6 ms·

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (1995)

68 points by denzil_correa 7y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
And yet Sagan was one of the biggest promoters of the “Drake Equation” which takes advantage of the fact that humans are really bad at very large and very small numbers to make it seem like alien civilizations, of which we have never had any evidence of, are widespread throughout the universe. This was just baloney wrapped in numbers.
- new_realist 7y ago
  I think you misspelled “hypothesis.”
- mikeash 7y ago
  The Drake Equation is perfectly reasonable. You just have to interpret it as “these assumptions imply aliens” rather than “there are definitely aliens.”
  - bnegreve 7y ago
    It is not, because at least 3 factors of the equation are incredibly difficult to estimate. About as difficult as estimating the probability of an alien encounter. So the equation is basically useless.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      And what’s the term for a figure that’s hard to estimate but which you guess at anyway? An “assumption.”
      - bnegreve 7y ago
        Yes, and in this case, an unreasonable one.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  The Drake Equation doesn't imply anything about the number of aliens in the universe, you can get any answer you want by putting in values for each of the factors.
- throwaway66920 7y ago
  I think the Drake equation is fine if you accept that even von Neumann probes are basically impossible to achieve. Space is simply too hard for everything.
cols 7y ago
I was born into a charismatic Christian cult and escaped in my early 20s, left to pick up the pieces of a completely shattered world view. No one in my life, at that point, really understood the internal turmoil I was in. This piece in particular and, in general, all of the Demon Haunted World couldn't have come at a better time for me. It gave me the tools I needed to overcome a lot of the biases and crazy charismatic thought patterns that were established at a very early age. I will forever be indebted to Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan for making my life a lot more bearable and for helping me out of the existential quagmire I was stuck in.
- ARandomerDude 7y ago
  > charismatic Christian cult These words don't go together. Cults are definitionally aberrant, i.e., non-Christian. Many of us in high Christian orthodoxy would certainly regard the entire charismatic movement as heterodox at best. Lest anyone should cry "no true Scotsman," the difference is Christianity has a well-defined view of orthodoxy, as propounded by Scripture and understood by the Church going back to its earliest days. The Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, etc. are excellent examples of a united, cross-denominational understanding recognized by all except the cults. That's not to say we don't disagree about some of the particulars in other areas, but all Christian churches believe in "one holy, catholic (universal), apostolic, Church." Edit to add: I'm sorry you had trouble with a cult. I know there's a lot of real pain caused by many of these groups. Come check out the real thing. We'd love to have you.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    You took someone’s painful experience with a cult and No True Scotsman’d it into a sales pitch for your religion. There is a time and a place for everything. And for the record, having also left an evangelical cult that tried really hard to get me to hate myself because of my sexuality, I’m not too sold on any branch of Christianity at this point. The last thing I’d wanna hear after telling people about my experiences like that is “but have you tried my flavor of Christianity?”
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    The word "cult" is just a way for mainstream religions to look down on non-mainstream religions. "Cult" is definitionally aberrant because mainstream religions have defined it for their own convenience. Certainly cults have high potential for abuse, but then again, we've seen quite a bit of that in mainstream churches too. It's also a bit silly to cite the harms done by cults when the "high Christian Orthodoxy" espoused the crusades, the inquisition, pogroms--the "high Christian Orthodoxy" is responsible for far more death and suffering than any of the small cults that spun off of it. And you can't distance yourself from that and claim the Nicene Creed which predates all of it. The Nicene Creed which is your supposed proof that you're the "real Christians" was written at the Council of Nicea, which was convened by Constantine I in 325, just 8 years after he had his soldiers slaughter Donatists[1], a group of Christians who opposed Constantine's attempts to unify the various churches. The document you claim shows the unity of your religion was practically written in the blood of Christians who refused to unify. I'll happily admit that the vast majority of modern Christians are kind, decent people, on two conditions: 1. That you extend the same courtesy to members of other religions (including so-called "cults"), and 2. That you refrain from proselytizing on HN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
technothrasher 7y ago
I met Carl Sagan at a talk he gave at a local astronomy telescope in the 70's when I was just a kid. He pointed me to CSICOP (Now just CSI), and it made a huge impact on my young mind by leading me down the path of skepticism. I've always been incredibly grateful to that man for his approximately two minutes of personal advice. www.skepticalinquirer.org/about
ohazi 7y ago
> Commercial culture is full of similar misdirections and evasions at the expense of the consumer. You’re not supposed to ask. Don’t think. Buy. > Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers. They introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientiﬁc objectivity. Today there are even commercials in which real scientists, some of considerable distinction, shill for corporations. They teach that scientists too will lie for money. As Tom Paine warned, inuring us to lies lays the groundwork for many other evils. It's gotten so much worse since Sagan wrote this. I wonder what he'd think of the advertising monstrosity we have today, courtesy of Google, Facebook, etc.
- dmix 7y ago
  I wonder how long until there's a well developed product placement ad system in podcasts. Everyone is skipping livereads so they'll sprinkle ad names within the content.
_edo 7y ago
> According to the World Health Organization, smoking kills three million people every year worldwide. This will rise to ten million annual deaths by 2020 We're up to 7 million according to the CDC, not 10: > Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year[0]. Sagan predicted 7 million in growth and we only saw 4 million. That's a ~40% overstatement. And in the very next sentence from the CDC: > If the pattern of smoking all over the globe doesn’t change, more than 8 million people a year will die from diseases related to tobacco use by 2030. While we're on the subject of skepticism and 'baloney detection' whenever somebody says X will happen in Y years there's usually a bit of baloney in there. It's a well-meaning practice to present bad scenarios to create social change but it happens so often that when somebody says "The oceans will rise X feet in Y years!" I get skeptical. Then I get in trouble for being skeptical which just makes me more skeptical... [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...
- simtel20 7y ago
  I feel you are not taking into account the importance of "unless something changes". I see the publication date of this as being 1997. That was around the time when globally it started to be conceivable that restaurants and public areas and even bars could be areas that were smoke-free. Changing the norm seems to have lowered the number of smokers and thus smoking deaths. You scoff at these projections but I feel that turning your energy a bit and focusing it at how these projections indeed were used to good effect would get you closer to the truth than what appears to be your assumption that nothing was done and the projections were false. So much has changed in the intervening 22 years.
  - _edo 7y ago
    Maybe I wasn't clear enough because I'm seeing a lot of the same comment here. At some point anybody who's producing statistics and projections has to decide what's more important between accurately predicting the future and changing the future. Is being truthful more or less important than being revolutionary? It's fine and noble to want a better future but it introduces a bias into projections and how they're reported. Carl Sagan was more than smart enough to know that society was likely to learn the dangers of smoking and to act accordingly. I'm guessing he had his public prediction which he put in his book that deaths due to smoking will rise to ten million but if you asked him over coffee when he wasn't driving home a socio-political rant about Big Tobacco he would probably produce a lower number more in line with what has actually happened. If this sort of convenient number selection happens in a lecture about baloney detection we should probably expect it to happen in other places, too.
dmix 7y ago
This fermatslibrary.com website is a great idea. I've been looking for a curated list of academic papers to read. They should be promoted like great literature. The software they are building that augments long form writing works cleanly in the browser. Hopefully they have a long-term sustainable business model to keep this going.

