I appreciate sincere criticism, I really do, and despite all the praise for my recent radio debate, I listened to it and mainly heard a lot of things I could have done better. So I like it when I find someone who also offers suggestions for improvement, but at the same time, I have to disagree with one (just one, the others are good) central point he makes.
However, in the future I would warn PZ against calling his opponent ignorant or berating them in a debate like this. Save that kind of stuff when you’re venting to your fellow smart people. Name calling doesn’t convince any of the audience and it gives your opponent a chance to get off the ropes through subversive rhetoric. Using the term “ignorant” allowed Simmons to take the upper hand and make PZ look like a dick even though he was right in pointing out Simmons’ lack of knowledge. Or at least, it would have allowed Simmons to take the upper hand if he didn’t suck so much. In essence, don’t attack the opponent, attack the opponent’s ideas.
This is a tough one. In all the rules a communications major might learn, in all the forensics exercises a student goes through, in most public discussions, he is absolutely right. You want to win over the listeners with your charm, you want them to like you more than your opponent, and you want to set your image as strong but respectful. That’s usually the winning strategy.
But it’s also a strategy that’s best used on a level playing field, where both sides are arguing in good faith. It fails miserably in creationist debates. I know. I’ve seen a lot of them. I’ve seen too many debates where the science guy is utterly hapless — he stands there using the same tactics he would in a discussion with a fellow scientist, and the Gish-clone or Hovindite is spinning out a phenomenal web of outright lies, making claims about geology or biology or astronomy that are simply false. It’s painful to watch, because the scientist is usually straight-jacketed by the same rules my critic just stated, but the creationist is not.
If I have one combination strength and weakness, it is that I am not an expert debater. I am not going to be smooth on the podium, I am not going to charm the audience, and I am not going to make elegant ripostes. What I’m going to do is be blunt, and when my opponent says something stupid, I’m going to say, “That’s wrong,” and then I’m going to explain why it’s wrong. If it makes me look like a dick, that’s OK — I’m not in a popularity contest.
He is absolutely right that you can’t just call your opponent ignorant and be be done with it. You also have to show why he’s ignorant, in plain and simple terms that don’t require a lecture in advanced molecular biology to get across. Simmons’ failure wasn’t just that he sucked as a debater, but that he was actually and demonstrably ignorant of a subject in which he claimed sufficient expertise to be able to write a whole book on it. Failing to point out how ignorant he was would have been a profound mistake — it would have allowed him to continue to occupy the lofty pedestal of a scientific authority, and the debate would have been about which of the two of us was nicest and friendliest and least threatening to the audience’s predispositions, and he would have won.
I say the answer is to be honest to yourself, and recognize that most scientists, including myself, are not going to be golden-tongued orators. All we can do is present the evidence and the ideas bluntly, and backed up with the authority of our knowledge. We’re going to make the communications people cringe, and we’re going to annoy all the experts who want to tell us what to say and how to frame it, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to ignore most of their advice, because it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. It assumes the opponent merely has a difference of opinion and isn’t a lying faud.
Here’s a suggestion for how to think about these kinds of debates. You’re a professor. The creationist is your worst student ever, the one who skipped all the classes, never did any homework, and just bombed on the final exam. He’s in your office now, trying to scam you out of a few extra points so he can pass the course. We’ve all been in this situation; what do you do?
-
Call him an idiot and kick him out of the office?
-
Charm him with kind words and generous reassurances that no, he really asn’t failed, he’s merely made a few minor errors that require him to retake the course to get credit?
-
Grant him his arguments and change his grade to give him a passing C- in the course?
-
Lead him step by step through all of his mistakes, demolish his final exam all over again, and tell him in plain terms that he has not met the standards of the course and has failed?
The correct answer, of course, is #4. And the student always goes away thinking you are a real dick, but those are the breaks.
I think sometimes people NEED to be told their stupid, or that they’re lying through their teeth. Being nice to him would’ve let him get away with it. He deserved to be called on his lying and ignorance.
This reminds me of a Dawkins debate when he referred to creationists as “ignorant fools”. Somebody took him to task for saying that and he had to define on air what “ignorant” meant. I think a lot of people confuse ‘ignorant’ with ‘stupid’.
I think part of the problem is the juxtaposition of scientific and colloquial terminology. ‘Theory’ means different things to different people in the same was that ‘massive’ does. (at least in the U.K. where is means very very big, as apposed to having mass).
It seems tiresome to have to set out the rules and define the terms beforehand, and I would hate to be in your shoes, you’re damned by the scientists if you debate on their terms, and you risk loosing the argument if you don’t.
But at the end of the day, at least we can say we have massive penises and mean it, and that should cheer us up.
I do not agree with the criticism at all. In fact, I think a common problem with scientists “debating” creationists has been precisely that the scientists are often too polite to call them out civilly, but uncompromisingly, as PZ did very well. This timidity allows the creationist to walk away with a stature that is completely unearned despite having both demonstrated his utter ignorance and lied his head off. The ignorance and lying MUST, absolutely must, be made plain to the audience, though of course in a way that does not come off as badgering. I thought PZ maintained that delicate balance very well.
One of the problems with debating a fundie is that they love to play the martyr and will try to frame any attack on their ideas as an attack on their person. In the debate you attacked ideas not a person, but you might not have made that as clear as you might have.
Yep.
The other problem here is that our opponents have redefined certain words from meaningful descriptive terms to mere epithets (or compliments).
What is “ignorant”? Lacking in knowledge. That’s all; baby humans are ignorant and nobody scolds them for not knowing the terms of the Magna Carta or weather patterns over the past few million years. Ignorance is with us all our lives long, like a pile of Xmas presents too large to ever all be opened (says the eternal optimist).
“Wilful ignorance”, however, ought to be actionable. If your job requires you know the Magna Carta or weather patterns, and you as a grown-up with a college degree and a very responsible position do your very best to avoid this knowledge, then there is no employer in the world who won’t fire you…
Oh, wait. Never mind.
Noni
To call a creationist ignorant in such a debate is a statement of fact.
From thesaurus.com: apprenticed, benighted, bird-brained, blind to, cretinous, dense, green, illiterate, imbecilic, inexperienced, innocent, insensible, mindless, misinformed, moronic, naive, nescient, oblivious, obtuse, sappy, shallow, thick, unaware, unconscious, unconversant, uncultivated, uncultured, uneducated, unenlightened, uninformed, uninitiated, unintellectual, unknowledgeable, unlearned, unlettered, unmindful, unread, unschooled, unsuspecting, untaught, untrained, unwitting, witless
Do any of these terms express “ignorant” more politely/succinctly?
I listened to the debate, and you didn’t call him “ignorant” per se. You said he was “ignorant of the facts” or “ignorant of the subject matter” or something, which was simply true. It was the DJs who tried to suggest that you called him ignorant, like you were using the high school slang of ignorant as rude, rather than lacking knowledge. In fact, I think you were kind of nice. In your final statement I sort of expected you to say and wished you would have said, “Simmons lied about everything he said relating to science,” which of course would have been true. However, you were polite enough not to do that.
I’d agree with PZ, except that “straight-jacketed” should be “strait-jacketed.” (A strait is something that fits tightly or confines.)
One tactic that was very effective during the Dover trial was to refuse to let the creationist duck the question or change the subject in his answer. PZ certainly did that in the whale episode. Insist that the answer be directed to the precise question; hammer on it until it is answered. In Minnesota, we are famous for the “yeabut.” Do not let the opponent say “yeabut” and digress to a different question.
#5
exactly
the other one they tend to get wrong is “myth”-which they conflate with “lie”.
To continue the analogy, after the student storms out of your office for whatever reason, the parents get on the horn and demand that the grade be changed either because their offspring’s poor performance was your fault, or because you were unprofessionally nasty and offensive, and to amends you’ve got to raise their grade to a passing C-.
I think I can see this analogue play out in the post-debate shennanigans too.
I think the analogy is a poor one. You’re not just trying to convince this one creationist. You’ve got an audience of hundreds or thousands who are paying close attention to your interaction with this one person.
I don’t think “ignorant” was necessarily a bad word to have used, but it did allow him to temporarily deflect the central topic. “Infantile” was an even poorer choice of words.
I don’t agree with the advice to avoid explaining some basic scientific concepts. I think it’s important to express some enthusiasm for the subject and try to educate the audience on some basic level.
Overall I think PZ did a good job. As he pointed out in his intro to the debate, it’s a bit of a rigged game and scientists have a much more difficult time under the constraints of such a forum, but they can potentially do a lot of good.
I think Fairchild has a good point about taking the offensive against ID. Keep asking them just how they intend to investigate the nature of the intelligent designer, and to determine what mechanisms the ID used to achieve its planned results. If they are not interested in investigating this, they aren’t really scientists, are they?
“Your ignorance is not evidence” is the Greatest Line of All Time.
You might be able to refine it a bit, but that’s the essence of the argument. Creationism is the thinnest of veneers. A little sandpaper takes it right off.
I think it’s crucial to point out that he’s ignorant on the subject. I’m just not so sure that saying “your ignorant that…”, or the like, is the best tactic.
One might do better to say “apparently you are unaware that…” or, “you appeared to be uninformed that…”. Even, “you seem not to know…”.
Obviously I’m not at all opposed to showing the ignorant that they’re ignorant, and calling them that in the context of this forum. It’s just that in these debates, which are indeed not set up to be fair, one has to be diplomatic in pointing out the stark truth that the guy is an ignorant boob. So I would think that finding some more polite way of saying that he’s an ignoramus would be worth trying out.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
If I remember correctly, you didn’t call Simmons an ignorant, you pointed out that the latter’s ignorance didn’t constitute evidence for the alleged lack of fossil record.
I think there is a difference, both semantically and formally, between using the epithet “ignorant” and factually demonstrating one’s ignorance, as it was the case here.
Therefore this criticism is uninformed and we can safely dismiss it.
Couldn’t this be alleviated by substituting “complete lack of knowledge” for “ignorance?” The latter is perceived, correctly or not, as a pejorative. The former gets across the same point without alienating the audience.
Well, there were two possibilities, well three: Simmons was ignorant, he was stupid, or he was lying. Which is the nicest that you can say about him.
However, perhaps it would be better to say, “you don’t know what you are talking about”, rather than “ignorant”. Or some such formula.
If you think he is lying, perhaps you can say, “You are misrepresenting the facts.” Or another one I like, “You are being less than candid”.
Perhaps you can use a couple of scientific names for the fossils, but for that type of audience, it would be better to remain a bit general and say, “That is not true, we have greater and greater numbers of real fossils that establish ever more clearly the links. You simply ignore the discoveries that have been made over 150 years”.
