The Skeptical Zone is not fit for its intended purpose.
Elizabeth created The Skeptical Zone with admirable and lofty goals:
My name is Elizabeth Liddle, and I started this site to be a place where people could discuss controversial positions about life, the universe and everything with minimal tribal rancour (pay no attention to the penguins….)
My motivation for starting the site has been the experience of trying to discuss religion, politics, evolution, the Mind/Brain problem, creationism, ethics, exit polls, probability, intelligent design, and many other topics in venues where positions are strongly held and feelings run high. In most venues, one view dominates, and there is a kind of “resident prior” about the integrity, intelligence and motivation of those who differ from the majority view.
That is why the strapline says: “Park your priors by the door”. They may be adjusted by the time you leave!
She provides more details on the Rules page:
So I’m going to start a bit vague, then get more specific as need arises.The principle is in the strapline: Park your priors by the door. Everyone has priors, they are crucial to way we make sense of the world. But the impetus behind this site is to be a place where they can be loosened and adjusted while you wait. So leave them by the door, and pick them up again as you leave!
There are plenty of blogs and forums where people with like priors can hang out and scoff at those who do not share them. There’s nothing wrong with those sites, and I’ve learned a lot from them. But the idea here is to provide a venue where people with very different priors can come to discover what common ground we share; what misunderstandings of other views we hold; and, having cleared away the straw men, find out where our real differences lie. In my experience, when you reach that point, who is right becomes obvious to both parties 🙂
It is painfully obvious that Elizabeth’s final sentence is not supported by the empirical evidence. Measured by its ability to achieve Elizabeth’s stated goals, The Skeptical Zone is broken. The reason for that is obvious: Elizabeth’s goals can only be achieved if all participants are genuinely supportive of them and willing to not just assume good faith but actually act in good faith. That is not the case here. It is clear that several members of the TSZ community are not at all interested in “find[ing] out where our real differences lie”, parking their priors at the door, or risking disconfirmation of their positions. These people add nothing to the discussion but disruption through the repetition of baseless, nonsensical claims even after multiple refutations.
The root cause of why TSZ cannot meet Elizabeth’s goals is the nature of one of the primary topics here, intelligent design creationism. IDC is a religiously-based political movement, not a scientific endeavor. There is no scientific hypothesis of IDC, there are no testable entailments, no one supports it because of evidence or reason. IDC is creationism dressed up in a costume lab coat. It is a fundamentally, inherently dishonest attempt to make an end run around the separation of church and state after the Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard.
IDC supporters are not interested in challenging their own religious beliefs. There is no evidence or logic that will sway them because their identities are too tightly tied to those beliefs. They are incapable of aligning with Elizabeth’s goals because they are waging Culture War. Evidence, reason, science, and truth are not what they value.
While there are interesting discussions on a wide variety of scientific and philosophical topics here, they are being increasingly crowded out by the high volume of comments containing little more than PRATT (Previously Refuted A Thousand Times) creationist tropes. We have a couple of participants suffering from aggressive, weaponized ignorance and a willingness to display it in a prodigious stream of comments. We have someone who aspires to be the clown prince of intelligent design creationism but only manages to be an attention whoring, dishonest, humorless troll. We have a presuppositionalist who can’t see out of the hole he was placed in as a child and pulled in after himself. We have a young earth creationist who uses the valuable input of working scientists solely to hone his ability to indoctrinate others with his anti-science beliefs. We have a number of seagull commenters who just fly in, crap all over everything, and leave. And we have a lot of people, myself included, who eventually respond to such prolonged stupidity with frustration.
So what, if anything, is a possible way to achieve Elizabeth’s goals for the site? How do we get to the point where we can “find out where our real differences lie” so that “who is right becomes obvious to both parties”?
One option is better tools. “Technical solutions to social problems rarely work.” is an engineering maxim, for good reason. In this case, though, it may be that better technology that reduces the noise generated by the anti-science participants could have a significant benefit, while respecting everyone’s freedom of expression.
TSZ does provide the ability to ignore specified participants. That reduces some of the volume from those who are not aligned with Elizabeth’s goals, but the sometimes large number of replies to those being ignored are not blocked. Usenet solved this problem decades ago through newsreaders that support threading of discussions and personalized killfiles to remove specific people or topics from the user’s feed.
