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Cognitive Biases: Logical Fallacies' Ugly Sisters

22/9/2015

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A while back, I shared a list of logical fallacies.  It is important to be aware of fallacious reasoning, especially when engaged in exercises such as philosophy.  It is equally important to be aware of cognitive biases, even in simple daily tasks.  Most logical fallacies tend to have positive rhetorical impact due to the way our brains work, specifically the illogical biases that they lend themselves to.
Here's a lost of the more common and impactful ones:
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A List of Podcasts

18/9/2015

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The time has come, I think, to purge some podcasts off my list.  I have more podcasts than I have time, and some of them have ceased providing utility for my current situation... which happens a few times a year.  Usually, when this time comes, I share on facebook the ones that I am abandoning and why.  Now that I have a platform on which I talk about podcasts incessantly, I figure this may be a better place to do so.

Podcasts I continue to listen to (in order of priority):

  1. Superego:  Short and rarely updated, Superego is the funniest thing I have ever heard on the internet.  That is all.
  2. Robot or Not: Five minute episodes in which the hosts determine whether or not a specific piece of technology is a robot.  Fun, short, funny.  I disagree with their conditions for being a robot, but that doesn't take away from the fun.
  3. Tom Woods Show:  Updated every weekday, I make it a point to keep up-to-date with this show.  Tom is the most respectable and most influential anarchist alive today.  Every day he has something new and important to share with the world.  Everyone, regardless of what they believe, must listen to his show, if they are going to say they are a critical thinker.
  4. Mad Philosopher Podcast: Yeah, yeah... I know... I listen to my own show, I'm such a dork and a narcissist.  I listen to it the day I upload in order to catch major issues with the show.  I've already caught and re-uploaded two shows, so the process works.  I recommend everyone listen to what I have to say, too (as any narcissist would).
  5. Sovryn Tech:  A tech and culture podcast with another paradigm anarchist.  A little think/left sometimes, but always well-reasoned and intellectual, Brian Sovryn has done more for liberty than any politician, ever.
  6. History of Philosophy Without any Gaps: A weekly podcast that has been methodically plodding through the history of philosophy from the pre-socratics through today.  Each episode is short, easy to understand, and like the name says, has no gaps.  Excellent for both beginners and people who know it all.
  7. The Cracked Podcast:  Just like the Cracked website, but in audio format.  Hilarious, informative and a little too left to be taken seriously.  I have fun and learn a lot of trivia.
  8. DH Unplugged: A weekly discussion of the financial markets by Dvorak and Horowitz.  Very informative about what's going on in the world, even if one has no skin in investments.
  9. Christopher Cantwell Essays:  With more passion and rage than even I can muster, the well-read and ever-grounded Cantwell will occasionally record a stand-alone rant which always has something important to tell someone.
  10. Very Bad Wizards:  My favorite Philosophy podcast, these two guys are hilarious and relaxed.  Their content is always fresh and informative.
  11. Philosophize This:  A fun exploration of concepts in philosophy, seemingly chosen at random.  The host has a cleverness about him and a solid grasp of the concepts and contexts he covers.
  12. Catholic Stuff you Should Know:  A podcast currently hosted by my assistant pastor and my (likely) future pastor, they cover a wide variety of subjects, all of which are important to living a full faith life.  Lots of fun banter and jokes, lots of educational stuff.
  13. Partially Examined Life:  My first and still one of my favorites podcasts, the Partially Examined life is a monthly exploration of a small group of texts in philosophy.  With a healthy balance of irreverence, humor, and knowledgeably, this show is usually a lot of fun, and teaches me stuff I didn't know in a field in which I'm generally very knowledgeable.
  14. Radical Agenda:  Christopher Cantwell again, hosting a live show in his living room.  Every so often, he goes a little too conservative (being against immigration, for example), but he is usually 100% on top of what it means to be an anarchist in an unfree world.
  15. School Sucks Show:  Usually randomly updated, but with long episodes, School Sucks is a show devoted to education and intellectual self-defense.  Parents and educators ought to listen to this show, as well as anyone who wishes to be intellectually literate.
  16. The Ex-Worker:  An AnCom production about AnComs, this is a useful resource in encouraging me that at least some anarchists are actually doing something besides sitting around and praying for the second coming of John Galt.
  17. Rationally Speaking:  An atheist podcast that focuses primarily on cognitive biases, science, and ethics.  On rare occasion they'll bring Neil DeGrasse Tyson (or some other popular "scientist") on to shit all over philosophy and religion, but they are usually very ice and even-handed.  One of the main hosts just left, but the remaining host has carried along nicely.
