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Bad advice

Incision
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Posted 01/27/09 - 09:33 PM:
Subject: Bad advice

Some ideas have a popular reputation as being part of good critical thinking, even though experts recognize them not to be. Thanks to these, people sometimes accept false beliefs out of sheer earnestness and goodwill. I thought it would be fun to make a list of them.

Some might be:

And maybe (though this might be too controversial to count):

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Are there any others?

hyena in petticoat
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Posted 01/27/09 - 09:48 PM:	#2
Hmm... Could you perhaps elaborate on the qualifiers on how to "detect" bad advices, such that, how these ideas you mentioned become bad advice? Say, what did the "expert" say?
I need to get acquainted with sanity. Rantings, rantings and more rantings. Seriously.

Incision
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Posted 01/27/09 - 09:59 PM:	#3
Oh, sorry. What I meant is that you often hear people recommend, say, that youdefine your terms. Obviously many people think this is good advice. But philosophers working in the theory of definition will generally tell you it's not. Defining all your major words is unnecessary, and more difficult than many people might expect, and trying is likely to lead to more conceptual confusion than it solves. So it qualifies as bad advice if and only if most philosophers (or other relevant experts) believe it's bad advice. And it makes the list if and only if it's commonly believed and bad advice.

hyena in petticoat
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Posted 01/27/09 - 10:44 PM:	#4
Yes, I sort of got that about "defining terms". Incidentally, I came across a similar issue here at PF. Defining terms sometimes lead to the discussion getting sidetracked and losing the focus as to what is really being discussed. The qualifier is vague though. Most philosophers? Who are they? But didn't you just mention about "popularity" as something to blame when bad advice are mistaken to be good ones? Could you perhaps provide the source of this ideas? An article perhaps where you got this and the corresponding explanations so we could have a better grasp at it? That would be much appreciated.
I need to get acquainted with sanity. Rantings, rantings and more rantings. Seriously.

CypressMoon
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Posted 01/27/09 - 11:10 PM:	#5
Good advice: Become so obsessed with something that it no longer becomes a part of you. Edited by CypressMoon on 01/28/09 - 04:48 AM
"IN THE spring, Tipasa is inhabited by gods and the gods speak in the sun and the scent of absinthe leaves, in the silver armor of the sea, in the raw blue sky, the flowercovered ruins, and the great bubbles of light among the heaps of stone." - Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays A good determinant of success is when people start buying your shit.

Incision
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Posted 01/28/09 - 12:08 AM:	#6
The ideas I'm thinking of are (1) philosophy- or critical thinking-related, (2) widely believed among nonphilosophers, or nonexperts of the relevant kind, and (3) contradicted by most philosophers, or experts of the relevant kind. It's true that "widely believed" and "most" are vague, and "related" is incomplete in meaning, but have mercy on me since this legalistic definition is probably scaring people away from my topic right now. I didn't really get the idea for this topic, or for the inclusion of any item on the list, from a specific article. I just assumed that many people would accept that many others believe that "a wise man proportions his belief according to the evidence," and would also accept that, taken strictly, this generates a recursive problem that it's a main task of epistemology to solve. But don't pay too much attention to that. My goal was to clarify what good critical thinking is (and maybe have some fun revelling in our collective superiority). I'll accept any method.

hyena in petticoat
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Posted 01/28/09 - 12:40 AM:	#7
Hmm... I must have misunderstood what you said. It's just that when you said: Some ideas have a popular reputation as being part of good critical thinking, I assumed it was among thinkers such as us. And that when you said: even though experts recognize them not to be. I assumed it would be people with sufficient credibility to judge some of "our" methods/ ideas as dissatifactory in based on established qualifications. No contributions to the listing as of the moment though. It might help start the "ball rolling" further if you offer the rationale behind the above items being bad advice, aside from the one already discussed, as some people might disagree. Do these have a "common denominator" or something, etc.
I need to get acquainted with sanity. Rantings, rantings and more rantings. Seriously.

Cuthbert
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Posted 01/28/09 - 02:22 AM:	#8
Perhaps 'horses for courses' is a good bit of advice about these bits of advice. That is, sometimes they apply, and there's a grain of usefulness in all of them, but it's easy to think of situations where they fall down. 'You can't prove a negative.' If asked to prove that I was not in the conservatory when the murder took place, I'm at a loss. I cannot somehow produce my absence from the conservatory as evidence. But I can prove that I was in the library, and one may deduce from that positive fact the crucial negative fact that I was not in the conservatory. It's a point that's useful in some forensic arguments. But obviously there are 'not'- statements which can be proved, if anything can be proved. 'Define your terms.' Again, it's very useful in particular contexts. It depends what you mean by 'define' of course. And by 'terms'. And who is the 'you' referred to in 'your'? The full stop is perhaps not wholly self-explanatory, either. Aside from that, we all get the general gist of that advice, I'm sure. 'Believe only what you can prove.' A good mathematical maxim. People might have had a hunch that Fermat's Last Theorem was true. They might have been prepared to bet on it. But if they believed it, before Wiles proved it, then they weren't taking maths seriously.

Incision
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Posted 01/28/09 - 12:28 PM:	#9
hyena in petticoat wrote: Do these have a "common denominator" or something, etc. Cuthbert wrote: Perhaps 'horses for courses' [. . .]. Hm, maybe that's it. "Define your terms" and "believe only what you can prove" are both useful in mathematics, and maybe that's why they're felt to be good advice. There's also a common reason why they fail: they all have a self-referential problem (as in Cuthbert's remark about defining terms). So people tend to adopt self-referentially problematic ideas that nevertheless work in certain contexts, and then proceed to take them out of context. Is that it? But then there's "you can't prove a negative." Surely it's not mathematicians who believe this. And I'm remaining unmoved, Cuthbert, by your example: doesn't it just show that you can prove that negative, albeit by means of a positive? In the boardgame, everyone has proven a positive by process of elimination. Does "you can't prove a positive" have heuristic value?

zjerome
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Posted 07/04/09 - 08:44 AM:	#10
I would add its bad advice to base advice off of most philosophers or relevant experts. (What is your definition for a "philosopher"?) "So it qualifies as bad advice if and only if most philosophers (or other relevant experts) believe it's bad advice. And it makes the list if and only if it's commonly believed and bad advice."

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