Another alternative is a karma system like Reddit or Hacker News. Giving individuals the ability to configure their viewing preferences so that only comments above some threshold are displayed would reduce the ability of those not acting in good faith to disrupt discussion. This would also eliminate the need for admins to move rule-violating comments to Guano. One size does not fit all, so a karma system would have to take into account individual relationships. For example, the system might know that I generally agree with one person’s comment ratings and give their votes more weight in my personal view of the site. This could result in multiple disjoint sets of participants. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Unfortunately, no software with these capabilities is currently available for WordPress. We should adopt them if and when they are, but it’s not a near term solution.
Another option is increased censorship. (We could use nice euphemisms like “moderation” or “curating” but let’s be brutally honest.) Censorship can take many forms. We could make failure to act in accordance with the site goals a bannable offense. We could follow the After the Bar Closes approach of giving particularly disruptive participants their own thread and banning them from any others. One admin, if I understand him correctly, supports treating PRATTs as spam and moving comments containing them to Guano.
That last suggestion is one step on the path to curating every post and comment for quality. This is journal-style moderation where nothing gets posted without approval. While it might achieve Elizabeth’s goals, it is a very labor intensive approach.
We could maintain a list of PRATTs (the Talk Origins archive is a good start) and move all comments that repeat them without supporting evidence to a Guano-like thread. We could go further and heavily moderate comments that don’t contribute to the discussion.
All of these possibilities violate the principle of freedom of expression. They do not encourage the free and open exchange of ideas, they are vey likely to lead to significantly reduced participation, and they’ll definitely lead to more arguments and meta-discussion in Moderation Issues. I’m certainly not interested in playing the role of censor and I wouldn’t trust anyone who volunteered for it.
The only currently viable option I see is to let the TSZ community be what it wants to be. There are a large number of valuable posts and comments here by experienced scientists and philosophers that are worth preserving. Even with the noise from the anti-science crowd that signal isn’t completely drowned out. There is also value in honing arguments against those incapable of changing their minds, even when that doesn’t meet Elizabeth’s goals and distracts from discussions that are aligned with them. It seems that the community wants both.
If there are enough of us here who are aligned with Elizabeth’s goals, we can achieve them voluntarily. Elizabeth touched on this approach herself:
This post by Reciprocating Bill sums up the ethos of the site brilliantly so I’m quoting it here:
Participation at this site entails obligations similar to those that attend playing a game. While there is no objective moral obligation to answer questions, the site has aims, rules and informal stakeholders, just as football has same. When violations of those aims and rules are perceived and/or the enforcement of same is seen as arbitrary or inconsistent, differences and conflicts arise. No resort to objective morality, yet perfectly comprehensible and appropriate opprobrium.
The current rules don’t support this ethos. In the interests of taking off the gloves and giving opprobrium the chance to work, I suggest two rule modifications. First, the rule about assuming good faith should not require active stupidity in the face of bad faith. Calling out flagrant dishonesty and repeated, willful ignorance should not be against the rules. Second, I suggest eliminating the overhead of endless Moderation Issue discussions by no longer allowing admins to move comments to Guano. The bannable offenses should still be enforced since they provide legal protection to Elizabeth and the site.
My final suggestion is being the change we want to see. Rules and tools are not going to achieve Elizabeth’s goals. People acting individually and cooperating voluntarily can. That means having the discipline to stop feeding the trolls (or at least moving the slop bucket to Noyau). It means encouraging the quality posts and comments and ignoring the noise. I think a good percentage of the TSZ participants agree with what Elizabeth is trying to achieve. Let’s turn the free speech dial up to 11 and take responsibility for it.
Admins are no different than any other participant when they are participating in the discussion. If we were to implement a karma system, everyone would be subject to the same rules.
It looks like he is proposing that relentless attacks on ID, no matter how many times they have been refuted, are OK
False. And the fact that you don’t see that makes all your rule proposals dangerous. Dismissed.