  18. Anime World Order:The snobby older brother to Anime Pulse, AWO updates rarely and sporadically, but I very much enjoy their discussions of older anime, especially since they tend to share similar opinions to my own and expose me to things I've missed.
  19. History on Fire:  A new podcast from Daniele Bolelli (of Drunken Taoist fame).  He recounts interesting and often-ignored chunks of history from an amusing angle.  The history lessons being my favorite part of the Drunken Taoist, this podcast is awesome.
  20. Atlas MD: A recent discovery of mine (I shared it on the daily resource suggestions).  It helps me keep tabs on an amazing agorist project that may save the medical industry from itself.
  21. Personal Profitability Podcast:  Another recent find, this is a podcast put on by a former co-worker of mine from Summer Camp.  It reminds me a lot of "The Art of Manliness" but with more useful ideas about money and less soldier worshiping.
  22. Samurai Archives Podcast: Exactly what it sounds like.  A historical survey of Japanese culture, samurai, bushido, etc.  A must-listen for samurai fans.
  23. The Drunken Taoist:  A show that talks about lefty subjects more than anything else, funny and informative, if a little too statist for me to really recommend it.  My favorite parts are the history, drugs, and stories about the host's daughter, Isabella.
  24. Powerful Parenting:  I found this show just last week.  It was features on School Sucks, and it seems to be a good show along the lines of peaceful parenting and the other parenting "styles" that I'm interested in.
  25. Rebel Love Show:  The host of this show recently reached out out me on facebook, so I thought I'd give his show a listen.  Turns out it's pretty good.  I've only heard a few episodes, but I plan on listening to more.
  26. Lets Talk Bitcoin:  A huge network of blockchain-related shows, I listen to the actual "Let's Talk Bitcoin" show and the MaidSafe show.  Both of them keep me up-to-date on what I believe to be the most important areas of the Bitcoin world.
  27. East Meets West:  A show that I'm not really sure why I listen to... It's a discussion between two fairly well-to-do people in the hollywood circuit.  They usually talk a little bit about movies and a lot about current events.  They update rarely, but their conversations are fun.
  28. The Art of Manliness:  A former favorite of mine, the Art of Manliness explores manliness and male culture.  Of late, there has been too much president and soldier worship for me to get all that excited about the show.
  29. Radiolab:  This show keeps just barely making the cut.  Overproduced, frenetic, and excessively liberal, the only thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that every three episodes or so presents me with something I hadn't known about previously.
  30. Matt Walsh:  The only reason he's still on my list is because his episodes are short and it reminds me of how a lot of my Catholic friends see the world still.  When talking about social issues (like whether someone becomes a woman because they chopped off their balls), he's usually spot-on, but his politics are decidedly neocon bullshit.
  31. Anime Pulse:The show is on a temporary hiatus while management gets all their ducks in a row.  Until recently, it has been a fun and quality production (mostly Manga Pulse and Anime Pulse... VG pulse sucks).  After a host change at Anime Pulse, I've been losing interest in the show, but this hiatus makes me feel that if it gets off the ground again, it will be a quality show again.
  32. Freedom Feens:  This show was one of my favorites for a good while.  A group of people just talking about freedom and stuff on the radio for a few hours every day.  The only reasons I don't listen to them too much anymore is because they put out so much material that if they had priority, I would wind up listening to nothing else, and for a while now they've been spending more time shitting on Chris Cantwell than doing anything fun or productive (and MK Lords posses me off a lot of times).
  33. Anarchast:  I rarely listen to this podcast anymore, as Jeff Burwick is a very sketchy guy and the show tends to host respectable people alongside total nutjobs and it isn't really worth my time.  However, There is an occasional guest that I hadn't heard of before who actually has something worthwhile to say, and I use this podcast to find these people.


Podcasts I no longer listen to:
  • ArchDen.org: The official podcast of the Archdiocese of Denver.  It used to be a campy but fun and informative podcast by a couple people from teh Chancery... but that was discontinued in favor for random instances of the Archbishop's homilies.  All of which are identical: "God loves you, we are unworthy, abortion is bad, vote republican, give us money."
  • The Nerdist:  Funny, but updates something like every day, and I just don't have time for it.  Cantwell, Superego, and Cracked make up for it in the funny department.
  • The Voluntary Life:  I originally started listening to this show because Stephanie Murphy voiced the intro and outro.  It's an interesting show, with good tips and tricks for living more freely in an un-free world, but they rarely present anything I don't already know.


