Who pissod off Penn?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

My logic teacher told me that:

"A vote B" usually means all A vote B unless otherwise stated

It's just a semantical quibbling.

Your logic teacher was correct.

 

[AndyD]

I see a note at the top of my forum screen advising me that I haven't posted for "several weeks" and inviting me to contribute something. So, at risk of dragging this debate/discussion/argument/slanging match somewhere close to On Topic, can I ask:

Is it expected that all skeptics must have firm opinions on every controversial issue and that they must also agree on everything, all the time?

If not (and I hope not or I'm done-for before I start) then can I suggest that unless Penn and Teller are travelling around actively promoting a one-sided agenda on Global Warming then their lack of a firm position on it seems entirely irrelevant. Doesn't it?

Hell, I'd rather have someone admit, up front, that despite their fame and fortune and the fact they actually sell their opinions for mass market consumption, there are not only some things about which they're undecided but they are also willing to admit that their opinions, or lack of, might actually be swayed by emotion/politics.

Damn! Now I can watch BS (when we get it here, which is rare) and assess whether I necessarily agree with them or whether their politics might be clouding their judgement. Is that really a bad thing? As a long-time non-smoker and anti-smoker, I disagreed strongly with their passive smoking episode (though I believe they later changed their position on that). Was I supposed to agree with everything they say because they're skeptics - even if I strongly disagree?

In my short time reading a host of skeptic blogs, mostly based in the US, I can't say I've seen much support for the Republicans. Am I to believe that none of these bloggers is ever swayed by their political preferences? Pfft! I've lost count of the "Obama's going all religious on us - but I'll still vote for him" posts.

Face it, anyone who has to vote has to have a political opinion and it's surely natural to tend toward defending that opinion. Penn gets some kudos for stating as much.

The stupid thing now is that something that was probably low key and fairly "private" is now blazingly public and Penn's views, or lack there of, on GW are out there for everyone to see, use and abuse. Wouldn't it be "funny" if he decided to make his mind up - and went the the GW skeptics instead of the environmentalists? Oops!

There you go, I posted something.

 

[BPSCG]

Is it expected that all skeptics must have firm opinions on every controversial issue and that they must also agree on everything, all the time?

I think there are a couple of statements that we could probably get near-, or even perfect unanimity:

1. I wish politicians would sometimes say, "I don't know the answer to that."
2. I wish that entertainment types, when asked about their opinions on politics, current events, and social issues, would routinely respond, "I don't have any particular expertise in that area, so could we please return the discussion to something I do have expertise in, namely, my life, my career, and my general wonderfulness?"

I think Penn did a pretty good imitation of number 2.

 

[luchog]

If scientists are political by definition, what makes their work scientific?

Adherence to scientific method, peer review, and replication.

It's very difficult to fully eliminate biases and agendas from any research, no matter how much care one takes to remain objective. That is why the peer review process and replication by independent researchers are so important.

 

[CFLarsen]

Adherence to scientific method, peer review, and replication.

It's very difficult to fully eliminate biases and agendas from any research, no matter how much care one takes to remain objective. That is why the peer review process and replication by independent researchers are so important.

That's just my point: Why would the independent researchers be free of their political bias?

 

[I Ratant]

I think there are a couple of statements that we could probably get near-, or even perfect unanimity:

1. I wish politicians would sometimes say, "I don't know the answer to that."
2. I wish that entertainment types, when asked about their opinions on politics, current events, and social issues, would routinely respond, "I don't have any particular expertise in that area, so could we please return the discussion to something I do have expertise in, namely, my life, my career, and my general wonderfulness?"

I think Penn did a pretty good imitation of number 2.

.
#2 is all any celebrity should be expected to have any knowledge (such as that may be) at all!

 

[jimbob]

It was partly covered in this thread, but there seem to be two different stories about what Penn actually said:

Penn's LA-Times article:

During our loose Q&A period this year, someone asked us about global warming, or climate change, or however they're branding it now. Teller and I were both silent on stage for a bit too long, and then I said I didn't know.

I elaborated on "I don't know" quite a bit. I said that Al Gore was so annoying (that's scientifically provable, right?) that I really wanted to doubt anything he was hyping, but I just didn't know. I also emphasized that really smart friends, who knew a lot more than me, were convinced of global warming. I ended my long-winded rambling (I most often have a silent partner) very clearly with "I don't know." I did that because ... I don't know. Teller chimed in with something about Gore's selling of "indulgences" being BS, and then said he didn't know either. Penn & Teller don't know jack about global warming ... next question.

The Newsweek Blog:

I’ll write more about the meeting eventually, but for now I can’t get something out of my mind. Penn and Teller did a q&a with the audience the day before Teller alone spilled the beans on spoon bending, and one question yielded a surprising answer. Someone asked Penn whether he still believed that man-made climate change is bunk, as he has said more than once. Penn's basic answer was: I loathe everything about Al Gore, so since Gore has been crusading against climate change it must be garbage.