In this last case, you get in the word “ignore” without seeming offensive. A little different meaning, granted.
A friend of mine who taught me to argue with creationists, said you must absolutely stick to the facts. Do not let them distract you. It isn’t about elegant debate. It’s about a logical argument. You know they are beginning to think when they get pissed off.
Your story reminds me of a line from Saturday Night Live (when it used to be funny) when Dan Akroyd would say “Jane, you ignorant slut.” I can imagine how tempting it would be to say “Simmons, you ignorant slut.”
Is the rebroadcast available to listen to?
As others have said, I think the problem is for many people, calling someone ignorant has become synonymous with accusing someone of lacking intelligence rather than lacking knowledge.
Though to be honest, I’ll be the first to admit that often when I apply it to cretinists and IDiots, I actually do mean stupid more often than I mean simple ignorance. If only because their ignorance often appears almost cultivated and even a source of some pride as they trot out homilies about common sense and the like.
‘Ignorant’ was simply the correct word in the sense in which PZ used it. Succinct, and easily justified. There are worse things than coming off as a bit crusty. Being decisive, making it clear, backing it up, that’s all worth looking a a bit crusty. You look crusty, but justified. In the whole of the debate, even the effort of his opponent to single it out as abusive cost him, because it gave PZ the opportunity to ram it home again as justified.
I’d add as a general comment that armchair QBing questioning stuff like this at this point has to justify itself pretty effectively, and better than that bit did, seriously. Especially when even the UD folk were clearly acknowledging Simmons had been solidly bested. The perception of strength in a contest like this one is a complex sum of the whole of its parts, and arguing now that the terms ‘infantile’ and ‘ignorant’ were poorly applied is highly suspect just knowing the outcome. Can you honestly, confidently argue other approaches omitting them would have been more powerful, taken as a whole, now? Note that creos are slippery beasts by nature–we know debating them is as much art as science, and frequently fails for any number of reasons utterly unrelated to the actual logical strength of the argument. PZ clearly did not fail, and that alone should give you pause. So second-guessing it now, saying: ‘okay… it worked… but here are the rules you should have applied’ is a bit like telling a winning chess player: ‘but that wasn’t a standard offense’. You can say that. But you’d better keep in mind you’ve got a high bar to prove you had something better for that situtaion. And sure, everyone is saying Simmons was ineffectual–but note that he had in his quiver and used much of the standard creo arsenal. Why didn’t it work for him? Is it just about his being weak, or is it about PZ framing him correctly and backing it up so solidly?
My general sense of what happened is it was at least as much the latter. Those terms were actually an integral part of the victory. They might have rung as a bit startling to some ears when first uttered, but when backed up so solidly, they sealed the devastation. They were clearly accurate, appropriate terms for Simmons’ approach, and PZ effectively backed them up with the whole of his response. Between being prepared for the material, and prepared well enough to nail him promptly, clearly, and decisively on the whale fossil gaffe, he justified those words. They were part of the whole, and part of a winning strategy.
So I say: look at that, too. Don’t just say: ‘don’t do this’. Ask more insightfully why doing this, in this case, at least, worked.
Saying that someone is ignorant of the scientific evidence is only suggesting that they lack knowledge in a specific subject. We are all ignorant about some things. Simmons didn’t understand how PZ used the word just like he didn’t understand the word theory. Some suggest that we shouldn’t call it the theory of evolution so these same “ingorant”, and I mean that in the nicest way, people would better understand the conversation. The only thing I thought PZ could have done better is to explain that he was not getting personal and going into the gutter but that he was suggesting that he simply lacked knowledge in that field.
Didn’t sound particulalry harsh to me. Ignorance isn’t a personal insult is it? Quite a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
Sometimes.
As far as I’m concerned ANY debate in which the creationist didn’t get wacked over the head with a rolled up newspaper is a debate in which the creationist got off easy.
You could see how Professor Plimer absolutely flogged the hide off Gish in 1988. Not only did he call him ignorant, but in addition to calling him a liar and a cheat (and demonstrated it), he offered to let Gish electrocute himself because electromagnetism is ‘only a theory’. The rebuttals afterwards from the predominatly creationist audience and their apologists can be summed up as ‘Plimer was a meanie poopy head’ despite Plimer ripping Gish apart with his own brand of showmanship and evidence. And in my opinion it had a far greater effect in how vacuous creationism is than a dozen nicey-nicey debates.
Call bulls**t, bulls**t. Don’t dress it up as ‘organic growth enhancing material’ because someone may cry at you offending their PC sensibilities. If they can’t handle reality, that’s their problem – not realitys.
I still think it’s possible to have the best of both worlds. You don’t have to be nice to your opponent. But you should be polite. There’s a difference between being a concilliatory punching bag and being polite. You can point out the person’s ignorance without calling him a dumbass.
The example you gave of combatting the student trying to con you into a passing grade by leading him “step by step through all of his mistakes, demolish his final exam all over again, and tell him in plain terms that he has not met the standards of the course and has failed” is exactly the kind of tactic that I’m suggesting
Point out why where his argument is flawed. Like I said, attack the ideas, not the person. Otherwise you could find yourself right back on the defensive.
Upon relistening to that portion of the debate I think you actually did just that. But it was close enough to the line that Simmons tried to make it sound like you were calling him a moron. Were Simmons a better debater he would have succeeded.
There might be a polite way of calling someone an ignoramus on a neutral topic – for instance, “MissPrism, I gather that you can’t play the piano” – but I don’t think there is a polite way of calling someone a liar, and if you’re pointing out their ignorance of a topic on which they claim expertise, you are doing exactly that.
If someone introduces himself to you as a concert pianist, but then stumbles through ‘Three Blind Mice’, then the statement “You can’t play the piano” becomes extremely confrontational.
I find it very interesting that I, an atheist, will gladly admit ignorance in areas I am, in fact, ignorant. However, ask a creationist or even just a fundamentalist Christian to do the same…and wait for the explosion!
Sorry, but if Simmons didn’t want to be called ignorant he should’ve done his research properly (presumably even the Disco Institute have access to Google – I’m assuming Luskin doesn’t hog ALL their IT facilities permenantly Googling himself). You did just great PZ!
You’re teaching hypothetical: Of course, giving answer #4 is right but no fun. It’s even less fun when a student needs a particular GPA to stay in the country, and you just have to say, “sorry, can’t fudge it like that…you earned the D.”
I’m going to weigh in with LC – there’s no reason to handle these people with kid gloves. It’s one thing to haul off and engage in ad hominem attacks, it’s quite another to set the stage with evidence and truthfully call someone ignorant, a liar, etc.
Face it, creationists and other religious bumpkins get a free pass in the media and suffer absolutely no consequences for their lies and invective against science, rationality, and secular society. They live in a bubble where their ideas go unchallenged. It’s unlikely that they’ll be convinced by any argument, what with their gargantuan ability to rationalize away criticism, logic, evidence, and anything that challenges their dogma. We owe it to the audience to leave them standing in a smoking crater of their own ignorance.
I’ll worry about coming off as arrogant when the godbotherers’ influence on society is reduced to writing crabby letters to the editor in the weekly shopper.
I’ve taken part in your #4 (ripping an undergrad to shreds) and it is actually quite liberating. Especially when said undergrad needs to pass your course in order to get into med school. That one made me sleep better at night.
I had a similar reaction myself after listening to the “debate”: if Simmons was insulted by the use of the term “ignorant” (as he had a right to be), the term should have been defined. A good response might have been, “All right, I apologise for assaulting your dignity [or words to that effect with fewer syllables], but what word would you prefer that I use? You do not know something that you ought to know about. You wrote a book on transitional fossils, yet you do not recognise most of the transitional fossils that I mention. How is that not ignorant?” Of course, ignorance was the least of his problems: writing a book on a subject that he knows so little about is arrogant and insulting to the experts as well. The Bible says something about bearing false witness, does it not? If you wanted, I am sure that you could have reduced the man to a blubbering wreck with this. But that would be more harsh than might be appropriate; all that was necessary was to expose his ignorance. There is no better word for it, and it would have been good for you to have explained that.
Having said all that, really, PZ, you did a spectacular job. I was cheering the whole way.
Many people simply don’t understand the meaning of the word “ignorant”. They see it as a general-purpose insult, like “jerk” or “dumbass”. However, you were factually correct in calling Simmons ignorant.
You were also right to be apalled by his lack of knowledge. It was as if someone wrote a cookbook containing recipes for scrambled eggs, PB&J sandwiches and microwave popcorn and claiming that it contains every recipe known to mankind, because those are the things the author’s mom taught him how to make and didn’t do any research.
No one on the program understood why you were calling him ignorant, or even that there were gaps in his knowledge. Try using metaphors (like the above!) to explain. That might help.
There is no point being civil to a fraud. You can quote me on that.
As for your question about the student: #5. Tell him that failing him was an act of kindness, since he is going to need a lot of practice at failing gracefully so long as he keeps playing games instead of learning the course material.
As someone who is sometimes curt and perhaps rash–and as someone who has taught a fair deal, I’d point out that your analogy is fatally flawed, because your debating partner ISN’T your worst student ever, or even a student.
You have a reciprocal, hierarchal relationship with students. If you presume that sort of relationship with a debate opponent, you might look arrogant and condescending and lose your point.
Haven’t listened to your debate, so I don’t know if that’s the case here, but I do think that the analogy distorts the issue rather than throws light on it.
Remember the Bush-Gore debates, where Gore clearly knew the issues better, was more articulate, but is generally counted the loser.
I will weigh in on the side of the debate weaving through this thread that favors substituting less emotionally-weighted language such as “misinformed” or “not familiar with” for “ignorant.” “Ignorant” may be the most accurate term, but many people hear “ignorant” and think it’s a synonym for “stupid” or “moronic.”
Never had to deal with a scenario like you laid out — the students I failed generally had so much advance warning none ever bothered darkening the office door after the fact. One kid’s mother did try to intervene with the department head, though. I think he was almost listening to her until she let slip that she was the one who’d actually researched and written the paper that cost him a passing grade. [Note to any students reading this: if you’re a college sophomore and your mom is doing your course work there’s probably a McDonald’s uniform in your future.]
One thing that bothered me about the debate is that in the closing comments, Simmons began with an ad hominem attack on Darwin (the man) and the moderators made no comments. Yet when PZ factually pointed out Simmons ignorance the moderators stepped in and commented that “…you can’t say that he knows absolutely nothing”.
no offense PZ I love your written stuff(and you’ve done more than i could dream to do in combatting the insane creationist takeover)
but why would you agree to do a debate on a religious radio station and then go in acting like that?
ok i understand that you might want to say “we dont want to debate you and we joke about you in the lab” and “i need to give you a remedial course in bio” because they are true statements, but jesus you dont say that once you’re already in the debate and trying to present facts(remedial as they may be) and change minds.
