Recomended Resources

#1

This thread is for people to recommend less well known resources (compared to, say, The God Delusion, &c., &c.). If you add an entry here, please change the subject line to the name of your recommendation.

This is a sticky, to float to the top of the forum...

#2

JAB and I recommend the book "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
It can be downloaded free-of-charge.

The author is a psychology professor who has studied authoritarians. What he describes seems to me to be very similar to that of the Baboons.

#3

It might have already been referenced in the original Slimepit (I can't remember now) but the Debunking Handbook by John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky is available free online at the following link: http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/De ... ndbook.pdf

It has some good stuff about how people filter out information that doesn't conform to their presupposed belief system. It also gives cues on how to possibly overcome this problem. It's a relatively quick, yet informative read. A skeptic's must-read (in my humble, non-dogmatic opinion :D ).

#4

Hoaxes by Curtis McDougall
Historical list of famous political, scientific and cultural hoaxes. Astounds you with the sheer number; however, the author is able to draw general conclusions about why people believe outrageous claims.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
An extended essay on the nature of fanaticism. He shows that fanatics of all stripes have much more in common than they'd want people to believe. Doesn't take a purely negative view of fanaticism, saying that it might be useful in spearheading good causes (abolitionism, suffrage).

An Introduction to Error Analysis by John Taylor. The best textbook I've ever read. Teaches you how to deal with the uncertainty inherent in all data and helps you think in terms of probability instead of yes/no. Also covers hypothesis testing. Any basic text of statistics or probability theory could be substituted here.

Any introductory text book on logic. I used A Concise Introduction to Logic by Patrick J. Hurley as an undergrad. Something that covers symbolic logic, proofs, and both formal and informal fallacies.

At least one book written by someone you disagree with. Maybe it's Refusing to be a Man, The Bell Curve, Darwin's Black Box, or Against Method. Oh, and if you're going to criticize it on the internet you should probably read it first.

#5

Propaganda Critic

#6

Franc's post reminded me of this, "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell. Orwell's rules, if followed, would dispense of probably over half the propaganda currently in print.

Another great essay is Pathological Science by Irving Langmuir.
Langmuir shows how scientists can fool themselves in very sophisticated ways. Along a similar vein, but superior to Feynman's Cargo Cult Science speech.

Also some respect for the old school skeptics like Pierre Simon Laplace, who wrote the following in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814) pg. 118-119:

We would give no credence to the testimony of a man who should attest to us that in throwing a hundred dice into the air they had all fallen on the same face. If we had ourselves been spectators of this event we should believe our own eyes only after having carefully examined all the circumstances, and after having brought in the testimonies of other eyes in order to be quite sure that there had been neither hallucination nor deception.
But after this examination we should not hesitate to admit it in spite of its extreme improbability; and no one would be tempted, in order to explain it, to recur to a denial of the laws of vision. We ought to conclude from it that the probability of the constancy of the laws of nature is for us greater than this, that the event in question has not taken place at all - a probability greater than that of the majority of historical facts which we regard as incontestable. One may judge by this the immense weight of testimonies necessary to admit a suspension of natural laws, and how improper it would be to apply to this case the ordinary rules of criticism. All those who without offering this immensity of testimonies support this when making recitals of events contrary to those laws, decrease rather than augment the belief which they wish to inspire; for then those recitals render very probable the error or the falsehood of their authors.

He had nicely dispensed with the 'evidence' for Jesus' miracles long before William Lane Craig was born.

Your Daddy · #7

Here's something all you self-important whiners might find useful...http://www.babycenter.com/0_choosing-an ... er_1078.bc

I was going to post porn links but after reading some of what passes for rational thinking in this forum it's obvious you don't need any help with the wanking...

#8

Your Daddy wrote:Here's something all you self-important whiners might find useful...http://www.babycenter.com/0_choosing-an ... er_1078.bc

I was going to post porn links but after reading some of what passes for rational thinking in this forum it's obvious you don't need any help with the wanking...

Witty, urbane and cogently argued! Noel Coward is weeping silently into his gin and bitters...

#9

I have a wee set of books that I always like to recommend for anyone who is thinking seriously of trying to become a critical thinker and/or skeptic.

1. The Demon-haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark -- Carl Sagan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World).

2. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are -- Carl Sagan; Ann Druyan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of ... %28book%29).

