consilience. : the linking together of principles from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory.
contextomy. : an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. Quote mining.
excilience. : the linking together of Contextomies from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory. Thought mining.
The Quote Mine Project provides excellent examples of contextomy. Uncommondescent provides excellent examples of excilience.
The practices lend themselves to all kinds of humorous incongruities. Among them are:
1. free will vs predestination
2. deism vs interventionism (Michael Denton vs Michael Behe)
3. front loading vs twiddling (Mike Gene vs gpuccio, etc.)
4. ascentism vs degenerationism (Chardin vs Sanford)
5. old earth vs young earth
6. realism vs last thursdayism
7. biblical literalism vs inspirationism
There are probably a lot more, but these come up frequently. The humor comes from observing that the armies of ID clash by night, without ever mentioning or discussing their differences and their contradictory assumptions and conclusions.
Food for discussion.
I agree with RB, William.
That’s like saying it’s “utterly laughably wrong” to claim the sun rises in the morning, because there is a finite possibility of a solar eclipse, even if it has never happened.
In other words, this is hilarious backpedaling.
Still waiting for an example of a creationist publishing one of the quote mine texts in a way that isn’t a quote mine.
Calling people idiots sure is easier than documenting your claims, isn’t it. I suppose this is creationism-think.
Petrushka,
If a creationist quotes a mainstream (non-creationist) evolutionary biologist in making a case for creationism, and the biologist disagrees with the argument and the conclusion of the creationist, was the creationist quote-mining?
Flint,
What claim do you think I’ve made?
Still waiting for an example of creationist use of quotes that isn’t dishonest.
You’ll get a cookie when you can explicitly admit that petrushka is wrong.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Still waiting for an example of a creation site using quotes honestly.
William has no examples. Like always he was knee-jerk defending ID-Creationism without thinking it through or examining the evidence. The same as he does every day.
What we on the ‘mainstream science’ side of this particular divide call “quote mining”, is a technique of long-standing in Xtian apologetics; Xtians call this technique “proof-texting”. Is anybody surprised that Creationists make extensive use of a technique which is straight outta Xtian apologetics?
Earlier, I provided a sample example of what would be a creationist quote of Gould that would NOT be a quote mine. I notice you ignored it. So like others, I’m waiting for a REAL example of such a quote. When challenged to produce one, the best you can do is call people idiots who are calling you out.
Yes again, and this is the whole problem. What scientists consider dishonest quote-mining ID-Creationists like WJM consider a perfectly valid and moral form of argument.
ID-Creationism desperately wants to be science but ID-Creationists can’t be arsed to use science’s rules and definitions.
I sometimes wonder if creationists subconsciously realize that they can’t be honest and yet be creationists at the same time, that the two are mutually exclusive? Following the rules and definitions of science would render any creationist argument incoherent.
I also find it instructive that WJM is at a total loss for words when confronted with the question of quoting honestly, and NOT trying to create a false impression. He is, I think, genuinely and sincerely baffled by the assertion that misrepresentation is wrong. Hey, the evolutionist SAID this, these are his very words, how can this be wrong? SO WHAT if the evolutionist vehemently disagrees with the claim he is being quoted to support? WJM can only sputter and call names, this is so self-evident.
Yeah, Billy boy got sloppy on that one.
He might be too mad to think straight, or he might just have figured no one would notice the difference. He bundled your reasonable request about evidence with my flat statement that WJM can’t help quotemining petrushka.
I mean, I’m not worried about being lumped in with you, keiths, but you’d think in a discussion about the faults of taking things out of context, Billy boy would at least try to get the literal meaning of the things he reads, even when he obviously can’t or won’t understand the intended meaning.
cubist,
I just looked that up. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. This is your brain on creationism.
Interesting, the wikipedia article on “prooftext” includes this warning example:
Yeah, very humorous 🙁
Could the moral be any more plain? DON’T QUOTEMINE TEXTS.
I thought this article by McLatchie was pretty much straight shooting.
The ONLY quote I saw was:
Even if one disagrees with McLatchie, would the regulars here view his article as straight shooting?
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/the_spliceosome_1076371.html
The reason I’m asking, the structure and form and approach of his arguments are something I think I’d like to emulate. Granted the material is mostly mundane, but that’s the nature of the subject matter.
I don’t see anything objectionable about McLatchie’s quotation of Nilsen.
If you want to go through life appearing to be stupid, you might emulate McLatchie.
What he says is, this is really complicated and no one has been able to provide a step by step history of its evolution. Therefore Jesus.
