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xiphiasI guess my reaction is that this show is appropriately named the way that Ann Coulter's book Slander is appropriately named.
My second reaction is that con men don't make terribly persuasive spokespeople for causes.
In twenty-four minutes, Penn took on two topics: fad diets, and genetically modified foods. And, damn it, before I watched this show, I agreed with the stance Penn and Teller were taking on these things. Now, I'm not so sure. Moving your audience from "agreement with your position" to "unsure about your position" is not considered successful persuasion, last I checked. Actually, in rhetoric class, if we did that, we got a failing grade.
The fad diet part, that I didn't have too much trouble with. Their point was that the only way to actually lose weight over the long term is to change your eating habits and your activity habits as a lifestyle thing. Cool, I can get behind that. There is no, to my knowledge, magic pill that causes healthy weight loss.
That said, there's a lot of interesting research going on about a bunch of topics related to weight loss. Lilke, how does our body decide if it's hungry or not? This is not, as far as I know, a completely understood topic. And if we understood more about satiety, appetite, and food craving, well, who's to say that that wouldn't result in things that could help weight loss?
Of course, that'd be years if not decades away, even if it ever happened, and the fad diets out there are, in fact, bullshit, so I didn't have a problem with that. And they made a very interesting point about "before" and "after" photos in diet ads: Penn claims that these companies find someone, normally athletic, who's been sidelined by injury or some such thing, pay them to actually eat more while they're injured, they gain a bunch of weight, they take the "before" pic, then, when the person's healed up and resumes their normal lifestyle, they, naturally, go back to where they were before, and that's the "after" picture. Interesting point.
It was the second part of the show that started really bugging me.
See, Penn was making the (perfectly reasonable) argument that genetically modifying food feeds more people. But in order to discredit the anti-GM side, they found the wackiest, looniest anti-GM people one could imagine.
I've taken classes in how to argue unfairly and deceptively -- mostly from a "how to avoid doing this, and respond if someone else is doing this" perspective. They used all of those techniques. And obviously.
Now, I've got this belief. It's that, if you actually are right about something, you don't need to decieve. You need to present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that's not an easy task, but you never need to resort to manipulation or deception. This is what I learned in rhetoric class. If you just need to convince people for ten minutes, or an hour, or maybe a day or two, sure, you can use manipulation or deception. But anything much longer than that, that just falls apart, and you're better off making the cleanest argument you can.
I've got this other belief. If someone's presenting an argument, and they're using manipulation and deception, it's probably because they can't actually get their point out if they present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that means that They're Not Right. One thing I do is listen to both sides, and see who's using more manipulation, and trust that point of view less.
So I fuckin' HATE it when people use manipulation and deception to express views that I hold.
Penn and Teller are con men. They're very good con men. They're some of the best manipulators and decievers who don't work for Karl Rove that I can think of.
That makes them lousy spokespeople for causes. Because, damnit, it's pretty CLEAR when people are using manipulation or deception, and it makes the entire SIDE of the argument look bad.
My second reaction is that con men don't make terribly persuasive spokespeople for causes.
In twenty-four minutes, Penn took on two topics: fad diets, and genetically modified foods. And, damn it, before I watched this show, I agreed with the stance Penn and Teller were taking on these things. Now, I'm not so sure. Moving your audience from "agreement with your position" to "unsure about your position" is not considered successful persuasion, last I checked. Actually, in rhetoric class, if we did that, we got a failing grade.
The fad diet part, that I didn't have too much trouble with. Their point was that the only way to actually lose weight over the long term is to change your eating habits and your activity habits as a lifestyle thing. Cool, I can get behind that. There is no, to my knowledge, magic pill that causes healthy weight loss.
That said, there's a lot of interesting research going on about a bunch of topics related to weight loss. Lilke, how does our body decide if it's hungry or not? This is not, as far as I know, a completely understood topic. And if we understood more about satiety, appetite, and food craving, well, who's to say that that wouldn't result in things that could help weight loss?
