The Trouble With Skeptics

or The Misuse Of The Argument From Authority Accusation

First, a couple of disclaimers. 1) I'm going to use the word "skeptic" in this post to lump everyone from the skeptics, secular, humanist, and atheist communities into a single label. Those communities are absolutely not interchangable, let's get that straight right up front. Being an atheist doesn't make you a skeptic, as everyone's go-to example, Bill Mahr, can attest. Neither does being a skeptic automatically make you an atheist, as our resident non-atheist skeptic, Pamela Gay, proves. Irrelevant for my point here. I don't feel like listing out all the groups every time I reference them, so I'm going to lump them into one place-holder label, and I chose "skeptic" because I say that word often enough that it comes out easily.

2) I am a skeptic, and damn proud of it. I love the label, I love what I learn from both the community and the process of skepticism. I am in no way considering dumping the label. I'm uncomfortable in skeptic spaces because there are certain problems I encounter, but I want to fix those problems so that I can continue to be part of the skeptics community; I don't want to split off into a whole new group that has the exact same premise as the skeptics community but who refuses to be connected to skepticism because of the bad association.

3) This is not the only problem with the skeptics community. In fact, it's not even one of the top 10 worst. It could be considered a symptom of one of the more major problems, but I don't want to hear "that's it? That's your big problem? Why are you bitching about that when there are real problems with the skeptics community that need to be addressed?" This is an irritation that has real-world implications, and this is my journal where I specifically set it up to bitch about things. So I'm going to bitch about it.

So, on to the problem.

Skeptics, overall, tend to be a fairly well-educated, intelligent group of people. When you have a group of well-educated, intelligent people, the arguments have a tendency to take a particular form. People tend to try to remove all emotional content from the argument and argue everything academically, even when the subject is about emotions, is personal, or is subjective. Many times, they will argue something just for the sake of academically arguing it - it won't even be a subject they're particularly invested in exploring, they just want to argue. If that subject happens to be something that their opponent is invested in, then because the skeptics aren't, they have a tendency to, not only be totally unaware of how damaging it is to academically argue about something the opponent is personally invested in, but to also be completely dismissive of the emotions of their opponent because, hey, it's just an intellectual exercise, no need to get your panties in a twist over it.

Now, as an intellectual exercise with no emotional investment in the outcome other than being right, skeptics will tend to throw accusations at each other, and anyone they're arguing with, like they're in the middle of a Logical Fallacy oral exam in school. Except that these dispassionate skeptics are not actually unemotionally invested in the argument. They are, just not in the topic. They're invested in the idea that they're well-educated, intelligent, and not emotionally involved. So any criticism of this really irritating way of arguing is taken personally and defended with great vehemence and their own set of logical fallacies.

Final disclaimer, I'm not immune to the subject of this rant. But I can still be irritated when I see it happen.

So, the one I'm going to vent about today is the Argument From Authority. There are a handful of logical fallacies that are easier to identify and remember than the others, so every time they come up, skeptics immediately jump to accusing their opponent of using said logical fallacy. The Argument From Authority is one of them.

The Argument From Authority Fallacy is when a claim is deemed to be true simply because the person who made the claim is an authority figure of some sort.

The Misuse of the Argument From Authority Fallacy is when someone is accused of using said fallacy when it's actually a legitimate argument.

So, for example:

• Quinn: Acupuncture TOTALLY works! You should try it!


• Devon: Uh, no it doesn't. Here are citations from well-regulated, double-blind, placebo-controlled, large sample population studies from a variety of research facilities that all confirm there is no measurable effect from acupuncture.


• Quinn: Psshhh! My acupuncturist is a guy I've known for 20 years and he's a karate sensei  so I believe him, not your studies. Science gets things wrong all the time, but THIS guy knows karate! I think he knows what he's doing with acupuncture!


• Devon: *blinkblink*

You might now want to accuse me of Strawmanning by pulling out a ridiculous argument, but this is, I swear, a conversation I actually had with someone. It was a person I know in real life and had the conversation face-to-face so it's not a troll either. This is actually how it went. In order to keep the peace, I had to end the conversation simply by advising him to make sure that his sensei at least uses brand-new needles and wears gloves because of the recent hepatitis scare among acupuncture patients in Florida. Even the thought of getting a life-threatening illness didn't phase him, because his guy is a guy he "knows", who would never do anything dangerous. Karate. Acupuncture  Nothing dangerous. OK, I'm done.

So this is an example of a legitimate accusation of the Argument From Authority. Quinn believes the claim that acupuncture works because "a guy" said it does, with complete disregard to the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Here are some examples of legitimate USES of the Argument From Authority:

• Paula: As a black trans woman, I've experienced sexism, racism, and homophobia in skeptic communities, so I'm less likely to want to attend skeptic events.