You get much props from me for naming specific whale common-ancestor species names, but to any listener of that station you’ll come off as an ass!
this guy was such a moron, but i doubt minds were opened to the truth(or beauty) of evolution which makes me sad.(and which you have done for me on numerous occasions in print). Given…many of the minds were already closed in the firstplace, but then why the debate?
First, I disagree with Dr. Myers when he says he is not a debater. He was quite good. Calm, simple sentences, a stream of facts, facts, facts. Citing West-Eberhard’s book was brilliant! And he did win the debate!
But regarding insults, I would suggest: never never comment directly on the opponent. Simply continue presenting your facts in your professorial style, perhaps with a few oblique phrases added (avoiding the word ‘you’) such as “When one actually studies the subject, one finds that …”
Dr. Myers must keep in mind that he is now a well-known figure, with a reputation of being one of those ‘horrible profanely aggressive atheists’. Debate moderators are just waiting for him to call someone a moron, which is why the mention of ignorance triggered this one.
You claim to disagree with the point your critic makes. But in your analysis, you end up actually agreeing with him. The critic stated that you ought not call your opponent “ignorant”.
In your analogy of the creationist student, you offer four choices of action. You claim (correctly) that Option Four is the correct one. And I suspect that your critic would agree with you that this is an acceptable option.
But your critic is saying that you resorted to Option One in your debate; you called your opponent an idiot.
So which is it?
PZ, I think your analogy is a bit flawed. In a creationist debate, the tactics you employ should be for the purpose of converting your audience, while in your analogy they are to convert the opponent. Since the student hadn’t shown any interest in what you had to say for the previous semester, and was unwilling to change his behavior to gain the grade, the appropriate response should have be #1.
Otherwise, you’d be wasting your time.
Now, if I grant your analogy, then you’re just wasting your time debating these schmucks, but remember, the real strategy is not to convince your opponent he’s wrong– it’s to sway the audience away from your opponent. For that reason, it may actually be more efficient to employ the “soft” tactics like charm, poise, etc. Facts are absolutely necessary, but they are tools in your belt.
Well, I’ve said all I want to about the issue PZ brought up. What I want to comment about now is just how appallingly inbred these IDiots are, in the “intellectual” sense. It appears that they’re busily confirming each other’s biases at the DI, so afraid to question any of their beliefs that they never undergo any scrutiny or difficult questions from each other.
The thing is, I’m sure there are DI “fellows” who do know about whale transitionals, but who among them would actually read Simmons books and point out the egregious errors? That would just open up a can of worms, in which the bullshit put out by all of them would be vulnerable to similar scrutiny. The thing is that they just don’t dare to question IDiot lies at all, or the whole pile of shit would be likely to be thrown out.
It reminds me of the twaddle between Mathis (producer of Expelled) and that ignorant liar for Jesus, Denyse O’Leary (this is from “The Design of Life” website, Feb. 4):
They do seem to know what’s going on with themselves, they just don’t know how to view it except as a fault belonging to others. And don’t think that I’m white-washing the media, which may be faulted for some insularity–but clearly they’re far better informed and professional than DO’L or the egregious Mark Mathis.
Indeed, whatever was clear in the debate between Simmons and PZ, the insularity of the DI “fellow” was amazing, since he didn’t know what many school children happen to know about whale evolution. PZ, of course, knows both evolution and Simmons’s and Mathis’s idiocies quite well, and how those two bozos have no capacity for evaluating evidence.
Anyway, just something I thought was an interesting lesson in how the ignorance so evident in the debate takes up problems of insularity and uses it to further their own inbred fantasies about “the other.” There certainly isn’t any point in holding off calling DO’L, Mathis, and Simmons ignoramuses and idiots on this forum.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I would have had to work hard to refrain from adapting the old SNL line that Dan Akroyd would say to Jane Curtain: “Simmons you ignorant slut” .
It would have been priceless.
It bothered me that the show’s hosts accused you of being uncivil when you accurately pointed out your opponent’s ignorance of the fossil record. “Ignorant” need not be considered an insult, as Dawkins has elegantly explained.
However, a word’s impact is not limited to its precise meaning, but also includes its more nebulous connotations. It’s not enough to say that “ignorant” should not be an insult, or that it is an accurate description. The word’s connotations lead it to be interpreted as an insult. In scenarios where no insult is intended, it should be used with great caution. Our language does not have the precision that we would often like.
Of course, sometimes an insult is intended, but it takes rhetoric on Hitchens’ level to pull it off best. He reserves his insults until after his arguments have already dwarfed his opponents, after which he’s able to insult with such wit that it tends to override any aversion to his condescending manner. It’s not a style that could be casually mimicked, but I think it’s a good general goal – use a brilliant insult as a coup de grace for a beaten opponent, rather than as a weapon against an opponent who is still fighting on his feet.
And in general, don’t assume that you’re winning an argument just because you’ve pointed out factual errors in all of your opponent’s arguments. It should work that way, but it doesn’t. Hitchens could argue that the sky is green, and win. A creationist can have every lie rebutted, and still win in the eyes of the faithful. I guess you’re pretty much aware of that, and have come to terms with that, and are still banking on unrelenting truth and evidence as reliable tools in the long run. I hope you’re right.
Anyway, good show. Hope you’ll do a follow-up with the same station.
I’m not sure an ad hominem attack is ever justified, regardless of the quality of the opponent. Just because the creationists engage in deceitful practices, doesn’t mean scientists should. And it’s a poor debating strategy inasmuch as the attack itself draws attention from the central arguments. Also, properly-defined, ignorant may mean “unschooled”, but, round these parts, when someone calls you ig-nernt, they’re calling you stupid. You called him out, PZ.
As usual, nobody misses the point. What else could be said about a person who was either lying about the facts or was ignorant of the facts. And in case you did not notice, PZ was not moderating the debate. He was in no position to kick out the debater. He did what he had to do, call Simmons on misinformation.
So what is it?
i can’t decide:
is it ignorant or stupid to think that “ignorant” means “stupid”?
In my opinion, it’s very hard for a person not to attack someone’s ideas, if that someone has so intertwined him/her/itself with the aforementioned idea so as to be indistinguishable.
Also,
I’d offer him enough extra credit to pass the course with a low C by having him write a 10 page report explaining how, if the world is indeed 10,000 years old, that a fish like Bothriolepis can have remains on every continent, and yet, have no interactions with humans until their fossils’ discoveries since the 1800’s.
A false civility is no-one’s friend, especially when you’re dealing with disingenuous morons.
I disagree PZ. I only caught the last 20 minutes, but you showed yourself to be a master debater. You get an A. Simmons, on the other hand, only earned a D-, and a master debater minus the ‘D’ is a, well, you get the idea.
Of course, if the argument was one of Christian theology, how many of Behe, Simmons, D’Souza, and the rest of their miserable ilk would have refrained from pulling out the Courtiers’ Reply, in effect calling PZ ignorant of the vast wealth of made up stuff?
We are all ignorant of a great many things. PZ is American, and has previously stated that he has no interest in sports. Thus it is highly likely he knows next to nothing about English football. That is not a problem of course, he lays no claim to know anything about it. Simmons did claim to know about science, and biology in particular, but clearly did not. In doing so now only was he ignorant, he was also dishonest. It such people persist in claiming to be knowledgeable about things they clear know nothing about what is to be done about that. I think the only clear action is to tell them they do not know what they are talking about. An honest person may take that as a rebuke, as indeed it is, but hopefully they will go away and learn. Sadly it seems the creationists/IDiots are unable to comprehend the idea that they may not have a clue.
You didn’t call him ignorant. You said he was ignorant of the fossil record. There’s a big difference. I’m ignorant of particle physics. I’m ignorant of proper paint mixing techniques. I’m certain that you’re more ignorant of early 20th century Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian neo-classical piano concertos than I am. We’re all ignorant of something. That’s not, nor should it be, insulting.
Scooty (#35) said,
It’s even worse than that!
It’s like writing a guide to changing car oil based off what your Dad’s friend said and being smug about the fact that your Dad’s friend forgot to tell you to put a bucket to catch the old oil.
….and then claiming that nobody knew that.
Given that, I’d say both definitions of ignorant do just fine.
Wow. Consider this a Molly nomination.
That would work nicely in French, but in English (or German) it would mean he willfully overlooks them because he doesn’t want to know about them. That’s not the same. It’s also not demonstrable under normal circumstances.
LOL!
Wow. Consider this a Molly nomination.
That would work nicely in French, but in English (or German) it would mean he willfully overlooks them because he doesn’t want to know about them. That’s not the same. It’s also not demonstrable under normal circumstances.
LOL!
To some extent, the debater is bound by the terms of the debate. The suggestion of the critic that a debater pound on an opponent to defend ID sounds appealing, but will only work if that opponent is representing ID. If the topic of the debate is limited to evolution, there is little chance to talk about alternatives. Here, ID was not under discussion, so it’s not relevant.
Yeah this would be good advice if the anti-evolution arguments were voiced as simple disagreements, or questions trying to understand what evolution is, what it means, how it works.
But that is demonstrably NOT the case. Rather, it’s a bunch of, yes, ignorant public spotlight-seeking pulpit preachers dressed as dispassionate businessmen, medical professionals, scientists and commentators. The anti-evolution crowd is distinctly media-savvy by, um, design. Notice all the books written for the express purpose of denouncing evolution, not discussing it on its merits AND faults and coming to a conclusion. Notice the wide range of individuals spouting anti-evolution doctrine from halls that do not study the concept in any meaningful capacity. Notice behind the curtain that all the detractors mysteriously have one thing in common: Christianity. And yet they will deny that, Judases that they are. I wonder what their Christ on the Cross would think of their dissemblings about their faith-colored glasses.
Stupidity on a pedastel deserves nothing but the racking of pick axes at its base by decent, thinking people.
RE: Sandman, #47:
This doesn’t fit the definition of an Ad Hominem argument.
“You must be wrong because you are so stupid” is Ad Hominem.
“You must be stupid because you are so wrong” (after rebutting arguments) is not Ad Hominem, just an insult.
But you’re still correct, “ignorant” does not really mean “stupid”, but either way, them’s fightin’ words!