Of course, that'd be years if not decades away, even if it ever happened, and the fad diets out there are, in fact, bullshit, so I didn't have a problem with that. And they made a very interesting point about "before" and "after" photos in diet ads: Penn claims that these companies find someone, normally athletic, who's been sidelined by injury or some such thing, pay them to actually eat more while they're injured, they gain a bunch of weight, they take the "before" pic, then, when the person's healed up and resumes their normal lifestyle, they, naturally, go back to where they were before, and that's the "after" picture. Interesting point.
It was the second part of the show that started really bugging me.
See, Penn was making the (perfectly reasonable) argument that genetically modifying food feeds more people. But in order to discredit the anti-GM side, they found the wackiest, looniest anti-GM people one could imagine.
I've taken classes in how to argue unfairly and deceptively -- mostly from a "how to avoid doing this, and respond if someone else is doing this" perspective. They used all of those techniques. And obviously.
Now, I've got this belief. It's that, if you actually are right about something, you don't need to decieve. You need to present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that's not an easy task, but you never need to resort to manipulation or deception. This is what I learned in rhetoric class. If you just need to convince people for ten minutes, or an hour, or maybe a day or two, sure, you can use manipulation or deception. But anything much longer than that, that just falls apart, and you're better off making the cleanest argument you can.
I've got this other belief. If someone's presenting an argument, and they're using manipulation and deception, it's probably because they can't actually get their point out if they present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that means that They're Not Right. One thing I do is listen to both sides, and see who's using more manipulation, and trust that point of view less.
So I fuckin' HATE it when people use manipulation and deception to express views that I hold.
Penn and Teller are con men. They're very good con men. They're some of the best manipulators and decievers who don't work for Karl Rove that I can think of.
That makes them lousy spokespeople for causes. Because, damnit, it's pretty CLEAR when people are using manipulation or deception, and it makes the entire SIDE of the argument look bad.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-05 03:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-05 04:11 am (UTC)Yeah, pretty much
Date: 2003-04-07 06:10 am (UTC)They've actually had Randi on a couple of times -- they love this guy (which is cool with me, so do I). They even publicized his million-dollar challenge to prove any psychic phenomenon scientifically and gloatingly pointed out that in quite a few years, no-one has even come close.
That said, I agree with you folks. I really loathe tobacco smoke, and resent having to breathe it (i.e. in a traffic jam when someone in the next car lights up) and modifying my activities to avoid it (i.e. not going inside Manray to meet up with some I travelled 500 miles to see, and then she pops out two hours later with someone else). However, most of the public smoking bans are poorly-conceived (especially the recent NY one) and misapplied. But their show muddied the point endlessly, wandering off on tangents and side issues and showcasing blithering idiots.
They do really well when their target is composed mostly of people who value wishful thinking (read: oney) over coherent thought (their ESP and alternative health shows come to mind). But when they confront actual complex issues, they resort to cheap theatrics and taking potshots at fish in a barrel (to mix a metaphor), and end up (as was pointed out) seriously weakening their case.
I think they also waste too much time showing how gullible people are. We know people are gullible, or all this BS wouldn't exist to have a show about! Showing people drinking bottled water out of a hose and trying to show off their non-existent appreciation for the nuances of taste is amusing, but hardly worth more than 30 seconds of airtime.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-07 01:34 pm (UTC)See?
Date: 2003-04-05 08:06 am (UTC)Re: See?
Date: 2003-04-05 04:58 pm (UTC)There is an assumption here...
Date: 2003-04-07 07:17 am (UTC)It would be a classic misdirection to do this you know.... like running as the opposition in an election against someone you want to get elected, to make them look good and draw votes away from real opposition.
The fact that the fad diet piece appears to have been a legitimate issue, presented logically and precisely without the deception, makes a good reinforcement ploy to convince you that they support what they are talking about, and then they hit you with the switch on the second one.
Re: There is an assumption here...
