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.
That’s not fair to me. One of my most endearing features is the utter lack of embarrassment when I’m wrong. Does it count if others are embarrassed for me?
Always the anal imagery with you. wtf?
As long as you admit that you are wrong, I don’t see why not.
Joe, where are you?
It was a catnipping.
It’s a good thing you didn’t say catnapping. He has been missing for a couple months.
You seem to be the only one who brought up anal imagery
Interesting how much your homophobia and gay-bashing always surfaces. Just can’t hide those pure Christian roots, can you?
Is this Salvador admitting he was wrong?
I don’t know if “broken” is the right word. TSZ is currently not very satisfying or interesting. This is largely because of the great majority of posts I have to wade through that say nothing. Even though I have the main perpetrators on ignore, two problems remain: responses to the contentless posts from people who sometimes do have something to say, and thus can’t be ignored, also tend to be contentless, and the ignoredposts still push real posts off the front page, making it easier to miss them.
Briefly, the main problem with TSZ is low signal to noise ratio. I don’t know how to fix that, but let me make a probably futile appeal to anyone reading this: before you post, ask whether it’s a useful contribution. If the answer is no, don’t post.
Christianity doesn’t teach homophobia and gay-bashing and this site could be improved by people agreeing to shun folks like you. 🙂
Back on Ignore you pathetic hateful little person.
Then where did you learn if from? Why does your homophobia always surface eventually no matter where you post?
And here we have yet more evidence that the entire premise of the OP that it is all the fault of “the other guy” is in fact a false premise.
ok, here’s another suggestion to improve the site.
Patrick should step down as a moderator and he should be replaced by someone from “the other side” who is equally as obnoxious for a period of at least one year.
Elizabeth apparently saw some need for more balanced moderation and johnnyb was recruited, but that doesn’t seem to have been a good choice. Time for johnnyb to go.
Of course, this suggestion is only applicable if the link between moderation and Guano remains. If that link is broken I do trust Patrick to be able to detect porn when he sees it.
Awwww.
I’m sure you’re right. But, as you know, it annoys me that everybody here gives patrick — who defended Trump because Hillary Clinton was soooo dangerous–a permanent pass because he says he’s an atheist. Good for him. His choices have made the world very dangerous for atheists. And he’s entirely unapologetic about this.
Nobody here gives a shit about this but me apparently, but it’s hard for me to let this go because he was also very obnoxious to me personally–attacked me for being a public servant, in spite of being a moderator who’s not supposed to be engaging in ad homs. I could get past this with a sincere apology maybe, but people like that never apologize for anything.
Worse, maybe he thinks his choices have been right! The world is completely fucked but the ATHEISTS here are focused on the moderation rules rather than the moderators at TSZ. They claim to care about stuff like creationism in schools, climate change denial, etc. But for Christs sake. Trump trumps everything right now.
walto,
If you think that “everybody here” gives Patrick “a permanent pass”, and that it’s “because he says he’s an atheist”, then your observational skills need some serious work.
Well, it’s that he’s an atheist and provides the occasional “Oho!” post, I guess. Almost humorous–when posting somebody else’s cartoon or something.
Anyhow, this is just more ad homs, so I’ll stop.
I’m pretty sure that when walto writes “everybody” he’s not talking about people like myself and Erik. I’m sure you already know that though. He’s talking about people like you. If you don’t like it, stop giving Patrick a pass.
I don’t give Patrick a pass, much less a “permanent” one. I agree with him when I think he’s right, and I disagree with him when I think he’s wrong.
Of course you won’t let those inconvenient facts get in the way of your dishonesty.
Complete agreement.
Between my teaching, scholarship, and helping with the resistance against revanchist White nationalism, I don’t have much time for TSZ as it is.
Sure you do. When is the last time you reported him to one of the mods for a violation of the rules, either directly via PM or in a post in Moderation Issues?
Accusing others of dishonesty is against the rules. But you don’t give a shit about the rules. Both you and Patrick seek license to violate the rules at will. Two peas in a a pod.
Really? I just don’t recall Patrick having a great impact on government and/or society.
I think you have to ask how important any of this is. I think that for most of us the answer is “not much.” Laugh a bit, boggle at the extremes taken by IDists/creationists to avoid reasonable inferences, try not to become a moderator myself. You’re both arguing that it doesn’t matter much and acting like it really does–understandable because it was personal for you, but you know, it can’t thereby be personal for the rest.
The thing is, it really doesn’t matter much. Most of us know that.
Glen Davidson
Mung:
That’s precisely the problem. The rules reward dishonest bottom-feeders like you, while punishing others for telling the truth.
Your projection is duly noted.
keiths:
Mung:
That’s pitiful, Mung. I don’t report anyone for rules violations, because I think that moving comments to Guano is counterproductive. As you know perfectly well.