• Paul: That's ridiculous, there's no sexism, racism, or homophobia in skeptic communities! We're a rational group of people, we require evidence to hold beliefs, and there is no evidence supporting the unequal treatment of other genders, other races, or other sexual orientations. Therefore, you couldn't have experienced any of those things because we're just not any of those things.


• Paula: Look, I'm telling you that I've experienced all of those things. Just because you weren't there or you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does, and I've felt it, and so have a lot of other people. That's why there are so few women, people of color, and people of alternative sexualities at your little events - we get treated poorly and we'd rather just not go.


• Paul: I don't see you citing any rigorous studies supporting your claim, therefore you're just spouting anecdote, and anecdote does not equal data. You're wrong, it doesn't happen.


• Paula: I think I get to be the authority on my own personal experiences and you can't tell me that I didn't have them.


• Paul: That's the Argument From Authority! Your argument is invalid!

---

• Jordan: Polyamory is a legitimate relationship style. I love more than one person at a time and polyamory is a valid way to ethically explore those feelings.


• Sam: You don't love more than one person at a time, you only think you do. Real love doesn't let you love more than one person at a time, so if you think you love multiple people, you don't really love any of them. If you did really love any of them, you couldn't have feelings for the others. QED.


• Jordan: You can't tell me what I do and don't feel! I know what I feel, and I feel real, true love for each of my partners!


• Sam: You're just deluding yourself, that's not real love. Dictionary.com says love is exclusive, therefore what you feel isn't real love.


• Jordan: No one gets to overrule what I say about my own feelings. I have feelings that I can feel, I am part of a community you've never even heard of before today, and I have an academic sociology background. I am the final authority on what I feel and anyone who says different is wrong!


• Sam: Aha! That's the Argument From Authority! Your claim is now invalid - polyamory is not real because you can only support it with logical fallacies!

Before anyone tries another accusation of Strawman, these are also both absolutely real conversations. And both are absolutely misuses of the accusation. There are times when it is completely valid to take an authority figure's word on a subject. It can, and should, be provisionally accepted, but it should still be accepted. When the authority figure is an authority on a subject with actual experience in the subject and not just "I read Wikipedia for hours about it" or took some classes on it, and you're not, you can provisionally accept his word. When the authority figure is telling about her own personal experiences, you can provisionally accept her word. When the authority figure is telling you about their internal feelings, you can accept that they do, indeed, have those feelings (even if you remain dubious regarding the nature of what caused those feelings - i.e. just because one feels attacked, it doesn't mean someone actually attacked them). Especially in the third example, their word automatically trumps everything else.

I have been feeling more and more uncomfortable in skeptic spaces over the last year or two, and the smug and dismissive attitude when it comes to topics the speaker has no experience in that is so prevalent among skeptics keeps me away. I don't even want to bother attempting to educate them, because they're so confident in their own intelligence that they don't think they need education on anything they have already formed an opinion on, even if they formed that opinion without the benefit of any education on the subject or with speaking to anyone relevant to the subject. Even worse is when they claim to have done their own "research" on a topic (it usually means they've Googled it or read Wikipedia) and think they're fairly well-read, but they have no personal connection or experience with the subject and dismiss anyone who is actually living the subject but who hasn't done any formal research on it.

Take Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory - he is constantly lecturing Raj on Indian culture, even though Raj was born and raised in India and Sheldon has never left his own apartment, let alone the country.  But Sheldon has read stuff and is smart therefore Raj's personal experiences don't count.

http://youtu.be/KYsH5HxKPw8

So misapplying the accusation for the Argument From Authority pisses me off. If you aren't kinky, poly, female, transgendered, non-white, poor, or anything else that is as much "experience" as academic (if not more), and when someone who is talks about their experiences or their feelings or their own community, your ability to recite all the logical fallacies by heart and have an argument without getting "emotional" does not make your opinion as equally valid as theirs. "There is no authority and all opinions are equally valid" is a classic logical fallacy among pseudoscience cranks. Don't fall into the same trap and don't dismiss personal experience when the subject is a subjective one. We're not talking about the chemical makeup of water or the physics of gas planets. Those have yes/no answers - either something does or does not, and we can test it and find an answer that is right and an answer that is wrong (insert appropriate error bars here, for those who are pedantic). But a physicist with credentials and published papers and a university behind him is probably more right about physics than the guy who hasn't left his basement in 5 years spouting Deepak Chopra and Dinesh D'Souza is, because the physicist is an authority on the subject, and we can provisionally accept his word that cold fusion is highly improbable and that we will never develop a free energy machine that sucks electrons from the ionosphere but that could turn into a doomsday weapon with only a small modification to the plans (again, true story).

