Ask HN: how to deal with revisionism?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784699

by Tichy • 17 years ago

15 74 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It seems that there is no "major" topic without two factions that claim the exact opposite things from each other.

- global warming

- peak oil

- evolution

- vaccinations

- holocaust

- and so on...

The only one I where I can confidently say the deniers are wrong is evolution theory. That is because I know enough about it to validate it logically (to a degree that satisfies me personally), and I can even run experiments in my computer that demonstrate evolution at work.

Maybe it is best to simply ignore most of the issues. Just wondering if HN has some other ideas.

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

If you think it's an important issue, read up on it. Read arguments from people on as many different sides of the issue as you can, and be sure to read up on the responses to those arguments from different sides of the issue.

Pay attention to peer-reviewed studies and meta-studies - look for data that you can study and verify.

Pay attention as well to the manner in which arguments are made. If an argument resorts to informal fallacies like ad hominem attacks, cherry picking data, bait-and-switch and so on, be even more highly skeptical.

It's also important to understand whether the person making the argument has any conflicts of interest (e.g. their own paycheck depends on a particular point of view taking precedence over policy). However, it doesn't automatically follow that such a person is being dishonest just because they stand to benefit from the adoption of their particular stance.

Tichy20• 17 years ago

I tried reading up on global warming, but it seems surprisingly hard to find any information. The only "big" web sites on the topic were run by anti-global-warmists, naturally they were full of charts and stuff.

How does one even find peer-reviewed information - by looking into "certified" journals? And don't the revisionists have peers as well?

"If an argument resorts to informal fallacies like ad hominem attacks, cherry picking data, bait-and-switch and so on, be even more highly skeptical."

Agreed, these tend to be fairly clear signs. My favorite is the inevitable claim that "faction x can only resort to personal attacks", which is of course also a personal attack ;-)

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

http://www.realclimate.org/

mixmax• 17 years ago

There's a subreddit called hardscience dedicated to only scientific papers. I've seen a few on global warming there. So that might be a good place to start.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardscience/

Retric3• 17 years ago

The problem with looking for scientific support is it comes in tiny pieces. Going back 30 years you find the early stuff is looking at the general trends but people don't republish the same report looking at the same data. So if you want to get a solid understanding of what scientists think you really need to read a few hundred technical reports each of which is a tiny slice of the pie. You also need to verify that each of those reports is based on solid science and created by people without significant bias; luckily if you go far enough back the issue is not all that controversial so the age of the publication is a good indicator of quality.

It would be nice to have a reliable way to avoid that much work, but if you try to shortcut this you are going to be faced with summery information that's of questionable quality.

tjic• 17 years ago

The proper approach to these debates is either (a) rational ignorance [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance ], (b) study up on both sides.

I dislike the word "revisionism" as a slur against the standard position. Revision is good. When more data comes to light, one should reevaluate what one things one knows. "Revisionism" is another word for "the scientific method" ; it should not be a slur.

I've done a fair bit of reading on all of these, and I am convinced of the "standard" position on all, except two. Anthropogenic Global Warming and Peak Oil have a lot less solid science behind them than the others, and replace it with (IMO) dubious modeling.

lbrandy• 17 years ago

Definitions certainly get muddled. Revisionism, skepticism, and denialism. You have to be really careful about labels, but we should all agree that skepticism (esp. of the scientific variety) is good but when it becomes denialism, we've left the rational world.

I find these topics fascinating. In fact, I think everyone should dig into one just as a mental exercise. Convince yourself. You will learn a tremendous amount, even from the most bizarre. And not just about science or whatever topic is at hand, but at logic, fallacy, and how people think about and convince themselves of things.

I've dug fairly deep into things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, creationism, moon hoaxes, tax protesters, and other assorted "alternative" theories (like homeopathy). I am 100% convinced they are all nonsense, but I encourage anyone to dig in. You'd be simply amazed how much you can and will learn.

eru• 17 years ago

You can start with the hollow (or flat) earth.

hughprime3• 17 years ago

Tax protesters?

ggchappell• 17 years ago

> Anthropogenic Global Warming ...

That brings up an interesting point. After all, the OP didn't say "anthropogenic"; he only said "global warming". And some people deny that as well. That gives us three positions: (1) the earth is warming up and humans made it happen, (2) the earth is warming up and humans didn't make it happen, and (3) the earth is not warming up. And then there are endless variations about how much it will warm up, and how much this is a problem, etc.

My point is that, when two sides debate an issue, they can both be wrong. Simply because we are presented with two positions, does not mean we have to choose one of them.

