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780

> "The normal academic response to an opposing argument is to engage with it, testing the strengths and weaknesses of the differing views, in the expectations that the truth will emerge through a process of debate. However, this requires that both parties obey certain ground rules, such as a willingness to look at the evidence as a whole, to reject deliberate distortions and to accept principles of logic. A meaningful discourse is impossible when one party rejects these rules. Yet it would be wrong to prevent the denialists having a voice. Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they employ and identifying them publicly for what they are. An understanding of the five tactics listed above provides a useful framework for doing so."

This paper appears to recommend not to engaging with people whose opinions fit these tropes, and instead draw public attention to their divergent views and make an example of them. Essentially what we call cancel culture today. To the targets of such a tactic, what alternative recourse are they left with after being called a denialist? They can't all be funny enough to deflect it.

I'm not sure these writers understand what happens when you organize to cause the faith and humour of people to fail them. On this, Doctorow seems unwise.

I’m not sure that I can follow. They talk about how to deal with denialists, i.e. people who intentionally mislead others about a topic, not people who happen to have a different opinion.

There was an interesting discussion over the weekend about tribal stupidity, prompted by an article by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Mr. Doctorow perfectly embodies it:

All of his examples are about the other tribe. "My tribe is science-based! It's the other tribe that has the denialists!"

Actually, both tribes practice all of his behaviors.

For any particular tribe you'll see members of that tribe use dishonest tactics to try to convince the other side.

I find this the most distasteful when science, logic, consensus, etc. is on a particular tribe's side. Member of the tribe don't need to use underhanded schemes to try to argue their side. They are actively undermining their tribe by using dishonesty to attempt to strengthen their position.

While it's certainly true that there are some people on the Internet who both agree with the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming and make bad arguments,

a) that does not imply that the position those arguments defend is incorrect, and

b) for the science denialists, bad arguments are all they have.

Let me rephrase that for you:

"My tribe is correct. It's the other one that's bad."

"Both sides are just being tribal, there's no real right answer" is one of the more common methods used to dismiss the very real differences between the two sides and attempt to prevent progress from being made.

"progress" meaning "my tribe wins."

"Progress," meaning "the things the "tribe" that labels itself as "progressive" wants."

So, yeah, you're not being particularly clever by observing that.

I've read a lot of articles condemning the state of science today, things like redacted papers having thousands of citations, replication crises. I've heard a lot of accounts of scientists on HN decrying the perversions of funding. Science is messy. Humans are messy. Theory of Falsification. Skepticism. Shit even my late-year biology textbook hasn't integrated the stochastic variability in movement of forks in DNA replication, neither did my professor.

I don't know what to take from any of it, I'll believe it when I see it. Je ne crois que ce que je vois.

Is this taxonomy argued to be exhaustive and sufficient in any sense? Like, if a bubble were drawn around the taxonomy, are they saying that everything outside the bubble is truth, or at least valid argumentation?

This article is not actually about denialism, it's about propaganda.

Ad hominem is a term of diagnosing a logical fallacy far more than it's a disinformation tactic, per se. A lexicon around tactical uses of information that are technically exploiting the ad hominem logical fallacy would be far more useful than whatever this is.

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