Agnotology.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I learned a new word today. The author argues that agnotology played a major role in the results of the Brexit vote. From here:

Big Tobacco’s misinformation campaign is held up as the best example of agnotology. The author provides other examples, if you don’t want to read an interesting article but are curious what I’m going on about:

I have long thought that bs is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, threats to mankind today. You could say war is a greater threat, but bs is what starts most wars. You could say that climate change is the greatest threat, but bs prevents society from addressing the issue. I suppose the world’s greatest threat is debatable, but bs is up there.

Anyway, “bs” is just too broad a term. If you recognize it as a threat and want to exert resistance against it, focusing on “bs” will probably lead you waste energy on fights that aren’t very important. Garden variety bs is like savoir faire, it’s everywhere.

That’s why I am so glad the term agnotology came along. There may well be other strains of bs which are dangerous and virulent, but starting with agnotology provides a nice focus, a way to filter from view a lot of worthless bs that isn’t worth fighting.

Back to Brexit, the author makes the case that British citizens got fooled by agnotology into voting for a mistake. Me, I can’t say I know enough about it to take a position on Brexit. I am not a Brexit critic. Even if I knew everything about it, it would still be a matter between the UK and Europe. Yah, it affects the global economy, but I think any really nasty outcomes long term will be limited to the UK, and maybe Europe, but not really my life.

I’d be interested in discussing whether or not the author’s hypothesis is correct. We can discuss the sort of ethical views I am taking in this discussion, like resisting bs is some kind of imperative, or that I shouldn’t be a critic of things that don’t affect me especially. We could explore what effect language/vocabulary has on a person’s ethical outlook. But this is in MPSIMS because I am just pleased to have been granted this new category which brings things that much more into focus for me.

2

Among the computer folk, we call it FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

This is a major factor in virtually all notable US elections.

3

Does this include stuff like the “terrorist fist bump” nonsense the right-wing media dreamed up when Obama was first running for president? Manufactured reasons to doubt or dislike a person or cause, presented in a way that’s like, “we’re addressing this issue that we know all of you are wondering about!” when no one was actually wondering about that, but now they are, thanks to you. Mission accomplished.

4

Recommended viewing (or reading): Merchants of Doubt. They talk about corporate-funded campaigns to deflect blame for dangerous products or environmental damage, including tobacco and climate change.

5

Where is the BS in Brexit? It’s a trade agreement, the people of the UK didn’t like it. There’s been a lot of political puffery on both sides of the issue but the fear mongering has been on the ‘Stay’ side of the issue, talking about disasters and war because the UK doesn’t want to belong to the club any more. GB and Europe can go about their business without any great repercussions if they want to. There are no false scientific claims here, there is nothing illogical about GB wanting to go it alone.

6

The first bit that leaps to mind is the 360m pounds that the Leave bus said would be transferred to NHS.

7

This is exactly why I so often speak out against what I call “The Media/Industrial Complex”.

8

Yes, I think it does. “Is Obama a Muslim terrorist? Hmm, not sure, it’s an open question!”

From the article:

If you click the link in the OP, the above paragraph is heavily hyperlinked to more info. Here’s a link to the EC’s nonsense-debunking blog.

For all that, I still think it is the UK’s business, like you say. I’ll add that Cramer from Mad Money called Brexit “the dumbest financial mistake I have ever seen.” FWIW.

9

Yes, political puffery. That’s what happens when you hold votes. Where’s the scientific evidence for the predicted gloom and doom? We hear plenty of times how we are all better off with globalization but the proof always comes down to extremely wealthy people continuing to profit and no observable gain for everyone else. If the pro-globalization side had the facts on their side why couldn’t they convince the people of Great Britain to stay in? It’s easy to pick your own concerns as the most important for everyone, but when everyone else gets a say in the matter the outcome might not be to your liking. Every political campaign will claim that the world is a better place if their side wins, it’s not the same thing as making specious scientific claims and denying provable facts.

10

“Agnotology” is new to me, too, but we’re going to see more and more examples of it. I just finished listening to an interview on NPR with someone from The Susan B. Anthony List (which I hadn’t heard of, either) say that the medical community’s statement that abortions are safer than carrying babies to term, or having a colonoscopy, is wrong … and that the Supreme Court shouldn’t have made its decision yesterday on that determination.

The spokesperson from The Susan B. Anthony List didn’t say why her view on healthcare is more accurate than that of a large collection of actual doctors, but she still felt free to state it on national radio.