A lot of Monday morning quarterbacking here. PZ got it right focusing on the facts or the lack thereof. Finesse is for the courtroom and the few people who do that sort of thing for a living. I consider myself to be reasonably bright and I am sure I would not have thought of most of the suggestions listed here. Listening to Simmons stupidity, I am not sure I wouldn’t have just blurted out, “Holy S**t, you’re and idiot!”
I thought that the saintlike restrain you showed in not using the word “pinhead” was thoroughly charming.
One thing I noticed in the debate was how many times the host referred to the creationist as “Dr. Simmons” and Dr. Myers as “PZ.” Unintentional? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t put anything past these people. It struck me as the same kind of junior high school nonsense that leads President Bush to refer to the democratic party as the democrat party.
I do not want to be critical really but I would make one other observation in the analogy of the bad student. In the case at hand the “conference” is not taking place in the office it is taking place in the classroom in front of the whole class.
I have had many discussions with right wingers, fundies and others with whom I disagree they have all tried to put words in my mouth and tell me what I think. I have in the past sometimes allowed the comments to stand without dispute, no longer! I try not to use statements that start with “You” I do try to make statements that make emphatic I statements. I also try not to get into “discussions with “those kinds of people”. They do favor the tactic of baiting you with inflammatory statements with the sole purpose to elicit an emotional response. I aint playing!!!
I am not a “public figure” nor am I likely to become one. I would say you did a very good job in a very difficult situation and will be even better the next time.
I do not want to be critical really but I would make one other observation in the analogy of the bad student. In the case at hand the “conference” is not taking place in the office it is taking place in the classroom in front of the whole class.
I have had many discussions with right wingers, fundies and others with whom I disagree they have all tried to put words in my mouth and tell me what I think. I have in the past sometimes allowed the comments to stand without dispute, no longer! I try not to use statements that start with “You” I do try to make statements that make emphatic I statements. I also try not to get into “discussions with “those kinds of people”. They do favor the tactic of baiting you with inflammatory statements with the sole purpose to elicit an emotional response. I aint playing!!!
I am not a “public figure” nor am I likely to become one. I would say you did a very good job in a very difficult situation and will be even better the next time.
“That would work nicely in French, but in English (or German) it would mean he willfully overlooks them because he doesn’t want to know about them. That’s not the same. It’s also not demonstrable under normal circumstances.”
Actually I think that it would be perfectly fair to call someone who agreed to take part in a debate about evolution and then demonstrated having no knowledge of scientific advances in the last 150 years, as having willfully overlooked the evidence. More, it would be fair to call such a person profoundly dishonest. Any person who wishes to take part in a discussion has a duty to know something about the topic under discussion. If they do not then we can draw certain conclusions about that person. If they are just posting on a forum, or in reply to a blog then most likely they are just impolite. In a more formal situation, then I think we can fairly accuse them of being dishonest. There is not shortage of good information on evolution out there, and when people refuse to make use of it they need to be called to account.
All I would suggest in the future is that you make it very clear that you are using “ignorant” in the technical (rather than the insulting) sense of the word.
When people, such as the radio hosts, misunderstand, take the time to explain that what you mean by ignorance is technical and very different from what you would hear shouted on the street.
Otherwise, very well done, I fully support your bluntness, and realize that in these kind of events there really won’t be enough time, nor any possibility that you will remember all of a thousand small strategies to make such argumentative cul-du-sacs crystal clear.
Thanks for keeping up the fight. I really don’t know where you get all the energy to lecture, research, blog, take care of your family, and participate in radio debates with cdesign proponentists.
Simmons’s crying foul was a thinly-disguised disingenuous attempt at diverting the argument away from the facts and toward him taking some sort of “high road.” The fact is, he was ignorant, admittedly so (remember when he said, “I can’t comprehend how …”). His “arguments” were absurd. We shouldn’t be so concerned about appearances that we don’t call the creationists on bullshit when we see it.
Speaking of which, Simmons claimed that he wasn’t a Christian in the debate. I smell bullshit. Anyone know what religion Simmons actually is?
You know, I don’t really think the word “ignorant” is necessarily a pejorative term. I am ignorant of many things. I read trade books on biology; I can’t get enough of the darned things, and I probably know a good deal more than your average non-biologist. But if I were to WRITE a book about biology based upon what I know, and advance a bunch of novel ideas that popped into my head while reading, I am sure that “ignorant” would be a fair summary of the basic problem with me as an author in biology.
He ADMITTED that he didn’t know anything about the whale transitional fossils PZ mentioned. He ADMITTED that his entire knowledge of the current state of the science came from a Scientific American article (which, I am sure, didn’t really support his point of view, but that’s another story). Now, I cannot claim intimate knowledge of those fossils (though I am pretty sure I read the same SA article); if I came up with a novel interpretation of them based on what I know, “ignorant” would probably be the kindest thing that could be said of me.
The guy admits to being ignorant on subjects he wrote a book about. And then he objects to the word “ignorant” because he deems it impolite. Sheesh!
Simmons is a fairly commonly a Jewish name, so I’d look into that angle if you really want to check it out.
From our standpoint, how would that be anything but an inconsequential difference? It’s all just the bibble, whether the concern is about “literal interpretation” or not.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
One suggestion I’d like to make is that it would help in these situations to explicitly appeal to people (especially kids) who are interested in science but feel intimidated against exploring evolution. People like this need encouragement to break the spell and embrace the joys of scientific discovery.
Read the post again, and then read all 41 comments above yours. “To be ignorant of a fact” means “to not know a fact”. Period. That should probably be explained, but it isn’t wrong.
Imagine convincing the opponent live on stage that he’s wrong. What will the audience think?
Are you ignorant of the fact that “ad hominem argument” doesn’t mean “insult”? :-) “X is the Great Master, therefore what X says is true” is an ad hominem argument, but not an insult. “X says Y, Y is wrong, therefore X is a poopy-head” is (…maybe…) an insult, but it’s not an ad hominem argument. PZ may or may not have been insulting (I vote “not”), but he didn’t make an ad hominem argument.
People should be really careful with throwing all that Latin around.
It’s ignorant.
Read the post again, and then read all 41 comments above yours. “To be ignorant of a fact” means “to not know a fact”. Period. That should probably be explained, but it isn’t wrong.
Imagine convincing the opponent live on stage that he’s wrong. What will the audience think?
Are you ignorant of the fact that “ad hominem argument” doesn’t mean “insult”? :-) “X is the Great Master, therefore what X says is true” is an ad hominem argument, but not an insult. “X says Y, Y is wrong, therefore X is a poopy-head” is (…maybe…) an insult, but it’s not an ad hominem argument. PZ may or may not have been insulting (I vote “not”), but he didn’t make an ad hominem argument.
People should be really careful with throwing all that Latin around.
It’s ignorant.
Seems like we’re all in agreement that the guy was simply ignorant of the subject he wrote a book about, and PZ was factually justified in saying so.
That said, it’s often better to use the least inflammatory terms possible while clearly demonstrating exactly what you want to demonstrate. If the audience reliably and strongly infers “for itself” that the other guy is woefully and willfully ignorant, that’s usually better than coming out and saying it flatly. Ideally, the conclusion should be inescapable but not explicit.
(If the *audience* concludes that the guy’s an ignorant dickhead, that’s just his fault and not yours. You win. If *you* call him an ignorant dickhead, you’re an asshole, and that’s both annoying and distracting.)
Letting the audience draw that final inference makes the audience feel smarter and more respected, and makes their conclusion enjoyable. To some extent, it’s about *them* being smart enough to see that the guy’s lost in space, rather than about *you* being smart enough to prove it to them.
It can also be very funny. Comedy punchlines rely on letting the audience draw a surprising conclusion that suddenly becomes obvious given the punchline; if you simply state the actual point flatly, it’s just not funny, or as interesting and fun for the audience.
(IMHO, comedy is largely about freebasing smartness, distilling arguments down to where people can easily follow them and “feel smart,” rather than feeling dragged through the steps. A lot of good rhetoric is similarly exhilarating.)
On the other hand, there’s a problem here. Sometimes you *do* want to make the final conclusion. You’ve gotten them to a point where they can understand the truth of it, and you need them to realize they “have to agree” with the shocking truth, and exactly what the truth is, and can’t “wiggle out of it.”
If they’ve fully bought your argument, that *may* work—that may cement the conclusion (and its truth) in their minds in a way that matters later, when the argument is not fresh in their minds.
It’s a double-or-nothing gamble, though, and generally the least loaded terms are best.
Unfortunately, any audience is likely to consist of a mix of people with different thresholds. There’s a huge variation in how much people will buy in, and for a given level of credence, whether they’ll take an “insult” as unwarranted.
Some people will find a justified insult *interesting* and admire your enjoyable forthrightness. (Even some people who disagree with you.) Others will be so distracted by your “meanness” that they’ll mostly forget that they were agreeing with you up to that point. It may even make them distrust you, thinking that if you’re motivated to be “so mean” to the other guy, you’re likely willing to lie about the facts, too.
The very tricky part is making conclusions inescapable without making them “too explicit” for a big fraction of the audience.
All told, I think PZ did a great job. It’s difficult to show such restraint.
I confess that I once publicly debated a theologian, and when he smugly spewed an astonishingly ignorant line of bullshit about brain science, I flatly said “you have NO FUCKING IDEA what you’re talking about!” It was true, and I “won” a postdebate vote, but that was not my best moment. A lot of the people who were “on my side” thought it was a hoot, but I’m sure a I lost a big fraction of other people right then.
Kudos, PZ.
It always frustrates me when people mix up ignorance and stupidity.
I would recommend that should anyone call out a creationist on his/her ignorance of a given subject, DO NOT let them twist it into some sort of low-brow insult. Because, should they take that route, then they’ve also illustrated their stupidity, or at best, that they are disingenuous (not that there isn’t always ample evidence to that fact).
Creationist and ID proponentists all rely on the assumption that they are debating someone who is themselves ignorant of the science involved (at least in appearance). That is what lets them build their strawmen and false logic.
Know your shit. Take no one else’s.
Clearly PZ was using “ignorant” in reference to the guy’s knowledge of the facts. It wasn’t some ad hominem attack that needed curbing by the hosts.
There’s nothing wrong with calling someone ignorant if they, in fact, are. In the Simmons debate, Simmons proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was ignorant of whale transitional fossils. He claimed there were none, you proved him wrong, he was ignorant of the facts.
Ignorance can be cured, you just have to learn what you’re talking about and creationists, by and large, don’t want to know the facts, they don’t want to know the truth, they want everyone to be just as ignorant as they are.
By all means, keep calling ignorant people ignorant. Just because they get offended by it (mostly because they don’t understand what the word means) doesn’t change the fact that it’s demonstrably true.