Thus, when the conservatives say one thing, and the liberals say another, we probably need to pick one of the two as something to vote for, but not necessarily as something to believe.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

You forgot:

4. The CO2 (and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is warming the earth, but the stratospheric sulfur dioxide produced by China's burning of lots of sulfurous coal is beginning to counteract the CO2 warming.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

The Holocaust deniers are definitely wrong too, just as are the people who don't credit the evidence for biological evolution. And anyone who thinks that medically administered vaccines are more dangerous than measles, pertussis, or seasonal flu is crazy. The harder case is vaccination against chicken pox, a disease with lower mortality and morbidity.

To answer your methodological question about how to tell the difference between competing ideas, learn to read the peer-reviewed scientific journals on each subject. Now that the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals all have open online access, it's easier than ever to practice reading scientific literature. See Peter Norvig's guide to reading scientific research

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

for what to look for while reading.

Tichy20• 17 years ago

What makes you so sure, though? I think there are definitely cases of too much vaccination, for example (though I personally don't think the major ones are superfluous - but I have so far never vaccinated against the seasonal flu...). There is a lot of money at stake, too.

Holocaust: well it's impossible to discuss, and to me personally it has little relevance. Whenever I tried to look for more information, I hit on a lot of question marks. So I think the details are very unclear, but no doubt a lot of people died. Thing is, it was before I was born and there are hardly any traces left, so how to ever be sure?

hvs2• 17 years ago

The evidence for the Holocaust is so complete and wide-ranging that to question it almost instantly puts you into the "loony" category. Just because it happened before you were born is not an argument for believing in it or not. Otherwise, %99.9999... of the knowledge that you have would be useless. The number of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust alone is evidence enough, but the documentary footage of it is also significant.

thelonecabbage• 17 years ago

A) Your argument that the Holocaust might not have happened could be applied to any historic event. Moon landings included. Saying it didn't happen because you've figured out a way that it could have been faked is pointless, since it amounts to an unfalsifiable negative.

B) Occam's razor applies. Conspiracy to fake the Holocoust is invariably more complex than it would have been for an openly racist & facist regime to have done it.

C) You would need an alternative explanation for 6 million missing persons, 2 million refugees and all those abandoned swiss bank accounts. Again Occam's razor.

Vaccination is a more about what a person believes, and the individual circumstances (like primi's, genetic history, and living environment)

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

Michael Shermer, who has a Ph.D. degree in history, does a good job of reviewing historical evidence for the Holocaust, and responding to claims of deniers, in his book Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...

which is well worth a read.

You must be a good bit younger than I am if you don't personally know Holocaust survivors, or at least much more socially isolated from Jewish people of European heritage than I am.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

There are plenty of traces left, want to come and inspect the arms of some elderly Jewish couple here ? Or do you think they got their tattoos on a lark for a fashion ?

Sorry, but this really gets my dander up. If you can't be bothered to study history then you're possibly going to repeat part of it and that is a very scary thought.

krschultz2• 17 years ago

There are more than a "hardly any traces left", you just haven't looked for them.

My great grandfather is still alive today with the numbers on his arm, he didn't tattoo that on for fun.

JimmyL• 17 years ago

re: the Holocaust, what part of it is that you're not sure of?

- That 9+ million people were killed?

- That this was done in a methodical and organized fashion?

- That the vast majority of the people killed were Jews, gays, gypsies, and other smaller/marginalized social groups?

I'm all for an organized and civilized debate, but if you want to do that without being called a nutjob, you need to clarify exactly what parts you are questioning, and provide a somewhat sound basis for doing that - i.e. if you have a problem with my first point, then explain why people think that, and why you disagree?

As Truzzi said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Questioning the Holocaust is a pretty extraordinary claim, so bring it...

cousin_it3• 17 years ago

Evaluating a big controversial issue is hard for reasons analogous to the "curse of dimensionality" when numerically computing multidimensional integrals: a grid with step 1/k in N-dimensional space has ~k^N points, way too many to sample them all. People solve this problem in practice by the Monte Carlo method: sampling points at random and averaging their values converges to the true integral much faster. So if some major topic has two opposite factions, pick a random tiny factual detail where they disagree, and honestly work out for yourself which side is right about it. Repeat several times to get a big picture with pretty good statistical assurance.

Some examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp

mhb• 17 years ago

It seems like you are mixing up revisionism with coming to a conclusion about a debatable topic. The holocaust and global warming are not differences of scale - they are differences of kind.

If you question whether the holocaust occurred, you should also be questioning any other events which you didn't personally observe. And maybe even ones which did happen to you. So unless this kind of philosophical debate is what you are wrestling with, including the holocaust on your list muddies the question you are asking.