How has that worked out, over that past couple hundred years of science?
You’re a gambler, Sal. Does that look like the smart way to bet?
Thanks for your opinion. As long as it doesn’t look dishonest, that counts for something.
As faded_glory pointed out, IDists can frame their arguments that will avoid accusations of quote mining.
Thanks Keiths.
No, I don’t see an obvious quote mine.
ENV is dumb at a higher level, if that’s important. I haven’t seen them rise much above incredulity, but incredulity is at least honest.
The characteristic of a quote mine is the misuse of authority. If you recognize that the original author is making an argument, and you respond to that argument, it’s fair use.
So we have an example against which creationist pages may be compared.
The position one appears to be expected to take in order to avoid being called a tool by WJM is that petrushka is wrong to say that all quotes of mainstream biologists in support of Creationism are quote mines. Even if, as in my case, we weren’t even talking of petrushka at the time. “Never mind your fucking agenda, FOLLOW MINE!”.
OK, if that’s what he says – and like keiths, I haven’t been through this thread with a fine-tooth comb – then I would disagree. There, that’s petrushka under the bus. Now what?
Thump, thump, ow!
petrushka,
Beep! Beep! Vehicle reversing …
Flint:
That’s a mischaracterization of William’s position. He did write this, after all:
That last bit by keiths needs a bit of parsing.
The dishonest part is in appropriating the reputation of the author in support of ideas the author disagrees with. It is not as simple as whether the quote itself is true or false. It is whether you are fairly representing the author’s position.
In the MacLatchie example, there is no misrepresentation. There are other kinds of sleight of hand, but not quote mining.
I suppose my biggest reservation in all this is whether a practice so stupid and self defeating can really be called dishonest. Its almost as if the creationists are smearing themselves with feces and screaming maniacally from a soapbox in the park. It’s so bizarre and unattractive that perhaps it isn’t worth calling dishonest.
I would say rather, this is the far end of confirmation bias. Start with what you wish to be true, and pluck individual phrases out of context which can be interpreted to confirm your wish. To some degree, we all do it, and science has multiple methods (peer review, null hypotheses, etc.) intended to minimize it, but it happens nonetheless.
The distinction is that science regards confirmation bias as harmful, and religion regards it as essential, sine qua non.
Okay, I can go with that. 🙂
OK, fine, but I’d love to see a single example of a creationist quoting an evolutionary biologist to illustrate that biologist’s actual position. Multiple people have asked for one, and been rewarded with insults.
Multiple people have also asked why it’s ever necessary to quote an evolutionary biologist AT ALL, when the facts are available from primary sources. These requests have been ignored without exception.
I don’t think William’s statements are consistent.
Possibly Flint made an overstatement (possibly), but it could be quite true in all of the other instances of quotemining. William’s statement is really very narrow, that if you’re trying to make it look like the scientist agrees with your position (and doesn’t), that is dishonest.
Does he really have a problem with the IDEA Center quotemines? Is it even reasonable to suppose that the disclaimer makes up for the fact that much of it is out-of-context junk collected from creationists without serious regard to whether the author even made that statement? Is it reasonable to think that they really meant anyone should be doing any sort of proper research by starting from quotemines taken without regard to context? The disclaimer is idiotic on the face of it–it’s about plausible deniability (if only to the dull and biased)–and he laps it up.
Oh, I’d say that William would formally agree that misrepresentation is wrong outside of the narrow range that he actually stated was wrong in keiths’ quote. But would he really be bothered by it in fact? Is he bothered by it in fact? I can’t see that he is. He tries to divert attention away from the actual dishonest use of quotes to whether or not one agrees with a statement by petrushka, as if that really matters (sorry petrushka).
No, I’ve never seen any real concern from William about dishonest creationist quotes. In fact, he’s pretty good at misrepresenting, like this one at UD: “Glen Davidson won’t even call petrushka wrong, and offers a long apologetic argument that Gould probably, in most cases, is not “properly” quoted by creationists, noting near the end.”
I don’t doubt that he’d say any misrepresentation is wrong–a given for most people–it’s just not at all clear that he acts accordingly.
Glen Davidson
So in other words, I made no claim that needs “documenting”.
Thanks. I appreciate the intellectual honesty and the forthright response.
Petrushka said:
It can be fair use whether or not one responds to the argument from which the quote was taken.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, because this is ambiguous. If the person you quote is making argument A, then his quote must be used in the context of argument A. It is DISHONEST to use a quote made to support argument A, AS THOUGH it is a quote in support of argument B.