The Annual Florida Ice Cream Festival

http://www.floridaicecreamfestival.org/

I saw this billboard on I-4 about a week or so ago and knew I had to go.  Not many people know of my love for ice cream.  It's more than a love, really.  I won't go so far as to call it an obsession, because I don't actually eat it all that often.  But the word "love", with it's usual dilutions when associated with non-human things, is not strong enough to cover my feelings for ice cream.

You see, in addition to it being probably my favorite dessert in all of existence, it also has very strong associations with my dad.  That was a *thing* we did.  As a "daddy's girl", my dad was the feature in my childhood memories.  We hunted together, he practiced soccer with me when I made the soccer team, we fished, we watched football, he taught me poker, and, later, as I got older, we watched what became my all-time favorite sitcoms and action movies together after dinner.  And most of those memories had ice cream associated with them.  Every hunting and fishing trip required a stop for a milkshake, and every night, in front of the TV, we'd have a bowl of ice cream together - vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup, stirred until all one, consistent, creamy-brown color.  My mom *hated* it.  The sound of the spoons scraping the bowls during the TV shows drove her nuts.  But that was our thing.  To this day, when I want emotional comfort, I eat vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup, all stirred together in one big creamy mess.

So there was no way I was going to miss the First Annual Florida Ice Cream Festival.

I want to start out by saying that I loved the food I got and I definitely plan to attend next year.  But I have some criticisms, and the nature of this event may not be to everyone's liking.  Just remember, throughout the critique, I liked it.

The Good

• The event had free parking right on site and was only $3 to get in.  By the time I had arrived, they even stopped charging the entrance fee, so win!


• The food was amazing!  At least, the ones I had were amazing.  The prices were "reasonable", and by "reasonable", I mean that they were comparable with any specialty ice cream shop.  So I'm sure you can find cheaper ice cream, even really good cheaper ice cream, at the grocery store.  But if you go to Baskin Robbins, you'll probably pay the exact same price for a cup of ice cream as the Baskin Robbins booth right there at the festival.


• The music was entertaining.  If you're a music snob, or you like only niche or certain sub-culture music, then you probably won't like it.  It was family-friendly, non-offensive, and designed to keep up people's moods.  I like music like that.  I heard Beach Boys, The Electric Slide, and something from some current pop artist, maybe Tao Cruiz.


• I saw an Indian ice cream booth there! I didn't get any, but I was very pleased to see such an exotic booth.  The only flavor I even recognized was mango, and if I had had enough money when I discovered it, I would have tried some.


• They had some activities besides just buying ice cream - mostly kids stuff.  I saw a bounce house, pony rides, a rock climbing wall, and even a teeny-tiny mini golf course.

The Not So Good
This was the first time this event has been put on.  As with all big events like this, it takes some time to work out the bugs.  There will be logistical issues and things that didn't get planned for, and these sorts of things will get better over time.  At least, if they don't get better over time, the event won't continue to be held year after year.  So most of my criticisms are the kinds of things that I expect to be better next year.

• They really did not expect the crowds they got and were not prepared.  I arrived a little before 3 PM (open until 7 PM) and booths were already sold out, which is why they stopped charging admission.


• There were no lines drawn or flagged on the grass parking lot, so the lines of parking were crooked and slanted, and they actually ended up with huge amounts of wasted parking space because it wasn't quite enough room to add another lane but definitely too wide for just a normal driveway.


• Lines were long and unwieldy. The layout of the festival did not account for the long lines, so passerby traffic had to cut through the lines, and the lines stretched and curved and leaned into other booths - both next to and across the road.  The booths themselves were not staffed to handle such a customer load, so the lines were also slow-moving.


• As usual for festival grounds, there wasn't a whole lot of shade.  That's less of a problem if you're moving around and can get to the giant "Chill Pill" tent with all the tables, but because of the line problem, we were just standing still in the sun for unreasonably long amounts of time.  I know there's not much they can do about that, since festival grounds, by nature, need to be wide open spaces.  But maybe putting up a whole bunch of tents right over the road, kind of spaced along the road?  Then, as we're walking down the road browsing the booths, we can pass under spots of shade, and people standing in lines that span across the road can maybe be standing under those tents?


• They needed more variety of non-dessert food.  There was 1 burger stand, 1 Italian sausage stand, 1 hot wings stand, and 1 stand with fries that sold out right around the time I got there.  There needed to be some non-dessert options that weren't $6+.  The fries were a good start, but, as I said, they sold out early.  A corn on the cob stand might have been a good option.  A falafel food truck or a burrito truck or hot dogs or something.  Anything that could have served some kind of side dish for approximately the same price range as the ice cream and even a single option that a vegetarian could have would have been nice (although they did have non-dairy & vegan ice cream - naturally it was already sold out by the time I got there).  I know it was an ice cream festival, but people will be more willing to stay longer, and more willing to buy more sweets, if there are actual meal options that are affordable and options to cut the sweet so that we don't go into a sugar coma.