Telic thinking has been around since the ancient Greeks. It preceded Creationism by centuries. While true that Creation is a subset of ID, they are not the same. Anyone who has read what IDists say and are doing know it is a scientific endeavor and makes testable claims. Biological ID can be falsified by merely showing blind and mindless processes are capable of producing living organisms and their systems and subsystems. It meets the criteria of a scientific endeavor. And if you don’t think so just show us what you have so we can compare.
The evidence that would falsify ID is in writing and if IDists reject it when provided would prove Patrick correct. However Patrick’s statement in the face of what his position cannot offer is lame to the extreme. It seems that the only evidence Patrick will accept for ID is a meeting with and complete demonstration from the Intelligent Designer(s).
So what we have from patrick is just typical projection. He will never lead by example and will never show us the science behind evolutionism.
In science, there isn’t any “right”. At best, there’s “accepted as right for now, but subject to revision.” Science is pragmatic. It goes by what works, or what works better than the previous idea.
The ID folk don’t get that. They want truth. But their theism doesn’t get them truth, either. It merely makes the pretense that it does.
We do have good discussions, thanks especially to people such as Allan Miller, and participation by many others.
It is Elizabeth’s site. Our ability to change things is limited.
If it were my site, I would have permanently banned Frankie, and Mung would find himself on frequent short suspensions to slow down his trolling. My suspicion is that Alan F. would have a similar viewpoint, but I could be mistaken.
I’ve seen sites that are run the way that you and keiths want it. And they have turned out badly.
I mostly agree with that.
Unbelievable- Dembski wrote that science is tentative and that the design inference of today could be upset by future discoveries.
If it were your site and you let the hooligans run unchecked then shame on you. You would ban me only because I don’t allow you and yours to get away with bald assertions and arguments from imagined authority. Yours would surely turn into an echo chamber “debating” minutiae. You would go around thinking that you had it all figured out when in fact you didn’t have a clue. Who would want to visit a site like that?
Also Patrick does not get that. He thinks he is right and that’s all that matters. He is unable to learn from differences as the goals of the website state.
I am. It’s Lizzie’s decision whether or not to consider those proposed changes. Alan, Neil, and I are just the janitors.
Well, gee, I guess that settles that. No evidence needed.
Perhaps you’d care to point out the actual difference you seem to think exists?
Then please ask her to join us, at least for this thread. Transparency and all that.
Why the hell am I talking to the janitor?
I don’t know about y’all, but I find myself wondering, when the U.S. is going right down the toilet, whether it’s more important to worry about the moderation rules at TSZ or make fun of Sal.
I’m torn, myself. Fortunately at least one of our moderators is not. As this (detailed) OP indicates, he knows what’s really important.
And yet you wrote this:
What’s up with that?
Because the toaster repairman is barking mad?
Phillip Johnson:
“This [the intelligent design movement] isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science, it’s about religion and philosophy.” World Magazine, 30 November 1996
“The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ and ‘In the beginning God created.’ Establishing that point isn’t enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message.” Foreword to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000)
“Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.” American Family Radio (10 January 2003)
Someone needs to buy him a new record. His ’78’ “I know you are but what am I?” was desupported decades ago.
You think that mods (who can restrict regular members – that’s what you propose) and regular members (who have no power over mods – because that’s what it means to be a regular member) are not two distinct classes, whereas I think they are. Let any onlooker judge if this is a relevant distinction.
See above. I have pointed this out in almost every post of mine in this thread, but you fail to see it. Anyway, this blindness makes you you and that’s why nobody should give you any more power. You don’t deserve the power that you already have. Grow up. Understand differences and learn to tolerate them.
No.
I would ban you because most of your posts are content free or are bare unsupported assertions. That quickly becomes tiresome.
It’s what he would do if the tables were turned. It’s plucked out of thin air otherwise, as far as I can see. An unfortunate, for him, slip.
Cat pictures!
Will someone tell Rumraket that quote-mining is immoral? We’ll never get to the bottom of who is right and who is wrong if he keeps that up.
Let’s just get over the plain observable fact that the site isn’t living up to it’s intended goal. That’s because it’s intended goal is a naive hope, rather than an empirical fact.
Elizabeth is still wasting her time trying to explain stuff to Dave Hawkins over on talkrational. After 14 years of trying, he’s still not got any of it. Any. of. it. 14 years and he has learned nothing. Why waste your time? To me, the belief that this man is capable of changing his mind is as insane as man himself.
