Poe's Law, Morgan's Maxim, and Outlawing Dinosaurs -- with Authority!
So today's twitteruption involves the following Big Story, presented to me by a colleague with this link from an ABC News affiliate:
http://abc13.com/society/are-dinosaurs-a-65-million-year-old-lie/514514/
(Original caption is "This stock photo shows a female teacher explaining dinosaur skeleton parts to students in biology class. (Shutterstock)")
In case it's gone by the time you read this (which presupposes your existence; NOT a proven fact, so you'll get no existential reassurance here), the title is "Are Dinosaurs a 65-Million-Year-Old Lie?" The article reports on a report on a reported flareup among users of a website. (Digest that for a moment. While you're doing that, I'll have a little snack of kelp to fortify myself for the writing ahead.)
SO anyway, according to the report of the report, there's this Facebook group called Christians Against Dinosaurs, and a member of the group was posting in a UK forum/online group called mumsnet.com about how dinosaurs are a big lie and need to be outlawed from schools because they drive children into raptor frenzies, and how the poster's sister gave dinosaur toys to the poster's children for Christmas, but fortunately the poster's children were alert enough to the spiritual dangers of dinosaurs that they joined with their mom to burn the toys and disown their aunt, and when other mumsnet users made fun of the anti-dino poster there was flamage and whatnot and so now it's national news on another continent.
See why I needed that kelp?
What's interesting (to me; I have no idea why *you* are here) is that this is now being repeated and retweeted with an apparent underlying assumption that the whole thing is legit -- namely that there is in fact a real live human being who self-identifies as a Christian Against Dinosaurs and that she disowned her sister for giving dinosaur toys as Christmas presents.
Subsequent discussion, in which a third party referenced "Poe's Law", led me to Wikipedia. Eventually we'll talk about what I found there.
Now that part where I told you that I went to Wikipedia and telling you what I found there? THAT is a PROPER "citation to authority". I'm told that in medieval times, writers would Cite to Authority and that you pretty much couldn't do any better than citing to Aristotle, because he was as high up the Authoritative Food Chain as you could get, and that if you were in an argument and said "Thus sayeth Aristotle", the other guy would just fold up his illuminated manuscripts and slink away while everybody else laughed at him.
(Photo of medieval guy winning an argument by citing to Aristotle. Or maybe something about polyphonic music. I nicked this one from an online edition of The Guardian, and the photo credit is to "Imagno/Getty Images")
Interestingly enough (again, in the context of "things that are interesting to me"), I can actually *tell* you the source of my earlier statement, about how in medieval times people would cite to Aristotle: my dad told me that!
My dad is a deceptively deep and well-read individual. Just when you think he's just like every other science-and-technology-heavy genius type of person -- a simple inventor/tinkerer/rocket-ship-systems-integrator who single-handedly won the Cold War before it even started (which is probably material for another post), he'll whip out a completely unexpected and penetrating insight on politics or economics or constitutional law, or make a passing reference to Aristotle and medieval intellectual culture in the context of how important it is to cite your sources when you're writing a school paper in 4th grade.
I'll be completely honest at this point (not that I was lying like a rug previously, but what follows is verifiably My Own Opinon): I don't know *for certain* that you could win medieval arguments by citing to Aristotle. But it's a great illustration of the concept of the appeal to Authority. So for me, the whole story of "Thus sayeth Aristotle" is the very epitome of apocrypha -- what I like to refer to as "a story that's so good it ought to be true even if it isn't."
So, inside my own imaginary world, medieval-type people cited to unassailable Authority with "Thus sayeth Aristotle". Therefore I now like to cite to unassailable Authority with "Thus sayeth Wikipedia". As I am about to do regarding Poe's Law.
You probably already knew that Poe's Law is as follows (Thus sayeth Wikipedia):
"POE'S LAW: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake [it] for the genuine article."
What I found even more interesting was Morgan's Maxim, which I found posted inside the Wikipedia article about Poe's Law. Here's Morgan's Maxim, which I am going to start quoting frequently:
"Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook."
And at long last we roll back around to the mystery mumsnet poster and the ensuing response threads, as reported in the Mirror, re-reported by various ABC affiliates (and others), re-re-reported by my colleague, tweeted and twittered and Facebookified and even ultimately narrated by Yours Truly.
If, as an exercise, you follow the embedded citations back towards the initial posts, it sounds more and more like the original post was satirical. Or maybe not. But it definitely got lots of clicks and references and re-presentations. And in so doing it has become an instant apocrypha -- a story that's so good it *should* be true, even if it's not -- so long as it is consistent with your already-established worldview.
Me, I choose to believe that there was a limited archive of reference information available to medieval scholars, and that Aristotle was held as being a pretty big noise in intellectual circles of the time, so he got repeated and recopied (hm... medieval retweeting...) a lot. And even if you couldn't really win every argument with "Thus sayeth Aristotle," you could probably count on that as a pretty compelling cite to Authority. I guarantee that this characterization was not wholly accurate even at any specific place and time within the broad span of "medieval times" (and I should also define that as "medieval Europe," and then set my geographic and chronologic boundaries, and so on and so forth...). But there is *certainly* no shortage of reference information available now, and a whole lot of it is *just* noise -- endless re-re-re-reportings of the same base data, but in such a way that the reporter's opinion gets more and more substituted for whatever objective fact was lurking within the initial story.