11

If Cramer said that then maybe they did make the right move. It’s a political decision, maybe one made stupidly, but both sides are arguing about unknown outcomes. And both sides used fear-mongering as a tactic.

12

After all these years, I’m just not in the mood to learn more about our Greek-American ex-veep. :smiley:

13

:D. I’m curious how many will pick up that reference.

14

Most of the issues listed in the OP have two sides. Who is to say which side is indulging in agnotology? The climate change alarmists? Or the climate change deniers? The GMO opponents? or the proponents? Just making up a fancy word doesn’t cut through the BS from either side.

Voting isn’t a system designed to make the best decisions. It is a system designed to avoid decisions so horrible that the vast majority of ordinary people can tell it’s a horrible decision.

15

Nonetheless, creating a word for the phenomenon may help people be aware of the practice. Thus being more skeptical and thinking about what they’re hearing with a more critical ear.

16

And here I thought it was the study of lambs!

17

No, that’s agnewtology. Then there’s plain newtology, not to mention bushology.

I just wanted to record an actual anecdots about fist bumps on 9/11. A friend of mine had a son in HS on that day in Calgary. There were a lot of Muslims in that school. When the second tower fell, several of the Muslim students stood up and started giving high fives to each other. Of course, these were just some teenagers, but still.

18

No the EU is way more than a trade agreement. Right off the bat you sound like you don’t know enough to comment.

19

Ha! I have often wondered myself if the opposite of everything Cramer says is the best path. But he was fairly persuasive. His take was that it was a stupid financial decision, but it wasn’t about money, it was about immigration. Therefore, it was stupid, and he went on to calculate the cost of basically bribing immigrants to go somewhere other than the UK vs. the costs of the Brexit. The bribing option carried about 1/3 the costs as losses due to Brexit, not even counting long-term consequences. But I don’t blame you if you are unconvinced by Cramer.

As for the ‘both sides do it’ point, do you have any examples of bs from the Remain side? Because looking through the EC’s nonsense-debunking blog, it is clear that the Leave side promulgated quite a list of whoppers.

I don’t think it is a “who can say?” kind of proposition. We can know for sure that the Leave side was engaging in it by looking at their disinformation campaign. They were creating confusion and suppressing the truth. If the Remain side was doing it too, let’s see the evidence. The notion of dueling agnotologies is intriguing.

As for the climate change issue, the specific agnotology the author pointed out was the claim that global warming is a scientific hoax, which has no basis in fact. Maybe you are suggesting the global warming, uh, realists are exaggerating the danger and promoting ideas that have no basis in fact as a means of promoting their agenda? Well then, trot out those statements and let’s have a look. But even if you can produce some good ones, ultimately there is a scientific consensus on global warming and it isn’t a hoax. So that issue falls such that the scientific consensus promoters have the fact-based position, and the deniers are trying to construct ignorance of those facts, sowing confusion in order to suppress the truth.

I think some caution is in order here though. We don’t want to brand anyone who questions the scientific consensus as engaging in agnotology. There really are two sides to the issue, and there really are sincere thinkers on both sides. Dissent is not enough to fit the definition of agnotology.

Also, some issues are not as clearly true-or-false as the proposition that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. That is clearly a case of agnotology because so much effort was put into promoting a blatantly false premise as a causus belli. A scientific consensus is not quite the same thing as a fact, it is merely ‘to the best of our knowledge’- it isn’t quite “truth”. What are the limits to knowledge? What is knowable and not knowable? Imperfections in the nature of human understanding itself muddy the question of what is an instance of agnotology. I think it is fair to point out that maybe we can’t know for sure whether it is really better for the UK to be in or out of the EU. It could be partly subjective, you’d have to ask the Brits, and they did, and they voted Leave.

But it was so close, and the Leave side floated so many whoppers, it is tantalizing to think that agnotology swayed the result, as it did in the decision to invade Iraq, as it did in maintaining a “safe” status for cigarettes decades beyond when they should have been revealed as dangerous, as it did it justifying debt-ballooning tax cuts for mostly wealthy people, and so on. I agree with the author that agnotology was at least definitely in play on the Leave side.

It also occurs to me that you may be “in character” for the thread topic, bringing in this Fox-newsian both sides do it fair and balanced kind of rhetoric, maybe your post is supposed to be an example of the topic, directed against the topic itself? I’ve got my eye on you, Tim R. Mortiss. :dubious:

20

You can keep your eye on me all you want. It just strikes me that this thread, like most SDMB politically tainted threads, regardless of forum, is totally liberally biased. Both sides are guilty of demagoguery, so let’s not act like one is gospel and the other is BS.