Hi PZ – I think you are making two key mistakes:
1) over-focusing on your opposition. The people you should be focusing on is your audience. What approach and affect will be most persuasive to them? Some crowds might like a vigorous, even aggressive rebuttal, while others will be put off by aggressiveness and might prefer a gentler approach. (When in doubt, aim for gentler.) Keep in mind that you are probably smarter and more analytical than 90% of people you meet, or more, so you probably need to do more dot-connecting than you yourself would need.
2) over-reliance on the content of the message versus its form. study after study shows that 80% of a communications happens outside of the words themselves. it’s appearance, expressions, gestures, tone, etc, Beyond that, people are highly suspectible to persuasion if they feel they are being valued and respected by the speaker, and are highly resistant to it if they feel undervalued and disrespected. If you doubt this, look at the political scene – it’s why Reagan and Bush both got elected despite being, well, heinous and full of shit.
I recommend that everyone reads Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People – it is full of relevant wisdom. People like to mock it, but in my book The Lifelong Activist, I quote Carnegie and Saul Alinsky, famed activist and author of Rules for Radicals side by side giving essentially identical advice. Persuasion is persuasion.
Oh, and you might check out Part V of The Lifelong Activist because it is a primer on persuasion specifically aimed at *progressive activists.* Among other things, I discuss the three bitter truths:
1) it’s the quality of your presentation, rather than the quality of your ideas, that determines your success at persuading.
2) people don’t “buy” based on the quality of your product (or ideas) but to fill a need they have. in an atheist context, the need could be to feel intelligent and thinking (even if they are not) or to be consistent in one’s thinking (people crave the feeling of being consistent). So you could say something like, “People who value modern technology and antibiotics and the Internet should also value evolution because they all derive from the same scientific mindset.”
3) in any persuasive endeavor, your needs and preferences count for ***much*** less than your audience’s – in fact yours barely count at all.
people hate these truths, but hating them is as productive hating gravity – they are founded on human psychology. otoh, if you learn and use them you will become a fantastically more persuasive activist.
Hillary
ps – it is very cool and classy and impressive that you would ask for help on this kind of thing in a public forum, and from the community that loves you but in which you are “the authority.” Way to model empowerment!
It is true that an insult is not necessarily an Ad Hominem fallacy. A personal comment can be a different fallacy; it can violate debating rules; it can simply be uncivilized or provocative. Consider examples such as Ad Baculum, Poisoning The Wells, Killing The Messenger, Shifting Levels, Excessive Detail, Appeal To Audience, and the modern Ad Hileriam (“only a nazi could find any good in eugenics”).
Simmons indeed demonstrated ignorance of basic facts. However, I agree with those commenters who’ve pointed out that your (PZ’s) use of the word “ignorant” (as well as “infantile” and “ludicrous”) did provide Simmons with an opportunity to stray from the central topic. I did not find your use of those terms to be particularly objectionable; indeed, “impolite” would be a stretch. Nevertheless, avoiding them would have denied Simmons an opportunity to (temporarily) change the subject. Also, rhetorically, I doubt you gained any points with the audience with those particular sentences–though whether you gained any points with that station’s typical audience is doubtful anyway.
By the way, there were a couple of other things I found annoying. One was the hosts’ insistence on addressing you as “PZ” and the other guy as “Doctor Simmons” (and continually hawking his books). They did remember to say “Doctor Myers” a few times, but it was as if they were trying to stack the deck by reminding the audience constantly of your interlocutor’s “credentials” (M.D.).
The other thing that just made me cringe were those scripture interludes. Now I’m a Christian myself; in fact, I earn my living as a biblical studies professor. But the way those verses were plucked from their context, and the way-too-pretentious manner in which they were intoned, really turned me off.
personally I think the “ignorant” part was in bounds, but the “infantile” bit went too far.
Those of you who are suggesting that I pointed out Simmons’ ignorance for his benefit are completely wrong. I did that consciously for the benefit of the audience.
They don’t know when he’s spewing complete nonsense, and the debater has to spell it out. Maybe I annoyed them; that’s fine. But however they felt about me (and I did say I didn’t go into this to win people over with my charm), one message even his sympathizers got loud and clear was that Simmons is an unreliable source for information. That was my intent. I think I accomplished that.
I find that a polite modifier, combined with a choice adjective/adverb or two, can work wonders, combining the best of politeness with rhetoric.
“You are astonishingly misinformed…”
“That was a breathtakingly dishonest statement…”
“You seem painfully unaware…”
Usually, those manage to fly below the radar.
Of course, there’s always my favorite:
“That’s just f*cking spendid!”
For some reason, people take exception to that one. ;^)
OT, but I feel COMPELLED to address this issue: the word “proponentists”.
PLEASE STOP using this word. I can even bring myself to say it. It’s horribly constructed, and can be thrown in the trash with “irregardless”. What is a “proponentist”? A person can be a “proponent”. A person can also be many things ending in “-ist”. But a person is a “proponent-ist”?? They are a person who acts or supports the supporting of something? No. They are ID proponents, not “proponentists”.
Hopefully someone is still reading these. Anyway, I would encourage you to look at the popularity of American Idol. Be the Simon Cowell of Evolutionary Biology by being so insulting that it’s funny, and people can’t help quoting you.
I just went back and listened to that section of the debate again. I think calling the guy ignorant was entirely justified, even if it was taken as an insult. I mean, he just claimed that there weren’t any transitional forms between Indohyus and modern whales, and when he got called on it, he said he didn’t know the names of every single fossil, went on to cite a single Scientific American article as his authority on the matter, and even misrepresented Darwin’s hypothetical of a bear evolving “till a creature was produced as monstrous as
a whale.” If he’d been called a “Fucking moron,” I could see people saying that the language was too strong, even if accurate, but calling him out for being ignorant seemed perfectly justified.
The fellow said himself that there was something he couldn’t comprehend, so you could call him “uncomprehending” to his (virtual) face without raising the politeness issue.
Re: #83
I deliberately don’t watch American Idol, for that very reason. I’m all for schadenfreude, but in those situations, there’s usually a sense that the target is deserving of the downfall. Very few deserve verbal abuse and humiliation, especially not the gullible and the naive.
If you want to make your science funnier/snarkier, or even if you don’t, check out Greg Dean’s book “Step By Step to Standup Comedy.”
It’s based on cognitive psychology, gives a brief introduction to schema theory, and goes on to explain how jokes work cognitively and how to construct them. (Greg Dean’s a comedy teacher; his brother Jeff is a cognition researcher. I’d read some of Jeff’s stuff before I came across his brother’s how-to book.)
It’s an interesting easy read, even if you don’t plan on “doing comedy.”
BlueIndependent:
It’s a joke, based on the infamous Of Pandas and People search-and-replace, where “creationists” becomes “cdesign proponentsists.” Still a little funny, though admittedly awkward. Just callin’ them what they want to be called.
See, the problem is that you’re getting it wrong. It isn’t “proponentists,” it’s “proponentsists”. Furthermore, it should always be used with the modifier “cdesign,” in the famous phrase “cdesign proponentsists.”
What I’m getting at is that it seems you don’t know that the word is used precisely because it’s a bastard “word,” concocted when “creationists” was being swapped out for “design proponents” in Of Panda’s and People (I hope I got the title right). The “c” and “ists” didn’t get deleted in one draft, leaving behind a comical “transitional fossil” of the conversion of a creationist book into the a book about a “completely different and scientific subject,” intelligent design.
(I’ll probably post, and find that someone already said this).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Re: proponentsists
Blue Independent, I think this might explain why so many people are using that term:
Missing link: “cdesign proponentsists”
@82 perhaps it would help to read it as a mockery, and not a literary description.
Intelligent Design Proponent + Creationist = ID Proponentist
gah, is this when someone calls Jinx?
A recap of what I said in #73 of the “Memory Hole” post: I think another strategy when he complained about being accused of being ignorant would be to turn it around and make the point that questioning evolution is essentially calling the entire academic discipline of biology ignorant. It is insulting to dismiss the life’s work of many thousands of professional biologists as flawed, delusional, misrepresentative, conspiratorial, and ignorant. His entire premise is one big name-calling assertion, so posturing that PZ was the first one to assert “ignorance,” while perhaps literally true, certainly doesn’t hold water.
The art of oration came about so that preachers and politicians could convince an audience to believe them when they didn’t know what they were talking about or simply had nothing to say. If you broke a cardinal rule of oration by using actual facts to prove that your opponent didn’t know what he was talking about, then I say… two birds, one stone.
Ignorant is not merely a pejorative, it has some objective meaning. Simmons was indeed “without knowledge” on topics about which he was writing and speaking publicly. Perhaps sticking with the word “ignorant,” but explaining exactly what it means and why it applies would be the way to go.
And of course your interpretation is superior and undoubtably corrent. Goof.
Screw that. I think PZ’s approach was dead on for the debate in question.
I realized that it is possible to be too inflammatory and that rhetoric can have the opposite effect intended if one goes over the top, but we have already tried appeasement and it hasn’t worked. Michael Shermer is part of appeasement crowd and has many fine books on rational thought, morality and religion, but they didn’t get near the traction of the God Delusion. Shermer’s soft spoken ways are just one part of a complete approach to advocating science but on its own it insufficient. We also need people to take a strong stance as PZ did.
I think sometimes people NEED to be told their stupid
*headdesk*
That is a very vital point. The GD has appealed to a much wider audience simply because it is so blunt.
A-freakin’-men. The dainty souls concerned about PZ’s “strong language” need to read this explanation over and over until it sinks in. These people get away with peddling their horseshit because the suckers believe they actually know what they’re talking about. Nothing could be more apropos in countering them than making it clear just how untrue that is.
As PZ had already patiently explained the word ‘theory’ it was hardly incumbent upon him to explain the word ‘ignorant’.
Maybe he could have added a decent dictionary to the reading list he gave the twerp.
There is no substitute for the word “ignorance” in this context because Simmons, like all creationists, does not simply “lack knowledge” – he deliberately ignores vast swathes of evidence. The connection between the active verb “ignore” and its result, ignorance, needs to be made explicit in every way possible, at every opportunity. If one is too diplomatic about it, one obscures the fact that the public promoters of creationism – unlike many of the people they spend their time deluding – must deliberately and willfully ignore an enormous quantity (and quality!) of evidence in order to write their books and lectures and so on. This should be highlighted, not obscured – and I applaud PZ for doing so.