Podcasts that have been discontinued:
  • Enchanted Grounds: Technically, not discontinued, but their podcast feed has been broken and they haven't fixed it for over a year.
  • Into The Deep: Also technically not discontinued, but the last time it updated was June of last year...
  • Z-Talk:
  • Zelda Working Title Podcast:
  • FTL Weekly Digest:Philosophize This:
  • Saint Cast:
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More NVC, but in a Broader Context

2/9/2015

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This suggestion is a bit time consuming, but no more so than a few of the books I've suggested.  Today's suggestion is a podcast series on the Trivium method of reason and it's relationship with NonViolent Communication.  

I recommend listening to this series, as it effectively outlines NVC, the Trivium, and provides a summary education concerning CIA programs like MKUltra and the cultural zeitgeist of cybernetics.  One can make do with listening to episodes 363 through 370, but if one wishes, tehy can listen to all of the videos on this page in order to get the full picture.

http://schoolsucksproject.com/category/podcast/the-trivium-applied-to-communication/
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Logic Test

24/8/2015

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Today's resource suggestion is a simple logic test and the explanation concerning the results of that test.  "How Logical Are You?" is a short, simple video that explains what amounts to one of the foundations of Bertrand Russel's logic works.  These sorts of puzzles ought to be commonly known to people at large as, without them, illogical assumptions and prejudices become the cultural narrative.  I'm speaking less about racism and more about the inevitable rise of criminal and misanthropic institutions.

You can find the video here, on YouTube.  I got it right. I say this not to brag, but to prove that there is no excuse for not getting it right, if my dumb ass can.  If you don't get it right, that's fine; you can learn (with time and effort) how to think logically, too.
The rules to the puzzle may not be very clearly stated.  The cards have two sides.  The rules concerning "if one side is X, the other side is Y" refers to individual cards, not the set.  If you want a clue, I recommend hearkening back to what Karl Popper thinks about knowledge and how one increases certainty..

Also, while it sounds like the video poo-poos inductive reasoning, if you watch it all the way through, they clearly show the utility of induction, even if it isn't logic, per-se.
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Kuhn on Philosophy of Science

12/8/2015

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I've previously recommended reading Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, as I feel Popper has provided the best set of epistemological tools and groundings for science to-date.  Thomas S. Kuhn is often trotted out as a more modern counterpoint to Popper, especially in his work in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  You can get the .pdf for free here, but I bought the book so I could write in the margins.
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If anyone is familiar with Popper, Kuhn, and my own dabbling in epistemology, they will notice that the other two have influenced my epistemology dramatically.  Where many set up an opposition between Popper and Kuhn, I believe that antagonism (at least, in the realm of ideas and logic) is unwarranted.  Popper was engaged in a Bertrand-Russel-esque project of trying to use the tools of logic and reason to ground the functional applications of that logic in a manner consistent with the logicians' project.
Kuhn, on the other hand, is making an observation of the normative manner in which science is done.  Wielding the tools forged by Wittgenstein in the realms of language and cultural phenomena, Kuhn indirectly draws parallels between the manner in which science is actually done and the language games played in Wittgenstein's ontology.

Because of this difference in focus and approach, what results is Popper's "This is the epistemic grounding for the scientific exercise and methods" is set in opposition to Kuhn's "But this is what scientists are actually doing."  In reality, there can be a reasonable synthesis betwixt the two.  Popper, early on in Conjectures and Refutations, describes the different ontologies of the scientific method: essentialism/realism, instrumentalism, and what he calls "conjectures" but I like to call falsification (or, induction by falsifiability).  Popper makes a compelling case for falsification as the most cogent ontology of science.  Kuhn is, by his own admission, a staunch instrumentalist.
This instrumentalism is a matter of normativity.  In the case of the indirectly observable (particle physics, quantum mechanics, evolutionary and global climate sciences, etc.) Popper's defense of falsification and attack on instrumentalism begins to falter, but not fail.  Because instrumentalism has shown to get more quantifiable and marketable results (more journals published, more TV shows by Neil De Grasse Tyson, and more government grants), it has become the cultural MO for quite some time in the scientific community.

Kuhn explores the sociology and phenomena of scientific communities and the nature of change between different theories and methods of doing science.  Insofar as he is making normative claims, he does an excellent job of showing how things are done.  I feel that he fails in making claims as to how science should actually be done, essentially taking the normative case and saying that "it isn't fully developed yet, we ought to continue along this instrumentalist and diversified method of theory-making." without making a compelling case as to why that is the appropriate course of action.

