choofnagle | May 21, 2007
The 9 of Spades is different than previous confusion tactics. Remember that most legislative staffers handle many different issues, and often are not expert in any one of them. This tactic leverages incomplete information to promote confusion.
Here, the denialist simply does not offer information, or allows others to hold misconceptions if it benefits the denialist. In technology and consumer protection, this usually occurs where an industry can fix a problem, but does not want to, and so its advocates don't mention their capabilities or practices.
denialism | May 19, 2007"Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine".
I've just got to say, wow. I read it at first thinking, "hey, this is hysterical satire", then I read the comments and thought, "wow, these guys are dedicated - this is pure performance art!" Finally, I started going through the archives with a sinking feeling, "holy crap, these guys are for real."
I really think they've fallen for these cranks line about a fixed earth, and all I've got to say now is please, please, please tell everybody about this. If there ever was a better example of the universality of crank thinking, this is it, and of course…
choofnagle | May 19, 2007
You should all be familiar with this tactic--poisoning the well. You know the trick: provide derogatory information about your opponent to undermine her arguments.
And here's a great example: In defending Channel One, Jack Abramoff's lobbyist Dennis Stephens proposed that Peter Ferrara pen an oped that "hammered the 'anti-technology' crowd:" "When I talked with Peter this morning, he was planning to draft a press release hammering the "anti technology" crowd per Jeff B's request and will also be distributing Grovers nice piece on Channel One. A nice balance, a positive piece on the good guys…
choofnagle | May 19, 2007Two more tactics for those of you who want to be an industry lobbyist, or for those who want to recognize their two-bit tactics.
With nit picking, the denialist finds one problem with a fact asserted or the proposal for reform, and then harps on the problem incessantly.
A variation on the 8 of Clubs (red herring) is "muddying the waters." This is where the denialist brings forth any information, whether specious or not, to confuse the issues.
choofnagle | May 18, 2007"Duh!" is one of my favorite lobbyist tactics. I've seen it used many times.
With "Duh!," the denalist deliberately misunderstands, misinterprets, or plays dumb when presented with others' questions or proposals. One is sometimes amazed at how smart an industry lobbyist can be until they're asked a question they don't want to answer!
In the Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal, this exchange between Rep. Eshoo and Fred Adler, a company investigator, is an excellent "duh" moment:
ESHOO: ...If you say no, then I'll accept your answer.
ADLER: OK.
ESHOO: You said no?
ADLER: No in regard…
denialism | May 18, 2007As I sit here, trying to write a paper, I found this article entitled "How to write consistently boring scientific literature" very interesting. (via The Annals of Improbably Research"
I'm afraid it's behind a paywall, so I'll summarize their findings.
Here's their table that summarizes their findings in bullet-points.
Avoid Focus
This is my favorite one:
If an author really wants to make sure that the reader looses interest, I recommend that he/she does not introduce the ideas and main findings straightaway, but instead hide them at the end of a lengthy narrative. The technique can be…
denialism | May 18, 2007There is no other explanation for her eulogy for Falwell entitled, I kid you not, "Jerry Falwell -- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan!"
In her impassioned defense of Falwell's most egregious statements, from blaming 9/11 on atheists and gays, to accusing Tinky Winky of being a gay recruiter, she proves she's really a Democratic agent working to undermine the religious right. Here's a couple of excerpts.
Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to…
choofnagle | May 18, 2007Okay industry lobbyists in training, you've started just making up arguments to confuse everyone. That's a method of confusing issues. Now you should start confusing individuals' roles in the policy process. It's time to start playing government officials off each other.
If you don't like what the federal government is doing, say that it is a state issue.
Of course, if the states are active on the issue, you should argue that it is a federal issue, and that state action will create a "patchwork" of conflicting requirements. The "patchwork" argument is also an effective tool to broaden…
choofnagle | May 17, 2007Next week's New Yorker makes a point that I hadn't considered, perhaps because there is so much religiosity in America. In a review of recently-published books on atheism, Anthony Gottlieb writes:
...one can venture conservative estimates of the number of unbelievers in the world today. Reviewing a large number of studies among some fifty countries, Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, puts the figure at between five hundred million and seven hundred and fifty million. This excludes such highly populated places as Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, and Nigeria,…
denialism | May 17, 2007Evolution news and views on me
That's fascinating logic: apparently the widespread feeling that it is "sensible" to remove individuals of a particular viewpoint does not necessarily mean there's a "conspiracy" to remove individuals with a particular viewpoint.
Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?
You know, I tolerate lots of people with different ideas from mine, and there is a broad range of ideas that are perfectly acceptable to me. If other scientists hold…
choofnagle | May 17, 2007Now, the debate starts to get fun. This group of Denialists' cards are all about spreading confusion. The more that one muddies the waters, the harder it is for anyone to do anything.