The ID people who come here are the last vestiges of a dead movement. The movement had their shot at trying to change the scientific community and blew it. They blew it because their sought conclusion is false, and their methods flawed.
Everyone capable of changing their minds did so and left the movement. What we are left to contend with is those who either can’t or won’t. Such people exist. Sad but true.
Somehow word spread that this is where ID people come to die. 🙂
Let’s quote another mod here
And after that Patrick asks “evidence” from me? The evidence – that he is alone in his proposals and that the manner in which he is proposing them is going against the website’s current goals and rules – is all over the place. It’s just that he is wilfully blind and others are too kind to him. When people are kind to a bad mod, it can only get worse. It is already getting very bad because this is about the third or fourth time he is doing it within a year.
As I said, I think it was a mistake to turn a blind eye to JoeG’s sock puppet and that account should not have been allowed to continue. I would have given JoeG a second chance, had he expressed contrition and undertook to abide by site rules in future, though I can’t imagine him giving such an undertaking. Subsequently breaching it would have been grounds for a permanent ban. As it is, we have to put up with that particular fly buzzing.
Regarding Mung, I actually think he’s not a bad sort. At least he makes me chuckle* from time to time.
*@ Mung
That’s with you and not at you!
ID people don’t change their mind.
Well, they do, but those who do so, have already done so.
The remaining dregs always end up at TSZ.
LMAO!
Repeating myself, it is rearranging deckchairs on SS Trumptanic.
Alan is one of those people who knows I can both admit when I am wrong and also modify my behavior. Other people see what they want to see. Thanks Alan.
Well, let’s hold the ship up.
Or, um, are we probably not equipped to do much except uphold rationality where we are?
Glen Davidson
Walto, you need to pace yourself, the worst is yet to come.
I agree that The Skeptical Zone has not fulfilled its intended purpose, and that’s the fault of pretty much everyone here, myself included. I don’t think that any change in moderation would help.
I think it’s simply that TSZ would need a different cast of characters who really are committed to Lizzie’s vision, and not enough of us (if any of us) are.
No one here is committed to parking their priors by the door and engaging in sympathetic dialogue with people they disagree with. Rather, we all have our entrenched views and defend them as best we can (which is often not very well).
In any event, I have no complaints about the moderation and don’t see the need for any changes. The problem isn’t the procedures; it’s our attitudes.
I agree. Mung is one of the few ID proponents from whom I don’t see anything that appears like deliberate dishonesty, or outright stupidity.
I wouldn’t presume to claim that The Skeptical Zone had any particular hand in the decline of the ID-movement. So it’s not I think ID-proponents come here and then change their minds and leave. Rather, those that could did so long ago, and of those that are left, a select few venture here, most spend most of their time appealing to their own strawmen, mockery and ignorance. Or make fools of themselves.
The primary argument seems to be to pick something from the literature, state it in different and mocking terms and couch it in rhetoric (lucky random errorenous chaotic unguided blind braindead accidental copying catastrophes without foresight, miraculously by accidental meaningless and unintended luck, happened to create everything for no reason whatsoever), laugh at it and then pretend thus, evolution was disproven. It’s not even an argument, yet that is the primary output of some of the people that come here.
I find it easy to ban anyone that I find uninteresting. I ignore them. Some via software, and some by scrolling over. I can always get the gist of what they say by reading responses to them.
I never had the goal of convincing anyone on either side of these debates. My only goal is to be entertained and occasionally educated. If I post, it is not intended to convert or convince anyone. It is to elicit a response that might indicate I am on the right track in my understanding, or that I need to modify my position.
I find the site just fine for my purposes.
I have abided by the rules more so than others, like adapa, acartia, Richie, OMagain, dazz, etc- even you and Patrick
Evidence please- surely you can support your claim.
I’m with Petrushka on this; I don’t come here for “civil” discussion or for learning anything, per se, at this point. A number of years ago, when I first started reading Pandas Thumb and After the Bar Closes, that was my motivation, but after a few years of the rhetoric and the ridiculousness at UD, I realized that the only reason to come to these places, let alone engage with those of contrary views, was purely for entertainment. I really can’t imagine that the vast majority of folk here expect otherwise.