68 points by denzil_correa 7y ago

And yet Sagan was one of the biggest promoters of the “Drake Equation” which takes advantage of the fact that humans are really bad at very large and very small numbers to make it seem like alien civilizations, of which we have never had any evidence of, are widespread throughout the universe. This was just baloney wrapped in numbers.

new_realist 7y ago
I think you misspelled “hypothesis.”
mikeash 7y ago
The Drake Equation is perfectly reasonable. You just have to interpret it as “these assumptions imply aliens” rather than “there are definitely aliens.”
- bnegreve 7y ago
  It is not, because at least 3 factors of the equation are incredibly difficult to estimate. About as difficult as estimating the probability of an alien encounter. So the equation is basically useless.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    And what’s the term for a figure that’s hard to estimate but which you guess at anyway? An “assumption.”
    - bnegreve 7y ago
      Yes, and in this case, an unreasonable one.
whatshisface 7y ago
The Drake Equation doesn't imply anything about the number of aliens in the universe, you can get any answer you want by putting in values for each of the factors.
throwaway66920 7y ago
I think the Drake equation is fine if you accept that even von Neumann probes are basically impossible to achieve. Space is simply too hard for everything.

cols 7y ago

I was born into a charismatic Christian cult and escaped in my early 20s, left to pick up the pieces of a completely shattered world view. No one in my life, at that point, really understood the internal turmoil I was in. This piece in particular and, in general, all of the Demon Haunted World couldn't have come at a better time for me. It gave me the tools I needed to overcome a lot of the biases and crazy charismatic thought patterns that were established at a very early age. I will forever be indebted to Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan for making my life a lot more bearable and for helping me out of the existential quagmire I was stuck in.

