Don't use not-even-wrong arguments!
I have been debating various things on Internet forums for almost a
decade now. And one of the hardest lessons I've learned is not to use
not even wrong arguments. I want to share that lesson I've learned.
A significant percentage of the arguments used on the Internet forums are not only not right, they are also not even wrong. And while it is difficult to tell apart a right argument from a wrong one, it is not all that difficult to tell apart not even wrong arguments. Simply, before using some phenomenon as an argument against mainstream science, ask yourself, how does your "theory" (I am using that word in the informal sense.) explain that phenomenon. And if you cannot give a simple answer to that, don't use that argument.
I know this sounds confusing, so let me illustrate that with an example. Here is an example of a not-even-wrong argument:
And like I've said, there are many widely-used not-even-wrong arguments. Here are some examples:
"Atheism cannot account for logical tautologies." And injecting God explains that... how exactly?
"Vegetarianism leads to soil depletion." And having hundreds of millions of grain-fed cows solves that problem... how exactly? If anything, it makes it worse, right?
"Mainstream medicine is claiming that most cancers are caused by random mutations in cells. But if that were true, we would expect whales to get cancer far more often than mice do. Yet, they get cancer equally often." And an alternative theory explains it... how exactly?
"Most of the climate models predict the infra-red (long-wave) radiation from the Earth will decrease because of the greenhouse effect. Yet the satellite data shows it's been increasing. What's the point of trusting climate models then about the effect of CO2 on the global temperature?" And an alternative theory explains that rise of infra-red radiation... how exactly?
Or unfortunately many people say, when arguing for anarchism, stuff like: "Vaccinating young people against COVID-19 is wrong. There is no evidence the vaccines lower the transmission of COVID-19, and there is plenty of evidence they damage the heart (causing myocarditis way more often than COVID-19 itself does) and are about as dangerous for young people as COVID-19 is. Governments are reckless murderers of young people.". But how would an anarchy solve that problem? It seems obvious to me that vaccines would be tested less in anarchy, rather than more. After all, they were tested far less for both efficacy and safety in the past, such as during the Polio Pandemic of the 1950s (Cutter Vaccine Incident), and government regulation made them be tested more. If vaccines are unsafe and ineffective, then an anarchy would make things worse.
And so on...
Let me be clear that I don't think it's always unreasonable to ask a question about a supposed problem with mainstream science without proposing an actual solution. I think that, in a discussion about the Illyrian language, this is an entirely reasonable question: "Why isn't the 'p' in 'Colapis' (ancient name for the Kupa river) and 'Serapia' (ancient name for the Bednja river) geminated, since 'a' was short (because -ap- is coming from *h2ep meaning 'water')? The 'n' was geminated after a short 'a' in 'Pannonia' (from *pen meaning 'marsh').". It's probably possible to have a productive conversation about that question. What would be not-even-wrong is if somebody was attempting to discredit mainstream onomastics with that question without providing an alternative etymology to Pannonia (or, less likely, to both Colapis and Serapia) that doesn't suffer from the exact same problem.
And complaining that the mainstream onomastics uses methodology that seems to contradict basic information theory, like I'm doing, is not not-even-wrong, because I am suggesting a methodology that doesn't suffer from the exact same problem. Mainstream onomastics claims that this k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (Krka, Korana, Kravarščica, Krapina, Krbavica, two rivers named Karašica) is a coincidence, while basic information theory (Collision Entropy and Birthday Paradox) strongly suggests that it's statistically significant (that the probability of such a pattern occurring by chance is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17). An obvious solution is to suppose that this k-r pattern was an Illyrian word for "to flow", or at least some prefix that was, for some reason, common in names of rivers. I have a rather detailed explanation of what I suppose happened, which you can read on my website. The difference between the examples of not-even-wrong arguments and the arguments I am using against mainstream onomastics should really be apparent.
I hope I've made the Internet a better place by making this web-page. Link to it when somebody is using not-even-wrong arguments!
