US Officially Blames Russia

Upchurch said:
How are they not? They are trained in this, they have the data, and there is a consensus across agencies. I'm not saying they can't be wrong, but it silly to deny that they are the authorities in this.

If not them, then who?
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They are as good at assessing truth as police are at assessing guilt or innocence (FBI are closer to police than the other two). FBI agents regularly testify to the validity of both forensic and witness evidence to a degree of certainty appropriate to a courtroom maybe, but not scientifically sound. The CIA simply believes a number of things about intelligence that is flat out not supported (torture works). I simply cannot evaluate the capability of the NSA as they keep so much of their work secret.

Authority must be earned (setting aside my thoughts on appeal to authority). None of these agencies have earned it.
 
BobTheCoward said:
They are as good at assessing truth as police are at assessing guilt or innocence (FBI are closer to police than the other two). FBI agents regularly testify to the validity of both forensic and witness evidence to a degree of certainty appropriate to a courtroom maybe, but not scientifically sound. The CIA simply believes a number of things about intelligence that is flat out not supported (torture works). I simply cannot evaluate the capability of the NSA as they keep so much of their work secret.

Authority must be earned (setting aside my thoughts on appeal to authority). None of these agencies have earned it.
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"...then who?"
 
BobTheCoward said:
Being a skeptic sometimes means the answer is, "I don't know and neither do you."
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Being a critical thinker mean asking the question, "How do we know?" Sometimes, how we know relies on conditionally trusting an authority. There are several authorities on this issue and they all currently agree. Denying this by cherry-picking times when various agencies were wrong merely supports my hypothesis from a day or two ago.
 
Upchurch said:
Being a critical thinker mean asking the question, "How do we know?" Sometimes, how we know relies on conditionally trusting an authority. There are several authorities on this issue and they all currently agree. Denying this by cherry-picking times when various agencies were wrong merely supports my hypothesis from a day or two ago.
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It isn't cherry picking. They are examples of their fundamentally poor institutional structure that makes them poor at figuring out what is correct and for us to accept their judgement.

They have not even earned conditional trust.
 
phiwum said:
If you prefer to call it "critical thinking" rather than "informal logic", I have no complaints.
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From the way you're presenting it, it seems mostly a combination of educated guesswork and ideological indoctrination. Whatever it is, it sure ain't a logic though.

Historically, of course, these topics have been a part of logic, though these days, when people think of logic, they think of the formal stuff.
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Historically alchemy was a part of science, that doesn't mean much.

When I think of logic I think of the study of logical systems, aka formal systems with semantics. All of which have precise definitions, precise methods, etc. As opposed to that "informal logic" which seems some vague set of heuristics floating around in mid-air without grounding.

I disagree that it is mere educated guesswork. I find the view that inductive reasoning must be done in a Bayesian setting[1] to be a fantastic fiction.
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Not limited to Bayesian. I find the view that any meaningful reasoning can be done without a formal framework to be a fantastic fiction.

On the contrary, it's appropriate to reason inductively, through analogy and also to appeal to trustworthy, informed authorities.
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Except that your assignment of "trust" to the "authorities" in this case (US government and intelligence agencies) is ideological rather than empirical. By this logic I can assign "trust" to the pope and then claim to have evidence for us having immortal souls, because the pope says so.

All that's happening here is that people are packaging their ideological preferences under "trust assignments" and then claiming that their appeals to these "trusted" authorities aren't fallacies because reasons.

And that's the thing that bothers me about this, if people were to just say "my ideology requires me to believe the claims" then sure, I wouldn't have a problem with that. But no, they just have to go and package it under "critical thinking". Especially the appeals to scientific authority to support the case is an abuse of science at a level which is no better than so-called "creation science".

This kind of thinking is what we do everyday. When my car makes a funny noise and I recall that this was a symptom of a bad starter last time I heard it, then I am doing informal inductive reasoning, and quite appropriately, too.
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You are doing statistical reasoning. You've earlier established a correlation between "hearing funny noise" and "having bad starter" which you then use the next time you hear the noise. This could easily be put in a Bayesian framework as well.
 
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caveman1917 said:
Tell me: do we have immortal souls? The pope says so.
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The difference is that, with time and effort, we can access the information being used by the authorities I mentioned. Heck, the stuff we're talking about here may be eventually declassified.

Is there information the Pope is using that we can have access to?
 
Upchurch said:
Then, you acknowledge the successes of the US intelligence community?
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Why don't we ask a former CIA director?

William Casey said:
We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
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Now, your question is to how successful they are? I think that's hard to measure, but luckily I've just learned here that there is no need for measurements or any sort of empirical inquiry, all we need is blind faith in authorities. Judging the result on that basis (ie "critical thinking" is rejecting empirical evidence in favour of blind faith in the government) I'd say they've been pretty successful indeed.
 
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Upchurch said:
The difference is that, with time and effort, we can access the information being used by the authorities I mentioned.
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Well then feel free to come back with your claim once you actually have the evidence.

Is there information the Pope is using that we can have access to?
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I am free to assign "trust" to him, making him an "appropriate authority", so by your own argument you should now believe that we have immortal souls.

But since you've now jumped ships to "accessing the information" as a requirement - does that mean you reject the existence of Hannibal?
 
caveman1917 said:
Why don't we ask a former CIA director?
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(citation needed)


caveman1917 said:
I think that's hard to measure, but luckily I've just learned here that there is no need for measurements or any sort of empirical inquiry, all we need is blind faith in authorities.
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I don't know where you learned that, but it wasn't from me. Perhaps you should re-read the thread and actually address my posts.
 
Upchurch said:
(citation needed)
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1. Do you know how to use google?

2. The mere fact that you even require a citation for this shows that you are in absolutely no position to judge the "trustworthiness" of the intelligence agencies.

I don't know where you learned that, but it wasn't from me.
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Sure it was from you. You argued that we could appeal to authority as opposed to requiring evidence, didn't you?

Perhaps you should re-read the thread and actually address my posts.
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Ugh. I don't mind arguing topics, but when it comes to continually explaining critical thinking, logic, and fallacies, it gets really old.
 
caveman1917 said:
1. Do you know how to use google?

2. The mere fact that you even require a citation for this shows that you are in absolutely no position to judge the "trustworthiness" of the intelligence agencies.
.
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Your post does place the onus to cite it on you.
 
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