Korean Job Discussion Forums

[arjuna]

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
thread, into the fabric of their lives." - Leo Tolstoy


"When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from
childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible
for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately,
and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem
to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I
could do it myself." - Mark Twain


"Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally
convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for
reflection." - Henri Poincare


"New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled,
the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in
them?' " - H. G. Wells


"I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of
nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of
phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE." - William James



"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em."
- Louis Armstrong


"When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument,
but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the
forces of logic and reason." - Thucydides



"I ask you, which is the greater threat to science and mankind,
accepting a claim that can have no possible benefit, or rejecting a
claim that can have great benefit?" - Dr. Edmund Storms


"It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the
same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity, filled to overbrimming
as we are with questions, and naturally talented as we are for the
asking of clear questions, and then for us to do nothing about, or
worse, to try to suppress the questions..." - Lewis Thomas


"The creative person pays close attention to what appears discordant and
contradictory... and is challenged by such irregularities." - F. Barron


"The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think
what has never been thought before about what you see everyday."
- Erwin Schrodinger


"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what
nobody else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyoergi


"A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or
fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has
observed, he does not observe." - H. D. Thoreau


"The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of
existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will
never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea." - Max Planck


"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world."
- Arthur Schopenhauer


"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the
humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei


"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
- Sir Martin Rees (astronomer)


"Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by
beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a
journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will
turn it down" - Sir Fred Hoyle


"If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will
leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic
for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain
always uncertain... In order to make progress, one must leave the door
to the unknown ajar. " - Richard Feynman


"The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in
editors rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of
anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by
censorship will be the death of science." - Julian Schwinger, physicist


"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,
it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer


"Theories have four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense;
ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; iii) this is
true, but quite unimportant; iv) I always said so."
- J.B.S. Haldane, 1963


"When a thing is new, people say: 'It is not true.' Later, when its
truth becomes obvious, they say: 'It is not important.' Finally, when
its importance cannot be denied, they say: 'Anyway, it is not new.'"
- William James, 1896



"The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the
status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the
greatest pain is the pain of a new idea." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human
soul." - Mark Twain


"A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism in to dogmatism is an
inability to respect those who disagree" - Dr. Leonard George



" Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we
suppose, but queerer than we can suppose... I suspect that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy"
- J.B.S. Haldane



"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all
things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a
great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of
nature." - Michael Faraday



"Sit down before facts like a child, and be prepared to give up every
preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses
Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." - T.H. Huxley


"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged
to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." - Mark Twain


"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald


"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein


"Biologists can be just as sensitive to heresy as theologians."
- H.G. Wells


"You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back." - Beverly Rubik


"If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that
settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him."
- Mark Twain


"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken


"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices." - William James


"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you." - Don Marquis


"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's
mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all
thoughts. Not a select party." - John Keats

[keane]

[mindmetoo]

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is
much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that
might be wrong." - Richard Feynman

Let me suggest that Feynman would be classified as a dogmatic skeptic by those putting forward whatever woo he found no rational basis for.

There are, I suppose, skeptics who reject things out of hand. However, good skeptics have an open mind but reserve belief until good evidence is presented.

While a skeptic might say "I don't believe in UFOs" is not to say a skeptic dismisses the possibility. It's akin to "I don't believe in Santa". The proposition seems problematic and requires good evidence. Since it is not forthcoming for Santa or UFOs, the safe position is "I don't think it exists but you can change my mind."

[cbclark4]

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Robert A. Heinlein

Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an
optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of
events.
Robert A. Heinlein

[loose_ends]

Great thread!...OP thanks for the quotes.

[JMO]

Show me evidence and I will believe. Don't and I won't. I don't think thats excessive.

[arjuna]

[ED209]

[JMO]

[loose_ends]

[Ya-ta Boy]

There is healthy skepticism and excessive skepticism. The trick is to know the difference.
Ya-ta Boy

[Gopher]

Arjuna: nice quotes.

You seem to attempt to sell or justify some of the allegation-driven discourses you cite here, however -- Victor Ostrovsky comes immediately to mind, for example.

Moderate skepticism is fine and healthy, then, as Ya-ta asserts, above. And calling someone "overly-skeptical" because they want you to support what you allege with evidence -- that is, solid, direct evidence that others may evaluate for themselves -- is unreasonable and disingenuous.

I will stick with the kind of moderation Poincare proposes and leave it at that: "Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection." This is the difference between skeptics, cynics, and some of the tin-foil-hat wearers we see sometimes dominating this message board...