ARandomerDude 7y ago
> charismatic Christian cult These words don't go together. Cults are definitionally aberrant, i.e., non-Christian. Many of us in high Christian orthodoxy would certainly regard the entire charismatic movement as heterodox at best. Lest anyone should cry "no true Scotsman," the difference is Christianity has a well-defined view of orthodoxy, as propounded by Scripture and understood by the Church going back to its earliest days. The Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, etc. are excellent examples of a united, cross-denominational understanding recognized by all except the cults. That's not to say we don't disagree about some of the particulars in other areas, but all Christian churches believe in "one holy, catholic (universal), apostolic, Church." Edit to add: I'm sorry you had trouble with a cult. I know there's a lot of real pain caused by many of these groups. Come check out the real thing. We'd love to have you.
- journalctl 7y ago
  You took someone’s painful experience with a cult and No True Scotsman’d it into a sales pitch for your religion. There is a time and a place for everything. And for the record, having also left an evangelical cult that tried really hard to get me to hate myself because of my sexuality, I’m not too sold on any branch of Christianity at this point. The last thing I’d wanna hear after telling people about my experiences like that is “but have you tried my flavor of Christianity?”
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  The word "cult" is just a way for mainstream religions to look down on non-mainstream religions. "Cult" is definitionally aberrant because mainstream religions have defined it for their own convenience. Certainly cults have high potential for abuse, but then again, we've seen quite a bit of that in mainstream churches too. It's also a bit silly to cite the harms done by cults when the "high Christian Orthodoxy" espoused the crusades, the inquisition, pogroms--the "high Christian Orthodoxy" is responsible for far more death and suffering than any of the small cults that spun off of it. And you can't distance yourself from that and claim the Nicene Creed which predates all of it. The Nicene Creed which is your supposed proof that you're the "real Christians" was written at the Council of Nicea, which was convened by Constantine I in 325, just 8 years after he had his soldiers slaughter Donatists[1], a group of Christians who opposed Constantine's attempts to unify the various churches. The document you claim shows the unity of your religion was practically written in the blood of Christians who refused to unify. I'll happily admit that the vast majority of modern Christians are kind, decent people, on two conditions: 1. That you extend the same courtesy to members of other religions (including so-called "cults"), and 2. That you refrain from proselytizing on HN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

technothrasher 7y ago

I met Carl Sagan at a talk he gave at a local astronomy telescope in the 70's when I was just a kid. He pointed me to CSICOP (Now just CSI), and it made a huge impact on my young mind by leading me down the path of skepticism. I've always been incredibly grateful to that man for his approximately two minutes of personal advice. www.skepticalinquirer.org/about

ohazi 7y ago

> Commercial culture is full of similar misdirections and evasions at the expense of the consumer. You’re not supposed to ask. Don’t think. Buy. > Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers. They introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientiﬁc objectivity. Today there are even commercials in which real scientists, some of considerable distinction, shill for corporations. They teach that scientists too will lie for money. As Tom Paine warned, inuring us to lies lays the groundwork for many other evils. It's gotten so much worse since Sagan wrote this. I wonder what he'd think of the advertising monstrosity we have today, courtesy of Google, Facebook, etc.

dmix 7y ago
I wonder how long until there's a well developed product placement ad system in podcasts. Everyone is skipping livereads so they'll sprinkle ad names within the content.

_edo 7y ago

> According to the World Health Organization, smoking kills three million people every year worldwide. This will rise to ten million annual deaths by 2020 We're up to 7 million according to the CDC, not 10: > Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year[0]. Sagan predicted 7 million in growth and we only saw 4 million. That's a ~40% overstatement. And in the very next sentence from the CDC: > If the pattern of smoking all over the globe doesn’t change, more than 8 million people a year will die from diseases related to tobacco use by 2030. While we're on the subject of skepticism and 'baloney detection' whenever somebody says X will happen in Y years there's usually a bit of baloney in there. It's a well-meaning practice to present bad scenarios to create social change but it happens so often that when somebody says "The oceans will rise X feet in Y years!" I get skeptical. Then I get in trouble for being skeptical which just makes me more skeptical... [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

simtel20 7y ago
I feel you are not taking into account the importance of "unless something changes". I see the publication date of this as being 1997. That was around the time when globally it started to be conceivable that restaurants and public areas and even bars could be areas that were smoke-free. Changing the norm seems to have lowered the number of smokers and thus smoking deaths. You scoff at these projections but I feel that turning your energy a bit and focusing it at how these projections indeed were used to good effect would get you closer to the truth than what appears to be your assumption that nothing was done and the projections were false. So much has changed in the intervening 22 years.
- _edo 7y ago
  Maybe I wasn't clear enough because I'm seeing a lot of the same comment here. At some point anybody who's producing statistics and projections has to decide what's more important between accurately predicting the future and changing the future. Is being truthful more or less important than being revolutionary? It's fine and noble to want a better future but it introduces a bias into projections and how they're reported. Carl Sagan was more than smart enough to know that society was likely to learn the dangers of smoking and to act accordingly. I'm guessing he had his public prediction which he put in his book that deaths due to smoking will rise to ten million but if you asked him over coffee when he wasn't driving home a socio-political rant about Big Tobacco he would probably produce a lower number more in line with what has actually happened. If this sort of convenient number selection happens in a lecture about baloney detection we should probably expect it to happen in other places, too.

dmix 7y ago

This fermatslibrary.com website is a great idea. I've been looking for a curated list of academic papers to read. They should be promoted like great literature. The software they are building that augments long form writing works cleanly in the browser. Hopefully they have a long-term sustainable business model to keep this going.