Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. You might not be able to tell, but I spent this summer moving to an updated server (my old server was still running Debian 8 and was due for a major update).
I have tried to keep the look and feel of the website as close to the old one as possible (major updates to PHP, MYSQL, and WordPress did force some minor changes however).
Ed note: This was sponsored content in ASEE Capitol Shorts May 9, 2020 but it does look like a neat device so I placed it below:
With classrooms everywhere going remote, it’s no surprise that professors, lab managers, and researchers are having to change their teaching game plans, and having to do so quickly. Luckily, Digilent’s Analog Discovery 2 and Analog Discovery Studio make that transition much easier for those in Academia. Small, portable form factors and the easily navigable WaveForms software make these two instruments an educator’s dream. Each of the products boasts 13 popular test and measurement tools in a single device, and are already used in electric engineering courses in 70+ universities around the world. Currently, Digilent is shipping the individual devices directly to students – helping to share the burden by eliminating the need for the professor to distribute them manually. As an additional support to the academic community that Digilent was founded on in these tough times, they are offering special academic pricing on almost their entire scope catalog, meaning that professors will be able to stretch their budget to go even further. Digilent also offers free guides to get started and other helpful documentation in their Resource Center for each tool.
Ran into this link for Acroname that sell Automated Test Systems and sensors. Particularly interested in their 2D Distance Sensors and LIDAR (just wish they would come down in price a bit).
I got to admit that I have seen this for myself….not having to go into work has definitely added hours to my work week and made it harder to separate job and free time!
Carl Sagan’s rules for critical thinking offer cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934–December 20, 1996) was many things — a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era’s greatest patron saint of reason and critical thinking, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan’s timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 — Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society’s most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda.
In a chapter titled “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” Sagan reflects on the many types of deception to which we’re susceptible — from psychics to religious zealotry to paid product endorsements by scientists, which he held in especially low regard, noting that they “betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers” and “introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity.” (Cue in PBS’s Joe Hanson on how to read science news.) But rather than preaching from the ivory tower of self-righteousness, Sagan approaches the subject from the most vulnerable of places — having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them.
Through their training, scientists are equipped with what Sagan
calls a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and
techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods:
The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new
ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives
examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although
tentative, acceptance. If you’re so inclined, if you don’t want to buy
baloney even when it’s reassuring to do so, there are precautions that
can be taken; there’s a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method.
But the kit, Sagan argues, isn’t merely a tool of science —
rather, it contains invaluable tools of healthy skepticism that apply
just as elegantly, and just as necessarily, to everyday life. By
adopting the kit, we can all shield ourselves against clueless guile and
deliberate manipulation. Sagan shares nine of these tools:
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments
from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes
in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way
to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there
are experts.
Spin more than one
hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the
different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by
which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What
survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian
selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance
of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea
that caught your fancy.
Try not to get
overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way
station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the
idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find
reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
Quantify.
If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical
quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate
among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to
many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many
qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more
challenging.
If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
Occam’s
Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two
hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
Always
ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.
Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much.
Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just
an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But
if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not
the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions
out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your
reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same
result.
Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is
unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense.
Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes:
In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a
claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us
what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous
fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in
religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged
to justify two contradictory propositions.
He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones — many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity — with examples of each in action:
ad hominem
— Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument
(e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her
objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)
argument from authority
(e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a
secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was
secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its
merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a
mistake, as it turned out)
argument from adverse consequences
(e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He
didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous — perhaps even
ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial
must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other
men to murder their wives)
appeal to ignorance
— the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and
vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not
visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life
elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other
worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth,
so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity
can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence.
special pleading, often
to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a
merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against
orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you
don’t understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be
an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person?
Special plead: You don’t understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity.
Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam — each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving
kindness and compassion — to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so
long? Special plead: You don’t understand Free Will again. And anyway,
God moves in mysterious ways.)
begging the question, also called assuming the answer
(e.g., We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime.
But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is
imposed? Or: The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical
adjustment and profit-taking by investors — but is there any independent
evidence for the causal role of “adjustment” and profit-taking; have we
learned anything at all from this purported explanation?)
observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances,
or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and
forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has
produced, but is silent on its serial killers)
statistics of small numbers
— a close relative of observational selection (e.g., “They say 1 out of
every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of
people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.” Or: “I’ve thrown
three sevens in a row. Tonight I can’t lose.”)
misunderstanding of the nature of statistics
(e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on
discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average
intelligence);
inconsistency (e.g.,
Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is
capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental
dangers because they’re not “proved.” Or: Attribute the declining life
expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many
years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the
United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the
failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to
continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the
possibility that it has infinite duration into the past);
non sequitur
— Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because
God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the
German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non
sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative
possibilities;
post hoc, ergo propter hoc
— Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime
Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks
60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or: Before women got the
vote, there were no nuclear weapons)
meaningless question
(e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable
object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can
be no immovable objects, and vice versa)
excluded middle, or false dichotomy
— considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate
possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m
always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or:
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)
short-term vs. long-term
— a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out
for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed
malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently
deal with crime on the streets. Or: Why explore space or pursue
fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?);
slippery slope,
related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first
weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a
full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits abortion even
in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our
bodies around the time of conception);
confusion of correlation and causation
(e.g., A survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than
those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or:
Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet
Uranus; therefore — despite the absence of any such correlation for the
nearer, more massive planet Jupiter — the latter causes the former)
straw man —
caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists
suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a
formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that
Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t. Or —
this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy — environmentalists care
more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people)
suppressed evidence, or half-truths
(e.g., An amazingly accurate and widely quoted “prophecy” of the
assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but —
an important detail — was it recorded before or after the event? Or:
These government abuses demand revolution, even if you can’t make an
omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a
revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous
regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all
revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of
the people?)
weasel words (e.g.,
The separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the
United States may not conduct a war without a declaration by Congress.
On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and
the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting
themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may
therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling
the wars something else — “police actions,” “armed incursions,”
“protective reaction strikes,” “pacification,” “safeguarding American
interests,” and a wide variety of “operations,” such as “Operation Just
Cause.” Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of
language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, “An important art of
politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names
have become odious to the public”)
Sagan ends the chapter with a necessary disclaimer:
Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused,
applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to
thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the
world — not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present
them to others.
The Demon-Haunted World is a timelessly fantastic read in its entirety, timelier than ever in a great many ways amidst our present media landscape of propaganda, pseudoscience, and various commercial motives. Complement it with Sagan on science and “God”.