3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature -- Steven Pinker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate)

If any of the Baboolies, including that imitation academic and intellectual fraud, PeeZus Myers, were able to read, and then took the next step and learned how to understand that the world, and reality, is not black and white, and then went the distance to try to comprehend the information in these three books, using things like dictionaries, we would not have the chthonic religious disease that is FfTB.

My Daddy said: "Here's something all you self-important whiners might find useful..." etc.

Ooh, ooh, I've got that one. Bit it was a hard read. I didn't get it. I don't like kids.

On a more serious note, why is it that so few Baboolies (and, judging by the sophisticated erudition, I am assuming that Daddy is either a Baboolie, or a Baboolie wannabe) are able to present an urbane and cogent ;) ;) argument? Is it some kind of congenital malfunction? Devolution? America? Say, now that's a seriously interesting question, I think. Are there any Baboolies outside of America? Oh, shit, yes there are. Jason LousyCanuck Thibeediddydiedoh for one. Mind you, he has posted several posts that show quite clearly that his personal view of the world is very heavily based on an American perspective. I think he is probably just a Yank in sheep's clothing.

Ah well. It was a thought.

#10

John Greg wrote:Are there any Baboolies outside of America? Oh, shit, yes there are. Jason LousyCanuck Thibeediddydiedoh for one. Mind you, he has posted several posts that show quite clearly that his personal view of the world is very heavily based on an American perspective. I think he is probably just a Yank in sheep's clothing.

Ah well. It was a thought.

I think you'll find that Canada is still in America, specifically North America...

/pedant_off

Your Daddy · #11

Yeah, let's take a look at this place, shall we?

Periodic Table of Swearing - The Undead Thread 1 Topics 854 Posts

Freethought, Atheism, Skepticism and Science This is the core of the site - 17 Topics 154 Posts

"FreeThought Blogs" and the FC5 - Any stuff relating to the Baboollies 40 Topics 369 Posts

Admin and Board Structure 44 Topics 355

So, what have we got here? The supposed "core of the site" has the fewest topics and comments, and even there most of the topics and comments have to do with the same thing as the rest of forum; whining about the "baboolies" and arguing amongst yourself about whether or not you should all still be talking about kicking women in the cunt or whining in a kinder, gentler manner. (Yeah, there's some Noel Coward quality discourse right there, eh? :roll: )

I think this forum is just about the saddest thing on the internet; a pack of self important wannabe bloggers crying to each other `cause the big kids didn't take them seriously enough. You've created a nearly perfect parody of yourselves. How pathetic. Amusing, but pathetic.

Grow up and get a life, children...seriously...

#12

How should I phrase this?

Erm, "Blow me!"

Yep, that sounds about right.

Your Daddy · #13

Lsuoma wrote:How should I phrase this?

Erm, "Blow me!"

Yep, that sounds about right.

Ah, that must be an example of the famous "sophisticated erudition" I was just hearing about... :lol: :lol: :lol:

#14

Oh, and I understand, Big Daddy, that you're trying to get your rocks off by provoking a reaction, but as one of the greatest philosophers of all time said, "That dog won't hunt, Monsignor!"

#15

A question to all of the posters who want to keep this thread useful: would you prefer that I restrict posting here to registered users and push the trolls off to another forum at the Slyme Pit, or are you happy to have the amusements mixed in here as well?

Guest · #16

Lsuoma wrote:Oh, and I understand, Big Daddy, that you're trying to get your rocks off by provoking a reaction, but as one of the greatest philosophers of all time said, "That dog won't hunt, Monsignor!"

No, I don't care about a reaction; I'm having fun just reading your little circle jerk of a forum and chuckling at the whole sad little pity party.

But do go ahead and react if you like (or block me or delete my posts like the hypocrite we all know you are); makes no difference to me...

Guest · #17

Lsuoma wrote:A question to all of the posters who want to keep this thread useful: would you prefer that I restrict posting here to registered users and push the trolls off to another forum at the Slyme Pit, or are you happy to have the amusements mixed in here as well?

WHAT"S THIS!!!!1!! SILENCING AND BULLYING AND CENSORSHIP OH MY!!!!!!11!!! :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

#18

Hooked!

#19

... would you prefer that I restrict posting here to registered users and push the trolls off to another forum at the Slyme Pit, or are you happy to have the amusements mixed in here as well?

Let them have the same privileges as we all do.