This book, along with Poppers, is crucial to understanding the rationale and culture behind the claims made by physicists and philosophers of science today, especially when dealing with the limit-sciences of thins like quantum physics.  As a work of literature, it is a bit rough to read.  Where Popper takes 600-ish pages to explicate and defend 600 pages worth of material in a readable and concise manner, Kuhn takes 200-ish pages to explicate one central concept that could be done in less than 50 pages, applying the same rubric to multiple cases, over and over, in a manner that could be done more directly without losing any substance or rhetorical power.

There are more than one chapter in my unpublished book dedicated to epistemology and the synthesis between Popper and Kuhn, which have already strongly influenced certain blog posts, such as the post on Paradigmatic Awareness, in case one wants to explore related concepts before devoting time and money to reading the primary source.
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Methods of Reason

23/7/2015

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I wrote a post about paradigmatic awareness a while back.  I wrote it while editing a couple chapters in my book.  Those chapters were concerned with epistemic rigor and the manner in which one can rightly approximate knowledge using experience, logic, and thresholds of doubt.  I believe such things to be more important than nearly any other human faculty.  Because my book is not yet completed or published, I will share someone else's work which is similar, if not quite as deliberate, to those chapters.

The Voluntary Life Podcast has a three episode series titled "How to Think for Yourself":

Part 1 is concerned with why  methods of reason are important to rational creatures and begins to address the difficulties in establishing a method of reason.
Part 2 is concerned with a brief overview of the scientific method, philosophy of science, and their relationship to epistemology.  Most important, it explains the requirements for epistemic confidence.
Part 3 is concerned with a priori reasoning and the relationship between reason and freedom.
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It's encouraging to see someone else produce work that is so similar to my own, in that it makes me feel a little less crazy.  The differences between the two are also encouraging, as it makes me feel I have something to contribute to the conversation.  I am considering different distribution methods for my book.  Feel free to read more about it here.
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Personality Meets NVC

26/6/2015

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I told myself I was going to take a break from recommending Tom Woods material for a while, but here I am again.  This guy's just a genius, and I'm too busy to find something better than what this guy has to offer.  This is it, though.  I'm taking a one-week break from recommending Woods.

This podcast, Is Reason Enough? (and the additional materials), seems to be an important tool when trying to change other people's minds (something that cannot be done over social media, as they explore in this podcast).  One will notice the striking resemblance that it bears to NonViolent Communication.  I don't believe this is a mistake, given the results I've had with NVC and the results that are expected with the method of discussion as seen in today's podcast.
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http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-429-is-reason-enough-why-your-opponents-wont-listen/
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Socrates Reincarnated

25/6/2015

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The first podcast I ever downloaded, The Partially Examined Life, is a perennial staple of my podcast-listening and self-education.  Their Zero Episode does a great job of introducing their project.  I have gotten the most out of their podcast by reading the material ahead of time, listening to the podcast, and then talking to someone (anyone) about the material discussed and trying to tease any kind of intellectual response out of them.
Previous attendees of my mostly-defunct philosophy club will recognize several of these episodes and ideas.  I understand several of the earlier episodes (my favorite ones) are behind a paywall these days, but people have to make a living, right?  They're up on iTunes and all the other podcast aggregators.
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My favorite episode is probably their 100th episode... however, their commentaries on Camus, MacIntyre, Antigone, etc. are amazing.  I recommend starting at the beginning and moving on from there, as they do build on past episodes in order to be able to address higher-level and more esoteric concepts later on.
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The History of Philosophy

15/6/2015

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Today's resource is a little heavy on the terminology, but I think those that are even slightly above-average can at least get the main thrust of the discussion.  Today's resource suggestion is the 228th installment of the History of Philosophy Podcast, Without Any Gaps.  Truly, the entire series thus far is an invaluable resource for even one who is trained in philosophy, as there really are no gaps in this production, filling in whatever may be overlooked by directed scholarship.  Each episode builds on the last, true to the history of philosophy.  So, if you find that this episode is beyond your comprehension, you can simply move back through history until you find something that's more your pace.  Honestly, though, everyone should start at the beginning and work their way to this episode.  The episodes are short and entertaining (as entertaining as the subject matter can be, anyway), and released weekly so, even with more than 200 episodes released, you can still catch up.
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http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/transcendentals
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A More Friendly Rendition...

2/6/2015

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George Ought to Help is a very short, much more kindly iteration of a point I've made on this blog and elsewhere.  This is a good video to serve as a refresher to those that already understand the basics of morality, and it serves as a great starting place for those that aren't quite on board yet with anarchy.
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