There is a real difference between ordinary “passive” ignorance and someone who actively ignores evidence: Even if a creationist begins from a position of merely not knowing anything much about biology, he or she becomes responsible for actually learning about the subject by taking on the mantle of an authority on it – and failing to fulfill that responsibility while still pretending to be an authority constitutes willfully ignoring evidence no matter how you slice it. Simmons wrote whole book about evolution while deliberately preserving his own ignorance of the subject, and still refuses to learn any of the actual science associated with the claims he makes: Thus, he bears full responsibility for both his own ignorance and for his deliberate promulgation of ignorance, and PZ was both morally in the right AND strategically wise to hold him publicly accountable for it.
1) those of you who are debating whether the word “ignorant” is indeed an insult need to go offline for a while. in the real world, it’s generally considered an insult, and is likely not to be considered an insult only by the small minority who are confident in their intellectual abilities.
there’s also a big difference between calling someone ignorant, and calling one particular idea of theirs ignorant.
2) re hitchins, simon cowell, etc. cowell is an entertainer; his goal is different. hitchins is also an entertainer, albeit also a serious debater. but few of us would have hitchins’ debating skill, so that’s probably not a useful model to emulate.
Hillary
PZ: that “ignorant” bit was the most powerful in the whole debate. It obviously unhinged the ID’ers. What I found fascinating was that one of the hosts still claimed that Simmons was an expert later on. (it was either in your closing remarks when you were interrupted, or with a caller, or both, I don’t remember offhand)
I’ve never shied away from calling out creationists on their ignorance, but then I’ve never engaged in such a “public” debate with one of them. I probably wouldn’t hold back even then, though. If accused of being mean or impolite, I like to retort, calmly, “Wow, I had no idea you were so ignorant that you didn’t know the meaning of the word!”. It doesn’t win me any friends–none that I’d miss having, anyway.
I think you cleaned his clock in your first response, PZ.
It only went downhill for him from there.
He knows well what “ignorant”, “theory” and “fact” mean, he was feigning offense when you used “ignorant”. A common debate tactic, which I’m sure plays well with his audience.
Seconding #22 as hard as I fucking can (we’re still doing the profanity thing, right?) The rules of polite debate be damned – when you’re arguing with a liar, forget the tactics, just remember the words of Lord Nelson and “go straight at ’em”.
For all the uncorked smelling salts and popped monocles littering the floor over this, I think it’s worth remembering that the people at UD declaring PZ the winner over this probably did so not because he was right, but because he sounded certain, authoritative, and forceful, and Simmons didn’t. While I don’t think it’s a good idea to be antagonistic, I think a little blunt force was exactly what the situation called for, given the debate, the opponent, and the audience.
Lets face it, modern discourse has been undermined by the construction of truth. By any objective measure this man was ignorant. Subjective measures of ignorance are however another matter entirely.
I think PZ called the situation correctly, we really can’t just sit in a bubble of civility and watch as someone reconstructs reality around us.
@ 88-91:
I’m familiar with the “etymology” of the term. But I guess I never got much of a chuckle out of it. Maybe I’m too uptight, but I really am sick of “-ist” words, especially drive-by ones.
I really think the only misstep you made in the entire argument was when, starting out of the gate, you harped on the changing of the terms of debate. You were right, but it made you seem bruised and easily offended. Perhaps it might have worked if it was put more succinctly.
Either way, everything past the opening statement was wonderful. I’ve been showing this debate for friends just on the grounds of its entertainment value, it’s so good. Like watching Evander Holyfield in a boxing match against a twelve-year-old girl.
Re 86:
I would agree that the “gullible and the naive” don’t “deserve verbal abuse and humiliation”, but I would insist that the frauds that prey on them certainly do.
Re 103:
It depends on what the goal is. Most of the people listening to the debate probably zone out when listening to scientific evidence for anything. If the goal is to get them to listen and open their minds, something more entertaining or viral might be necessary.
Re: #111
Oh, I agree. That’s why I don’t watch American Idol (naive and gullible folk), but will happily listen in as people like Simmons (intellectually dishonest folk) get themselves outfitted with a structurally superfluous new behind.
Damn straight you call them ignorant. Anything to get them on the defensive.
Why? One thing that’s understood by everyone who pays attention to this is that creationists (or cdesign proponentsists) are terrible playing defense. It’s like dealing with a liar: force them to defend their story and it usually falls apart because they’ve got nothing to fall back on. Same with creationists: if you have to debate them, do the research and find something they’ve said that’s easy to prove is complete claptrap…and then hammer them on it.
If they admit they’re wrong, you can keep referring back to it on other points. “If you were wrong then, can’t you be wrong now?” If they don’t admit it, keep referring back to it anyway to remind the audience that if they can’t admit to that obvious error, they’re either a liar or deluded.
Sure, it’s not how you’re supposed to win a fair debate, but you know what? Creationists have no interest in a fair debate. Never have. The smart ones know the evidence is overwhelmingly against them, and the dumb ones are too dumb to realize it.
PZ, you are the master debated, and a cunning linguist. I must say I’ve heard my fair share of debates, but you nailed that last one very properly. And by nailing, well.. Nail away.
Brodie: You’re doing it wrong. It’s “cdesign proponentsists”. Not to be changed one jot or tittle.
Heh, I said “tittle.”
The way PZ used “ignorant” in the debate was perfectly acceptable, though since he was challenged on it and told to be nice, he should have explained why he used that term and what it applies, and that it is not necessarily an insult. However, given the time constraints and such, it is understandable that he did not.
The remark about creationists being “infantile” is what probably could and should have been omitted in this particular forum, especially since it was clear from their reaction to the word “ignorant” that they were going to be hyper-sensitive and blow any perceived insult out of proportion to paint PZ as the “big, mean atheist.”
I’m not going to tsk-tsk at PZ s use of the word “ignorant” — (a) in the context of the debate, it was clearly what Mark Twain would have called “the right word for the right job”, and (b) considering the outcome of said debate, who cares if “ignorant” has some colloquial connotations that aren’t 100% desirable?
That said, it’s pretty clear that the word “ignorant” does have undesirable connotations, and since this whole thing is basically a winning-hearts-and-minds deal, I’d like to suggest that anybody (PZ or otherwise) who’s going to debate a Creationist might want to enlist good old Will Rogers to defuse those undesirable connotations. See, Rogers had a lovely line that’s awfully damned relevant in the context of such debates:
“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
Use that line. Right up front, in your opening statement. You’re softening things up with a bit of humor, you’re drawing a sharp distinction between “lacking in knowledge” and “dumb as a post”, and you’re denying your opponent the opportunity to whine about how the mean nasty atheist called him ‘stoopid’. Basically, it’s a short-and-sweet win on multiple levels.
Errr… What?
Just once, I’d like to see one of these debates go like this:
Cdesign Proponentsist: Blah, blah, transitional, blah, Darwinist, blah, 747, blah, design, blah, irreducible, blah, blah, can’t imagine, blah, Mount Rushmore, blah, blah.
Atheist/Scientist: I’ll address my worthy opponent’s specific points in a moment, but before I do I’d like to speak a bit about intellectual honesty: what it is, and why it’s important….
Seriously, though, I think it’s a waste of time to debate them on specifics. Make the debate about honesty. To claim to believe the crazy crap they do, they have to be either stupid, delusional, or dishonest.* And I don’t think for one minute that the folks they send out to debate are stupid or delusional.
* There’s an interesting parallel there to C.S. Lewis’s Liar, Lunatic, or Divine formula that someone smarter than me could probably make a lot of hay with.
I like the Will Rogers suggestion, Quentin.
But what if the creatonist is a brilliant student?
Then what?
“Ignorant” is one of those words that means different things to different people. To a person with two or three degrees on the wall, “ignorant” is a descriptive term that one wouldn’t hesitate to use about oneself. But to most people, “ignorant” is on a par with moron or idiot. You can’t use it without being insulting. Saying that someone is ignorant “of” something is no better.
Strictly speaking, it’s possible to say that a person is stupid with exhaustion. Or that a person, although well-trained in his field, is incompetent to express an opinion outside of it. Just try either of those on an audience with an average education.
If you can’t be bothered to learn the language that your audience speaks, how do you expect to be persuasive?
I think I love you, PZ.
Isn’t it ironic that the scientist is supposed to take the higher ground while leaving the religious member of the debate to stomp all over like a petulant child? When a scientist is debating on the side of science, he or she has a responsibility to tell the truth…even if it means making someone look stupid. And, if the debate were such that the creationist never ventured outside of the Bible and kept his arguments to Genesis and didn’t try to make science fit where it doesn’t…then I would agree that the scientist should keep it congenial. But, when a creationist takes science and blatantly and shamelessly twists it into a pretzel, in an attempt to make it sound good enough to fool the Christians, then it’s game on. Creationists love to call the atheist “arrogant”. I say it takes more arrogance to violate science in the ways that they do than it does to point out someone’s flawed thinking. There is no respect from the creationist when they bow to what they want to be true versus what is true.
This reminds me of a Dawkins debate when he referred to creationists as “ignorant fools”. Somebody took him to task for saying that and he had to define on air what “ignorant” meant. I think a lot of people confuse ‘ignorant’ with ‘stupid’.
Uh …
“fool: … a person lacking in judgment or prudence … a harmlessly deranged person or one lacking in common powers of understanding”
“stupid: … given to unintelligent decisions or acts … acting in an unintelligent or careless manner … lacking intelligence or reason”.
you didn’t call him “ignorant” per se. You said he was “ignorant of the facts”
Those mean exactly the same thing.
Look, Simmons is a fool, he is stupid (in the sense given above), he is “ignorant”, “ignorant of the facts”, “ignorant of the subject matter”, etc., and all this pussyfooting around and reluctance to say something — oh dear! — pejorative, is rather silly. The guy wrote a fucking book and goes around debating. It’s not a matter of someone simply not knowing the latest poop on Britney Spears; Simmons’ ignorance is a moral crime.
I think there’s something important to recognize in the discussion of ignorance.
People are notoriously bad at recognizing their own lack of competence (how many people think they are a below-average driver?), and it is easy for people with only a very small level of knowledge of a topic to feel like they know almost all of it.
I think this comes up so often in debates with creationists because on top of the typical human poor ability to self-assess, they think they are arguing for the ultimate authority – so there’s not even any need to assess the arguments properly, since the side they’re arguing for must be correct. And there’s the cultural problem: the bible keeps admonishing people not to think, and their ministers – overtly or covertly – encourage them to accept whatever comes out of the mouth of someone who claims to get their authority from God. Consequently, incompetence is regularly passed off as competence. None of this is conducive to understanding that you’re fundamentally ignorant on a topic.
The most devastating part of that debate came before PZ said he was ignorant:
PZ rattles off names of transitional fossils
PZ: “You heard of those?”