For the most part, individuals like Your Daddy only prove our point. And, sometimes, they can be very funny; incidentally funny, but very entertaitining. Even the ranty raging freaks like skeptifem, or some of the nutcase commenters from FfTB, can provide a lot of entertainment with their myopic rants, raves, and other self-indulgences.

Generally speaking, there is not much that is as Internetty funfunny as watching an FfTB clone rape the fainting couch.

#20

John Greg wrote:
... would you prefer that I restrict posting here to registered users and push the trolls off to another forum at the Slyme Pit, or are you happy to have the amusements mixed in here as well?
Let them have the same privileges as we all do.

For the most part, individuals like Your Daddy only prove our point. And, sometimes, they can be very funny; incidentally funny, but very entertaitining. Even the ranty raging freaks like skeptifem, or some of the nutcase commenters from FfTB, can provide a lot of entertainment with their myopic rants, raves, and other self-indulgences.

Generally speaking, there is not much that is as Internetty funfunny as watching an FfTB clone rape the fainting couch.

I know, I was only joking, but my baiting wasn't very subtle. And given where I was born I believe that this is the colour of my privilege...

#21

John Greg wrote:
... would you prefer that I restrict posting here to registered users and push the trolls off to another forum at the Slyme Pit, or are you happy to have the amusements mixed in here as well?
Let them have the same privileges as we all do.

For the most part, individuals like Your Daddy only prove our point. And, sometimes, they can be very funny; incidentally funny, but very entertaitining. Even the ranty raging freaks like skeptifem, or some of the nutcase commenters from FfTB, can provide a lot of entertainment with their myopic rants, raves, and other self-indulgences.

Generally speaking, there is not much that is as Internetty funfunny as watching an FfTB clone rape the fainting couch.

While I think it might be nice to keep the baboons in a playpen of their own, I think most of us are adults and can ignore the twits, or respond however. We know Dr Dr Dembski used to get his sycophants, er students, to troll UD for points in his class. I see this same thing for PZs sycophants. Troll over here to try to get a reaction, to prove their "superiority" (along with the pseudo-macho chest thumping that is all such specimens are capable of), and to try to achieve status within the baboon hierarchy. It's a rite of passage for them. I do love the unintentional irony of someone coming here, trying to say why the forum was started (I thought it was really the periodic table thread, with more threads as needed or desired, not the other way around), then commenting on how pathetic it is, all the while taking the same time to read and make a comment (like others here). I'm sure they'll try to claim there's a difference. And even if we grant them that point (for argumentation), how can they explain the vast comments over at FftB, most of which are just echoes?

Guest · #22

Oh I see...you guys think I take this shitty forum as seriously as you do....BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

No, I will never be that pathetic.

#23

Guest wrote:Oh I see...you guys think I take this shitty forum as seriously as you do....BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

No, I will never be that pathetic.

Simple Internet Shit #101:

The more one posts on a forum about how said forum is shitty, irrelevant etc., the more one defeats one's own argument.

Guest · #24

Tigzy wrote:
Guest wrote:Oh I see...you guys think I take this shitty forum as seriously as you do....BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

No, I will never be that pathetic.
Simple Internet Shit #101:

The more one posts on a forum about how said forum is shitty, irrelevant etc., the more one defeats one's own argument.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

YOU"RE JUST TRYING TO BULLY ANS SILENCE ME WAAHHHHHHHHHHHH :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

#25

Guest wrote:
Tigzy wrote:
Guest wrote:Oh I see...you guys think I take this shitty forum as seriously as you do....BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

No, I will never be that pathetic.
Simple Internet Shit #101:

The more one posts on a forum about how said forum is shitty, irrelevant etc., the more one defeats one's own argument.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

YOU"RE JUST TRYING TO BULLY ANS SILENCE ME WAAHHHHHHHHHHHH :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

No, quite the contrary. By all means, keep spending time posting here telling us how much of a worthless, irrelevant forum you think this is. Clearly, it's very important to you.

#26

Tigzy wrote:
Guest wrote:
Tigzy wrote:
Guest wrote:Oh I see...you guys think I take this shitty forum as seriously as you do....BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

No, I will never be that pathetic.
Simple Internet Shit #101:

The more one posts on a forum about how said forum is shitty, irrelevant etc., the more one defeats one's own argument.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

YOU"RE JUST TRYING TO BULLY ANS SILENCE ME WAAHHHHHHHHHHHH :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
No, quite the contrary. By all means, keep spending time posting here telling us how much of a worthless, irrelevant forum you think this is. Clearly, it's very important to you.