A significant percentage of the arguments used on the Internet forums are not only not right, they are also not even wrong. And while it is difficult to tell apart a right argument from a wrong one, it is not all that difficult to tell apart not even wrong arguments. Simply, before using some phenomenon as an argument against mainstream science, ask yourself, how does your "theory" (I am using that word in the informal sense.) explain that phenomenon. And if you cannot give a simple answer to that, don't use that argument.
I know this sounds confusing, so let me illustrate that with an example. Here is an example of a not-even-wrong argument:
A: If the Earth was round, we would expect the horizon to fall
as we climb. Furthermore, if ships disappearing bottom first was
caused by the Earth being round, we would expect the ships to not only
appear to sink as they go over the horizon, we would also expect them
to appear to lean. We observe neither of those two things. Therefore,
the Earth is flat.
B: I don't understand how the Earth being flat explains those two things. If the Earth is flat, what even is the horizon?
A: That's irrelevant.
(The conversation devolves completely.)
The absurdity of the A's arguments should be apparent. Now, here is an
example of a wrong argument and how it fares on an Internet forum:
B: I don't understand how the Earth being flat explains those two things. If the Earth is flat, what even is the horizon?
A: That's irrelevant.
(The conversation devolves completely.)
A: If the Heliocentricism is true, and the Sun were 150'000'000
kilometers away from the Earth, we would expect the sunbeams to appear
parallel when they go through clouds. But they don't appear to be
parallel.
B: How does the theory that the Earth is flat actually explain that?
A: Well, by the Sun being around 5'000 kilometers high.
B: Don't you think a much better explanation is the perspective? That the sunbeams appear to converge for the same reason the tracks of the railroad appear to converge when we look at the distance, but we know they are in fact parallel.
A: You can explain it like that when the sun is low in the sky, close to the horizon, such as during the sunrise and the sunset. But what when the sun is close to zenith, when the sunbeams are almost vertical?
(The conversation about perspective continues.)
I hope you can see why using a wrong argument is much better than using
a not-even-wrong one. Here are the reasons:
B: How does the theory that the Earth is flat actually explain that?
A: Well, by the Sun being around 5'000 kilometers high.
B: Don't you think a much better explanation is the perspective? That the sunbeams appear to converge for the same reason the tracks of the railroad appear to converge when we look at the distance, but we know they are in fact parallel.
A: You can explain it like that when the sun is low in the sky, close to the horizon, such as during the sunrise and the sunset. But what when the sun is close to zenith, when the sunbeams are almost vertical?
(The conversation about perspective continues.)
- It's low-effort. Once you are deep into some field of science, finding things that the science supposedly cannot explain is easy. What's not easy is to find things which are difficult to explain by mainstream science, but are trivial to explain by an alternative theory.
- Because it's low-effort, it is rude.
- It deeply poisons the discussion. The endless not-even-wrong arguments made by Flat-Earthers might make it look to a layman that there are many things which are easier to explain if you assume the Earth is flat than if you assume the Earth is round. In reality, there seems to be precisely one such thing: the sunbeams appearing to converge (It's easier to assume the Sun is close than to explain away the optical illusion.). Compared to a dozen of observations we can make in everyday life which are easier to explain if you assume the Earth is round than if you assume it is flat.
- It shows that you don't understand the very nature of the discussion. The purpose of debating is to find out which theory (in the informal sense of the word) has more explanatory power. What you are doing with not-even-wrong arguments is the opposite of that: You are trying to replace a theory that explains at least something with a theory that explains precisely nothing.
B: If the Earth is flat, how it is that we can see different
stars from different places on Earth?
A: Well, stars being only 3'000 miles up in the sky would provide the same effect as the Earth being a sphere with 6'000 kilometers radius.
B: No, it wouldn't provide the same effect. If the reason why we can see different stars from different places on Earth was stars being close, then the constellations would have different shapes depending on where you look at them from. There would be perspective distortions and, unless you assume all stars are at the exact same height, we would also expect there to be parallaxes. We observe neither of those two things.
A: Well, Heliocentricism suffers from the same problem. Why don't constellations have different shapes depending on which time of the year we look at them from?
B: That's not the same problem. For Heliocentricism, you can assume stars are very far away, so that the parallaxes aren't visible.