Don’t you ever get tired of being the buffoon whose attacks always fail?
All I have seen here is the ID side bad mouthing the evolution side. And the evolution side bad mouthing the ID side. And I have been as guilty as anyone else in this respect.
But, I proposed an excercise to try to get people talking and both sides have ignored it. Apparently there is nobody, regardless of what side you are on, who will provide details on any blog posts where you were absolutely wrong, yet still dug in your heels and refused to admit you were wrong.
As Gordon Mullings would say, that speaks volumes.
Yes. I’ve done so several times.
You’re so logical keiths. And predictable. You give everyone one a pass when it comes to rules violations. It follows that you give Patrick a pass when it comes to rules violations.
Care to elaborate?
No. I’ve long been aware of your impervious armor. You and Patrick. Two peas in a pod. Co-religionists. 🙂
Second this big time. Sadly the ID-Creationist movement tends to attract nothing but compulsive, repetitive liars like Joe G and Sal and Mung. With no way to police their dishonest shenanigans any discussion board rapidly turns into a shit pile.
Don’t you ever tire of performing like a trained seal?
Don’t you ever tire of being a whiny “I’m a victim!” attention whore?
I think everybody’s done been wrong and dug in; (certainly I have, anyhow). But that’s nothing. It’s not being wrong and sticking to it tenaciously that’s offensive. It’s KNOWING that you’re wrong and sticking that’s objectionable.
But the problem is, since there’s a resistance to BEING wrong, there’s also a resistance to BELIEVING one is wrong. And, of course, one can’t know one is wrong without first believing one is. So there may not be so many offenders as you might think…..
Examples at UD:
and recently at TSZ:
and
and in the Fall of 2016 I found several arithmetic errors here:
which I admitted somewhere several times in this thread somewhere:
NB: Got to take comfort in the small things.
But consider: there’s seems almost unlimited energy to tee off on IDists here even though, e.g., phoodoo was actively opposed to Trump (who certainly HAS the power to help the ninnies), while patrick was defending the guy (because, of course, Hillary was sooo problematic). My point is this: who is actually more dangerous to the cause of science, the phoodoos or the patricks? But who gets all the shit here?
stcordova,
Sal,
Thanks for sharing. But these are just instances of you admitting a mistake. I am talking about admitting instances where you doggedly stuck to your guns in spite of very clearly being shown that you are unequivocally wrong. A good example would be Joey stubbornly insisting that frequency = wavelength. We all know that this is not true, yet he has yet to admit that he was wrong. Do you have a similar example? I have already shared mine.
Elizabeth mentions venues in which one view dominates and mentions a “resident prior” about the integrity, intelligence and motivation of those who differ from the majority view. It is for that reason that people here are asked to “park their priors.”
Can we have a moment or two of brutal honesty? What is the dominant view here at TSZ and who, therefore, ought to lead the way in parking their priors in keeping with Elizabeth’s wishes?
Further, how does Patrick’s OP not fly right in the face of Elizabeth’s declared wishes for the site? It reads like a manifesto for exactly the sort of site she doesn’t want. It’s a shining example of how 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.
Who is going to go to Elizabeth and ask her to sell her soul to the devil?
There are plenty of things I have not made up my mind about. The world may be flat. Gravity may not be composed of anything material. So I get upset when people only manage to think of me as dogmatic and unable to change my mind. I haven’t made up my mind yet, what am I supposed to change it to?
I bet Patrick’s an ok guy. I bet we could have a drink together and chat. Should I change my mind?
Just think of all the things we discuss here where no one really knows. Is it that surprising that everyone can’t always agree and “see who is right”? Not to me.
Neither one seems much of a threat to science.
That’s quite melodramatic, Mung, but Lizzie never indicated that she wanted a site at which blatant dishonesty such as yours was encouraged and protected while truth-telling was punished. That was an unintended side effect of the rules — a side effect which you have gleefully exploited.
It’s no coincidence that the “don’t accuse others of dishonesty” rule is most often invoked by those, like you, who are the most dishonest.
Acartia:
Sal,
Think of the recent entropy thread, in which you clung to the energy dispersal view of entropy after it was conclusively discredited.
One of the problems is that IDism is already dead or dying as an ideology concocted and attempted as a ‘movement’ based in Seattle, Washington. Anyone who thinks that ‘movement’ is thriving would appear in denial of facts, such as Dembski’s retirement and Luskin’s abandonment of the DI to instead return to school. The 98+% of people who ideologically reject IDism is shared by atheists and theists alike because the DI never took a clear position about its own ideology in the bargain (Gilder, Meyer, political backbenchers, et al.) they were selling with PR & media productions (helped by gamblers like Cordova & Luskin at IDEA clubs indoctrinating USAmerican university students with cheap tricks). It was such a mess and this stuff is going to get cleared out big time in Trump’s tenure if for no other reason that that their bluntness would combine into ugly, distasteful paste.