Date: 2003-04-07 09:26 am (UTC)Yes, I did consider that. The problem is that, in a country in which the significant majority of folks actually believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks, these sorts of sloppy, obvious, and base manipulations actually work. So, if their final episode is "How we bullshitted all of you", and they explain all their sloppy, obvious manipulation then, yeah, I'll buy that argument. Otherwise, no, I don't buy it.
Led here by your wife...
Date: 2003-04-18 05:07 pm (UTC)Elayne Riggs (http://elayneriggs.blogspot.com)
Re: Led here by your wife...
Date: 2003-04-18 11:06 pm (UTC)On Randi's million dollar offer --
Date: 2003-04-18 10:41 pm (UTC)A friend of mine who deeply admires Randi once, rather smugly, presented me with the following allegory. "Darren," he said, "extreme claims require extreme evidence. If you come inside with your hair wet and tell me 'it's raining', well, that's not an extraordinary claim. I can look up, see your hair is wet, and take your word for it. But, if you come in and tell me, 'there's a unicorn in the garden'... ahhhhh. THAT requires extraordinarily good evidence."
I thought about that for a second, and then I said, "Dick, first, if you're any kind of scientist, if I come in and tell you it's raining outside, you're not going to just take my wet hair as proof, if you care whether it's raining outside or not. I might have stood under a sprinkler. You have to get up and look out the window. Second, if I come in and tell you there's a unicorn in the garden, you'll scoff at me without putting down your book. If I show you a Polaroid I just took of it, you'll sneer it's trick photography. If I bring in three more witnesses, you'll claim it's a joke, if they all past polygraph tests and so do I, you'll say it's mass hypnosis. But what you won't do, what you will never do, because you know for a fact that unicorns do not exist... is get up off your ass and look out the damn window."
Dick also once explained to me that there was no credible evidence of psychic phenomena. When I asked him, outraged, what about the Duke University tests, and various others that get cited in the literature all the time, he just smirked and told me, quite solemnly, "Darren, they've studied those studies." (I don't know who 'they' is. The Amazing Randi, and Martin Gardner, I guess.) "They've found that any time there was any kind of evidence of psychic phenomena, the controls weren't tight enough. And any time they've done tests with tight enough controls... the evidence disappears."
I goggled at him. I literally could not believe my ears. "You realize," I finally said, "that you just defined a perfect tautology. If there's evidence you don't like, that proves the controls were sloppy. If there's no evidence, well, then the controls were tight enough."
Dick and I stopped talking about paranormal phenomena after that last conversation.
Randi is never going to have to pay out that money. Walk up and levitate right in front of him, and he would swear blind you had to be faking it, he just doesn't know how... and Martin Gardner would agree with him, although he might not know how, either. You know how they'd know you had to be faking it? Because levitation is impossible. It violates several basic laws of physics. Randi knows that. Therefore, if you show him irrefutable evidence of the paranormal, he'll refute it. Because he knows it can't be true.
Colin Wilson once noted he wished he was as certain of anything as Martin Gardner is of everything. I feel the same way about James Randi.
D. (www.angelfire.com/blog/abehm)(docnebula01@juno.com)
Re: On Randi's million dollar offer --
Date: 2003-04-18 11:20 pm (UTC)One of the most fun flamewars I've gotten into was started when someone stated that something was totally obvious and everybody knew it, everybody knew it like everybody knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States of America, and obivious like the sky is blue.
I replied that the first president of the United States of America was John Hansen, and that the sky was black, because the sun had set some hours before I was writing that post.
The "is the sky blue" flamewar was just a hell of a lot of fun. People came up with arguments like "The sky is always blue, it's just that sometimes it looks like it's other colors."
I think that sort of dogmatism is a human trait: people want certainty, and will hold on to things they believe as true, even when they're demonstrably false.
When Penn and Teller expose this kind of thinking, they're worthwhile. When they demonstrate this kind of thinking, I can skip it.
Anyway, I was chatting with my mother on the telephone one day when this flamewar was going on, and I said, "Hey, Mom -- I just wanted to ask you something. What color is the sky?"
