I have recently been reading a lot of ScienceBlogs articles which are responses to writings by individuals who present faulty knowledge on subjects such as evolution, math, logic, and science in general (Pharyngula; Good Math, Bad Math; and Respectful Insolence are examples). I noticed that I naturally tend to believe some writers and disbelieve others after reading just a few paragraphs. This led me to ponder what feature of their writing led me to this sort of judgment without having read their entire article or rant or whatever it might be.

I figure, it must be something similar that leads me to believe what a person is saying or whether I should trust a person in general from having a few conversations with them. Of course in reading somebody’s writing or in listening to them speak, I can definitely make false judgments so clearly my method is not perfect (I doubt a perfect method exists, as you are always acting on incomplete information, even after you’ve read an article and checked the facts behind it, you do not know what the person was thinking and in what context the piece was written in).

I think I can successfully identify some things that set of an alarm inside my head when I’m talking to someone or reading their work. I notice that a lot of people presenting false evidence do so very confidently. Whether this is in an attempt to bolster their arguments or whether it is because they are truly ignorant, I cannot be sure, but I notice that many such ideas are usually of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” nature. That is, the author and a select group of readers who are “competent” enough to understand the ideas are “in” on something the majority of the world is unaware of. Just peruse some of the “bad math” articles on GMBM and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyhow, these people’s claims also tend to be very hand-wavy, logically fallacious, and absolutist. They sound very authoritative and they don’t have much doubt in their diction. These authors claim to do things such as overturn an entire field of mathematics, prove the existence of a god, and find long-known scientific theories to be false… all in a little blog with probably a couple hours of thinking.

I started writing this post about a month ago, and just the other day I was listening to the radio and ran across a Christian radio station. The man was talking about false prophets and how Jesus taught his disciples what a false prophet was. The radio-evangelist spoke with such conviction and authority as he made statements such as “Most people would interpret this portion of the Bible as X, but they are mistaken, for it really means Y…” and proceeded to redefine the word prophet and much more as he told his audience that Christianity was in danger and needed to speak and act out against the “false prophets” in society. His entire speech oozed with the characteristics I spoke of as falling under the “Emperor’s New Clothes” category. I couldn’t help but not believe a single word of it.

In short, I think I can best sum it up as the more believable sources tend to acknowledge their work’s shortcomings and address how one might find flaws in their ideas. Furthermore, they state what is unknown and still needs to be confirmed, and what is likely and unlikely. These characteristics are lacking in the faulty sources which just sound less believable because they come off as having it all figured out.

Anyways, I should really reread my public speaking textbook, it was well written and talked about unethical writing/speech making along these lines. So, anyone got a better word than “Emperor’s New Clothes” for what I’m talking about? I’m referring to the presenting an idea to someone and getting them to believe it not by presenting facts, but more so by adding frills, false logic, and playing on their ego by making them feel smarter for understanding something many others cannot.