After A Word From These Sponsors...

Here are some links on advertising and reasoning.

• The first is about the underlying intellectual dishonesty in even the most honest of ad campaigns.
  
• By the way, if you're into advertising, that entire blog is great. I'm a bit biased, though, since I used to work with the guy who writes it.
• Here's a radio interview with the director of FactCheck.org, a great website devoted to debunking claims in political ads.
• I also used to work with the guy who interviewed FactCheck's director. Yup, I'm a pretty big deal.
• I wish those fact checking websites made a difference. Actually, I just wish they didn't hurt their own cause. Silly humans and your naturally biased minds!
  

Now for some news stuff.

• Here's the dirty secret on how news is made.
  
• Lots of people worry about conservative or liberal news media bias. But there are several interesting biases that are much less talked about. Here's a discussion of the bias toward anything that's dangerous or newsworthy.
  
• Here's an interview with a scientist who claims that similar biases exist in scienctific research journals.
  
• What's so important about news, anyway? Here's an interesting argument against caring so much about current events.

Finally, here's a recent Saturday Night Live skit on the distortions of political ads:

Impeding Us Since Birth

So, I love research on psychological impediments. Here are some links:

• Here's an article about a cool study on the relationship between risk and provincialism.
• Here's a summary of two recent studies which suggest that partisan mindset stems from a feeling of moral superiority.
• Here is a bunch of insightful videos of Daniel Kahneman, one of the pioneers of research into psychological impediments.
• Here's a review of a well-written book on the natural ways we're all irrational.
  
• Wikipedia's great, complete list of cognitive biases is available here.
  

Finally, I know some of us are still pining for the WHY BAD? glory days of fallacies. Here's something for you:

• Julian Baggini runs through some really great fallacies, many of which we didn't discuss in class. He turned this series into a book: The Duck That Won the Lottery.
  

That's an Ad Hominem, You Jerk

Here's a cartoon on the ad hominem fallacy and hypocrisy. (Click on the comics to enlarge them.)

Get to studying, you ignorant sluts.

Satan's Fingers? The Hospital Bombers?

OK, before we start rocking all night, perhaps we should come up with a name for our logic band. What's a good name for us? The Why Bads?

Hmmm... hopefully, you can come up with better names than that. Post some names in the comments to this post.

(Extra credit to anyone who knows what the title of this post refers to.)

Check the Source

-via GraphJam

Begging the Dinosaur

Here is a comic and a video about the fallacy of begging the question. The first is one of Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics on the fallacy. (Click on the comic to enlarge it)

And here's a special video for Mims's logically delicious song "This is Why I'm Hot":

Let's Be Diplomatic: Straw Person

Here's a dinosaur comic on the straw man fallacy (click on the comic to enlarge it):

Another Snow Day!

Class is canceled today, Monday, March 2nd, because of the snow. In fact, all day and night classes at Camden County College are canceled.

Please go sledding! Take pictures!! SHOW THEM TO ME!!!

Penguin Digestion Experts? You Bet!

So you didn't believe me when I said that there are experts on the subject of penguin digestion? Oh, you did? Fine, well, I'll prove it to you, anyway. Here are some academic articles on the topic:

• Adjustments of gastric pH, motility and temperature during long-term preservation of stomach contents in free-ranging incubating king penguins from a 2004 issue of Journal of Experimental Biology
  
• Feeding Behavior of Free-Ranging King Penguins (Aptenodytes Patagonicus) from a 1994 issue of Ecology

Of course, no list would be complete without the often-cited, groundbreaking 1985 Ornis Scandinavica article:

• Differential Digestion of Fish and Squid in Jackass Penguins Spheniscus demersus

Perhaps my favorite, though, is the following:

• Pressures produced when penguins pooh—calculations on avian defaecation from a 2003 issue of Polar Biology
  

If any of these articles are above your head (I think they're all above mine!), you might like this, uh, simpler video demonstration of penguin digestion.

Consistent as a Contradiction

Here are two videos related to the fallacy of inconsistency:



Let's be charitable, though: is there any way to defend what these seemingly inconsistent people said?

An Expert for Every Cause

Looking for links on fallacies and appealing to authority? This is your post! First, there's a nice series of short articles on a bunch of different fallacies, including many that aren't in our book.

Next, here's an interesting article on a great question: How are non-specialists supposed to figure out the truth about stuff that requires expertise?

Not all alleged experts are actual experts. Here's a method to tell which experts are phonies.

Here's a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Christopher Walken completely flunks the competence test.

Finally, here's that article on the 9/11 conspiracy physicist that we talked about in class. I've quoted an excerpt of the relevant section on the lone-wolf semi-expert (physicist) versus the overwhelming consensus of more relevant experts (structural engineers):

While there are a handful of Web sites that seek to debunk the claims of Mr. Jones and others in the movement, most mainstream scientists, in fact, have not seen fit to engage them.