Now, Penn & Teller’s terrific “Bull****,” now beginning its sixth season on Showtime, has debunked psychics such as John Edward, feng shui, acupuncture and other forms of pseudoscience and the paranormal. But here was Penn, a great friend to the skeptic community, basically saying, don’t bother me with scientific evidence, I’m going to make up my mind about global warming based on my disdain for Al Gore. (Both Penn and Teller are well-known libertarians and supporters of the libertarian Cato Institute, which has been one of the leaders in spreading doubt about global warming.) Which just goes to show, not even the most hard-nosed empiricists and skeptics are immune from the power of emotion to make us believe stupid things.

 

[dudalb]

Which just goes to show, not even the most hard-nosed empiricists and skeptics are immune from the power of emotion to make us believe stupid things.

That is the freaking truth. And I have noted that politics and economics are places where a lot of otherwise skeptical people toss logic and evidence to the winds if they clash with their ideology.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh, dearie me...

This about what you are saying here.

If scientists are political by definition, what makes their work scientific?

If all of their work is influenced by their own politics, then none of their results are valid.

Hm?

Scientists stop doing science when they become political. That's precisely why scientists must adhere to the scientific method.

You keep going round the same mulberry bush here Claus without ever putting the pieces together.

Everyone is biased to some degree. No one is completely unbiased even the best scientists. You want to discuss bias as if it were a matter of black and white. That is unrealistic.

A good scientist minimizes their bias using careful scientific method.

Scientists vary considerably in their ability to minimize bias. That is why peer review is so important.

If you think somehow the Michael Behes of the world are producing good work and therefore the work is unbiased, you would be wrong. Behe's work was careful and as far as I know, scientifically sound. But his conclusions were unsupported. Why was that? Maybe because he has a god belief bias.

If you think good scientific work is without bias, then what is peer review for? If you think anyone is completely unbiased, you are a fool. That is an impossibility because of the nature of our brains. But on the continuum of human nature, some people are much closer to the ideal of being unbiased than other people and some people are extremely biased.

Most often, individual degree of bias is variable depending on the subject and on the person's past experiences.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wrong again. Try to keep up. Logic 101. Learn.

Because you say so? I think not.

I posted a link on a discussion of the logic involved.

Care to try and find one that disputes the link I cited?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I see a note at the top of my forum screen advising me that I haven't posted for "several weeks" and inviting me to contribute something. So, at risk of dragging this debate/discussion/argument/slanging match somewhere close to On Topic, can I ask:

Is it expected that all skeptics must have firm opinions on every controversial issue and that they must also agree on everything, all the time?....

No, and the issue would have been just that had Penn not added the fact his opinion was being influenced in an unskeptical way, by his dislike of Al Gore.

Then there is the fact Gore is not the only source of information on global warming. Even more important than letting your dislike of someone politically, affect your conclusions on an important topic, the issue I brought up was the fact there has been an extensive attack on the science of global warming by the Bush administration and the Exxon Corp.

It's a pretty huge issue for a skeptic to just ignore such a significant attack on the integrity of science because it is inconvenient topic politically to think about.

 

[bob_conklin]

There seems to be way too many skeptics that can't be skeptical on this topic. I poured through the IPCC data myself. The skeptical comminity is way too biased on this point.

It seems very church like to me. All of the red flags are there. This is a religion.

 

[CFLarsen]

You keep going round the same mulberry bush here Claus without ever putting the pieces together.

Everyone is biased to some degree. No one is completely unbiased even the best scientists. You want to discuss bias as if it were a matter of black and white. That is unrealistic.

A good scientist minimizes their bias using careful scientific method.

Scientists vary considerably in their ability to minimize bias. That is why peer review is so important.

If you think somehow the Michael Behes of the world are producing good work and therefore the work is unbiased, you would be wrong. Behe's work was careful and as far as I know, scientifically sound. But his conclusions were unsupported. Why was that? Maybe because he has a god belief bias.

If you think good scientific work is without bias, then what is peer review for? If you think anyone is completely unbiased, you are a fool. That is an impossibility because of the nature of our brains. But on the continuum of human nature, some people are much closer to the ideal of being unbiased than other people and some people are extremely biased.

Most often, individual degree of bias is variable depending on the subject and on the person's past experiences.

But we are not talking about the kind of bias that all scientists have, namely that they want their research to succeed.

We are talking about political bias - you in particular claimed that all scientists have a political bias that influence their scientific conclusions.

If you point to Behe's conclusions being influenced by his bias, and all scientists are biased this way, then let's take three scientists whom we both know well: Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan and Phil Plait.

Present your evidence that Richard Dawkins' conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Present your evidence that Carl Sagan's conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Present your evidence that Phil Plait's conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Let me crystal clear about this: I don't want an avalanche of words where you explain why you don't - or can't - present your evidence. I don't want excuses. I don't want dismissive cheap shots.

All I want is your evidence.

 

[bob_conklin]

Carl Sagan's views were all political bias. He was the one that predicted the new ice age from the Iraq oil fires. Didn't happen. Great man there, but bad data, I'm sorry.

