Paid spokesperson for a bad idea

For critical thinking classes, I want to create a series of "talking head exercises," where students have to play spokesmen for proposals that are stipulated in advance to be really bad ideas. The first scenario I thought of goes like this: There are two courses of action, and one is twice as risky as the other. Option A has a 15% chance of a Very Bad Outcome, and Option B has a 30% chance. The Payoff if the Very Bad Outcome is avoided is the same in each case. You, the student, have been hired as a TV spokesperson for Option B by an organization that for some reason (money, ideology) wants to see it happen. You need to write up a series of talking points and coaching tips to yourself for your next TV appearance.

The answer for this particular scenario would involve two bullet points:

• Emphasize  that both options have risks 
• Avoid direct quantitative comparisons. 

The spokesperson needs to say things like "Look there are no guarantees in life. Even if we took option A, there is a possibility of a Very Bad Outcome, perhaps from set of circumstances X. [Elide the fact that these circumstances are unlikely.] If we want the Payoff, we are going to take risks. All we are saying is that we should give option B a chance."

If we got really fancy, we could do role play in class, although right now I don't do any public speaking type stuff in any of my classes. It would be nice to do this in combination with studying the techniques used by people in history advocating for what we now all agree are very bad ideas, such as Bill Buckley's oh so rational arguments for segregation, or the talking points for people paid to say that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

I need more scenarios, though.

doubleplusgoodthingers bellyfeel truthiness!

For my critical thinking class.

I'm going to use this disclaimer: "The opinions expressed are here for discussion purposes and do not necessarily represent the views of the instructor or the college."

Readings: Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" and chapter 1 and the appendix to 1984.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Truthiness

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

George Carlin - Soft Language

Other notes

McAvoy had an earlier talk on teaching using pop culture, and she noted that the shelf live of the Blackwell/Open Court books is about six months. After that, the bit of pop is out of student consciousness. Students today were 10 when the Matrix came out, and their parents didn't let them see it. This means that if I want to teach using essays from Watchmen and Philosophy, I'd have to do it fall 2009, about the time the DVD of the movie comes out.

I have repeatedly heard people here praise The Institute for Critical Thinking. I ordered some of their material a couple-three years ago, when I was at SLU, and was quickly turned off by it. My immediate reactions were (1) this is aimed at high school students and teachers of high school students, (2) this has the same cheesy style of presentation of a management seminar (3) like a management seminar, it might be a scam.

Now I am at an institution where high-school level material would be useful, and people are telling me that there is some significant theory behind what Paul and Elder do. (It is a completely formal, content-neutral definition of critical thinking. This goes against the trend that says total content neutrality is for formal logic only.) Perhaps I should take a look at their stuff again. It may, in particular, be good for the assessment people at LCCC who need to assess critical thinking learning outcomes.

The slippery slope with euthanasia

In Germany, a right-to-die activist has assisted in the suicide of a healthy 79 year old woman. The woman wanted to kill herself to avoid being placed in a nursing home.

This post and the previous one are cross-posted from my online bioethics classes. I try to emphasize to all my classes that slipper slope arguments are sometimes legitimate. They are legitimate if the slope really is slippery and the bottom of the slope really is unacceptable. These are questions you really need to ask yourself when it comes to the euthanasia debate.

More for the fallacy files

Via Molly, this bit of wisdom from Ben Stein, speaking to the Trinity Broadcasting system

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

In general, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on with this line of thinking. I know it comes up under the general heading "fallacious ways bring up the Nazis in a political discussion." He could be using a straight fallacy of the undistributed middle, the central tactic from Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.You could also call this a variation of the ad hominem, one that probably deserves its own subtype, along with ad hominem circumstantial and ad hominem to quoque. It could be the ad hominem "oh yeah, that's what Hitler thought." This would be a useful subtype to teach to undergraduates, who are used to thinking that ad hominem is simply a fancy term for insult. Here the fallacy occurs not because the speaker accuses the person holding a belief of being awful. Instead, he says the belief was held by someone else, who was awful.

I'm particularly distressed by this line

I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed

Wait. Scientists ran the death camps? And haven't done anything since? Remember that the next time your doctor tells you to get more exercise: the last time a scientist gave any advice about anything was when famous scientist Adolf Hitler greenlighted the final solution.

PS: I can't find the Unfogged thread where we brainstormed Republican Communism. I'd include a link if I could.

One for the fallacy files

For the fallacy files, this paraphrased description of a conversation between NPR and Jake Tapper about the questions asked Obama by the moderators in the last debate:

Q: "It seems like a lot of the complaints weren't about the questions being tough or necessarily biased against one candidate, but instead some people thought the questions were irrelevant and nonsensical. Do you think there might be some truth to that?"

A: "Well, the questions were tough, but I don't think they were necessarily biased against one candidate. And as for being irrelevant, you know, these are the kind of questions the candidates are going to get from journalists, so it's important for journalists to ask these questions so the candidates know what kind of questions journalists are going to ask."

I need to get the original transcript

New York Times Bullshit Trifecta!

