Why I'm Staying On Bloggingheads.tv

I very much dislike the strategy of opposing points of view by boycotting venues that give those views voice. If such efforts succeed, they silence voices from which we might learn things. It seems a much more robust strategy to oppose points of view by arguing against them. If a view has a 90% chance of being wrong, it has a 10% chance of being right, and we lose by not letting its advocates make the best case they can. The reason to listen to those you disagree with is, you might be wrong.

I'm astounded that no one (especially in a blog devoted to rationalism) has mentioned the very obvious motivation for appearing on bloggingheads - self-promotion. Sean Carroll has already said almost everything he's qualified to say on bhtv, with the exception of promoting his upcoming book. He stands to benefit more from the attention/reputation he gains from 'taking a stand' than he does from doing nothing. He loses what? One more interview?

As EY pointed out, there is ample evidence that bhtv does not have a hidden 'religious' agenda. To say that only certain viewpoints have enough merit to be heard was never anyone's decision to make, save Bob Wright and his staff. SC's actions smack of a play for attention - the squeaky wheel, so to speak - that has apparently worked. If SC was so valuable to bhtv that Bob felt pressure at the thought of losing him, than bhtv has bigger problems with respect to its coverage of science.

And let's not kid ourselves - SC can have a 'seen the light' moment at any time and decide that he would prefer to engage in dialogue and attempt to add to the public's knowledge rather than subtract from it. Bob would welcome him back with open arms after reading his ever-so-sincere blog post that reflects his 'changed attitude'. Life goes on as before, except that everyone involved has gotten a little extra attention.

The fact that we are even acting like this has something to do with 'principles' makes me a little ill. The only fact worth noting in this entire debacle is the ease with which Bob is/is not ready to throw his guests and his staff under the bus.

Interestingly, at 10:21, Behe accuses scientists including Sean Carroll of committing the Mind Projection Fallacy:

They confuse what's going on in their own heads with what's going on in nature

It is disturbing that he can identify this in others, without seeing his own vulnerability to this bias.

Wow, I haven't seen Phil Plait's post until now. Bloggingheads "called Creationism science"? I can only guess what tortured reasoning gave rise to this claim.

But I think, Eliezer, that you're being too charitable to those who are jumping ship. Sean and Carl aren't doing so because they're anti-accomodationist, they just can't stand the thought of being within 300 internet meters of Creationists if they don't think they can leverage the situation against them. Whether this particularized form of distaste is justifiable is an interesting issue and one I look forward to losing more karma points arguing here. Suffice to say, I would be surprised if there's a non-arbitrary standard that would dictate that advocating Creationism is the most boycott-worthy of all views represented on BhTV.

But this does raise a lot of issues that I'd like to see developed here a little more. We talk about "raising the sanity waterline", but there's not much discussion of how exactly this would be done, what exact institutions and rules of rhetorical engagement tend to actually promote becoming less wrong. One thought that I was toying around with was that irrationality, like many other problems of insufficient virtue, is something that should be attacked from the demand side, not the supply side - meaning that boycotts on ideologies should be looked upon skeptically. I suspect that much of my discomfort with "silencing" tactics arises from my background in the social sciences, where politics frequently manages to honest inquiry because of well-intentioned tactics such as those employed by those who would boycott Bloggingheads for daring to host a podcast they found irresponsible.

Why aren't you posting any new videos on Bloggingheads.tv any more? From the outside they seemed like low investment at least with regards to the amount of time spent and easily accessible. Some may have even been personally entertaining conversations with interesting people.

I think you should consider making an appearance once your rationality book is out for promotion purposes at least.

This looks sincere to me, and given that it's sincere, people really ought to be allowed more chance than this to recover from their mistakes.

I say that depends entirely on the nature of the mistake. Gross negligence should not be forgiven, although the proper response is not necessarily retributive.

I'm astounded that no one (especially in a blog devoted to rationalism) has mentioned the very obvious motivation for appearing on bloggingheads - self-promotion. Sean Carroll has already said almost everything he's qualified to say on bhtv, with the exception of promoting his upcoming book. He stands to benefit more from the attention/reputation he gains from 'taking a stand' than he does from doing nothing. He loses what? One more interview?