GS: “I don’t know every fossil name, but I do know…”
PZ: (laughing) “You have just announced that there are no transitional fossils.”
GS: “No, no, I just read an article in Scientific American less than 6 months ago about exactly what scientists think, uh, uh, the whales came from and so whatever names were in there were the most current names at that time. And I’m sure it was a peer of your stature, and they do not have, they do not have anything with a blowhole on top of it.
PZ names a fossil with a blowhole on top of it
And then later, after PZ called him ignorant, the hammering on his knowledge of whale fossils, was excellent. But the above is why even the UD folks agree Simmons lost. (I wish somebody would make a techno remix of the above.) I say pounce on their ignorance.
If you can’t be bothered to learn the language that your audience speaks, how do you expect to be persuasive?
Hey, moron, PZ was persuasive, so persuasive that UD had to take down the comments from their own IDiots that recognized that PZ wiped the floor with Simmons.
To claim to believe the crazy crap they do, they have to be either stupid, delusional, or dishonest.
Dawkins said “ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)”. I’d say that it’s usually a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and wickedness (as dishonesty, at least intellectual dishonesty).
The remark about creationists being “infantile” is what probably could and should have been omitted in this particular forum, especially since it was clear from their reaction to the word “ignorant” that they were going to be hyper-sensitive and blow any perceived insult out of proportion to paint PZ as the “big, mean atheist.”
Uh, like they wouldn’t do that no matter what.
Truthfully, all these suggestions that we would achieve more if we didn’t call creationists this or that are inane. The goal should be to marginalize these people.
“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
Yeah, “teach the controversy”. “balance in journalism”.
Will Rogers was cool and all that, but his remark doesn’t apply here; only one of the debaters presents himself as an expert on a subject he’s ignorant of. Sometimes there really is a right side and a wrong side.
I’m familiar with the “etymology” of the term.
And you wrote #82? That’s insane.
The connection between the active verb “ignore” and its result, ignorance, needs to be made explicit in every way possible, at every opportunity.
Good point, though etymologically inaccurate: ‘Sense of “pay no attention to” first recorded 1801 and not common until c.1850.’
>The goal should be to marginalize these people.
If the goal is to marginalize them, then you shouldn’t debate them.
If the goal is to influence them, then you shouldn’t marginalize them.
Hillary
Ignorant is not merely a pejorative, it has some objective meaning.
“pejorative” and “objective” are not antonyms. Pejorative terms generally have “objective meaning”, else they wouldn’t have much force.
If the goal is to marginalize them, then you shouldn’t debate them.
PZ debated Simmons and thereby marginalized him; sheesh. And he’s been quite clear about recognizing that debates with creationists can lend them credibility, so your one-line lectures are out of place.
I think another strategy when he complained about being accused of being ignorant would be to turn it around and make the point that questioning evolution is essentially calling the entire academic discipline of biology ignorant. It is insulting …
That’s a tu quoque argument. You can’t justify calling someone ignorant or insulting them by complaining about them calling someone ignorant or insulting someone. The reality is that he is ignorant and biologists aren’t.
posturing that PZ was the first one to assert “ignorance,” while perhaps literally true, certainly doesn’t hold water.
Strawman. Being first is not the complaint that people are lodging against PZ. Our side should endeavor to be honest.
P.S. You could call Simmons hypocritical for complaining about being called ignorant, which he certainly is, but the point isn’t to just point out flaws in your opponent but to point out those that are relevant to the debate, and Simmons’ ignorance about transitional fossils certainly is.
It is true that an insult is not necessarily an Ad Hominem fallacy.
It’s good to see that you’ve learned something since you were last ripped to shreds on this subject, June.
A personal comment can be a different fallacy
Lots of things can be lots of things, but PZ’s comments were not, in fact, fallacious.
‘is it ignorant or stupid to think that “ignorant” means “stupid”?’
It’s ignorant.
It’s both; only people who are “lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind” have that sort of ignorance.
But it’s also rather stupid and ignorant not realize that characterizing ignorance of that sort as stupidity is not a matter of equating “ignorant” with “stupid”.
people hate these truths, but hating them is as productive hating gravity – they are founded on human psychology. otoh, if you learn and use them you will become a fantastically more persuasive activist.
Will you also become a pompous twit?
You shouldn’t have called him ignorant? He’s the one that said “I don’t know” !! He defined his own ignorance to everybody. it might as well be rude for you to call a guy a christian when he professes his love for jesus christ.
The author of that suggestion is a moron.
In Utah the pejorative is “ignernt”, usually used in the phrase, “oofer ignernt”. “Ignernt” means rude. Nevermind.
If I don’t call them ignorant, maybe they’ll like me.
If I treat their representatives respectfully, maybe they’ll understand that I’m right.
If I avoid criticizing their ideas too harshly, maybe they’ll understand their errors.
If I try to look at things from their side, maybe they’ll try to look at them from mine.
If we don’t make them uncomfortable over their errors, maybe they’ll listen when we explain the problems.
If I spend more time telling the people on my side who stick their necks out and fight the battles that they should be as cautious as I am, maybe we’ll win the war.
I’m getting the messages some of you are sending.
You’re wrong.
Noni #5,
is just awesome. Google gives me nothing but this instance so, accepting it’s original, I say Noni for Molly!
If your audience believes that ignorant means stupid, then ignorant means stupid. Words mean what the people who use them use them to mean. If you don’t like it, write a letter to Safire. And truth machine, putting what you say in italics doesn’t make it more true. It just means you’re screaming. You sound deranged even in print.
You’re right PZ.
If someone can’t handle being called out on their ignorance…
they shouldn’t be claiming to be an expert.
Most americans are ignorant when it comes to ALOT of important things.
They like it that way.
If your audience believes that evolution means random chance… it means random chance… right?
Right?
Didn’t think so.
PZ did not call Simmons ignorant. He did not say, “You are ignorant.” (or any variation of that) What PZ said (about 23 minutes into the MP3) was:
“However, your ignorance about the state of the fossil record is not evidence that there are holes in evolutionary theory.”
This was just after Simmons demonstrated his ignorance of the current state of the fossil record as explained by PZ before that statement. PZ followed that statement with a clear statement about the current state of the fossil record of whales directly answering Simmons claims.
The statement by PZ would certainly hold true for me, I AM ignorant of the current state of the fossil record regarding whales, but then I am not the one claiming what Simmons is claiming. PZ, quite masterfully IMO, turned what Simmons was claiming right around. Simmons in essence said, “I am ignorant of the current state of the fossil record regarding whales.” Excellent debating tactic PZ!
Simmons then dug himself even deeper in his display of ignorance by asking for a citation from PZ.
Then Simmons tries to set up a red herring argument by saying to PZ,
“I would prefer you not drop to ignorant terms, and keep this, you know, and using terms like, and keep this a little nicer tone.”
The announcer then says,
“Yeah, let’s try to keep this civil.”
Then they break for a commercial.
They tried to salvage the loss of face by dumping a red herring and a re-framing of PZ’s statement as being un-civil just before a break in an attempt to leave the audience with those last two statements in their minds. Nice try on their part and perhaps effective on some of the audience.
Simmons tries the same tactic again when PZ answers his question about problems with evolution and how they are discussed by by researchers. Pz says (about 30 minutes into the MP3),
“However, we don’t sit there and say,’Well, whales didn’t evolve.’ OK? uh, that, that’s just infantile and ludicrous. This is not the kind of thing biologists discuss.”
Simmons interrupts and says,
“Well I think the word ‘infantile’ falls on the same level as the previous word and I really don’t want to get into an insulting discussion.”
PZ did not call Simmons ‘infantile’. Simmons tries to spin it as an insult but PZ did not insult him directly. In the context of the debate so far Simmons has only managed to insult himself. At worst(?) PZ merely points this out to the listeners.
There is more in the wrap up to the show but I will not belabor anyone with any more transcription.
In closing I would say that PZ was rather restrained, very polite, and honest. Good job PZ!
-DU-
And truth machine, putting what you say in italics doesn’t make it more true.
You apparently failed to grasp the irony that I intended by putting the word “moron” in italics, moron.
PZ did not call Simmons ignorant
Yeah, like “your moronic commentary” isn’t me calling you a moron.
Really, these folks “defending” PZ against something he doesn’t even want to be defended against are the silliest of all.
I beg to differ with you, truth machine: PZ debated Simmons, and did not marginalize him: PZ verbally hung him on a meathook and sliced him into a metaphorical fountain of bloody slivers.
I’m finishing up Nerds and one of the points made about public perception of nerds vs the popular kids is that the popular kids are self-assured and confident. They aren’t necessarily nasty or stupid, but they know how to deflect criticism and, by doing so, stay on the offensive. Truth and beauty don’t really enter into it – it’s all about letting the other guy pause and waffle and stutter and give all the social signals of being on the defensive.
As an example, factually beating George W. Bush in a debate is not nearly as effective as making him stammer, lose his temper, and keep interrupting to try and get his momentum back. Facts may win in a court of law, but they aren’t as important in the court of public opinion.
Conveniently, we have the truth (roughly 150 years of evidence and theory supported by every other branch of physical and biological science.) Sure, being aggressive can backfire, but looking at my state board of education and our (US) national political and religious climate, I don’t see that we have anything to lose. If we go over the line, we back off.
I don’t want to see the advocates of reason, science, and secular society rest until the godbotherers and their apologists are driven back to influencing only their waning, aging, ignorant congregations. This means taking credulous members of the media to task for valuing ‘balance’, ‘access’, and being liked over the truth as well as holding politicians accountable for religious pandering. I don’t want religion eliminated from the public sphere, I just want it back in its place – in someone else’s church. If that means bluntly calling someone ignorant and hurting their precious feelings, so be it.
truthmachine,
However, your ignorance of the difference between a noun (ignorance) and an adjective (ignorant, moronic) is not evidence that you understood what I (or PZ) actually said.
-DU-
However, your ignorance of the difference between a noun (ignorance) and an adjective (ignorant, moronic) is not evidence that you understood what I (or PZ) actually said.
I am of course not ignorant of any such thing, you stupid fuck. Talk failing to understand; sheesh.
PZ debated Simmons, and did not marginalize him
When even people at UD say “We should just close our eyes and pretend it never happened”, he certainly did. Simmons was marginalized by having it demonstrated that he has no idea what he’s talking about.
AJ Milne,
Where the hell is your Molly?
Some people are really showing their ignorance of the English language:
..”to be ignorant”,period (example: you’re just ignorant!), is a calculated insult.
.. to be ignorant of something should be acceptable in a serious discussion.