This op-ed piece about the apparent trend of public arguments against the existence of God uses all three of the crappy rhetorical techniques favored by the New York Times.

1. Ask a rhetorical question. Note immediately that it has a simple answer which does not fit your political agenda. Go on to spin a much more elaborate and completely unsupported hypothesis that answers the question, and hope that people forget the simple answer by the time you get to the end of your story. The great thing about this trick is that you can always, if asked, say that you acknowledged the simple answer. Then you can proceed to ignore the simple answer all over again.

2. Tell an anecdote and then claim it represents a social trend. For bonus points, have the anecdote be fictional.

3. Quote someone saying something very extreme in a way that makes it seem like you agree with that person, without actually coming out and agreeing with him. This lets you promote the extreme idea without having to actually defend it rationally.

I also see that PZ Myers is on the case.

A (gentle) defense of an epistemic rule of thumb

Wendy the psycho therapist expressed doubt about an epistemic rule of thumb I suggested. The rule of thumb is: "When unorthodox methods lead to unorthodox conclusions, you should doubt the methods, rather than embracing the conclusion."

This is really a simple corollary to the skeptic’s principle, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” with the elaboration that “extraordinary evidence” doesn’t mean unusual evidence, but evidence that is very hard to dispute.

Wendy worries, “What are you considering "unorthodox" and who/what is making this determination?” Context would help here. The rule came to my mind while I was reading a student paper on the death penalty. The student reported roughly that a doctor so-and-so using “new statistical methods” was able to show that seven lives were saved for every one person executed. My first thought was “Wow, that’s quite a claim, those had better be some good methods.” I suspect, though, that these new methods were simply invented for the purpose of justifying the death penalty and that there is no independent evidence for their reliability. In fact, this smacks so much of pseudo-science that I don’t even want to waste time investigating it.

So what am I counting as unorthodox? I am assuming a roughly scientific context, where there are some agreed upon methods that have yielded agreed upon results, and some other methods and results that are debated. I think most human knowledge can be well characterized this way, although the size of the agreeing communities may vary. My experience has been that good epistemology is actually profoundly conservative. At the epistemological level, I am practically Edmund Burke. We are born into believing communities, and when those believe systems are dysfunctional, we try to repair them with minimal changes, lest we find ourselves lost. Paradigm shifts are painful, and should be postponed, until it is clear that only the most ad hoc changes can keep the old paradigm afloat.

Wendy also said “IMHO experiences exist which cannot be easily or readily quantified, reproduced, expressed and/or explained and validity and reliability, orthodoxy and unorthodoxy are rendered moot.” I am aware of those experiences, too. But if expression is difficult, and reliability moot, what else is there to say?

Teaching 12 Angry Men

Update (3/25/13): I've fixed some of the links and cut out a request for help which is no longer needed.

So I'm going to show 12 Angry Men in my critical thinking class, but I'm extremely wary of the fact that simply showing a movie in class is a lot like reading the textbook out loud. To avoid this, I've decided to use a tactic called Guided Film Watching, where the students are required to fill out a question sheet while the film is going, and we stop frequently to discuss what has happened so far. Students have enough experience just sitting back and letting a movie sweep over them. I want them to practice working while watching.

The first resource I wanted was a simple character guide, so they can remember who's who and refer to them by number in discussion. A cursory Google search didn't turn one up, so I made one myself. I imagine that I'm not the only one who has looked for such a thing, so I am posting mine here, in hopes that it will show up for diligent googlers.

Second, I've decided to break up the movie into 15 minute chunks, and watch about two chunks a class for three classes, mixed in with discussions the movie, the nature of critical thinking, and Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief." Each chunk will have a question sheet. I've posted the full question sheet here. Questions for the first two chunks are below:

First segment

Chapter 1-3 on the disc, 0-15:46.

1. In the first minute and 13 seconds, the camera enters into the courthouse and follows a few people around. What do you notice about the way the courthouse is depicted? What do you notice about the people the camera follows? Why are we shown these people?

2. Starting at 1:47, when the camera pans over the jury, and going to 10:23, when the deliberations start, we get a chance to see the different jury members in a casual situation. Do any of them stand out to you? Who do you think will be a good jury member? Who won’t?

3. What reasons does Henry Fonda originally give for voting not guilty? Are they good reasons?

4. At 14:20 Juror 10 stands up and gives a speech about "them." "I’ve lived among them all my life," he says. Who is he talking about?

Second Segment

Chapters 4–5, 15:46–30:10

5. Starting at 15:46, the jurors start giving their reasons for thinking the defendant is guilty, starting with juror 1. Which of the jurors seem to have good reasons for their judgment and which don’t?

6. At around 21 minutes, juror 3 gives a speech about children and his son. What is significant about this speech?

7. At 24 minutes, Fonda gives a second speech about why he votes not guilty. Are his reasons different than the first time? Are they better?

8. At 28:50 Fonda introduces his own piece of evidence. Has he been holding back on the other jurors? What has he been holding back?

Some of the questions are long, but the students will have the chance to read them before the segment starts. If anyone stopping by is interested, I'd like to hear what you think of these.