Carl Sagan on Spotting Baloney -- aka Bullshit (1/3/14)

I have written much -- at least in quantity -- on bullshit tax shelters.  I thought readers might like this offering from Brain Pickings:  Maria Popova, The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking (Brain Pickings 1/3/14), here.  The rules are excerpted from Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, here.  The key chapter in that book for the topic is titled "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection."  

Sagan approaches the subject from the most vulnerable of places — having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them.

Sort of reminiscent of investors in the bullshit tax shelters.  They sought the supernatural of the tax world -- as some courts have described it, too good to be true.  They weren't true.

Sagan's 10 rules as presented in the Brain Pickings Blog are:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

The blog also links to another Brain Picking offering:  Maria Popova, The Baloney Detection Kit: A 10-Point Checklist for Science Literacy (Brain Pickings 3/16/12), here.  That short check list is:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

Although these guides were written for testing scientific claims, I think they apply also to other genre of claims, could have been usefully deployed by bullshit tax shelter investors and almost certainly are by judges and juries who have to suffer through bullshit tax shelter claims.  Or maybe judges and juries just cut to the quick and say that's bullshit!

Finally, while on the subject, I direct readers to Harry Frankfurt's classic publication, On Bullshit (Princeton Univ. Press 2005), here, which I used to have as "suggested" reading for my law students  Here is the blurb from Amazon:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." 

Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Frankfurt refers to a different genre of bullshit -- the more ubiquitous kind -- than found in bullshit tax shelters where, as I have noted in  my musings, the lie -- the big lie -- is the principal feature.  Maybe I could ask my students to discourse on the difference between everyday bullshit and bullshit tax shelters.