Tichy20• 17 years ago

"you should also be questioning any other events which you didn't personally observe."

Well I take it for granted that most things I see on the news are not the truth, and that I can never know the truth if I haven't been there (and even then it is debatable, as you point out). For example in wars, the official history version gets written by the winners of the wars. That is actually one reason why I avoid firm opinions about WW2 - since I witnessed the "official history fabrication" in several cases during my lifetime, why should it have been any different for WW2?

I also can not personally experience the global warming or not warming. I don't see how the HC is very different from the rest of the list?

gloob• 17 years ago

Just for the sake of curiosity: do you believe the Roman Empire existed?

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"The holocaust and global warming are not differences of scale - they are differences of kind."

With global warming there are at least four positions argued: GW is real and man-made, and we need to take direct action against it; GW is bogus; GW is real and man-made, but a cost/benefit analysis for allocation of limited resources says we should still spend time and money on other things (fighting malaria, improving education) besides carbon reduction; GW is real but natural, so attempts to change it via human behavior are a waste.

The mainstream media (and many online writers) like to portray controversy (real or invented) as having only two sides: Politics is always left v right, Democrat v Republican (there's no in-between or off-the-2d-axis thinking); health care reform debate is only for or against the Obama plan (you can't possibly be for reform yet think Obama's plan is wrong); global warming is either a man-made issue that demands immediate direct efforts or else it's total nonsense (one cannot possibly agree with the science but disagree about what's the best use of time and money).

There are two issues here. One is how to deal with out-and-out revisionists. The other is how to encourage healthy debate on complex nuanced topics, part of which is to not demonize as revisionists or deniers or obstructionists all dissenters from the orthodox view.

reedlaw2• 17 years ago

Whenever there are rational proponents on both sides of a controversial issue I tend to view the "official" position with at least some degree of suspicion, especially when there are politics involved (e.g. global warming, vaccinations).

Tichy20• 17 years ago

But why? Your attitude is one of the reasons I tend to view the opposing opinion with suspicion, because I suspect many people only choose that faction because it is the "being against it" faction and the underdog.

reedlaw2• 17 years ago

Because there may be an underlying political interest in maintaining the "official" position. For example, if anthropogenic climate change is "fact", and not just a theory, then legislation such as cap and trade may be easier to pass.

Also, when people adopt an unfashionable or non-PC position they are more likely to experience ostracism and even persecution. That would seem to be a significant barrier to entry into these "opposing factions".

wlievens2• 17 years ago

In many of these cases, the sides are not proportional at all. One side will consist of consensus by a large group of various kinds of experts and scientist, whereas the other might consist of a much smaller group of religious lunatics.

That's not "debate". That's just random lunacy.

jibiki2• 17 years ago

Imagine that you are living in 15th century England. Christianity is followed by a large group of experts and scientists (and everyone else as well.) Do you then conclude that atheism is just random lunacy? (If you happen to be Christian, you can do this thought experiment somewhere else--15th century Persia, for instance.)

The consensus theory of truth is a good starting point, but it is not sufficient.

cousin_it3• 17 years ago

Agree completely. This idea was eloquently expressed by yosefk:

Q: All those C++ users and overlords can't be wrong, can they? Why should I believe you?

A: This sort of thinking will get you in trouble, since it's recursive and it has no termination condition. Very large groups of people with the usual subset of those having impressive credentials are known to have been wrong for very long periods of time (the flat Earth issue comes to mind; these people weren't stupid, mind you, "wrong" and "stupid" is not the same thing). Supposing you are in a group of people who are wrong right now, how do you plan to find it out using your kind of thinking?

wlievens2• 17 years ago

That's a completely different case. When the dissenting opinion is held by scientist, I think it has some value. When it's held by people who refuse to even consider applying the scientific method (creationists, for instance), you should just outright ignore them.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

You answered your own question. Learn enough to convince yourself.

frig• 17 years ago

Welcome to the modern condition; this will only get worse for the foreseeable future.

The easiest heuristic is always to first ask qui bono, and then heavily discount information whose content if true would advance the interests of the information supplier.

Thus: if Pepsi runs an ad on TV saying Pepsi is the schizz and Coke is just fizz, you discount that information heavily b/c Pepsi's just talking its book.

There's a loose analogy to information-theory proper here: the information content of a message is proportional to its unpredictability; if for example you could reliably reproduce an N-bit message once you had the first k < N bits you'd say the message only has k bits of information, not N.