Shhh - don't give away the secret. If it figures out the irony it may leave, although to be honest, as a chew toy it's not much. Pretty much one track, and one trick. Maybe we'll see the "I know you are, what am I" gambit? Or maybe the "I'm rubber, you're glue" one? Surely it can come up with more than just crying.

#27

I kinda like this person/troll. Makes our point for us. Lsuoma, no banning, no censoring, no editing (except maybe for format). Please?

#28

I started listening to this in the car last night http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... ly/4084394. From the blurb: What is a better tool for gaining knowledge and discovering truthâ€”science or spirituality? Or are the scientific and spiritual approaches not so different after all? A physicist, a Buddhist monk and a biologist talk about the numinous cosmos and enlightenment.

I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I have a suspicion that it will boil down to the Universe is fucking big and awe inspiring (supernatural entities need not apply)

#29

Science and spirituality? Surely an oxymoron in the same sentence??

#30

Not necessarily. I think Sagan had a good comment on spirituality:

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of lightâ€years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

#31

Read the following:

A scholarly but for the most part very readable treatise on normative, descriptive, and prescriptive approaches to rationality at the individual and societal level bound to what the author, UPenn psychologist Jonathan Baron, calls "active open-mindedness".

You will most likely recognize blind spots in your reasoning that you never knew you had. This book is not an overly Mickey-Moused pop sci discussion you'd expect of, say, Jonah Lehrer. It is pure content.

#32

John Greg wrote:3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature -- Steven Pinker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate)

Terrible book.

[One logical] talent [allegedly not captured by connectionism] is compositionality: the ability to entertain a new, complex thought that is not just the sum of the simple thoughts composing it but depends on their relationships. The thought that cats chase mice, for example, cannot be captured by activating a unit each for â€œcats,â€ â€œmice,â€ and â€œchase,â€ because that pattern could just as easily stand for mice chasing cats.

[Another] is recursion: the ability to embed one thought inside another, so that we can entertain not only the thought that Elvis lives, but the thought that the National Enquirer reported that Elvis lives, that some people believe the National Enquirer report that Elvis lives, that it is amazing that some people believe the National Enquirer report that Elvis lives, and so on. Connectionist networks would superimpose these propositions and thereby confuse their various subjects and predicates.

The recursive auto-associative memory model, which does just that, was well over a decade old at the time he wrote The Blank Slate:

A long-standing difficulty for connectionist modeling has been how to represent variable-sized recursive data structures, such as trees and lists, in fixed-width patterns. This paper presents a connectionist architecture which automatically develops compact distributed representations for such compositional structures, as well as efficient accessing mechanisms for them.

That's one bad thing about that book. There are many, many others.

#33

I can't help myself. Here's another stinker towards the end of The Blank Slate:

In The Mating Mind, the psychologist Geoffrey Miller argues that the impulse to create art is a mating tactic: a way to impress prospective sexual and marriage partners with the quality of one's brain and thus, indirectly, one's genes. Artistic virtuosity, he notes, is unevenly distributed, neurally demanding, hard to fake, and widely prized. Artists, in other words, are sexy. Nature even gives us a precedent, the bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea. The males construct elaborate nests and fastidiously decorate them with colorful objects such as orchids, snail shells, berries, and bark. Some of them literally paint their bowers with regurgitated fruit residue using leaves or bark as a brush. The females appraise the bowers and mate with the creators of the most symmetrical and well-ornamented ones.

Except that doesn't square with the (less fanciful body of research in the) psychology of creativity. Creativity is associated (causally) with schizotypy, which generally includes social anhedonia, i.e. less dealing with other people in general i.e. ceteris paribus fewer children. Indeed, The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and The Dark Side of Creativity do mention in passing that creative people tend to have fewer children than average, if any. The usual line of EP wank is to retreat into "Well, it was different in the EEA."â€”OK, ball's in your court now; prove it. I will note that people who gain notoriety for having lots and lots of kids, often with multiple partners, rarely seem to be terribly creative, at least here in the US. Doubt the situation is much different elsewhere though.

So in conclusion: The Blank Slate is a really, really awful book.

Now I promise to stop unless prodded further.