Given that, I personally would not change much, if anything. I don’t see guano having any particular effect, either positive or negative, but I suppose if the rules regarding sticking to the topic and not the poster were enforced strictly for about a month and 40% – 60% of the posts were moved in that time, some of the conversations might be a little more productive by some measures. But “productive” is subjective, so who knows?
Now, while I state above that I don’t come her to learn anything, I am happy to say I have, particularly in terms of philosophical perspectives and ideas. That’s been fascinating. I will also note that since joining TSZ, my view of religion and “god” has gone from liberal Christian to pretty much atheist at this point. So I got that going for me, which is nice…
Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s time to revise the OP. Eh Patrick?
My name is Elizabeth Liddle, and I started this site to be a place where people could discuss controversial positions about life, the universe and everything with minimal tribal rancour (pay no attention to the penguins….)
What’s wrong with you? Can’t you at least appreciate the effort Rover Boobies is putting into his posts?
I prefer his nonsense over your bigmouth foaming over the origins of life evidence that never surfaces…
Just because you are a manipulator who deliberately deceives the public, this does’t give you the right to shut down RB.
I will call Donald Tuck if need be to nuke this sh…y establishment…
I think this thread should be about how to improve TSZ, not about how messed up Patrick is…. oh … wait … erm … could the two possibly be related?
It is so tempting to attack Patrick as part of the problem. Must .. resist …
After all, he started out by attacking “intelligent design creationists” as part if not all of the problem. Must … resist …
😀
To echo petruska and Robin, I don’t come here to convince anybody. And I’m not sure that would really be aligned with the site’s goals anyway…
I come here to learn and to be entertained.
I would say the same.
Here I disagree; I think you describe an overly jaded view of the participants here, and their willingness to park their priors. But it’s only slightly overly jaded.
Agreed.
Parking your priors, it turns out, is (a) difficult and (b) insufficient. There is, in addition, a level of charity required that I just don’t possess.
I do see TSZ as a rather interesting psycho-social experiment, and the data’s in…
Further data continues to accumulate of course, but I have gained a pretty good read on the behaviors of different players on either side of the divide.
I still learn some new stuff (beyond the psychology data acquisition), but really it is the entertainment that keeps bringing me back. Well, that and my Save the Children oblilgations.
See? I can’t help myself…
“TSZ does provide the ability to ignore specified participants. That reduces some of the volume from those who are not aligned with Elizabeth’s goals, but the sometimes large number of replies to those being ignored are not blocked.”
Ignore Commenter works great. I’ve got all the creationists on ignore except PaV so I can scan his comments and see if he’s going HIV Troofer, because that’s much more entertaining than warmed-over Duane Gish and Ken Ham.
…
I have some I can spare! Here ya go …
Actually, I think you usually do quite well.
There. I fixed it for you.
From the first message sent over ARPAnet in 1969, until today, no discussion board on the internet has ever successfully ignored a troll.
Damned elitist.😬
How did you get that picture of my cat?
Cosign.
“Robin February 6, 2017 at 9:58 pm
I’m with Petrushka on this; I don’t come here for “civil” discussion or for learning anything, per se, at this point. A number of years ago, when I first started reading Pandas Thumb and After the Bar Closes, that was my motivation, but after a few years of the rhetoric and the ridiculousness at UD, I realized that the only reason to come to these places, let alone engage with those of contrary views, was purely for entertainment. I really can’t imagine that the vast majority of folk here expect otherwise.”
Yeah, I don’t come here to have a deep, honest discussion with the creationists. That doesn’t happen. I come here to see things like “How do you know the protein space even has a density?” and laugh my hiney off.
Mung has inadvertently (I think) proposed the solution. Any commenter who can’t relate an incident on the blogosphere where they have been embarrassingly WRONG and refused to admit it, should be banned permanently from TSZ.
I’ll go first. When commenting at UD I once gave a probability 101 example of rolling two dice (die?) that was absolutely wrong. Querious pointed this out and I dug in my heels rather than admit I was wrong.
OK FrankenJoe, your turn.