D
Dave
Guest
Ever get into an argument with a skeptic only to end up exasperated and feeling you've been
bamboozled? Skeptics are often highly skilled at tying up opponents in clever verbal knots. Most
skeptics are, of course, ordinary, more-or-less honest people who, like the rest of us, are just
trying to make the best sense they can of a complicated and often confusing world. Others, however,
are merely glib sophists who use specious reasoning to defend their prejudices or attack the ideas
and beliefs of others, and even an honest skeptic can innocently fall into the mistake of employing
bad reasoning.
In reading, listening to and sometimes debating skeptics over the years, I've found certain tricks,
ploys and gimmicks which they tend to use over and over again. Here are some of 'em. Perhaps if you
keep them in mind when arguing with a skeptic, you'll feel better when the debate is over. Shucks,
you might even score a point or two.
* * *
1.) RAISING THE BAR (Or IMPOSSIBLE PERFECTION): This trick consists of demanding a new, higher and
more difficult standard of evidence whenever it looks as if a skeptic's opponent is going to
satisfy an old one. Often the skeptic doesn't make it clear exactly what the standards are in the
first place. This can be especially effective if the skeptic can keep his opponent from noticing
that he is continually changing his standard of evidence. That way, his opponent will eventually
give up in exasperation or disgust. Perhaps best of all, if his opponent complains, the skeptic
can tag him as a whiner or a sore loser.
Skeptic: I am willing to consider the psi hypothesis if you will only show me some sound evidence.
Opponent: There are many thousands of documented reports of incidents that seem to involve psi.
S: That is only anecdotal evidence. You must give me laboratory evidence.
: Researchers A-Z have conducted experiments that produced results which favor the psi hypothesis.
T: Those experiments are not acceptable because of flaws X,Y and Z.
: Researchers B-H and T-W have conducted experiments producing positive results which did not have
flaws X,Y and Z.
U: The positive results are not far enough above chance levels to be truly interesting.
: Researchers C-F and U-V produced results well above chance levels.
V: Their results were achieved through meta-analysis, which is a highly questionable technique.
W: Meta-analysis is a well-accepted method commonly used in psychology and sociology.
X: Psychology and sociology are social sciences, and their methods can't be considered as reliable
as those of hard sciences such as physics and chemistry.
Etc., etc. ad nauseum.
2.) SOCK 'EM WITH OCCAM: Skeptics frequently invoke Occam's Razor as if the Razor automatically
validates their position. Occam's Razor, a principle of epistemology (knowledge theory), states
that the simplest explanation which fits all the facts is to be preferred -- or, to state it
another way, entities are not to be multiplied needlessly. The Razor is a useful and even
necessary principle, but it is largely useless if the facts themselves are not generally agreed
upon in the first place.
3.) EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS: Extraordinary claims, says the skeptic, require extraordinary evidence.
Superficially this seems reasonable enough. However, extraordinariness, like beauty, is very much
in the eye of the beholder. Some claims, of course, would seem extraordinary to almost anyone
(e.g. the claim that aliens from Alpha Centauri had contacted you telepathically and informed you
that the people of Earth must make you their absolute lord and ruler). The "extraordinariness" of
many other claims, however, is at best arguable, and it is not at all obvious that unusually
strong evidence is necessary to support them. For example, so many people who would ordinarily be
considered reliable witnesses have reported precognitive dreams that it becomes difficult to
insist these are "unusual" claims requiring "unusual" evidence. Quite ordinary standards of
evidence will do.
4.) STUPID, CRAZY LIARS: This trick consists of simple slander. Anyone who reports anything which
displeases the skeptic will be accused of incompetence, mental illness or dishonesty, or some
combination of the three without a single shred of fact to support the accusations. When Charles
Honorton's Ganzfeld experiments produced impressive results in favor of the psi hypothesis,
skeptics accused him of suppressing or not publishing the results of failed experiments. No
definite facts supporting the charge ever emerged. Moreover, the experiments were extremely time
consuming, and the number of failed, unpublished experiments necessary to make the number of
successful, published experiments significant would have been quite high, so it is extremely
unlikely that Honorton's results could be due to selective reporting. Yet skeptics still
sometimes repeat this accusation.