She said, "Hang on," and put down the phone. After a few seconds, she came back, and said, "Grey."
I said, "You just looked out the window, didn't you?"
She said, "Yes. How else would I know what color the sky was?"
It's a real good question.
How else would you know what color the sky was? How else would you know whether GM foods are dangerous? How else would you know whether it is possible to read someone else's mind?
Me, I don't, really, believe in psychic phenomina. I mean, I read Tarot cards, and get useful information out of them, but I don't believe in them. A number of my friends are really skilled astrologers, and I'll consult with them on important decisions. But I don't believe in astrology.
I just use it.
I don't really believe in channel-lock pliers, either. I just use them. Believing in them seems like such a waste of effort.
Re: On Randi's million dollar offer --
Date: 2003-04-21 11:53 am (UTC)That may be, but the $1M challenge is setup to be independent of what Randi thinks is impossible. In short, _both_ claimant and the tester (JREF) agree upon the nature of the test, and the criteria for success and failure (see http://randi.org/research/challenge.html for the details). If you pass the test, you get the money, no matter whether or not Randi thinks you are faking.
>But what you won't do, what you will never do, because you know for a fact that unicorns do not exist... is get up off your ass and look out the damn window
Actually, I think most scientists would look out the window. The way to get famous in science is to demonstrate something previously thought impossible (see theory of relativity), so most scientist would be very happy to discover the existence of unicorns. Unfortunately, when the scientist gets to the window they get told "Oh, you scared it away, it's not here anymore", and all you're left with is a fuzzy polaroid that looks suspiciously like a sheep with a stick tied to its head.
> "You realize," I finally said, "that you just defined a perfect tautology. If there's evidence you don't like, that proves the controls were sloppy. If there's no evidence, well, then the controls were tight enough."
I don't think this is the position of the skeptics. In the experiments that showed positive results, procedural flaws were uncovered that allowed for alternative explanations. Once those flaws were eliminated the positive results also disappear. You don't add controls until the results disappear, you add controls to make sure that the experiments measure what it is you're claiming. If you want to demonstrate a new phenomenon, the burden is on you to show that it can't be explained by already known mechanisms.
sngrfxz
Come on...
Date: 2003-05-02 06:03 pm (UTC)I agree that they picked people who were fairly easy targets, but there ISN'T a better case to be made about the health aspects of GMOs. Better anti-corporate arguments could have been made, but they're fundamentally based on politics rather than science or real environmentalism. It's fine if you want to be anti-corporate, but activists should be up front about their agenda.
Any they were absolutely right on their smoking program. There is absolutely no credible evidence that so-called "secondhand smoke" causes any harm to anyone under any circumstances. It's like saying that someone smoking crack cocaine in the same room as you can somehow addict you to crack cocaine. Since all of these smoking bans are based on this flawed premise, they're all bullshit. It is not appropriate to ban something just because some people don't like it or are offended by it. And it's also an unquestionable fact that the smoking bans have hurt bars and resturants where smoking is banned and shut down many "smoking centered" business, like cigar bars.
As for skeptics in general, there are two schools of thought in skepticism: The "soft" school, which thinks that all paranormal claims should be seriously investigated on a case-by-case basis and the "hard" school, which says that many claims have been investigated enough to demonstrate that all or most similar claims are false and that further claims should be ridiculed rather than investigated. These schools also reflect general "tone", with the "hard" school being a lot rougher on the claimants.
P&T (and James Randi and Martin Gardner) clearly fall into the "hard" category. They see little need to prove that every spiritualist (like John Edwards) is false because the whole field has a long history of deception. They same attitude is clear in their UFO program and ESP program.
One thing Penn also points out on the website is that P&T realize that they are largely preaching to the choir. It's unlikely that UFO or ESP "true believers" would be convinced by their UFO and ESP programs, only those who already tend to think such things are bullshit are likely to be convinced. For example, I could bother to refute D's and Xiphias' comments about the Duke study, but what would the point be? I'll never convince them that the methodology IS clearly flawed and that the results aren't significant anyway. Nor will I convince them that every postitive study yet presented has suffered similar flaws. They really don't care about the studies because that is not the basis of thier belief, which is based on positive personal experiences. It's not relavent to them that ther experience can't be replicated under controlled conditions.
