SanityProject

Six rules for responding to bad ideas

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged SanityProject on by

SciManDan has put up a video which everyone trying to debunk bad ideas should watch. Nominally he’s talking about Flat Earthers. A lot of his videos are on that subject; a friend of mine likes to watch them, so I watch them too. Really, though, the six rules he offers don’t apply just to answering people who think the world is flat. They apply to any bad ideas you’re trying to knock down: socialism, Trumpism, “greedflation” theory, Moon landing hoax claims, whatever.

Watch the video, but I’ll quote his six rules here, substituting “[bad idea]” for “flat earth” to show the generality.
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Idiots on the left and right

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fake news journalism news SanityProject on by

Sometimes there is so much idiocy in the news that you have to unpack it layer by layer. This is the case with a statement which Florida governor DeSantis made and the way some people have described it.

In an interview, DeSantis said: “We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. … You drive off and hit one of these people — that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and parade you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”
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Misinformation on social media: A personal example

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Internet SanityProject on by

Social media websites are notorious for letting inaccurate information spread without correction. It’s often unintentional; someone makes a mistake that gets widely repeated, or a joke is taken as a serious claim. This morning I found I was part of this, as people boosted and favorited (terms vary with the platform) a mistake which I made.

I run a feed of news for filkers, appropriately called “Filk News” (on Bluesky and on Mastodon). On Sunday, March 9, the USA and Canada moved to Daylight Saving Time, but Europe doesn’t till later. There are several online filk gatherings with international attendance, so this could confuse people about when meetings start in their time zone. For example, Eurofilk is 6 PM Central European Time, which normally makes it noon US Eastern Time, but for three weeks it’s 1 PM Eastern Time.
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