Thus if knowing who is speaking lets you know what they'll say you should just ignore them; if you ever want to find out what they said you just have to remember who they were and reconstruct what they were saying, so you can defer considering it until you have a reason to care.

This looks like ad hominem but isn't; it's just avoiding low-information-gain use of your time.

The other thing to do is to back away from the twin notions that:

(1) holding true beliefs is in and of itself as valuable as you think it is

(2) most participants in a debate (a) attach the same importance to holding true beliefs that you do and (b) would switch to a different belief if the evidence supported it

(1) is probably the hardest to let go, but it's something you have to let go (holding true beliefs when such beliefs are inputs to an important decision is important; otherwise not so much).

(2) is more important.

A good general rule of thumb is that most people like to think of their lives as having had some kind of meaning or purpose, etc.; just living, enjoying what life brings you, and peacefully shuffling off the mortal coil isn't a satisfying life for many people (probably b/c our brains are hardwired for a difficult life in the jungle and get bored in the absence of real threats to overcome).

In places where life is nasty, brutish, and short survival itself is enough of a challenge that the struggle for simple survival is itself enough to cast your life into a narrative where you're a hero of some sort; in modern societies the challenges of life aren't generally enough on their own to provide a convincing narrative of moral heft and so other struggles have to be invented to fill in the meaning.

A first consequence of this impulse is firstly that people tend to assign excessive moral heft to the things they're good at:

- someone who has eg bootstrapped themselves out of a bad situation by virtue of wise decisions and self-restraint will assign a high moral value to wise decisionmaking and self-restraint, so that their life's story has a heroic bent to it above-and-beyond simple utility maximization

- someone who has strong aesthetic or artistic preferences or beliefs will assign a high moral value to aesthetics and artistic purity so that the decisions they have made (not "selling out", etc.) take on a heroic bent above-and-beyond simple utility maximization

- and of course someone who believes themselves to be good at arriving at true beliefs will assign an irrationally high importance to holding true beliefs (if you doubt this just count the # of times pundits or would-be "thinkers" write sentences like "I used to believe X but then I learned about Y and after some struggle I now believe Z instead X")

...etc. and a second consequence of this impulse arises from how it interacts with social life; people are at heart social beings and thus it is very easy to add additional axes of meaning to one's narrative by banding together into a faction as part of a larger struggle against other faction(s).

These affiliation-derived meanings range from sports teams to political labels to "sides" in an argument or public debate.

These two dynamics intersect in areas of contention in predictable ways:

- on each side of an argument you'll have some nucleus (core members) who will be a mix of people who assign a huge important to true beliefs (and currently believe in the side they're on) and shills (representatives of those whose interests hinge on what way the debate gets resolved if it gets resolved)

- then thanks to the way that additional meaning can be added to people's lives the mechanism by which affiliation-derived meaning can be added just by taking a side means that many hangers-on pick sides based on the meaning it gives them to do so (or because they've already made a commitment to a faction in exchange for enhanced meaning and "in for a penny in for a pound" (eg: joining a church makes it easier for them to cast their life as partially a struggle for virtue and against sin; b/c of that prior commitment they also commit against evolution as in the church they joined they can't do both))

With the following consequences:

- the people who hold true belief important can be convinced by reasoning and argumentation, provided the argumentation is sufficiently, overwhelmingly powerful that it's impossible to see said argumentation without coming to agree with it as a rational being; most argumentation -- especially on debatable issues -- is not that strong, and thus not enough on its own merits to nudge someone on the "other side" to take the hit to their self-esteem (as a discerner of true beliefs) and switch

- the shills can't be convinced by anything; they're dishonest participants and will argue their case as long as they keep getting paid

- the affiliational-types aren't going to be convinced by reasoning; the get convinced only when it becomes clear that greater meaning-in-their-lives can be had by switching to the other side, which is more about reconciling conflicting affiliational claims than it is about winning a debate (eg: finding a away to reconcile their religious beliefs with the other side -- thereby letting them keep their religious affiliation and join your side -- is more important than convincing them your side is right). A huge downside of even trying to argue is that arguing with them increases the amount of meaning their participation in the struggle gives them -- as it starts to look and talk like a real struggle, with conflict and bad guys and so on -- best just to make your side seem like the more-meaningful side

Which en fin is why such issues are best ignored. Things will only get worse as technology improves: allowing more communication => more opinions transmitted to more places => more factions / debates (and thus less time to learn the intricacies of each of them even if you wanted to) => more opportunities to join factions and add meaning to life => more of the same only more so.

