Conducting Instantaneous Experiments

August 24, 2024

Have a hypothesis about the world, society, human nature, physics, or anything else that nobody has directly tested before? It might seem like conducting a costly experiment would be required to find out whether it's true. But a lot of the time, you can check your hypothesis easily using what I call an "Instantaneous Experiment." How to do an Instantaneous Experiment: Step 1: Think of anything at all about the world that's checkable that is likely to be true if your hypothesis is true...

When Fallacies Aren’t Fallacies

July 4, 2020

Something rarely discussed that's important to recognize about "logical fallacies": in real-world situations, most of them are only SOMETIMES fallacies. Here are a bunch of examples: (1) Appeal to authority: some authorities ARE reliable. For example, ask a physicist about a well-established idea in physics, and you'll likely get the right answer. (2) Bandwagon effect: lots of people believing something often is evidence for it being true. For example, lots of people saying they heard ...