Join the Club!

Still subscribed to this old course blog? Nice.

So, I'm trying to start up a school club -- the "Owning Our Ignorance" club -- devoted to fun and logic, in that order. I've put up a blog for it over here.

Check it out. Please join if you're interested.

Eff Yook Lass

Here are some links on news and advertising. The first is about the underlying intellectual dishonesty in even the most honest of ad campaigns:

Truth Sells Lies

By the way, if you're into advertising, that entire blog is great. I'm a bit biased, though, since I used to work for Bob Garfield.

Here's a link to a radio interview with the director of FactCheck.org, a website devoted to debunking claims in political ads.

Political Ads Fact-Checked
(to launch the interview, click on the red "Listen" button)

I also used to work with the guy who interviewed FactCheck's director. Yup, I'm a pretty big deal.

Speaking of big deals:

Attend or Die

I will be mentioning this in class, but just in case...

Attendance is mandatory for the group presentations on Monday (12/10/07), Wednesday (12/12/07), and Friday (12/14/07). It's the only time I'll be a stickler for it. Basically, I want you to show respect for the other groups presenting.

If you don't attend on either the days your group isn't presenting (and your absence isn't excused), your own personal presentation grade will drop. Each day you don't attend will lower your grade by a full letter grade.

Also, be sure to keep the presentations under 15 minutes. A 10-minute presentation is ideal, so we can have time for a short question-and-answer session afterwards.

BS: The Video

Here's the video of Jon Stewart interviewing Harry Frankfurt about his book On Bullshit.

BS

I just remembered the link.
On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt
What do you think? Is not caring about whether you're saying the truth worse than deliberately lying?

My Bias is Special

Here's a roundup of links I mentioned in class recently.
New Yorker article on fundamental attribution error

Excellent explanation of hindsight bias

And here's the picture I tried to draw in class to explain the contrast effect bias. The green circles are the same size:

There was another link I was supposed to post, but I forget what it is. Anyone remember what it was about?

Impeding Us Since Birth

Here is a pair of links to articles on psychological impediments that I mentioned in class last week:

Why stereotyping is illogical
(Malcolm Gladwell)

The psychological impediment driving The Secret
(wishful thinking run amok)

Also, wikipedia's full list of cognitive biases is available here.

Group Presentations

Here are the groups for the presentations coming up. If your name isn't on this list, that means you haven't been assigned to a group yet. See me to get assigned into a group.

Team God Stuff
Sean
Chris
Adam

Team Steroids
Jared
Scott
Heather
Joe
Eric

Team Global Warming
Jim R.
Amanda
Brett

Team Gay Marriage
Abi
Sue
Kitty
Roxanne
Alison

Team Media Violence
Cassondra
Felicia
Lauren
Stephanie

Team Death Penalty
Dan
Justin
(Matt)

Team Weed
Ian
Ronnie
Maria

Team Death Penalty

Links coming soon!

Team Violence in the Media

Links coming soon!

Team Global Warming

Links coming soon!

Team Weed

Links coming soon!

Team God Stuff

Here are some links:

1. Hume on the Design Arg

2. Ian Hacking on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

3. Unintelligent Design by Jim Holt

4. Crazy Neo-Falsificationism

5. Francis Collins (theist) on Fresh Air

6. Richard Dawkins (atheist) on Fresh Air

7. Darwin’s God

8. Is God an Accident?

9. Ontological Arguments

Team Gay Marriage

Here are some links:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article on Homosexuality

Why the Religious Are Against Gay Marriage (Slate)

The Claims of Nature (Reason)

Gays and Genes (New York Review of Books)

Gay Marriage Email Debate (Slate)

Team Steroids

Here are some links:

An Unfair Advantage (Center of Applied Ethics)

Steroids DESTROY Baseball (Detroit Free Press)

In Defense of Steroids (Reason)

The Overhyped Harm of Steroids (National Review)

Don't Believe the Hype (Reason)

The Steroid Wars (New Yorker)

Yes, Steroids Enhance, But So Does Steak (Slate)

HGH: No Side Effects, But it Doesn't Work (Slate)

Remember, THG Was Legal and Not Banned by B'ball (Slate)

The Great Trashing of 2007

I had a fun weekend:

(See it all)

I'm the Special-est

Now that we're discussing psychological impediments, I can bring up one of my favorite topics: I'M-SPECIAL-ism. Psychological research has repeatedly shown that most Americans overestimate their own abilities. This is one of the biggest hurdles to proper reasoning: the natural tendency to think that we're smarter--or more powerful, or prettier, or whatever--than we really are.

One of my favorite blogs is Overcoming Bias. Their mission statement is sublimely anti-I'M-SPECIAL-ist:

"How can we better believe what is true? While it is of course useful to seek and study relevant information, our minds are full of natural tendencies to bias our beliefs via overconfidence, wishful thinking, and so on. Worse, our minds seem to have a natural tendency to convince us that we are aware of and have adequately corrected for such biases, when we have done no such thing."

This may sound insulting, but one of the goals of this class is getting us to recognize that we're not as smart as we think we are. All of us. You. Me. That guy. You again.

So in the upcoming weeks, at least, I hope you'll join me in my campaign to end I'M-SPECIAL-ism.

Pimply Stress

This mini-article on acne and anxiety raises a combo platter of questions relevant to what we're going over in class.

1) Reverse causation: Does acne cause stress, or does stress cause acne?
2) Questionable statistics: Do you trust the stat that students were 23 percent more likely to experience breakouts around the time of a test? Is it a good study? A reliable source? An undemanding stat?
3) Questionable use of statistics: If the above statistic is true, is it reasonable to conclude that anxiety causes acne? Or is there another plausible explanation?

What say you?

Recommendations

So what were those bands you told me to check out in class? Let me know in the comments.

Here are a few I mentioned:
Feist
Joanna Newsom
Pedro the Lion
T.a.T.u. (horrible guilty pleasure)

Most of my favorite music is full of gentle:

(The Microphones - I Felt Your Shape)

Possible Paper Articles

gladwell.com | Bad Stereotyping
race & gender = insufficient info

Blackburn Defends Philosophy
it beats being employed

Singer: How Much Should We Give?
just try to think up a more important topic

The Dark Art of Interrogation
Bowden sez torture is necessary

Can Foreign Aid Work?
didn't expect Kristof to bring up Darfur

NYT Editorial: The White House's Real Agenda
sunday editorials mean Big Picture time

Against Free Speech
but it's free, so it must be good

Is Wal-Mart Good for the Working Class?
Furman: walmart helps poor consumers more than it hurts poor workers. Ehrenreich: I call bs

What pro-lifers miss in the stem-cell debate
love embryos? then hate fertility clinics

Is Worrying About the Ethics of Your Diet Elitist?
since you asked, no

Abstinence campaign hits dead end on HPV

WSJ: White House vs. NYT on bank surveillance
on Keller's "leap of faith" (see below)

Keller's Letter on NYT's Banking Records Report

Is Selling Organs Repugnant?
freakonomicists for a free-market for organs

Should I Become a Professional Philosopher?
hell 2 da naw