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-03 05:38 am (UTC)I would have attempted to do so, if they'd bothered to actually put any arguments in that part of their show. It's difficult to counter an argument that doesn't exist. That's one of the deceptive things they did: fail to present an argument, yet hide that fact.
The important arguments against GM foods are the corporate ones. And, in fact, most people who are against GM foods are against them for the anti-corporate reasons. Because of that, the fact that Penn and Teller did not even mention that part of the issue is deceptive.
What Duke study?
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-04 07:01 pm (UTC)Basically their arguments amounted to saying that the health and environmental risk claims about GM foods made by Greenpeace were bullshit.
The important arguments against GM foods are the corporate ones. And, in fact, most people who are against GM foods are against them for the anti-corporate reasons. Because of that, the fact that Penn and Teller did not even mention that part of the issue is deceptive.
First off, they did mention some arguments. Several times. But they were specifically pointing out that the activists were anti-corporate in their agenda and if that's what their real reasons for being anti-GM were, they were deceving the public by putting forward all these other claims. And it's not like Greenpeace isn't making them, read their FAQs here:
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/ge/gefaq.htm
and here:
http://www.truefoodnow.org/speak_out/generalfaq.html
Somehow I don't see a flood of anti-corporate arguments there. It's conceivable that Greenpeace was somehow misrepresented, but their statements on the program are definitely consistent with their website.
Now maybe P&P shouldn't have focused on Greenpeace and there ARE better anti-GM argumnets that could have been made (cross-contamination, depences of corporate seed stock, etc.), but the presentation was hardly "deceptive".
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-05 09:11 am (UTC)A strong argument blends all three. But, frankly, the core of it has to be "logos". "Pathos" has to be used to show why the argument matters, and, of course, without "ethos", nobody will listen in the first place.
P&T's overblown "this man is the most important human being who ever lived ever on earth . . ." -- once you get that over-the-top, well, a lot of people stop listening.
Too much pathos, too trowell-y applied, too unartfully applied. Makes me wonder what weaknessess in their argument they're hiding behind all that overblown bullshit.
That's simply the first example which sticks in my mind, over a month after seeing this thing. There were others, but I'd have to rewatch the thing while taking notes to remember them accurately.
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-03 05:41 am (UTC)What I do do is use random events in a controlled manner to jog my thinking in ways that I wouldn't necessarily come up with without outside stimulus.
That's what I use Tarot cards for. I use them because of the human mind's ability to find patterns whether or not they actually exist. I let my mind take a bunch of random data points, and see what pattern it creates between those. The shape of the pattern which my mind chooses to create tells me something about how I experience the situation which I pretend the random data points corresponds to.
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-04 07:01 pm (UTC)If this is what you're really trying to do, you *DO* know that logical analysis works far better don't you? Studies have shown that the "information" gleaned from Tarot cards is worthless, mainly because there IS no information. "Reading" Tarot cards is no more useful that "reading" random paint splatters, or animal entrails (augury), or tea leaves. I would like to seen how your technique works in practice, though I suspect it is exactly identical to the techniques used by "magical" card readers, who claim to glaim information from magical or spiritual sources.
Re: Come on...
Date: 2003-05-05 09:21 am (UTC)Not all issues are susceptible to logical analysis. Some require emotional analysis.
I use randomness as a tool to help that process. One distracts the logical part of the mind, by setting it to find patterns where there aren't any. As the logical part of the mind goes happily off on its wild-goose chase, the emotional part of the mind ends up steering it. Since there isn't any actual pattern for the logical mind to find, what it thinks it finds is actually determined by the emotional mind, which allows one to look at how one feels about a situation.
Studies have shown that the "information" gleaned from Tarot cards is worthless, mainly because there IS no information.