"There's nothing to debunk," says Zdenek P. Bazant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University and the author of the first peer-reviewed paper on the World Trade Center collapses.

"It's a non-issue," says Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, a lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's study of the collapses.

Ross B. Corotis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a member of the editorial board at the journal Structural Safety, says that most engineers are pretty settled on what happened at the World Trade Center. "There's not really disagreement as to what happened for 99 percent of the details," he says.

And one more excerpt on reasons to be skeptical of conspiracy theories in general:

One of the most common intuitive problems people have with conspiracy theories is that they require positing such complicated webs of secret actions. If the twin towers fell in a carefully orchestrated demolition shortly after being hit by planes, who set the charges? Who did the planning? And how could hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the murder of their own countrymen keep quiet? Usually, Occam's razor intervenes.

Another common problem with conspiracy theories is that they tend to impute cartoonish motives to "them" — the elites who operate in the shadows. The end result often feels like a heavily plotted movie whose characters do not ring true.

Then there are other cognitive Do Not Enter signs: When history ceases to resemble a train of conflicts and ambiguities and becomes instead a series of disinformation campaigns, you sense that a basic self-correcting mechanism of thought has been disabled. A bridge is out, and paranoia yawns below.

Maybe It'll Taste Good This Year...

Here's some random stuff related to inductive arguments. First, here's a video of Lewis Black describing his failure to reason inductively every year around Halloween:

Also, here's a stick figure comic about scientists' impulse to get a big enough sample.

How Many Are Those Doggies In the Window?

The only semi-reliable source I was able to find on the total population of dogs on Earth places the number at around 400 million. That book, however, doesn't explain how it arrived at that figure, and it does warn that the estimate could be off fairly significantly.

Here's a map the top ten pet dog populations by country (although there's no source on this map's estimates, so caveat emptor):


Also, some dogs do not bark. That's why, in the inductive argument we discussed in class, I was careful to conclude only that "Most dogs bark," not "All dogs bark."

One more random fun fact: they used 217 dalmations to film the live-action remake of 101 Dalmations.

Hey, this is too much focus on dogs for my taste.

Homework #1

In case you didn't get a copy of it in class, here's Homework #1. It's due at the beginning of class on Monday, February 9th.


DIRECTIONS: Provide original examples of the following types of arguments (in premise/conclusion form), if possible. If it is not possible, explain why.

1. A valid deductive argument with one false premise.

2. An invalid deductive argument with all true premises.

3. An unsound deductive argument that is valid.

4. A sound deductive argument that is invalid.


MULTIPLE CHOICE: Circle the correct response. Only one answer choice is correct.

5. If a deductive argument is unsound, then:
a) its conclusion must be false.
b) its conclusion must be true.
c) its conclusion could be true or false.

6. If a deductive argument is unsound, then:
a) it must be valid.
b) it must be invalid.
c) it could be valid or invalid.

7. If a deductive argument is unsound, then:
a) at least one premise must be false.
b) all the premises must be false.
c) all the premises must be true.
d) not enough info to determine.

8. If a deductive argument’s conclusion is true:
a) then the argument must be valid.
b) then the argument must be invalid.
c) then the argument could be valid or invalid.

9. If a deductive argument is sound, then:
a) its conclusion must be true.
b) its conclusion must be false.
c) its conclusion could be true or false.

10. If a deductive argument is sound, then:
a) it must be valid.
b) it must be invalid.
c) it could be valid or invalid.

11. If a deductive argument is sound, then:
a) at least one premise must be false.
b) all the premises must be false.
c) all the premises must be true.
d) not enough info to determine.

12. If a deductive argument’s conclusion is false:
a) then the argument must be valid.
b) then the argument must be invalid.
c) then the argument could be valid or invalid.

Defining Our Terms

1. Tool: Here's one Urban Dictionary definition of "tool," the one I had in mind when referring to Dane Cook:

someone who tries too hard. a poser. one of those chic's who holds the sign saying "Carson Daly is Hot." the asstard who goes to a rock show because they heard one of the songs on the radio or mtv. or someone who insists on wearing velour sweat suits. Avril Lavigne.

To find out more, I suggest watching Tool Academy to see our heroes in action:

2. Fugly: uh, rather ugly. Moe Szyslak has been called a few variations of this term.

3. Emo Kid: "Emo" has a ton of meanings. The wikipedia article on "emo" has a nice history of the term.

4. Lame: South Park usually nails this term.

5. Carson Daly: This is especially for Steve, who kept asking for pictures of everyone's favorite TRL host.
Did I forget any terms? Let me know!