As EY pointed out, there is ample evidence that bhtv does not have a hidden 'religious' agenda. To say that only certain viewpoints have enough merit to be heard was never anyone's decision to make, save Bob Wright and his staff. SC's actions smack of a play for attention - the squeaky wheel, so to speak - that has apparently worked. If SC was so valuable to bhtv that Bob felt pressure at the thought of losing him, than bhtv has bigger problems with respect to its coverage of science.

And let's not kid ourselves - SC can have a 'seen the light' moment at any time and decide that he would prefer to engage in dialogue and attempt to add to the public's knowledge rather than subtract from it. Bob would welcome him back with open arms after reading his ever-so-sincere blog post that reflects his 'changed attitude'. Life goes on as before, except that everyone involved has gotten a little extra attention.

The fact that we are even acting like this has something to do with 'principles' makes me a little ill. The only fact worth noting in this entire debacle is the ease with which Bob is/is not ready to throw his guests and his staff under the bus.

Link to video

You should link to your comment on BHV.

One thing that has come out of this is that BHTV has finally posted their editorial policy, but I am quite disappointed that it's so vague. The substantive parts are:

At Bloggingheads.tv, we aim to set up conversations about interesting and important issues on which reasonable people have a diversity of viewpoints. We choose participants based on their past contributions to public discourse. This doesn’t mean we see particular merit in their views; it may just mean that they are articulate spokespeople for views that have been influential.

...

When controversial subjects are explored, the careful selection of participants usually results in a worthwhile conversation in which the subject is illuminated via contrasting perspectives.

To summarize, anything that "reasonable people" disagree about that is considered "interesting and important" is fair game, as long as there is a contrasting perspective. Since the problem with Behe, from their perspective, was not having a (sufficiently informed) contrasting perspective, we're to assume that "reasonable people" disagree about creationism/ID and that creationism/ID is an "interesting and important" topic. I disagree on both counts, and I think the fact that they believe creationism/ID is interesting and important and debated by reasonable people indicates that their perspective is out-of-line with science and that of what I consider "reasonable people" (i.e., intelligent, knowledgeable people who are conversant with science and the topics under discussion and are committed to the highest intellectual standards).

I just registered here, since I agree with the 'rationality' premise. Rational thought is (hopefully) less wrong than a less rational position, the implication being that little that the human mind formulates is totally correct. Less wrong is a goal, and modification of a stated position is often a requisite of nearing a more correct position.

Anyway, back to the topic of Blogginheads (allowed topics), accomodation, and (related) a critique of Michael Behe. Oh, also the question of whether ID is essentially Creationism.

First, RW sets the standards. It's been said that the stardards are too loose, but some would argue that stricter standards might lead to disallowance of certain positions, a form of censorship. That would be my position. General 'objective' guidelines, but not enforced 'standards'.

'Accomodation', with the meaning 'acceptance' of one's religious position by a scientist, does not mean that debate could not be done. While I would agree that debating a YEC position at Boggingheads might be 'over the line', and indeed raises the hackles on the backs of scientists, discussing the merits of ID should not. The "appearance of design" equating to actual design is a viable question, and has not been settled in my view.

If this is off-topic, you can table the question, but I'll ask it anyway. In what way does ID equate with Creationism? First define both, then state the correlation.

Behe is like the soft center a loaf of bread.

These theoretically righteous Copernicanism practicing cranks, (Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait, and of course, PZ,), have a lot of room to talk... speaking of religious fanatics.

Creationists can post their crap freely on YouTube - and I don't see YouTube getting its editorial policy criticised for allowing them on.

Basically, that site allows viewers to use their own editorial policy, and to get their video recommendations from any source they like. That seems to me to be obviously how a video hosting service should operate.

Critics claiming bloggingheads.tv is not being sufficiently censorious seem about 180 degrees out of whack to me. For me, the more compulsory content filtering a hosting service implements, the less usable it becomes.

"decision to have creationist Michael Behe interviewed"

Errr.... wrong...

Behe is not a creationist, he actually takes the view of intelligent design which is different (don't believe me look it up). The stereo type you are reacting to hasn't been true in "christian science" community for years.

Think whatever you want about Behe but at least do him the courtesy of not misrepresenting his views so you can go on an anti-religious rant, because and I am just being blunt (its a character flaw some would say) it just sounds foolish.