3 ms·

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (1995) [pdf]

54 points by sherilm 3y ago

dang 3y ago
Related: The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (1995) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21073726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21073726 - Sept 2019 (27 comments)
tabtab 3y ago
IT Fad Detection Kit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DilbertProgramming/comments/q3k1cb/it_fad_detection_kit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DilbertProgramming/comments/q3k1cb/...
stelliosk 3y ago
Baloney detection kit is great. Taking it a step further, "Attacking faulty reasoning" by T.Edward Damer is a great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacking_Faulty_Reasoning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacking_Faulty_Reasoning
- bibelo 3y ago
  The price itself is baloney. 160€ on Amazon
  - vo2maxer 3y ago
    $6.33 with free shipping in AbeBooks and that’s no baloney.
jonathankoren 3y ago
"Demon Haunted World" is such a great book. It was the first book that told me it was not just okay not to be believe, but not believing was in fact Good™.
arduanika 3y ago
There was an interesting counterargument on an old blog. If you can look past the uncivil language in the title, the author makes some good observations about how "baloney detection" tends to show up in the wild: https://web.archive.org/web/20140219225908/http://plover.net/~bonds/bdksucks.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140219225908/http://plover.net... A snippet: "In the real world, it's not sufficient simply to identify a fallacy in an argument. You've also got to think why the fallacy is a problem in that particular instance, and what consequences it could have for the rest of the argument; often it will have less consequence than you might think. If you think you've dismissed an opposing argument just because you think you've seen a fallacy, then you're deluding yourself." I never found out who this "plover" author is, or why they took down their blog. Maybe someone here knows more.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  The plover site has a variety of authors under it's umbrella. The entries under http://web.archive.org/web/20140220201235/http://plover.net/~bonds/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140220201235/http://plover.net/... were by Stephen Bond: https://www.ifwiki.org/Stephen_Bond https://www.ifwiki.org/Stephen_Bond Plover.net itself seems to be run by [David Cornelson](https://intfiction.org/u/davidc/summary https://intfiction.org/u/davidc/summary). The site may be an evolution or reference to the old [Plover-NET BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plover-NET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plover-NET).
- autoexec 3y ago
  > If you think you've dismissed an opposing argument just because you think you've seen a fallacy, then you're deluding yourself." That'd be the "fallacy fallacy" aka "argument from fallacy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy). A fallacy might not make someone wrong, but it does call their reasoning skills into question and can suggest that they're trying to manipulate you.
  - DiscourseFan 3y ago
    Most of the time, when someone trying to show logical inconsistencies (and this is only my observation), they either a) don't understand what the argument is about, and try to apply "logical" conditions to the discussion, or b) they are talking about the phenomenological world of programming and the compiler won't run. That second example should really, I think, demonstrate how silly the first case is. Because just as in programming, our arguments in the rest of the world always follow a certain contextual logic and order that can't be extracted from its social and material history; often, putting that history into question requires defying that logic, and whatever defies logic is oftentimes only intelligible within that logic as unintelligible, as "baloney," "fallacious." Its just as they say, the Shaiva Monists, that nobody ever has a false perception of reality--or rather, false perceptions are always already at some level true perceptions of the world, the only false perception is to think there are any. In order for people to "make mistakes," you'd have to accept that the "mistake" itself was not already part of the process of the truth unfolding.
jgalt212 3y ago
It seems that the VCs know this, and invest only in those who fail the test.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

54 points by sherilm 3y ago

dang 3y ago

Related: The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (1995) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21073726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21073726 - Sept 2019 (27 comments)

tabtab 3y ago

IT Fad Detection Kit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DilbertProgramming/comments/q3k1cb/it_fad_detection_kit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DilbertProgramming/comments/q3k1cb/...

stelliosk 3y ago

Baloney detection kit is great. Taking it a step further, "Attacking faulty reasoning" by T.Edward Damer is a great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacking_Faulty_Reasoning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacking_Faulty_Reasoning

bibelo 3y ago
The price itself is baloney. 160€ on Amazon
- vo2maxer 3y ago
  $6.33 with free shipping in AbeBooks and that’s no baloney.

jonathankoren 3y ago

"Demon Haunted World" is such a great book. It was the first book that told me it was not just okay not to be believe, but not believing was in fact Good™.

arduanika 3y ago

There was an interesting counterargument on an old blog. If you can look past the uncivil language in the title, the author makes some good observations about how "baloney detection" tends to show up in the wild: https://web.archive.org/web/20140219225908/http://plover.net/~bonds/bdksucks.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140219225908/http://plover.net... A snippet: "In the real world, it's not sufficient simply to identify a fallacy in an argument. You've also got to think why the fallacy is a problem in that particular instance, and what consequences it could have for the rest of the argument; often it will have less consequence than you might think. If you think you've dismissed an opposing argument just because you think you've seen a fallacy, then you're deluding yourself." I never found out who this "plover" author is, or why they took down their blog. Maybe someone here knows more.

Modified3019 3y ago
The plover site has a variety of authors under it's umbrella. The entries under http://web.archive.org/web/20140220201235/http://plover.net/~bonds/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140220201235/http://plover.net/... were by Stephen Bond: https://www.ifwiki.org/Stephen_Bond https://www.ifwiki.org/Stephen_Bond Plover.net itself seems to be run by [David Cornelson](https://intfiction.org/u/davidc/summary https://intfiction.org/u/davidc/summary). The site may be an evolution or reference to the old [Plover-NET BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plover-NET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plover-NET).
autoexec 3y ago
> If you think you've dismissed an opposing argument just because you think you've seen a fallacy, then you're deluding yourself." That'd be the "fallacy fallacy" aka "argument from fallacy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy). A fallacy might not make someone wrong, but it does call their reasoning skills into question and can suggest that they're trying to manipulate you.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  Most of the time, when someone trying to show logical inconsistencies (and this is only my observation), they either a) don't understand what the argument is about, and try to apply "logical" conditions to the discussion, or b) they are talking about the phenomenological world of programming and the compiler won't run. That second example should really, I think, demonstrate how silly the first case is. Because just as in programming, our arguments in the rest of the world always follow a certain contextual logic and order that can't be extracted from its social and material history; often, putting that history into question requires defying that logic, and whatever defies logic is oftentimes only intelligible within that logic as unintelligible, as "baloney," "fallacious." Its just as they say, the Shaiva Monists, that nobody ever has a false perception of reality--or rather, false perceptions are always already at some level true perceptions of the world, the only false perception is to think there are any. In order for people to "make mistakes," you'd have to accept that the "mistake" itself was not already part of the process of the truth unfolding.

jgalt212 3y ago

It seems that the VCs know this, and invest only in those who fail the test.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]