5.) THE SANTA CLAUS GAMBIT: This trick consists of lumping moderate claims or propositions together
with extreme ones. If you suggest, for example, that Sasquatch can't be completely ruled out from
the available evidence,the skeptic will then facetiously suggest that Santa Claus and the Easter
Bunny can't be "completely" ruled out either.
6.) SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF EVIDENCE: The skeptic insists that he doesn't have to provide evidence
and arguments to support his side of the argument because he isn't asserting a claim, he is
merely denying or doubting yours. His mistake consists of assuming that a negative claim
(asserting that something doesn't exist) is fundamentally different from a positive claim. It
isn't. Any definite claim, positive or negative, requires definite support. Merely refuting or
arguing against an opponent's position is not enough to establish one's own position.. In other
words, you can't win by default.
As arch-skeptic Carl Sagan himself said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If someone
wants to rule out vistations by extra-terrestrial aliens, it would not be enough to point out that
all the evidence presented so far is either seriously flawed or not very strong. It would be
necessary to state definite reasons which would make ET visitations either impossible or highly
unlikely. (He might, for example, point out that our best understanding of physics pretty much rules
out any kind of effective faster-than-light drive.)
The only person exempt from providing definite support is the person who takes a strict "I don't
know" position or the agnostic position. If someone takes the position that the evidence in favor of
ET visitations is inadequate but goes no farther, he is exempt from further argument (provided, of
course, he gives adequate reasons for rejecting the evidence). However, if he wants to go farther
and insist that it is impossible or highly unlikely that ET's are visiting or have ever visited the
Earth, it becomes necessary for him to provide definite reasons for his position. He is no longer
entitled merely to argue against his opponent's position.
There is the question of honesty. Someone who claims to take the agnostic position but really takes
the position of definite disbelief is, of course, misrepresenting his views. For example, a skeptic
who insists that he merely believes the psi hypothesis is inadequately supported when in fact he
believes that the human mind can only acquire information through the physical senses is simply not
being honest.
7.) YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE: The skeptic may insist that he is relieved of the burden of
evidence and argument because "you can't prove a negative." But you most certainly can prove a
negative! When we know one thing to be true, then we also know that whatever flatly contradicts
it is untrue. If I want to show my cat's not in the bedroom, I can prove this by showing that my
cat's in the kitchen or outside chasing squirrels. The negative has then been proven. Or the
proposition that the cat is not in the bedroom could be proven by giving the bedroom a good
search without finding the cat. The skeptic who says, "Of course I can't prove psi doesn't exist.
I don't have to. You can't prove a negative," is simply wrong. To rule something out, definite
reasons must be given for ruling it out.
Of course, for practical reasons it often isn't possible to gather the necessary information to
prove or disprove a proposition, e.g., it isn't possible to search the entire universe to prove that
no intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. This by itself doesn't mean that a case can't be made
against the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, although it does probably mean that the case
can't be as air-tight and conclusive as we would like.
8.) THE BIG LIE: The skeptic knows that most people will not have the time or inclination to check
every claim he makes, so he knows it's a fairly small risk to tell a whopper. He might, for
example, insist that none of the laboratory evidence for psi stands up to close scrutiny, or he
might insist there have been no cases of UFO's being spotted by reliable observers such as
trained military personnel when in fact there are well-documented cases. The average person isn't
going to scamper right down to the library to verify this, so the skeptic knows a lot of people
are going to accept his statement at face value. This ploy works best when the Big Lie is
repeated often and loudly in a confident tone.
9.) DOUBT CASTING: This trick consists of dwelling on minor or trivial flaws in the evidence, or
presenting speculations as to how the evidence might be flawed as though mere speculation is
somehow as damning as actual facts. The assumption here is that any flaw, trivial or even merely
speculative, is necessarily fatal and provides sufficient grounds for throwing out the evidence.
The skeptic often justifies this with the "extraordinary evidence" ploy.