This will be especially true for historical stuff, since history is vastly underdetermined by the available evidence and the same set of historical facts can usually support dozens of reasonable interpretations; much of the apparent previous state of consensus about what happened historically is as much a function of the previously high barriers to entry in publishing stuff as it is a sign that the previous consensus opinion was correct.

sethg6• 17 years ago

Let's say that in 10% of controversies of this nature, The Scientific Consensus is wrong and the revisionists are actually correct. I personally don't have time to review every controversy in enough depth to decide which ones belong to that 10%. For issues that I care about I may read enough critical work to form an opinion about whether or not the critics are kooks, and if they aren't kooks, then I may do enough follow-up reading to decide whether or not they are right. For issues that I really care about I may learn enough that I can advance arguments for one side or the other in my own words. For issues that I don't have time to look at, I assume that The Scientific Consensus is correct.

As Carl Sagan said, they laughed at Galileo and they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

sethg6• 17 years ago

For the specific issue of the Holocaust, I believe the go-to anti-revisionist site on the Internet is the Nizkor Project:

http://www.nizkor.org/

Tichy20• 17 years ago

Thanks for the link!

mattchew• 17 years ago

The only one I where I can confidently say the deniers are wrong is evolution theory . . . I can even run experiments . . .

Maybe you have an excessive need for certainty. Most people who enjoy thinking about these sorts of issues at all are willing to come to a conclusion without running their own personal experiments or doing primary source research.

You could consider making your views less informed and more tentative. It's not so bad if you have some wrong opinions. Almost certainly you do, some on subjects you've never even thought to question.

That said, you might find lesswrong.com and overcomingbias.com interesting places to hang out.

hughprime3• 17 years ago

I suggest reading R. A. Lyttleton on the nature of knowledge:

http://amasci.com/freenrg/bead.txt

The scientific attitude to adopt in regard to any hypothesis in my view (and we are talking of subjective things,) can be represented schemat- ically by means of a simple model of a bead that can be moved on a short length of horizontal wire (see diagram on next page). Suppose the left-hand end denoted by 0 (zero) and the right-hand end by 1 (unity), and let 0 correspond to complete disbelief unqualified, and the right-hand end 1 to absolute certain belief in the hypothesis. Now the principle of practice that I would urge on all intending scientists in regard to any and every hypothesis is: never let your bead quite reach the position 0 or 1

Once you're freed of the need to be absolutely certain of whether something is right or wrong, you can, in a more relaxed way, think about what the most sensible level of skepticism for any controversial issue about the way the world really is. Frinstance I'd say that the chance of creationism being right is something on the order of 10^-8. The chance of vaccinations being dangerous is maybe 10^-2, and the chances of them being more dangerous than the alternative maybe 10^-3. Peak oil? I dunno, 20%, depending what you mean by "peak oil". Holocaust denial comes in many forms from the lunatic to the nitpicky, each one needs its own level of skepticism. The "global warming" issue has quite unlikely positions on both sides with more plausible ones in the middle. And so on.

edgeztv• 17 years ago

(Edited)

To me the Holocaust is even more certain than evolution because I grew up with the stories of it from my grandparents. But if you don't have those stories in your family, you can also look at books, museums, photographs, eyewitness accounts. The sources for facts are endless.

Being concerned about revisionism, I would have thought the OP is worried about losing such facts, but then this thread turned into an outlet for your unwillingness to accept the holocaust.

If you weren't German, I'd simply call you an asshole, but one can imagine it being hard to believe that peers of your grandparents were responsible for killing millions of people for no reason other than race. Although coming from Germany, you should be much better informed than the average holocaust denier, from say, Iran.

Half of my grandmother's family was machine-gunned into a pit outside of Kiev called Babiy Yar with about 30 thousand other Jews by German SS during the first weeks of German occupation. The bodies, bullets, and cartridges are all still there. The executions at Babiy Yar went on for months until no more Jews could be found in the region, at which point the site was used to execute gypsies, prisoners, etc. These events were witnessed by thousands of residents of Kiev during the occupation by German forces, and you can read one such account in the book called Babiy Yar by Anatoliy Kuznecov.

Google image results:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=babi+yar&sou...

When you look at hundreds of individual mass execution events like this one, you get a more complete picture of the Holocaust.

Tichy20• 17 years ago

"outlet for your unwillingness to accept the holocaust."

I do accept the holocaust, it is merely another big issue that displays the revisionism phenomenon. I wish I hadn't mentioned it, though.

Please be careful before labeling people holocaust revisionists. At least in Germany it is not a harmless thing to accuse somebody of.

Edit: I have also seen a lot of pictures like that. In Germany we have school trips to concentration camps. I don't doubt the cruelty of the nazi time.

Ask HN: how to deal with revisionism?

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