Exactly. The point is not to find the information in the Tarot cards, because there isn't any there. The point is to find the information in how your mind chooses to pretend there's information there.
"Reading" Tarot cards is no more useful that "reading" random paint splatters, or animal entrails (augury), or tea leaves.
Or, for one more example, this stuff. Pretty much the same thing.
And I'd use any of the above, too, if I feel like it, and with the same degree if accuracy, because it works in precisely the same way. Okay, not animal entrails, because I wouldn't want to kill a critter for that purpose, and I don't particularly enjoy staring at roadkill. But, yes, that's exactly right.
I would like to seen how your technique works in practice, though I suspect it is exactly identical to the techniques used by "magical" card readers, who claim to glaim information from magical or spiritual sources.
Exactly as well, and exactly as poorly. Has NO noticable success rate at predicting the measurable future, has a significant success rate at uncovering the emotional present.
And you'll find that "magical" card readers, at least the good ones, have pretty much the same areas of success and failure.
Secondhand Smoke
Date: 2003-05-03 11:42 am (UTC)Have you actually looked for any, or are you just repeating what somebody else told you?
A Skeptical Blog has debunked Penn & Tellers' claims on secondhand smoke with the scientific studies. Further posts on that page debunk other claims that P&T made in other episodes.
Re: Secondhand Smoke
Date: 2003-05-04 08:03 pm (UTC)A Skeptical Blog has debunked Penn & Tellers' claims on secondhand smoke with the scientific studies
While I haven't done an exhaustive search of the literature, I have read a number of studies, includign the EPA study and several of those cited by Dominion. No verifiable causal link is shown in all cases and the methodology is questionable in many. For example, take this single statement in the Weily-Liss study:
ETS is composed of emissions from cigarette smoke and contains a higher concentration of tobacco smoke carcinogens than mainstream smoke.
Read that again carefully. They're claiming that upon exposure to open air (rather than directly inhaled) cigarette smoke somehow becomes MORE carcinogenic. How is this even possible? Well they reached this result by tallying the results of self-reported cigarette exposure by people already afflicted. Now it's possible that ETS really is more toxic, however it's a lot more likey that the subjects are simply misreporting their level of exposure. They also say that the results are preliminary and that larger studies are needed (though pretty much every study always says this).
Dominion missed the bigger meta-studies like this one which make much stronger conclusions about pediatric exposure: http://thorax.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/54/4/357
Of course, we don't know if this translates to adults. Which would be very relavent considering the bans affect BARS and other establishments only frequented by adults. Dominion himself points out that the studies on adults in general and "casual exposure" in particular are MUCH less robust.
The gist of P&T's argument was basically political though. Whether or not secondhand smoke has risk doesn't change the fact that people have the RIGHT to expose themselves to possible risk factors. Skydiving is risky, yet nobody is talking about banning skydiving or skydiving instruction. Eating fatty foods has a number of well-documented health risks, but nobody is taking about banning them. If you don't want to be exposed to secondhand smoke, don't visit bars and specialty resturants that feature smoking. Don't work there either.
To some extent, I agree with Dominion. P&T should have been more thorough about the medical literature. I think they chose not to do so because that would confuse their message that LAWS making smoking ILLEGAL in many places are unnecessary. Dominion basically agrees.
Full disclosure: I am particularly sensitive to this issue because I live in California, a "smoking apartheid" state. And I have many friends who are involved in the bar/resturant industry, which has been DEVASTATED by the ban.
I'll deal with the other post in my next message.
Re: Secondhand Smoke
Date: 2003-05-05 09:25 am (UTC)Read that again carefully. They're claiming that upon exposure to open air (rather than directly inhaled) cigarette smoke somehow becomes MORE carcinogenic.
No, they're not. They're claiming that it becomes more concentrated.
As a bartender who is allergic to tobacco smoke (which is not to say that I believe it causes cancer particularly), I find myself the benificiary of smoking bans, although I find myself opposed to them in theory: I feel that that sort of thing is more properly dealt with through etiquette than law.