So what's Authoritative now? Tragically, not Wikipedia, much as I'd like it to be. It is valuable and limited in ways other people have addressed at plenty of length, so I'll leave it to you to google their work. (Heh heh. I like what I did there, with the referencing of google as a way to authority-test Wikipedia.) I'll still go around saying "Thus sayeth Wikipedia," though, because it's fun to say, because it accurately cites my sources (revealing their limitations and capabilities), and best of all, because it reminds me of my dad. Thus sayeth Wikipedia!
Have I, therefore, written an essay about how there's no objective reality, and that truth is unknowable, and knowledge is a mutually agreed-upon fiction -- the sum of a trillion tweets? I'm going to go with NO. There is objective data underlying discussion and opinion: there are the facts of the case, and the circumstances surrounding those facts, and there are reasonable inferences to be drawn from those facts and circumstances. Don't believe me? Take a look at the first photo that I pasted into this overlong rambling whatever-it-is (assuming the link still connects to the photo). Even if the link doesn't connect, read the caption -- cut and pasted from the ABC news article. "Teacher explaining dinosaur skeleton parts to students"? Yeah, no. Photo shows a complete skeleton of something (I suspect a dog) on a lab-type table. Run that image back to its ultimate source and I will happily bet any (theoretical) reader that the photo no more shows a dinosaur skeleton than it shows *my* skeleton. And if the article was so sketchily assembled that its own internal citations don't hold up? I'll conclude that it's not a reliable or Authoritative source. Facts, circumstances, reasonable inferences (as I regard them).
So that's an extremely roundabout way of discussing my standards for citing to Authority. I'd like facts, circumstances, and reasonable inferences. Internal consistency is a must. And I'll draw my own conclusions.
Are there people in the world who believe and act on very odd things? Absolutely. Is there a Great Big Dinosaur Conspiracy? I suspect not. Did some poster on Mumsnet disown her sister because of dinosaur toys? I'm disinclined to accept that proposition ("Means, 'No'"). Do I have my own conceptual blinders and do I broad-brush a lot of things with rough approximations rather than precise facts? Well, "Thus sayeth Aristotle" ("Means, 'Yes'"). Do I like having useful shorthand for authoritative citations and general principles? ABSOLUTELY! "Any sufficiently advanced troll *is* indistinguishable from a genuine kook" -- after all, Thus sayeth Wikipedia!
(Thanks again to my dad. I love you, Dad!) :-)
http://abc13.com/society/are-dinosaurs-a-65-million-year-old-lie/514514/
(Original caption is "This stock photo shows a female teacher explaining dinosaur skeleton parts to students in biology class. (Shutterstock)")
In case it's gone by the time you read this (which presupposes your existence; NOT a proven fact, so you'll get no existential reassurance here), the title is "Are Dinosaurs a 65-Million-Year-Old Lie?" The article reports on a report on a reported flareup among users of a website. (Digest that for a moment. While you're doing that, I'll have a little snack of kelp to fortify myself for the writing ahead.)
SO anyway, according to the report of the report, there's this Facebook group called Christians Against Dinosaurs, and a member of the group was posting in a UK forum/online group called mumsnet.com about how dinosaurs are a big lie and need to be outlawed from schools because they drive children into raptor frenzies, and how the poster's sister gave dinosaur toys to the poster's children for Christmas, but fortunately the poster's children were alert enough to the spiritual dangers of dinosaurs that they joined with their mom to burn the toys and disown their aunt, and when other mumsnet users made fun of the anti-dino poster there was flamage and whatnot and so now it's national news on another continent.
See why I needed that kelp?
What's interesting (to me; I have no idea why *you* are here) is that this is now being repeated and retweeted with an apparent underlying assumption that the whole thing is legit -- namely that there is in fact a real live human being who self-identifies as a Christian Against Dinosaurs and that she disowned her sister for giving dinosaur toys as Christmas presents.
Subsequent discussion, in which a third party referenced "Poe's Law", led me to Wikipedia. Eventually we'll talk about what I found there.
Now that part where I told you that I went to Wikipedia and telling you what I found there? THAT is a PROPER "citation to authority". I'm told that in medieval times, writers would Cite to Authority and that you pretty much couldn't do any better than citing to Aristotle, because he was as high up the Authoritative Food Chain as you could get, and that if you were in an argument and said "Thus sayeth Aristotle", the other guy would just fold up his illuminated manuscripts and slink away while everybody else laughed at him.
(Photo of medieval guy winning an argument by citing to Aristotle. Or maybe something about polyphonic music. I nicked this one from an online edition of The Guardian, and the photo credit is to "Imagno/Getty Images")
Interestingly enough (again, in the context of "things that are interesting to me"), I can actually *tell* you the source of my earlier statement, about how in medieval times people would cite to Aristotle: my dad told me that!