Here, A is committing the tu-quoque logical fallacy by, instead of
responding to the argument, complains about an unrelated problem with
Heliocentricism.A: Well, stars being only 3'000 miles up in the sky would provide the same effect as the Earth being a sphere with 6'000 kilometers radius.
B: No, it wouldn't provide the same effect. If the reason why we can see different stars from different places on Earth was stars being close, then the constellations would have different shapes depending on where you look at them from. There would be perspective distortions and, unless you assume all stars are at the exact same height, we would also expect there to be parallaxes. We observe neither of those two things.
A: Well, Heliocentricism suffers from the same problem. Why don't constellations have different shapes depending on which time of the year we look at them from?
B: That's not the same problem. For Heliocentricism, you can assume stars are very far away, so that the parallaxes aren't visible.
And like I've said, there are many widely-used not-even-wrong arguments. Here are some examples:
"Atheism cannot account for logical tautologies." And injecting God explains that... how exactly?
"Vegetarianism leads to soil depletion." And having hundreds of millions of grain-fed cows solves that problem... how exactly? If anything, it makes it worse, right?
"Mainstream medicine is claiming that most cancers are caused by random mutations in cells. But if that were true, we would expect whales to get cancer far more often than mice do. Yet, they get cancer equally often." And an alternative theory explains it... how exactly?
"Most of the climate models predict the infra-red (long-wave) radiation from the Earth will decrease because of the greenhouse effect. Yet the satellite data shows it's been increasing. What's the point of trusting climate models then about the effect of CO2 on the global temperature?" And an alternative theory explains that rise of infra-red radiation... how exactly?
Or unfortunately many people say, when arguing for anarchism, stuff like: "Vaccinating young people against COVID-19 is wrong. There is no evidence the vaccines lower the transmission of COVID-19, and there is plenty of evidence they damage the heart (causing myocarditis way more often than COVID-19 itself does) and are about as dangerous for young people as COVID-19 is. Governments are reckless murderers of young people.". But how would an anarchy solve that problem? It seems obvious to me that vaccines would be tested less in anarchy, rather than more. After all, they were tested far less for both efficacy and safety in the past, such as during the Polio Pandemic of the 1950s (Cutter Vaccine Incident), and government regulation made them be tested more. If vaccines are unsafe and ineffective, then an anarchy would make things worse.
And so on...
Let me be clear that I don't think it's always unreasonable to ask a question about a supposed problem with mainstream science without proposing an actual solution. I think that, in a discussion about the Illyrian language, this is an entirely reasonable question: "Why isn't the 'p' in 'Colapis' (ancient name for the Kupa river) and 'Serapia' (ancient name for the Bednja river) geminated, since 'a' was short (because -ap- is coming from *h2ep meaning 'water')? The 'n' was geminated after a short 'a' in 'Pannonia' (from *pen meaning 'marsh').". It's probably possible to have a productive conversation about that question. What would be not-even-wrong is if somebody was attempting to discredit mainstream onomastics with that question without providing an alternative etymology to Pannonia (or, less likely, to both Colapis and Serapia) that doesn't suffer from the exact same problem.
And complaining that the mainstream onomastics uses methodology that seems to contradict basic information theory, like I'm doing, is not not-even-wrong, because I am suggesting a methodology that doesn't suffer from the exact same problem. Mainstream onomastics claims that this k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (Krka, Korana, Kravarščica, Krapina, Krbavica, two rivers named Karašica) is a coincidence, while basic information theory (Collision Entropy and Birthday Paradox) strongly suggests that it's statistically significant (that the probability of such a pattern occurring by chance is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17). An obvious solution is to suppose that this k-r pattern was an Illyrian word for "to flow", or at least some prefix that was, for some reason, common in names of rivers. I have a rather detailed explanation of what I suppose happened, which you can read on my website. The difference between the examples of not-even-wrong arguments and the arguments I am using against mainstream onomastics should really be apparent.
I hope I've made the Internet a better place by making this web-page. Link to it when somebody is using not-even-wrong arguments!