• The drink booth was also not prepared for the size of the crowd.  They needed more coolers, more helpers, and more drink options.  There was Gatorade, water, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi.  That's it.  Canned tea for those who need something with flavor but not more sweet, and Sprite for the non-caffeine drinkers who might want a soda instead of Gatorade or water would have been really appreciated.


• Everything was standard specialty ice cream shop sized. I'd rather see the festival organized more like Epcot's Food & Wine festival, where everything is more like taste-sized, so that we can go from booth to booth, sampling a wider variety of foods.  $1 shot glasses of ice cream would be way better than $3 cups of ice cream.  Also, it might not sell out as fast.


• All food was purchased with Moo-lah, fake money that you pre-purchased and then exchanged for the food.  I ended up with a Moo-lah dollar that I couldn't spend, because there wasn't anything there for a dollar (well, maybe some of the activities were, I don't know because I didn't even look at the bouncey house or the pony rides or the mini golf course).

Next year, I would recommend, first, arriving early, then only buying your entrance ticket, then walking the entire grounds to decide what you want, and THEN buying your Moo-lah so that you only purchase the fake dollars that you plan to spend.  It didn't occur to me to do that until I was already inside & had purchased my fake money, although I knew they sold the fake money inside.  As I saw "sold out" signs going up all over the place and lines so long and curvy that I couldn't find the ends, I decided to just jump in the first line that had something I wanted, and each line as I came to it, rather than planning out my spending.  I was afraid I would decide on something back in the beginning and it would be sold out before I circled back after looking at everything.

Even better, if you go with someone(s), plan what you want to buy, then split up - one (or more) of you stands in line for food while one runs to a Moo-lah booth to buy fake money.  Then the person with the money can deliver it by the time the person in the food line gets to the front.  If you can go with several, have one money runner and everyone else wait in different food lines to get everyone's food in each booth. Then meet up at the picnic tables.

Although I liked the flavors of ice cream I got, and although there was a nice variety of brands present, I would have liked to have seen A) more exotic flavors and B) a plain vanilla/plain chocolate option.

I know, that sounds like I'm asking a lot.  What I'm suggesting, though, is that this is a festival celebrating ice cream, and all the vendors are local vendors with shops or food trucks here town.  We can go to these shops any time we want to.  So I think it would benefit them to showcase some of their more unusual, exotic, or specialty flavors as a hook to catch the attention of the thousands of attendees who might be considering the competing shop right next door.  But, at the same time, *someone* has to have the old classics for those who attended for exactly that reason.  What I'm saying is that I saw the same handful of flavors over and over again - cotton candy, birthday cake, strawberry, chocolate chip cookie dough, cookies N cream, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there were some unique flavors.  I had an excellent banana pudding frozen custard that I just adored!  And there probably was more variety that I missed because of all the booths that had sold out before I got there.  But I didn't get any fruit-based, non-cream desserts like a strawberry popsicle, and the Shamrock Explosion that I was originally in line for sold out 3 people ahead of me, leaving the entire line with only the banana pudding and the coconut custard options.  I think this was clearly an underestimation problem that is to be expected with a first-year event.  It's very difficult to estimate what will sell and what won't.  It's why I use a third-party one-off printer instead of printing my shirts in bulk and handling the sales myself.  I've seen too many merchants end up with too many left-over t-shirts and other shirts sell out immediately, all because predicting what will sell is hardly an exact science.

So, it was hot, it was crowded, the lines were long, the food sold out early, and there wasn't enough of the food I wanted.  I still want to go back next year.  I think pretty much everything I had a problem with is something to be expected for a first-time event, so I hold out hope that every single one of them will improve next year.  If outdoor festivals aren't your thing, then you'll probably want to skip this unless your love of ice cream is stronger than your dislike of outdoor festivals.  But if you love ice cream, this was a pretty good event.  it was relatively inexpensive and I got exposed to a ton of ice cream brands that I didn't even know were local shops.  It was a nice day out, if too hot while standing in line in the sun without a hat, sunglasses, or sunscreen on and a poor decision to wear full jeans & a t-shirt with sleeves but that was my mistake, and I liked the music.  Really, it's not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and I expect it to be better next year.

But now I need to go eat something with protein & complex starch, to cut all that sugar.  Wish I had some salad-fixings in the house - add a little egg & a roll & it would fix the whole thing!