And so, the place to start is with the Red Herring.
The "red herring" argument is a frequently-employed and efficacious tool to confuse everyone. A red herring is a specious argument--one that sounds cogent, but isn't really responsive to the issue at hand. Just make something up that sounds good.
My favorite example of this is in the financial privacy sector. A few years ago, when California was trying…
denialism | May 17, 2007PLoS has an intriguing article providing additional reasons why the thermodynamic arguments against evolution are more than silly. It's called the maximum entropy production (MEP) hypothesis, and John Whitfield describes why life is actually may be favored by the second law of thermodynamics.
At first glance, life and the laws of thermodynamics seem to be at loggerheads. Most glaringly, the second law states that over time, any system will tend to the maximum level of entropy, meaning the minimum level of order and useful energy. Open a bottle of perfume in a closed room, and eventually the…
denialism | May 17, 2007What kind of family value is lying? That's the foremost question in my mind when I consider the family values organizations that use false research, lies and denialism to justify their agenda of disparaging contraception, sex education, homosexuality, and exaggerating the dangers of abortion.
In light of Falwell's death, I thought it would be appropriate to advance the discussion of the use of denialist techniques to reinforce bigotry and an anti-feminist agenda in the name of family values.
I think a good starting point for the discussion of what a family values denialist looks like is Paul…
denialism | May 17, 2007WaPo shows us how a good conspiracy theory can never die. It's depressing. We're probably going to be hearing from 9/11 troofers for the rest of our lives.
The new evidence that Kennedy was killed by someone on a grassy-knoll or the Cubans or whatever is that the metallurgical analysis that was used to prove that the bullets could only have come from the batch that Oswald used was flawed.
So is it time to re-open the Kennedy assassination?
No. It's not.
All this new analysis proves is that the analysis to tie the bullets to Oswald's batch was flawed. It doesn't mean that the bullet…
denialism | May 16, 2007A must read from Slate on Oprah, the Secret, and the American excess of wishful thinking - starting with a lovely story about a woman who stopped taking her cancer meds because of the secret.
I find the Secret to be pretty typical idiotic woo, that taken to its logical conclusions becomes dangerous, nasty and ugly woo. Beyond the stupid quantum mechanics fallacy, and the outrageous woo claims which have no credibility whatsoever, If you think about it, they're really just blaming the victims and offering false hope.
denialism | May 16, 2007Or at least "Darwinism" whatever the hell that means these days. I guess they couldn't keep quiet all day. UD's new argument is an easily dismissed straw man. It goes like this.
Scientists discover fruit flies put in a sensory-deprivation chamber,instead of flying around randomly, or in a rigid pattern, fly in a pattern with both random and non-random properties. (PLoS one article)Uncommon Descent which should have its RSS feeds revoked, says it's proof of design! Darwinism requires there is no free will! This is apparently based on a stunning misunderstanding of Dawkin's ideas by…
denialism | May 16, 2007You know the most obnoxious thing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists? They make idiots like Jonah Goldberg look right about something.
Goldberg, who as far as I can tell has never made an accurate prediction, finally has figured out a great way to make Democrats look bad rather than just embarrass himself and the Republicans. He writes for the LA Times "Just How Crazy are the Dems?", and sadly, he's got a point. The Democrats, their candidates, and sites like Daily Kos have failed miserably to quash support for conspiratorial thinking about 9/11. And it makes them look, really, really bad.…
denialism | May 16, 2007This is good. I'll get some writing (non-blog) done. However I'd like to pose the rare political question based on the coverage of last night's debate. Everyone from CNN to the National Review is all atwitter over Giuliani's brash response to the question about whether the first Gulf War might have had something to do with 9/11. His response? Angrily denouncing the idea that anyone could find blame for anything America has done as a potential reason for the attack (I bet the answer would have been different if they suggested it was Clinton's fault).
Have we really failed to move past…
choofnagle | May 16, 2007
This pair should sound familiar. Industry lobbyists love the idea of individual responsibility. And so they will argue that individuals should be responsible for addressing a problem (paired with the 4 of Clubs or the 6 of Clubs). But in other contexts, accountability goes out the window. They need total immunity from lawsuits.
Many technology companies have sought and obtained immunity for failure of anti-terrorism technologies. "'The unintended consequence of even a single failure in a well-intended system or device we might provide could result in significant legal exposure that…
denialism | May 15, 2007Here's an interesting article in BBC which suggests that more hysterical messages on climate change might fall on deaf ears.
Professor Mike Hulme, of the UK's Tyndall Centre, has been conducting research on people's attitudes to media portrayals of a catastrophic future.
He says strong messages designed to prompt people to change behaviour only seem to generate apathy.
His initial findings will be shown to a meeting run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
...
The study compared the responses of a group of people shown sensational media coverage with those given the more…