#34

Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is really inspiring. Sure, a lot of his guesses were off, and his philosophy is not technically atheistic (though functionally it is), but it's fantastic watching someone from an age ruled by gross superstition make a heroic effort to parse out the world and coming to some surprisingly prescient observations. He even has a rudimentary theory of evolution and a good eye for prosaic explanations of human behavior. It's a shame Aristotle was where Western thought was stuck for over a thousand years--any such orthodoxy would have been bad, but at least with Atomism/Epicureanism we might have had some basic idea of how things worked.

Not science so much, but still an ancient triumph of rational thinking-- The Daoist manual Taiping Jing. Way ahead of its time in recognizing that WHY people do things is not an easy question. Instead of a simplistic view of "original state" or "virtue" that dominate a lot of Chinese thought, it recognizes that there are a lot of social and external factors that influence human behavior. Even the emperor is a prisoner of history to some extent.

Shibboleth · #35

Here's a resource you nitwits could use...

http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

Remember, Shiny Side Out!!!

#36

Susan Jacoby recently wrote a nice article on Robert G. Ingersoll in The American Scholar:

"Why do some public figures who were famous in their own time become part of a nationâ€™s historical memory, while others fade away or are confined to what is called â€œniche fameâ€ on the Internet? Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), known in the last quarter of the 19th century as the Great Agnostic, once possessed real fame as one of the two most important champions of reason and secular government in American historyâ€”the other being Thomas Paine. Indeed, one of Ingersollâ€™s lasting accomplishments as the preeminent American orator of his era was the revival of Paine, the preeminent publicist of the American Revolution, in the historical memory and imagination of the nation."

http://theamericanscholar.org/a-new-birth-of-reason/

If you search YouTube, you'll find a number of his lectures recorded by various readers: e.g., http://goo.gl/Pp8MA

#37

Also, Eric Hoffer's classic "True Believer"

"The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one."

#38

Zhu Wuneng wrote:Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is really inspiring. Sure, a lot of his guesses were off, and his philosophy is not technically atheistic (though functionally it is), but it's fantastic watching someone from an age ruled by gross superstition make a heroic effort to parse out the world and coming to some surprisingly prescient observations. He even has a rudimentary theory of evolution and a good eye for prosaic explanations of human behavior.

Yes, it's a great read. Another good one from the same period is Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, even if he (or at least his imagined philosophical dialogue) often backs away from some of the more interesting stuff and ends up all careful and centrist. It was a big influence on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Natura_Deorum

#39

In addition to "Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies" by Daphne Patai, I've found this book by Simon Fraser University law professor Neil Boyd, entitled "Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism Has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality". It's available in an ebook version so perhaps I'll check it out if it's not available at my local library.

http://www.neilboyd.net/big_sister.php

#40

Stretchycheese wrote:In addition to "Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies" by Daphne Patai, I've found this book by Simon Fraser University law professor Neil Boyd, entitled "Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism Has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality". It's available in an ebook version so perhaps I'll check it out if it's not available at my local library.

http://www.neilboyd.net/big_sister.php

The introduction was on his website, but alas no longer. Though its still available via the WayBackMachine @ http://web.archive.org/web/200808071240 ... uction.pdf

#41

I began with the #FTBIrony hashtag, anyone who likes might add his favorite exploit of our favorite bloggers.

#42

franc wrote:Propaganda Critic

""you can play with knives in electric sockets, but I for one think aluminium sewing needles are much better""

#43

Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Histiography, by Aviezer Tucker.

It examines the philosophy of history (obviously) and argues that science has essentially the same epistemology (just with data volumes that are many, many orders of magnitude greater, therefore making it's findings more conclusive). He argues that the foundation of all of this is bayesian in nature.

Richard Carrier's Proving History is IMO the best tool for non-mathematicians to learn how to use bayes' theorem in everyday situations. If anyone wants to read it without giving him the revenue, the EPUB version is available on piratebay.

#44

I would recommend the three, "The Baroque Cycle", books by Neal Stephenson - "Quicksilver!", "The Confusion" and, "The System of the World".

They have fictitious characters interact with famous people of the 17th and 18th centuries.

For me he made dead history come alive.

YMMV

JesperBothPedersen · #45

Game over guys. I'm done.

#46

The only resource needed for analyzing PZ's tactics is this classic.

#47

You guys should follow me on twitter,btw. We're having a blast.:-)

https://twitter.com/JesperBothPede1