[cbclark4]

[mindmetoo]

[cbclark4]

1. Ad hominem An ad hominem argument is any that attempts to counter anothers claims or conclusions by attacking the person, rather than addressing the argument itself. True believers will often commit this fallacy by countering the arguments of skeptics by stating that skeptics are closed minded. Skeptics, on the other hand, may fall into the trap of dismissing the claims of UFO believers, for example, by stating that people who believe in UFO's are crazy or stupid.
2. Ad ignorantiam The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don't know that it isn't true. Defenders of extrasensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we do not know about the human brain. UFO proponents will often argue that an object sighted in the sky is unknown, and therefore it is an alien spacecraft.
3. Argument from authority Stating that a claim is true because a person or group of perceived authority says it is true. Often this argument is implied by emphasizing the many years of experience, or the formal degrees held by the individual making a specific claim. It is reasonable to give more credence to the claims of those with the proper background, education, and credentials, or to be suspicious of the claims of someone making authoritative statements in an area for which they cannot demonstrate expertise. But the truth of a claim should ultimately rest on logic and evidence, not the authority of the person promoting it.
4. Argument from final Consequences Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves. For example: God must exist, because otherwise life would have no meaning.
5. Argument from Personal Incredulity I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve.
6. Confusing association with causation This is similar to the post-hoc fallacy in that it assumes cause and effect for two variables simply because they are correlated, although the relationship here is not strictly that of one variable following the other in time. This fallacy is often used to give a statistical correlation a causal interpretation. For example, during the 1990’s both religious attendance and illegal drug use have been on the rise. It would be a fallacy to conclude that therefore, religious attendance causes illegal drug use. It is also possible that drug use leads to an increase in religious attendance, or that both drug use and religious attendance are increased by a third variable, such as an increase in societal unrest. It is also possible that both variables are independent of one another, and it is mere coincidence that they are both increasing at the same time. A corollary to this is the invocation of this logical fallacy to argue that an association does not represent causation, rather it is more accurate to say that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it can. Also, multiple independent correlations can point reliably to a causation, and is a reasonable line of argument.
7. Confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the "God of the Gaps�" strategy of creationists that whatever we cannot currently explain is unexplainable and was therefore an act of god.
8. False Continuum The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful: There is a fuzzy line between cults and religion, therefore they are really the same thing.
9. False Dichotomy Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two. For example, evolution is not possible, therefore we must have been created (assumes these are the only two possibilities). This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a continuum of variation to two black and white choices. For example, science and pseudoscience are not two discrete entities, but rather the methods and claims of all those who attempt to explain reality fall along a continuum from one extreme to the other.
10. Inconsistency Applying criteria or rules to one belief, claim, argument, or position but not to others. For example, some consumer advocates argue that we need stronger regulation of prescription drugs to ensure their safety and effectiveness, but at the same time argue that medicinal herbs should be sold with no regulation for either safety or effectiveness.
11. The Moving Goalpost A method of denial arbitrarily moving the criteria for "proof" or acceptance out of range of whatever evidence currently exists.
12. Non-Sequitur In Latin this term translates to "doesn't follow". This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists.
13. Post-hoc ergo propter hoc This fallacy follows the basic format of: A preceded B, therefore A caused B, and therefore assumes cause and effect for two events just because they are temporally related (the latin translates to "after this, therefore because of this").
14. Reductio ad absurdum In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false. The term is now often used to refer to the abuse of this style of argument, by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. For example a UFO enthusiast once argued that if I am skeptical about the existence of alien visitors, I must also be skeptical of the existence of the Great Wall of China, since I have not personally seen either. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because he is ignoring evidence other than personal eyewitness evidence, and also logical inference. In short, being skeptical of UFO's does not require rejecting the existence of the Great Wall.
15. Slippery Slope This logical fallacy is the argument that a position is not consistent or tenable because accepting the position means that the extreme of the position must also be accepted. But moderate positions do not necessarily lead down the slippery slope to the extreme.
16. Straw Man Arguing against a position which you create specifically to be easy to argue against, rather than the position actually held by those who oppose your point of view.
17. Special pleading, or ad-hoc reasoning This is a subtle fallacy which is often difficult to recognize. In essence, it is the arbitrary introduction of new elements into an argument in order to fix them so that they appear valid. A good example of this is the ad-hoc dismissal of negative test results. For example, one might point out that ESP has never been demonstrated under adequate test conditions, therefore ESP is not a genuine phenomenon. Defenders of ESP have attempted to counter this argument by introducing the arbitrary premise that ESP does not work in the presence of skeptics. This fallacy is often taken to ridiculous extremes, and more and more bizarre ad hoc elements are added to explain experimental failures or logical inconsistencies.
18. Tautology A tautology is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning, which means that the conclusion is also its own premise. The structure of such arguments is A=B therefore A=B, although the premise and conclusion might be formulated differently so it is not immediately apparent as such. For example, saying that therapeutic touch works because it manipulates the life force is a tautology because the definition of therapeutic touch is the alleged manipulation (without touching) of the life force.
19. Tu quoque Literally, you too. This is an attempt to justify wrong action because someone else also does it. "My evidence may be invalid, but so is yours."
20. Unstated Major Premise This fallacy occurs when one makes an argument which assumes a premise which is not explicitly stated. For example, arguing that we should label food products with their cholesterol content because Americans have high cholesterol assumes that: 1) cholesterol in food causes high serum cholesterol; 2) labeling will reduce consumption of cholesterol; and 3) that having a high serum cholesterol is unhealthy. This fallacy is also sometimes called begging the question.


http://www.theskepticsguide.org/logicalfallacies.asp