 

[bob_conklin]

Phil Plait just quotes the IPCC data that has been proven wrong again and again. Pushing guilt on the US for being prosperious is not a valid response. There should be equal response time given to all of the third world countries that need to exploit their natural resouces like we did to stop the trauma.

 

[bob_conklin]

Mr. Larsen should be expected to not make some argument by peer support in this forum. There is no argument for the hysteria that this religion has become.

Sorry, but we are all open to this kind of religious attack on our reality.

The data just doen't support this kind of global attitude. I leave the proof to the claimants, and they have not provided.

Quite the contrary.

 

[plumjam]

There seems to be way too many skeptics that can't be skeptical on this topic. I poured through the IPCC data myself. The skeptical comminity is way too biased on this point.

It seems very church like to me. All of the red flags are there. This is a religion.

Hallelujah to that.
Great, there's someone perceptive in the house. Finally

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

But we are not talking about the kind of bias that all scientists have, namely that they want their research to succeed.

We are talking about political bias - you in particular claimed that all scientists have a political bias that influence their scientific conclusions.

If you point to Behe's conclusions being influenced by his bias, and all scientists are biased this way, then let's take three scientists whom we both know well: Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan and Phil Plait.

Present your evidence that Richard Dawkins' conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Present your evidence that Carl Sagan's conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Present your evidence that Phil Plait's conclusions are influenced by his political bias.

Let me crystal clear about this: I don't want an avalanche of words where you explain why you don't - or can't - present your evidence. I don't want excuses. I don't want dismissive cheap shots.

All I want is your evidence.

Claus, I don't really care what you want. You can keep asking of course. Suit yourself.

I can't believe you are even arguing this most basic fact of human nature. Here is the evidence of the obvious but if this gets further away from the topic of Penn's biases you'll have to start another thread.


Biased brains, messy memories

In Kluge, psychologist Gary Marcus ....

The blame, he asserts, rests with our imperfect memory, "arguably the mind's original sin". Perhaps we would reason more effectively if the brain could store and retrieve data as accurately and as simply as a computer. Instead we must contend with a limited system. Brains locate memories by matching them to the current context rather than having unbiased access to all of our experiences. This contextual dependence makes it hard during an argument, for example, to recall how often our spouse does the housework, because thinking of one failure inclines our brains to remember similar situations rather than contrary examples.

Bias on the Brain: A Neural Basis for Prejudice

Psychological testing introduced some of the earliest evidence that certain biases may be more deeply rooted in the mind than previously thought. One way of measuring bias is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which was first described in 1998 by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle [1]. The IAT asks subjects to associate a word, name, or image with any of a range of possible answers. To take a benign example, if the word “dog” appears on the computer screen, the subject might be asked to click on either “friendly” or “threatening.” The interesting result is not necessarily which answer was selected, but rather how quickly the subject selected it.

Galaxy Zoo!, Human Bias and Why I Love Astronomy

This paper looked at the Galaxy Zoo project and was able to show a bias in the users categorizing of S galaxies to Z galaxies. The galaxy classifications that were used from the GZ project had to be considered “clean” - more than 80% of the votes agreed on the classification. The authors looked to see if there was some bias that prevented Z galaxies from being classified cleanly as often as S galaxies. That is, the thought was that there could be some underlying bias causing Z-wise galaxies to be classified as “other” more often than S-wise galaxies. They took a subset of galaxies that had been classified cleanly and placed both the original images and mirror-flipped images into the data base and allowed users to classify the galaxy type. In the original data set, more S galaxies are seen than Z galaxies, so one would expect the situation to reverse with the mirror images if the over abundance were the result of the true galaxy distribution. However, they noted a S galaxy excess that was statistically identical for the mirror images. This suggests some human bias that makes it easier to classify a galaxy with a certain rotation or “handedness”.

The authors mention a neurological study that had shown it might be possible for the brain to see a certain “handedness” better than another.

In order for one's political ideology to have absolutely no impact on their scientific research it would have to be segregated in their brain. Otherwise, just like everything else, we are creatures of our anatomy, physiology and experiences. No one can be completely 100% without bias and those biases are going to cross political ideology territory the same way they cross our emotional reaction and our innate sense of aesthetics. A good scientist and a good skeptic can minimize bias. No one can eliminate it completely.

 

[bob_conklin]

Before I piss on this board and leave like I always do, I have to say that I do my best to be nice to the environment.

When someone offers the alternative to a hell, they have something else in mind.

This is the case here.

When someone offers something constuctive, they are at least trying.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Phil Plait just quotes the IPCC data that has been proven wrong again and again. Pushing guilt on the US for being prosperious is not a valid response. There should be equal response time given to all of the third world countries that need to exploit their natural resouces like we did to stop the trauma.

Can you find us credible sources of evidence the IPCC is not credible? Is there evidence they are bought and paid for or stand to gain financially or otherwise from their 'erroneous work'? Or do you just favor the 'paid for by Exxon' scientists' conclusions?

I'm not trying to piss you off, but just trying to get at what your conclusions are based on.