Another problem is that Elizabeth Liddle explicitly did not design TSZ to be an atheist pit of despair for anti-IDist sorcery. I asked her this directly several times and she responded the same each time – TSZ is not designed for atheists or to burden a defense of atheism. Lizzie was more explorative & fuzzy than self-righteous extremist atheists like Patrick.
The ‘nature of’ this conversation (creation, evolution, design, science, philosophy, theology/worldview, struggle, tension, etc.), even among ‘skeptics’, has meant that atheists, naturalists, materialists have clung together against a far from mainstream loose clique of theists. The loose clique of theists need not stick together, a case in point of sal & mung. But if you think mung, sal, Frankie/joe, phodoo, erik, byers et al. are a picture of ‘mainstream’ Abrahamic theists in N. America, then you might want to think again. Even Torley can’t figure out that Catholocism doesn’t chain him to a highly distorted philosophy that he borrowed from a California lawyer, in the end with the SPECIFIC COMBO of ‘intelligent’ + ‘design’. Torley won’t let go of his IDist fetish & show the courage to change. He’s WEDDED to that mixture of terms & can’t figure a way to strip it from his identity … and thus continues distorting and galloping with plenty of words along a path to nowhere.
Most significant Anglo-Saxon philosophers of religion and science have moved on from IDism or weren’t impressed or bothered by it in the first place. They reject YECism because, uh, hello of course they do. And yet other than BioLogos, no major Abrahamic science, philosophy and theology/worldview on-line resource has arisen to meet the ‘demands of the day.’
Skepticism of the loosely claimed (zoo-sociological) ‘morality’ of the atheist skeptics who maintain the majority at TSZ is precautionary, healthy and wise, least decent people fall into the ugly cynical craven pit of anti-creationism that Elizabeth built & now refrains to visit.
She was often reasonable & decently ‘scientific/scholarly’, until requested to explain how her apostasy never meant anything to her in the first place. Then chaos & nonsense erupted from her again & again.
It was not any goal of mine simply to “find out where our real differences lie” between atheists & theists on most of the topics Lizzie was superficially (naturalistically) interested in. A conversation with ‘skeptics’ (aka atheists) shows how the differences are obvious.
You have a point. By himself, I don’t see phoodoo as a danger to science. And I do see Trump as a danger to science. And I do see libertarianism as dangerous to humanity, including science.
Neil Rickert,
Libertarianism is really only common with young, healthy, white, teenage boys. For the most part they grow out of it in early adulthood. It’s not much of a threat, politically.
Is it broken because of my threads???
i thought they were good scientific ones. Still do. Persuasive.
Endrun/ Is this a superball allusion? End runs seem to bring victory.
Why such a long winded assertion against iD/YEC is superwrong, superbad, superuncool??!!
TSZ gets as much, or more attention then ever.
is patrick a hurt evolutionist who can’t compete and wants discussions to cease and desist??
Hmmm.
I have no problem, and give no problem with/too people.
Some folks get mad as those who oppose them, indeed unkindnes and accusations flow.
However important subjects in human affairs , like these, are a contact sport.
If your side is behind, another superball allusion, don’t bitch but just perserve to the victory.
Creationists gain, and will gain the victory and TSZ is uniquely well managed. YES. it allows free speech and not allows malice . Just the right equation.
This.
Not to me either. And it’s not a requirement for substantive discourse that we agree on who is right, I think. If we can at the least stay away from the phoodoo-frankie-J-mac type interactions I think we have improved something.
John Harshman,
It’s hard to keep a unified ‘everyreader’ in mind though. Things that professionals deem worthy will not necessarily be the same as others. I am as guilty of troll-feeding as anyone. I’m aware that the person I’m responding to is simply not going to get it, and I am also aware of the ‘serious’ posters groaning ‘ohjustshutupwillya’ as I hit the button. Still, to me, it’s largely an exercise in formulating arguments, the purpose being principally my own amusement and education.
Equally, there’s no point writing for nobody.
It is an inevitable consequence of lightly moderated web discussion, I fear. My own interest in comments at Sandwalk diminished after getting fed up with the deterioration of every thread. My Facebook circle is rapidly diminishing as I block people far too ready to share the latest bullshit far-Right meme (and who, ironically, groan ‘bloody politics’ when I dare to pipe up).
Acartia,
Oh, I will. I had a lengthy argument regarding the relationship between selection and drift on the old ‘Richard Dawkins’ forums. My interlocutor was right, I was wrong. I am reddening as I type; the present me is embarrassed on the previous me’s behalf, and fortunately the entire discussion is now in a skip so I don’t have to link to it.
There must also be evolutionists who were raised Creationist here? And people often say they were evolutionists once, though one never sees the way they argued for it, if they did.