In the real world, of course, the evidence for anything is seldom 100% flawless and foolproof. It is
almost always possible to find some small shortcoming which can be used as an excuse for tossing out
the evidence. If a definite problem can't be found, then the skeptic may simply speculate as to how
the evidence *might* be flawed and use his speculations as an excuse to discard the information. For
example, the skeptic might point out that the safeguards or controls during one part of a psi
experiment weren't quite as tight as they might have been and then insist, without any supporting
facts, that the subject(s) and/or the researcher(s) probably cheated because this is the "simplest"
explanation for the results (see "Sock 'em with Occam" and "Extraordinary Claims"; "Raising the Bar"
is also relevant).
10.) THE SNEER: This gimmick is an inversion of "Stupid, Crazy Liars." In "Stupid, Crazy Liars," the
skeptic attacks the character of those advocationg certain ideas or presenting information in the
hope of discrediting the information. In "THE SNEER," the skeptic attempts to attach a stigma to
some idea or claim and implies that anyone advocating that position must have something terribly
wrong with him. "Anyone who believes we've been visited by extraterresrial aliens must be a
lunatic, a fool, or a con man. If you believe this, you must a maniac, a simpleton or a fraud."
The object here is to scare others away from a certain position without having to discuss facts.
* * *
To be fair, some of these tricks or tactics (such as "The Big Lie," "Doubtcasting" and "The Sneer")
are often used by believers as well as skeptics. Scientifc Creationists and Holocaust Revisionists,
for example, are particularly prone to use "Doubtcasting." Others ploys, however, such as "Sock 'em
with Occam" and "Extraordinary Claims," are generally used by skeptics and seldom by others.
Unfortunately, effective debating tactics often involve bad logic, e.g. attacking an opponent's
character, appeals to emotion, mockery and facetiousness, loaded definitions, etc. And certainly
skeptics are not the only ones who are ever guilty of using manipulative and deceptive debating
tactics. Even so, skeptics are just as likely as anyone else to twist their language, logic and
facts to win an argument, and keeping these tricks in mind when dealing with skeptics may very well
keep you from being bamboozled.
bamboozled? Skeptics are often highly skilled at tying up opponents in clever verbal knots. Most
skeptics are, of course, ordinary, more-or-less honest people who, like the rest of us, are just
trying to make the best sense they can of a complicated and often confusing world. Others, however,
are merely glib sophists who use specious reasoning to defend their prejudices or attack the ideas
and beliefs of others, and even an honest skeptic can innocently fall into the mistake of employing
bad reasoning.
In reading, listening to and sometimes debating skeptics over the years, I've found certain tricks,
ploys and gimmicks which they tend to use over and over again. Here are some of 'em. Perhaps if you
keep them in mind when arguing with a skeptic, you'll feel better when the debate is over. Shucks,
you might even score a point or two.
* * *
1.) RAISING THE BAR (Or IMPOSSIBLE PERFECTION): This trick consists of demanding a new, higher and
more difficult standard of evidence whenever it looks as if a skeptic's opponent is going to
satisfy an old one. Often the skeptic doesn't make it clear exactly what the standards are in the
first place. This can be especially effective if the skeptic can keep his opponent from noticing
that he is continually changing his standard of evidence. That way, his opponent will eventually
give up in exasperation or disgust. Perhaps best of all, if his opponent complains, the skeptic
can tag him as a whiner or a sore loser.
Skeptic: I am willing to consider the psi hypothesis if you will only show me some sound evidence.
Opponent: There are many thousands of documented reports of incidents that seem to involve psi.
S: That is only anecdotal evidence. You must give me laboratory evidence.
: Researchers A-Z have conducted experiments that produced results which favor the psi hypothesis.
T: Those experiments are not acceptable because of flaws X,Y and Z.
: Researchers B-H and T-W have conducted experiments producing positive results which did not have
flaws X,Y and Z.
U: The positive results are not far enough above chance levels to be truly interesting.
: Researchers C-F and U-V produced results well above chance levels.
V: Their results were achieved through meta-analysis, which is a highly questionable technique.