My dad is a deceptively deep and well-read individual. Just when you think he's just like every other science-and-technology-heavy genius type of person -- a simple inventor/tinkerer/rocket-ship-systems-integrator who single-handedly won the Cold War before it even started (which is probably material for another post), he'll whip out a completely unexpected and penetrating insight on politics or economics or constitutional law, or make a passing reference to Aristotle and medieval intellectual culture in the context of how important it is to cite your sources when you're writing a school paper in 4th grade.
I'll be completely honest at this point (not that I was lying like a rug previously, but what follows is verifiably My Own Opinon): I don't know *for certain* that you could win medieval arguments by citing to Aristotle. But it's a great illustration of the concept of the appeal to Authority. So for me, the whole story of "Thus sayeth Aristotle" is the very epitome of apocrypha -- what I like to refer to as "a story that's so good it ought to be true even if it isn't."
So, inside my own imaginary world, medieval-type people cited to unassailable Authority with "Thus sayeth Aristotle". Therefore I now like to cite to unassailable Authority with "Thus sayeth Wikipedia". As I am about to do regarding Poe's Law.
You probably already knew that Poe's Law is as follows (Thus sayeth Wikipedia):
"POE'S LAW: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake [it] for the genuine article."
What I found even more interesting was Morgan's Maxim, which I found posted inside the Wikipedia article about Poe's Law. Here's Morgan's Maxim, which I am going to start quoting frequently:
"Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook."
And at long last we roll back around to the mystery mumsnet poster and the ensuing response threads, as reported in the Mirror, re-reported by various ABC affiliates (and others), re-re-reported by my colleague, tweeted and twittered and Facebookified and even ultimately narrated by Yours Truly.
If, as an exercise, you follow the embedded citations back towards the initial posts, it sounds more and more like the original post was satirical. Or maybe not. But it definitely got lots of clicks and references and re-presentations. And in so doing it has become an instant apocrypha -- a story that's so good it *should* be true, even if it's not -- so long as it is consistent with your already-established worldview.
Me, I choose to believe that there was a limited archive of reference information available to medieval scholars, and that Aristotle was held as being a pretty big noise in intellectual circles of the time, so he got repeated and recopied (hm... medieval retweeting...) a lot. And even if you couldn't really win every argument with "Thus sayeth Aristotle," you could probably count on that as a pretty compelling cite to Authority. I guarantee that this characterization was not wholly accurate even at any specific place and time within the broad span of "medieval times" (and I should also define that as "medieval Europe," and then set my geographic and chronologic boundaries, and so on and so forth...). But there is *certainly* no shortage of reference information available now, and a whole lot of it is *just* noise -- endless re-re-re-reportings of the same base data, but in such a way that the reporter's opinion gets more and more substituted for whatever objective fact was lurking within the initial story.
So what's Authoritative now? Tragically, not Wikipedia, much as I'd like it to be. It is valuable and limited in ways other people have addressed at plenty of length, so I'll leave it to you to google their work. (Heh heh. I like what I did there, with the referencing of google as a way to authority-test Wikipedia.) I'll still go around saying "Thus sayeth Wikipedia," though, because it's fun to say, because it accurately cites my sources (revealing their limitations and capabilities), and best of all, because it reminds me of my dad. Thus sayeth Wikipedia!
Have I, therefore, written an essay about how there's no objective reality, and that truth is unknowable, and knowledge is a mutually agreed-upon fiction -- the sum of a trillion tweets? I'm going to go with NO. There is objective data underlying discussion and opinion: there are the facts of the case, and the circumstances surrounding those facts, and there are reasonable inferences to be drawn from those facts and circumstances. Don't believe me? Take a look at the first photo that I pasted into this overlong rambling whatever-it-is (assuming the link still connects to the photo). Even if the link doesn't connect, read the caption -- cut and pasted from the ABC news article. "Teacher explaining dinosaur skeleton parts to students"? Yeah, no. Photo shows a complete skeleton of something (I suspect a dog) on a lab-type table. Run that image back to its ultimate source and I will happily bet any (theoretical) reader that the photo no more shows a dinosaur skeleton than it shows *my* skeleton. And if the article was so sketchily assembled that its own internal citations don't hold up? I'll conclude that it's not a reliable or Authoritative source. Facts, circumstances, reasonable inferences (as I regard them).
So that's an extremely roundabout way of discussing my standards for citing to Authority. I'd like facts, circumstances, and reasonable inferences. Internal consistency is a must. And I'll draw my own conclusions.
Are there people in the world who believe and act on very odd things? Absolutely. Is there a Great Big Dinosaur Conspiracy? I suspect not. Did some poster on Mumsnet disown her sister because of dinosaur toys? I'm disinclined to accept that proposition ("Means, 'No'"). Do I have my own conceptual blinders and do I broad-brush a lot of things with rough approximations rather than precise facts? Well, "Thus sayeth Aristotle" ("Means, 'Yes'"). Do I like having useful shorthand for authoritative citations and general principles? ABSOLUTELY! "Any sufficiently advanced troll *is* indistinguishable from a genuine kook" -- after all, Thus sayeth Wikipedia!
(Thanks again to my dad. I love you, Dad!) :-)