“If your audience believes that ignorant means stupid, then ignorant means stupid. Words mean what the people who use them use them to mean. If you don’t like it, write a letter to Safire. And truth machine, putting what you say in italics doesn’t make it more true. It just means you’re screaming. You sound deranged even in print.”
Bloix, so what you are saying is that audience for this debate really need some lessons in English before moving onto harder stuff like evolutionary biology ?
You are just like the people who criticize Dawkins for calling his book “The God Delusion”. You assume that people are so stupid they will fail to understand what Dawkins means. Well some did, but the thing is those who did fail to understand were not those with religious belief that Dawkins was taking on but those who assumed those with religious belief are so ignorant they cannot work out how Dawkins was using the word. Rightious indignation on behalf of others is not a pretty thing.
Matt Penfold said:
“Bloix, so what you are saying is that audience for this debate really need some lessons in English before moving onto harder stuff like evolutionary biology?”
Given the comments about the meaning of ignorance surfacing around this thread I think that maybe some people here do too!
As has been previously stated, we are all ignorant of something – for example I am vaguely aware that the Giants won the Superbowl and that this is an American Football Competition but I have not the faintest clue who plays for the Giants or which city this team is from (I’m from the UK) – thus I am ignorant of the details of American Football. This in itself is not wrong, bad or stupid, it just means that I am not interested in that particular sport and have not bothered to find out much about it.
My ignorance on this topic would become a problem, however if I was to start writing books about how to play the game and going on radio shows telling serious American Football pundits/ players and managers that I know everything there is to know about the game and they know squat and/or are part of an evil conspiracy to hamstring the game.
In such a situation I see no reason why they should or would describe me as anything other than ignorant (and arrogant and more than a little stupid for putting myself in this position), which is exactly what PZ did to Simmons. Why is this a problem?
I have a calendar on my desk of quotes from Mark Twain. Monday’s was “Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly , don’t tell them where they know the fish.”
Seems kind of fitting for Simmons. He didn’t know what he was talking about, and just made shit up. But his biggest mistake was in doing this in the presence of someone who knew enough about the subject to catch him at it. You knew the fish.
Simmons was, at best, ignorant. There is no way around this. The only way he could say the patently false things he said without being ignorant is if he was fully aware that what he said was false, and was deliberately lying. Which is, in my view, a much worse insult. There is no shame in calling ignorance ignorance, nor in calling a liar a liar.
Again, the question I probably wouldn’t have been able to resist asking in this situation is “Isn’t your imaginary god supposed to have some sort of problem with bearing false witness?”
Matt:
Perhaps you missed the widespread and vitriolic backlash against Dawkins amongst “those with religious belief” who could not “work out how Dawkins was using the word.” What people assumed is irrelevant; reality speaks for itself. Many people viewed the title as Dawkins’ way of pathologizing theism. (Perhaps it was, though I have argued otherwise.) Perhaps the criticism was not for choosing a title that would or could be so widely misunderstood, it was for choosing a provocative title that was so widely misunderstood. I may be splitting a hair, there, for though I think you have chosen a bad example, I agree with you in principle: Righteous indignation on behalf of those who can speak for themselves is not a pretty thing.
Regarding Bloix’s comment:
By that logic, the word meant exactly what PZ intended it to mean.
Regardless, it’s not so black-and-white as you make it out to be. If your audience believes that “ignorant of” means “stupid”, then that’s what it means to them. Their belief doesn’t make them right. If 30% of the population spells “definitely” d-e-f-i-n-a-t-e-l-y, are they correct? If 50% of the population thinks “theory” means “wild guess”, are they correct? What’s the threshold? At what point does common usage prove established usage (and the dictionary) wrong?
As the comments on this thread aptly demonstrate, there are two ways of looking at this. If PZ uses a word correctly and listeners misunderstand his meaning because they don’t understand a critical word, then yes – they need a little bit of remedial language instruction. However, common usage ultimately does dictate meaning. No dictionary is above revision. For better or for worse, “ignorant” is increasingly taking on more pejorative shades of meaning as time marches on. The question is, are we past the point where the dictionary definition no longer accurately reflects the widely understood meaning of the word?
I don’t think so, but I can’t prove it. All I can offer is this:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ignorant
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ignorance
FWIW, the character string “stupid” does not appear anywhere on either page.
It does here, though. Heh.
Sometimes people are just… WRONG. Simmons, and the hosts, were wrong to be offended by a blunt statement of fact. Simmons claimed knowledge and expertise that he did not possess. PZ rightly called him on it.
I have to add that it’s not “appeasement” to pull a Will Rogers and let everyone on both sides of the mic know you’re addressing a lack of knowledge, not a lack of intelligence or character. (There will usually be time for that later on if necessary. Heh. As others have pointed out, the only alternative was to call Simmons a liar.)
I just saw on my “KKMS Live E-mail Alert” that Simmons will be back on the show today at 4:00. It will be interesting to see if any mention is made of last week’s drubbing.
4:00 Hour – “Evolution: Billions of Missing Links”
Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute will help us better understand why the theory of evolution is simply not feasible.
LMAO! “Simply”? Prediction: Simmons will pull out the “no transitional whale fossils” argument as if his encounter with PZ had never occurred! (“Why, I read it in Scientific American!”)
Obviously, having “a consumate liar” like Professor Myers on the show was a big mistake, and only got in the way of Simmons’ ability to disseminate the…ah… truth.
Ack!
Doug said:
“I just saw on my “KKMS Live E-mail Alert” that Simmons will be back on the show today at 4:00. It will be interesting to see if any mention is made of last week’s drubbing.
4:00 Hour – “Evolution: Billions of Missing Links”
Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute will help us better understand why the theory of evolution is simply not feasible.”
Sigh, Oh well, what’s everyone doing at 4:00? Methinks it is time to man the phones and eviscerate the good Dr again (assuming they’re brave enough to allow callers). Some people just will not learn will they?
Hey, everybody. Can we calm down, please?
When I posted on my blog it was NOT to offer a criticism of PZ’s debate against Simmons. My intent was to offer advice for future debates.
I’m not saying that PZ shouldn’t have called Simmons “ignorant” or infantile.” It doesn’t make sense to criticize him for it when it was effective and he so clearly won the debate.
All I’m saying, and what a lot of people here are saying is, that PZ MAY want to be careful using such tactics in the future. It doesn’t matter if PZ’s use of the word “ignorant” is semantically correct. A good debater can twist meaning and use it to undermine PZ’s message by making it look like he’s resorting to namecalling. Simmons is a terrible debater and his attempt to do this only ended up hurting him more.
Again, good job to PZ for smashing Simmons to pieces. My intent was to offer advice for future debates. I’m not armchair QBing a debate that already happened. That would be as pointless as…well…as pointless as over 160 comments debating the definition of the word “ignorance.”
Danny: Welcome to Scienceblogs. ;-)
But the thing is, they will take any pointing out of knowledge deficiencies as an insult regardless of how you phrase it. If PZ had said “You have no idea what you’re talking about” it would have been taken as an insult. If he had said “You are absolutely wrong”, it would have been taken as an insult. Simply avoiding the word ignorant wouldn’t have made Simmons feel any less picked on or denigrated. If someone is shown to be wrong on a topic they think they know, it makes them feel bad, and they can claim that the other person is picking on them by pointing it out. Couching it in different language wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
I don’t know if I agree with PZ; I think Neil Degrasse Tyson does a very good job of being straight to the point and handing his opponent their ass, while maintaining the audiences favor.
Science can have a warm, huggable side, and Tyson proves that.
Here’s an example of someone who doesn’t know what ignorant means but (as you’ll see if you read the continuing posts) who is quite happy to argue about that too from his position of profound ignorance. Classic stuff!
Absolutely. Irregardless of what prescriptivists say, I could care less about the “real” meaning, as it’s pretty much a mute point. You can wait with baited breath in a high dungeon for beknighted people to understand the dictionary definition, or you can understand that common usage is a fate accompli, a far-gone conclusion, and that for all intensive purposes what matters is how people use the words, not the straightjacket of some abstract “correct” form.
Are you in agreeance?
@170: Ouch! My eyes! Curse you and your colloquiably acceptable mangling of my native tongue, Tulse!
Supposably, these are all examples of acceptable ‘misuses’ in circulation acrost America.
Listening to Simmons right now. It’s a laugh a minute! I think that this guy is an exception to the don’t debate creationists rule. I haven’t heard anything about whales (just caught the last 5 minutes), but he is talking about the supposed impossibility of fish and bird evolution right now.
The only problem is I share a last name with him.
tulse,
ROTFL!!LOL!!1!thx!!!
(Seriously though, hilarious.)
Tulse wins the Innertubes!
That was awesome! And you’ve nailed a bunch of my pet peeves!
(But are you disagreeing with me? It’s hard to tell. You can’t deny that language evolves and that word meanings can, and sometimes do, change over time.)
Kseniya, I certainly don’t disagree that language evolves (just look at the word “gay”, for example), and it would be silly (another word that has changed meaning over time) to hold firm to a prescriptivist line in the face of overwhelming common usage to the contrary. That said, I think it is also reasonable to push back against what is currently incorrect usage, and to alert people of the formally accepted meaning and spelling of words and phrases. Like bacteria, language may evolve, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try applying metaphorical antibiotics to popular misuse of words.
In this particular instance, it would have been interesting to see the reaction if PZ had responded to Simmons’ complaint with something like “Ignorant simply means uninformed. I’m ignorant of the rules of piquet, which fortunately is not a problem because I don’t play the game. However, being ignorant of the evidence involving whale evolution when you claim to speak about it is a problem, and calls into question your credibility.”
Tulse (#170) is a comic genius.
Olorin @#9:
Thank you for keeping us all on the strait and narrow path of good grammar and spelling.
Tulse, thanks for the lucid reply. I conclude that you and I agree completely on these points. If haven’t drawn the same conclusion after reading my original post, then the fault is mine for being less than perfectly clear in the first place. ;-)
That’s very gracious, Kseniya — to be honest my original post was just being snarky, and took your comment out of context in order to vent on my own pet peeve. In other words, you were clear, and I was just funnin’.
Up in comment 58 BlueIndependent mentioned Judas. That got me to wondering, I heard Simmons deny he was a christian at least a couple of times, but did he deny it three times before the cock crowed? I haven’t listened to the debate a second time to check yet, but it was a wonderful listen the first time around so I probably will. I just wish they hadn’t included the commercials on the recording, yuck! Excellent work exposing the lousy arguments and ignorance that Simmons demonstrated, while still claiming he was expert enough to write a book on the subject. Congrats on the win Dr. Myers!
Cheers,
Ray