W: Meta-analysis is a well-accepted method commonly used in psychology and sociology.
X: Psychology and sociology are social sciences, and their methods can't be considered as reliable
as those of hard sciences such as physics and chemistry.
Etc., etc. ad nauseum.
2.) SOCK 'EM WITH OCCAM: Skeptics frequently invoke Occam's Razor as if the Razor automatically
validates their position. Occam's Razor, a principle of epistemology (knowledge theory), states
that the simplest explanation which fits all the facts is to be preferred -- or, to state it
another way, entities are not to be multiplied needlessly. The Razor is a useful and even
necessary principle, but it is largely useless if the facts themselves are not generally agreed
upon in the first place.
3.) EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS: Extraordinary claims, says the skeptic, require extraordinary evidence.
Superficially this seems reasonable enough. However, extraordinariness, like beauty, is very much
in the eye of the beholder. Some claims, of course, would seem extraordinary to almost anyone
(e.g. the claim that aliens from Alpha Centauri had contacted you telepathically and informed you
that the people of Earth must make you their absolute lord and ruler). The "extraordinariness" of
many other claims, however, is at best arguable, and it is not at all obvious that unusually
strong evidence is necessary to support them. For example, so many people who would ordinarily be
considered reliable witnesses have reported precognitive dreams that it becomes difficult to
insist these are "unusual" claims requiring "unusual" evidence. Quite ordinary standards of
evidence will do.
4.) STUPID, CRAZY LIARS: This trick consists of simple slander. Anyone who reports anything which
displeases the skeptic will be accused of incompetence, mental illness or dishonesty, or some
combination of the three without a single shred of fact to support the accusations. When Charles
Honorton's Ganzfeld experiments produced impressive results in favor of the psi hypothesis,
skeptics accused him of suppressing or not publishing the results of failed experiments. No
definite facts supporting the charge ever emerged. Moreover, the experiments were extremely time
consuming, and the number of failed, unpublished experiments necessary to make the number of
successful, published experiments significant would have been quite high, so it is extremely
unlikely that Honorton's results could be due to selective reporting. Yet skeptics still
sometimes repeat this accusation.
5.) THE SANTA CLAUS GAMBIT: This trick consists of lumping moderate claims or propositions together
with extreme ones. If you suggest, for example, that Sasquatch can't be completely ruled out from
the available evidence,the skeptic will then facetiously suggest that Santa Claus and the Easter
Bunny can't be "completely" ruled out either.
6.) SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF EVIDENCE: The skeptic insists that he doesn't have to provide evidence
and arguments to support his side of the argument because he isn't asserting a claim, he is
merely denying or doubting yours. His mistake consists of assuming that a negative claim
(asserting that something doesn't exist) is fundamentally different from a positive claim. It
isn't. Any definite claim, positive or negative, requires definite support. Merely refuting or
arguing against an opponent's position is not enough to establish one's own position.. In other
words, you can't win by default.
As arch-skeptic Carl Sagan himself said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If someone
wants to rule out vistations by extra-terrestrial aliens, it would not be enough to point out that
all the evidence presented so far is either seriously flawed or not very strong. It would be
necessary to state definite reasons which would make ET visitations either impossible or highly
unlikely. (He might, for example, point out that our best understanding of physics pretty much rules
out any kind of effective faster-than-light drive.)
The only person exempt from providing definite support is the person who takes a strict "I don't
know" position or the agnostic position. If someone takes the position that the evidence in favor of
ET visitations is inadequate but goes no farther, he is exempt from further argument (provided, of
course, he gives adequate reasons for rejecting the evidence). However, if he wants to go farther
and insist that it is impossible or highly unlikely that ET's are visiting or have ever visited the
Earth, it becomes necessary for him to provide definite reasons for his position. He is no longer
entitled merely to argue against his opponent's position.
There is the question of honesty. Someone who claims to take the agnostic position but really takes
the position of definite disbelief is, of course, misrepresenting his views. For example, a skeptic
who insists that he merely believes the psi hypothesis is inadequately supported when in fact he
believes that the human mind can only acquire information through the physical senses is simply not
being honest.
