John L. Taylor @johnnylogic@qoto.org

Two more things to keep in mind in addition to the above:
* **Brandolini's Law**: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." Also known as the **bullshit asymmetry principle**.
* **The Gish Gallop**: A rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.

#Denialism, #Fallacy, #Science, #Skepticism

I ran across the FLICC model of science denial a while ago while reading _How to Talk to a Science Denier_ by Lee McIntyre. I can say that throughout the years of engaging flat-earthers, stop-the-stealers, creationists, Covid deniers, vaccine skeptics, QAnon believers, and the like, I have faced every one of the techniques outlined. ([Image Source](https://skepticalscience.com/history-FLICC-5-techniques-science-denial.html))

#Denialism, #Fallacy, #Science, #Skepticism

Her website, [Web3 is Going Just Great](https://web3isgoinggreat.com/), is worth following if you are interested in stories related to Web3 and have a healthy skepticism of it.

Molly White bravely presented her talk, [Is Web3 bullshit?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsllEF7w_g), at Web Summit 2022 in front of a crowd with what are likely many people deeply invested in Web3. She calls out the ubiquity of vaporware, the numerous grifts, and the entrenchment power behind the rhetoric while acknowledging the importance of the lofty goals which should inspire technologists.

#Skepticism, #Technology, #Video, #Web3

Political scientist and philosopher, Eric Schliesser offers [further critique](https://crookedtimber.org/2022/11/24/on-macaskills-what-we-owe-the-future-part-1/) of MacAskill's longtermism:

"I offer two (kinds of) criticisms of What We Owe the Future. First, I discuss its cavalier attitude toward injustice. This criticism will be extrinsic to MacAskill’s own project. Second, I argue it treats a whole number of existential risks as uncorrelated which are, almost certainly correlated. (This I consider an intrinsic problem.) And this exhibits two kinds of lacunae at the heart of his approach: (a) his lack of theoretical interest in political institutions and the nature of international political coordination; (b) the absence of a disciplining social theory (or models) that can help evaluate the empirical data and integrate them."

Part two is forthcoming.

#EffectiveAltruism, #Ethics, #Longtermism, #Philosophy, #PoliticalScience

Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

#Kindness, #Poetry

Efforts to save the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly have resulted in quadrupling the population as well as helping save its host plant, the Kincaid’s lupine, from a similar fate!

"[T]he species is slated to be downlisted from endangered to threatened. If this status change is finalized, as is expected to happen this year, Fender’s blue will become only the second insect to have recovered in the history of the Endangered Species Act." ([Story Source](https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.11/north-wildlife-how-a-rare-butterfly-returned), [Image Source](https://annualmeeting2020.npsoregon.org/fieldtrips.php?id=22))

#Conservation, #Biology, #Butterfly, #Flower, #GoodNews, #Oregon