anybody else read this?
"The Assault on Logic" by Steven Yates
I happened to come across it while browsing the Mises search engine. I thought it was excellent. It is only one chapter of a tentative book called "In Defense of Logic". I emailed Yates to see if the book is still being planned.
There was an intriguing experiment discussed about a person named Sokal. It's not the main story, but was telling. He performed a hoax against a supposedly highly acclaimed Social Science academic journal. He pushed all the pop-philosophy buttons and got an article published that he said was completely wrong and if anybody knew quantum mechanics (and had the objective sense to actually critique the facts and rational, also, one of his references was a known New Ager that has nothing to do with science at all, and more) they would have realized how false the content was.
It reminded me of the Piltdown Man hoax that mislead people for ca. 40 years, but I don't know how deep that hoax went to prove a particular point as Sokal's was planned to show how, as he put it, the Emperor has no clothes. I don't think Piltdown Man hoax was planned to dupe the scientific community to prove how fraudulent science at the time was (but Solak's was for the social sciences). I believe, but not sure, that the Piltdown hoax was an effort to fudge results to fit a particular person's theory - so it wasn't for any pursuit of truth.
"I used to see a mountain as a mountain.. Thereafter.. when I saw a mountain; lo! it was not a mountain.. yet now of final tranquillity: I see a mountain just as a mountain as I used to.." - Master Yuan; molon labe
wilderness: There was an intriguing experiment discussed about a person named Sokal. It's not the main story, but was telling. He performed a hoax against a supposedly highly acclaimed Social Science academic journal.
There was an intriguing experiment discussed about a person named Sokal. It's not the main story, but was telling. He performed a hoax against a supposedly highly acclaimed Social Science academic journal.
The Sokal hoax is a pretty famous incident -- famous enough to rate its own Wikipedia page. You can find the hoax paper here. A prophylactic aspirin might be a good idea if you plan to read it. Googling "sokal affair" or "sokal hoax" will probably get you more hits than you can pursue in one lifetime.
I downloaded a copy of that sample chapter long ago: the timestamp on the file is June of 2002. I can't find anything more regarding the book, so it could be a dead project. Yates used to be very active over at lewrockwell.com, but I think the last article he posted there was in 2005. The "Columnists" page no longer lists him. His blog hasn't been updated since 2007. Maybe he dropped out of the movement. Anyone know?
Edit: wilderness, if you liked the Yates chapter enough to check out other pieces by him, I found his LRC archive page. I was right: his last piece for LRC was from 2005.
Wow, that's crazy. I just wrote a similar paper titled, An inquiry into the meaning of truth, where I basically say the same shit as Sokal. The fact that Aristotle's principle of non contradiction isn't just flatly accepted by the so-called "philosophical community" proves how backward and confused "intellectuals" really are.
Basically Sokal had a friend that was a programmer help him with the project and created what is known as a Post-Modern paper generator. It takes strings and words, splicing them together to create what seems like a typical PoMo paper. But I will remind everyone that Sokal is an ex-sandanista(sp?) so he's a dyed in the wool socialist for sure, but I do admire his stance on not blending the social and natural sciences.
"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process." -- liberty student
ladyattis:Post-Modern paper generator.
I'd say about 50% of the content on the internet is machine generated. Maybe more.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
True, I'm worried that YTMND has become se-WHERE IS SARAH CONNOR?
ladyattis: Basically Sokal had a friend that was a programmer help him with the project and created what is known as a Post-Modern paper generator.
Basically Sokal had a friend that was a programmer help him with the project and created what is known as a Post-Modern paper generator.
Mmmm, I'm not so sure about that. I think the computer that generated Sokal's paper was the wetware between his own ears. I hadn't ever heard that he used a paper generator to construct the hoax paper. Could you be mixing that up with SCIgen or similar incidents?
Sokal's Lingua Franca paper exposing his hoax is posted on his website. For what it's worth, it doesn't mention a paper generator. His description of the hoax paper sure makes it sound like he constructed it himself.
But I will remind everyone that Sokal is an ex-sandanista(sp?) so he's a dyed in the wool socialist for sure....
He taught summer courses in math for two years at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime. That doesn't necessarily make him a Sandinista. But wikipedia gives this as a quote (unfortunately not sourced) from Sokal: "But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them." Sokal's motive for the hoax was to protect the Left from idiot leftists who would discredit the movement in his eyes.
liberty student: I'd say about 50% of the content on the internet is machine generated. Maybe more.