7.) YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE: The skeptic may insist that he is relieved of the burden of
evidence and argument because "you can't prove a negative." But you most certainly can prove a
negative! When we know one thing to be true, then we also know that whatever flatly contradicts
it is untrue. If I want to show my cat's not in the bedroom, I can prove this by showing that my
cat's in the kitchen or outside chasing squirrels. The negative has then been proven. Or the
proposition that the cat is not in the bedroom could be proven by giving the bedroom a good
search without finding the cat. The skeptic who says, "Of course I can't prove psi doesn't exist.
I don't have to. You can't prove a negative," is simply wrong. To rule something out, definite
reasons must be given for ruling it out.
Of course, for practical reasons it often isn't possible to gather the necessary information to
prove or disprove a proposition, e.g., it isn't possible to search the entire universe to prove that
no intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. This by itself doesn't mean that a case can't be made
against the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, although it does probably mean that the case
can't be as air-tight and conclusive as we would like.
8.) THE BIG LIE: The skeptic knows that most people will not have the time or inclination to check
every claim he makes, so he knows it's a fairly small risk to tell a whopper. He might, for
example, insist that none of the laboratory evidence for psi stands up to close scrutiny, or he
might insist there have been no cases of UFO's being spotted by reliable observers such as
trained military personnel when in fact there are well-documented cases. The average person isn't
going to scamper right down to the library to verify this, so the skeptic knows a lot of people
are going to accept his statement at face value. This ploy works best when the Big Lie is
repeated often and loudly in a confident tone.
9.) DOUBT CASTING: This trick consists of dwelling on minor or trivial flaws in the evidence, or
presenting speculations as to how the evidence might be flawed as though mere speculation is
somehow as damning as actual facts. The assumption here is that any flaw, trivial or even merely
speculative, is necessarily fatal and provides sufficient grounds for throwing out the evidence.
The skeptic often justifies this with the "extraordinary evidence" ploy.
In the real world, of course, the evidence for anything is seldom 100% flawless and foolproof. It is
almost always possible to find some small shortcoming which can be used as an excuse for tossing out
the evidence. If a definite problem can't be found, then the skeptic may simply speculate as to how
the evidence *might* be flawed and use his speculations as an excuse to discard the information. For
example, the skeptic might point out that the safeguards or controls during one part of a psi
experiment weren't quite as tight as they might have been and then insist, without any supporting
facts, that the subject(s) and/or the researcher(s) probably cheated because this is the "simplest"
explanation for the results (see "Sock 'em with Occam" and "Extraordinary Claims"; "Raising the Bar"
is also relevant).
10.) THE SNEER: This gimmick is an inversion of "Stupid, Crazy Liars." In "Stupid, Crazy Liars," the
skeptic attacks the character of those advocationg certain ideas or presenting information in the
hope of discrediting the information. In "THE SNEER," the skeptic attempts to attach a stigma to
some idea or claim and implies that anyone advocating that position must have something terribly
wrong with him. "Anyone who believes we've been visited by extraterresrial aliens must be a
lunatic, a fool, or a con man. If you believe this, you must a maniac, a simpleton or a fraud."
The object here is to scare others away from a certain position without having to discuss facts.
* * *
To be fair, some of these tricks or tactics (such as "The Big Lie," "Doubtcasting" and "The Sneer")
are often used by believers as well as skeptics. Scientifc Creationists and Holocaust Revisionists,
for example, are particularly prone to use "Doubtcasting." Others ploys, however, such as "Sock 'em
with Occam" and "Extraordinary Claims," are generally used by skeptics and seldom by others.
Unfortunately, effective debating tactics often involve bad logic, e.g. attacking an opponent's
character, appeals to emotion, mockery and facetiousness, loaded definitions, etc. And certainly
skeptics are not the only ones who are ever guilty of using manipulative and deceptive debating
tactics. Even so, skeptics are just as likely as anyone else to twist their language, logic and
facts to win an argument, and keeping these tricks in mind when dealing with skeptics may very well
keep you from being bamboozled.