Cargo cult skepticism

There have been Deep Rifts™ within the atheist and skeptical communities [in English-speaking countries]. These have now been covered enough in the wider media that you might have heard of them even if you don’t identify with any of those groups. Just in the last 2 months, there have been numerous sexual assault/rape allegations against Michael Shermer, an art exhibit made by Amy Davis Roth out of all the harassment her and other women in the community have received and numerous “debates” around some really sexist stuff said by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

I won’t make an argument because to me there is no argument. When the most well-known atheist in the world defends his friend from rape allegations by subtweeting if you want to put a man in jail for rape you shouldn’t get drunk so your testimony wouldn’t be tainted, what more is there to say? No, the prominent figures in the community who have had allegations made against them or who have made bigoted comments are being deliberately obtuse at best. At worst, they’re malicious and despicable – which is how I read things.

What’s more instructive is how many of those defending Shermer/Dawkins/Harris etc are behaving. Not those who make rape and death threats but those who try to make actual arguments. A super-telling comment comes from this recent episode of Point of Inquiry about Mark Oppenheimer’s Buzzfeed article on the evidence of sexual assault against Michael Shermer. Here’s the comment in its entirety [source].

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
“The plural of anecdotes is not data. (At least not good data)”
“Memories are fallible.”
“Innocent until proven guilty.”
(Except when Shermer is accused of rape.)

It’s all really bad reasoning but the first line just floored me. I’ve seen it before in parodies of sexist skeptics. That’s the point, that they’ve been applying the idea of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” in a place where it so clearly doesn’t belong that it’s obviously motivated reasoning. Neither rape nor sexual assault are extraordinary or anywhere within the realm of the supernatural in terms of prior probability. If we’re talking Baysian priors, it’s false accusation of rape that are more extraordinary claim. If this comment is a Poe/parody though, I’ll eat my hat. It was written in a genuine, even earnest manner.

So at this point, many self-identified skeptics and rationalists are so desperate to defend their sexist worldview that they’ll throw around concepts even when they mean the opposite to what they think they mean. They demonstrate that they have no idea how to apply the skeptical principles that they claim to spend a lot of time on. They’re just buzzwords at this stage. This shows the problem inherent with teaching things like logical fallacies and biases – as Eliezer Yudkowsky noticed years ago they often become just a logical stick to wield against opponents. I’ve seen them misused more often than not, and if anything they have led to a reduction in the quality of discussion.

Richard Feynman invented the concept of cargo cult science – something that has the outer shell of science (ie. similar-sounding terminology, similar rituals and so on) but is missing the essence of science. The arguments mustered in support of harassment and sexism (and against anti-sexism) have been an excellent example of cargo cult skepticism. It’s the shell of lists of fallacies, concepts and argument gambits without the understanding behind them or the necessary context required to put them to work in actually finding the truth.

Ironically it was Shermer who said it really well, in interviews and apparently in his book: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons” [source]. If you’re smart, you’re really good at motivated reasoning.

The other related gambit of people who are in essence defending harassment is that scepticism should be “pure”. It should be about critical thinking focussed on empirically testable claims. This wishy-washy PC crap about reducing harassment within the skeptical community and about rape culture is tainting it. Greta Christina has an excellent related post about that but I’d say topics like rape culture should definitely fall within the purview of the skeptical/atheist movement as a whole. There reasons are:

1. Because it’s the right thing to do (duh)
2. Because it’s effective outreach (duh)
3. Because it intellectually belongs with skepticism – or at least what it should be

What will the movement choose?

I’ll conclude by butchering Carl Sagan’s famous quote to suit my needs:

How is it that hardly any major religion skeptics and atheists has looked at science have looked at the consequences of their beliefs and concluded, “This is better broader than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets very shitty place for so many; but this means our mission is much bigger than the founders of our movement had said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god activism is a little god one, and I want him it to stay that way. Shut up about sexism!” A religion movement, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science the importance of freethought in uplifting the condition of all beings no matter how downtrodden might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe momentum and influence hardly tapped by the conventional faiths traditional movement