Care to guess what's the fraction in these forums?
i. am. a. robot.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
I've been tricked by the bots. How do you identify them? Well, at least how do you limit the risk of wasted time?
"...The post-totalitarian system contrives to force life into its most probable states...This system serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it
Vaclav Havel
nirgrahamUK: i. am. a. robot.
98 48 34 10 5473 90 98 37 1432 26 41 74 3776 68 2 89 3494 48 95 2 2299 53 14 7 7438 84 78 65 873 72 7 90 4787 49 23 72 5184 1 2 83 2428 31 34 95 131 51 70 12 6032 45 71 41 7961 40 81 72 3933 90 57 35 9129 72 52 90 7139 27 81 62 1969 37 13 27 2861 21 57 23 5372 24 42 15 2919 18 8 38 5094 31 86 96 1978 12 11 76 549 28 48 34 5033 50 65 42 6676 75 34 97 5436 16 40 68 6483 88 78 58 1195 29 41 89 8730 35 28 57 4887 72 40 100 7418 100 61 50 4696 81 24 58 4164 92 75 73 3510 65 40 18 6820 99 20 35 5140 77 47 89 10023 19 34 8 6250 98 69 95 8843 49 75 60 6635 43 37 85 232 52 69 62 868 7 89 90 1436 30 84 86 10090 56 35 43 5167 53 48 81 3045 84 74 62 9540 75 30 83 397 52 81 82 1123 53 46 99 3274 8 62 69 5535 97 69 49 9750 66 29 4 8731 85 12 94 435 97 26 92 7166 32 31 6 8064 39 25 99 6892 69 24 13 6787 52 31 94 9523 13 73 60 4WILL I DREAM?
WARNING: This signature violates Rule 5. Stay classy!
twelveguage:Care to guess what's the fraction in these forums?
Baawa and I are pretty diligent about keeping that ratio very low. Forum bot software that can generate relevant conversation is still in the experimental phase. But in general, there are thousands of content websites out there, on every topic from health care, to interior design, that have content that was machine generated from a template.
It truly is the matrix.
Maybe that is why I don't trust very much presented on TV. And that is why Sokal doesn't surprise me.
@Wilderness, I forget what the video is, but I want to say it was one of the Neil de Grasse videos on Nielsio's YouTube channel, where he talks about how science is a community of trust, and hmm.... maybe it wasn't Neil de Grasse. Maybe it was another video on that channel.
Anyway, science is based on trust, and peer review is not so much a critical examination of the presentation, but that the researcher meets the standard expected of a scientist. So as a trust based system is completely exploitable.
http://www.youtube.com/user/nielsio
It was one of these three, I recommend watching all 3, they are great!
Nitroadict:WILL I DREAM?
only of electric sheep.
boring.
liberty student: @Wilderness, I forget what the video is, but I want to say it was one of the Neil de Grasse videos on Nielsio's YouTube channel, where he talks about how science is a community of trust, and hmm.... maybe it wasn't Neil de Grasse. Maybe it was another video on that channel. Anyway, science is based on trust, and peer review is not so much a critical examination of the presentation, but that the researcher meets the standard expected of a scientist. So as a trust based system is completely exploitable.
thanks for the link. yeah scientists are human like everybody else. it does have it's intellectual pitfalls - or as I brought up to show this is not anything new - the Piltdown hoax. And that lasted 40 years. But science still does have it's individuality. It still does take it's risk. But how much of science is subverted, not by it's own community of curious individuals, but by the State to pick and choose what science does? Undoubtedly a lot. As Yates pointed out in that first chapter, one of the buttons Sokal pushed to get the article published was he knew the social science community is more about opinion, multiculturalism, and politics, rather than logic. It is a direct, explicit attack on logic (universal principles; a prior), and so he threw into the article a some political comments to attract their attention and with that and other inserts they took the bait - without much critical thought. He called the paper "pop-philosophy". Flashy, interesting, but wrong.
wilderness:But how much of science is subverted, not by it's own community of curious individuals, but by the State to pick and choose what science does? Undoubtedly a lot.
The third video in the list I posted, addresses this. It is very, very interesting. Definitely watch it if you can find time.
"The Myth of Science as a Public Good" --- ?
That's the one.
twelveguage:He taught summer courses in math for two years at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime. That doesn't necessarily make him a Sandinista.
Um, the last time I checked, he was from Central America, or at least that's what I read on one bio about him.
ladyattis: Um, the last time I checked, he was from Central America, or at least that's what I read on one bio about him.
Born in the USA and took his doctorate at Princeton, at least according to wikipedia, for what it's worth.
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