Recently something brand new has emerged about Steve that is astonishing. In his own empirical work attacking others for biased data analysis in the service of political ideology—it is he who is guilty of the same bias in service of political ideology. What is worse—and more shocking—is that Steve’s errors are very extensive and the bias very serious. A careful reanalysis of one case shows that his target is unblemished while his own attack is biased in all the ways Gould attributes to his victim.
Pointer from Jason Collins.
what you should really look for, in a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, is intellectual integrity: the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions, the willingness to admit mistakes and change course.
Pointer from Mark Thoma.
Is it a rule of thumb that if you accuse other people of committing an intellectual sin, then you yourself are committing it?
Yes – it’s called projection. Not every time, but it is a good default assumption until proven otherwise.
Probably. As a matter of fact, there’s the Fallacy Fallacy: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy
I think I’ve observed this: when someone says they always clean the house, what that really means is that they rarely clean the house. Cleaning the house is mentally energetically expensive for them. They FEEL like they always clean the house.
Btw, is there some new PK flourish I’m not aware of?
He is more calculated than he lets on, though. I can’t see ASK arguing a point he knows is wrong because he has pundit multiple personality syndrome, but PK does it all the time.
It’s even more true of politicians accusing the opposition of certain moral failings.
Yes, this probably is a reasonably good rule of thumb. I would suggest a corollary heuristic.
When someone claims an intellectual virtue for themselves (like taking the most charitable view of those who disagree) that may also stem from some shortcomings in that area.
Zing!
Except he is referring to a known issue with known issues, the most remarkable of which is the unobjectivity of it.
All you need to know is that he could have left off the personal identification and everyone (e.g. “the lion of the blogosphere”) would have known who he was talking about, not because of some weird feature of all of us, but because of him.
I try to only pay attention to pundits and commentators when they bite the hand that feeds them. That is when I feel there is informative content and I might learn something new and possibly true. In jargon-speak, only costly signals are convincing.
“Whoever hath smelt it beith the one who hath dealt it.”
-Thomas Paine
Ha! I once characterized this as a divine joke (and I don’t think it’s restricted to intellectual matters).
As i like to say, Interfluidity gives good heterodox.
Free trade could be an unqualified good, or at least I have little problem holding that belief while also recognizing the major marginal trading partner since the great stagnation took effect is basically a communist party, and thus maybe what we are doing isn’t exactly free trade. And they are the good guys! They are trying to grow their economy and help their peasants. They have an account surplus. Let’s try some free trade and see.