To put it in different words, if you DO NOT use the quote in the context of the argument where it was made, you are quote mining.
(But it’s ambiguous because you MIGHT be using the quote to establish background facts. But again, in that case, why quote anyone? Why not simply cite the primary source?)
Regardless of the intentions of those responsible for the quotes on that page, the quotes being there doesn’t represent “quote-mining”. Period. You, Glen, are in error about that. There might be a lot wrong with that page and those quotes, but definitionally, they’re not quote mines as they exist on that particular page.
What matters to me in this thread is petrushka (and some others) putting forth (or supporting) an entirely false idea of what actually constitutes quote-mining and promoting sites that foster that false idea.
Flint said:
That’s simply not true. I’ve answered that question several times, and I even answered you when you asked it. It’s common practice to quote authorities in the camp you disagree with in order to establish that both camps agree to certain facts, ideas or premises, and then argue towards a different conclusion using those agreed-upon facts or givens.
That’s just bullshit, William. The sites that use these quotes do not make reasoned arguments. The just list the quotes.
Sal found a site that made an argument, but the quote wasn’t even on the quote mine list and wasn’t the kind of quote that is commonly mined.
Flint said:
No, Flint, it doesn’t. You’re just wrong about that. And this is why this debate is important – so you and Petrushka and others can learn what quote-mining actually is – and is not.
If, in his argument, biologist Joe says “it is an established fact that X”, then a creationist can quote Joe in order to show agreement between the competing camps that they both accept X as a fact without addressing any of the argument Joe makes.
It’s dishonest to make it appear as if Joe agrees with your argument or conclusions; it’s not dishonest to use the quote to show that Joe agrees with you about certain facts or other areas of agreement, or to establish Joe’s position about a certain thing you’re arguing about, whether or not it has anything to do with the rest of Joe’s argument.
You’re wrong. Anyone else here willing to help correct Flint’s misapprehension of what constitutes quote-mining?
That doesn’t make them quote-mines, petrushka.
Your obtuseness is no argument.
You don’t get to make up the definition.
What matters is your willingness to fault everyone for not agreeing with your dull misunderstandings of what is being discussed, as well as your unwillingness to learn from those who are more knowledgeable and less presumptuous than yourself.
Glen Davidson
Yes, we have been over this several times. IF AND ONLY IF the position taken by the person being quoted is faithfully presented, you can start from the same facts and draw different conclusions.
If the quote is not what the author meant, and you KNOW it’s not what he meant, then this is dishonest.
I beg you, PLEASE go back to the post where I gave you an honest, and a dishonest, use of the same quote to forward the same creationist position.
GlenDavidson,
You’re wrong about the quotes on that site being “quote-mines”, Glen. The proper meaning of quotes must be misrepresented in order for them to be considered quote-mines. Bare quotes are not quote-mines, especially with the disclaimer that page has at the top. What you imagine the motivations or intent of the page creators to be is irrelevant.
Anyone here got the stones to tell Glen he’s wrong?
Flint,
Anyone wiling to step up and correct Flint? Or is the IDist the only one willing to do so?
The IDist is the only one who THINKS so, for the self-serving reason that creationists use quotes dishonestly almost without exception.
I notice that not a single IDist is willing to step up and explain to you why you’re wrong.
I know you don’t get it, but it’s taking the quote out of context and placing it in a context where it will be misunderstood that makes a quotemine.
A bunch of quotes that say what creationists want to read–when this happens by leaving out context (not all of them, of course)–is quote mining.
So you don’t understand things well. That’s why you should learn, rather than reassert your misunderstandings endlessly while whining that no one on the side of knowledge and standards agrees with your self-serving BS.
Glen Davidson
We’re not blessed with the requisite obtuseness to do so.
Glen Davidson
Heh. Again, I would be more than willing to correct Flint – if Flint were wrong. Indeed, given my reputation for being a mean loudmouth, the fact that I haven’t already corrected Flint is good evidence that Flint is correct in this thread. Otherwise, you’d have to suggest a reason why I’d be holding back. What reason?
Out of “team spirit”? Don’t make me vomit. My record here shows that I don’t hold back on correcting “my side” — nor for that matter, do I refrain from agreeing with the “other team” when they say something smart.
Billy boyo can imagine whatever reason he wants for me/us not correcting Flint. But unless the reason he comes up with is “because Flint is already correct”, then whatever he’s imagining is just plain wrong.