House of Eratosthenes

Learned it just today, because of a new post over at Steve Milloy’s “Junk Science” site. In which he discusses a new study, the abstract of which reads…

Agnotology is the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Legates et al. had questioned the applicability of agnotology to politically-charged debates. In their reply, Bedford and Cook, seeking to apply agnotology to climate science, asserted that fossil-fuel interests had promoted doubt about a climate consensus. Their definition of climate ‘misinformation’ was contingent upon the post-modernist assumptions that scientific truth is discernible by measuring a consensus among experts, and that a near unanimous consensus exists. However, inspection of a claim by Cook et al. of 97.1% consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. Agnotology, then, is a two-edged sword since either side in a debate may claim that general ignorance arises from misinformation allegedly circulated by the other.

Must say, I’m ashamed it’s taken me this long to figure it out, in view of how much of it I’ve been seeing for the last twenty years, along with everybody else. There really ought to be some serious discussion about agnotology whenever & wherever the alwarmists are opining away about “climate change skeptics in league with the oil companies” and the like….which would make it a household word in no time, probably even wear it out. But that’s an education we could all use.

Update 9/7/13: Related: “Consensus Shmensus.”

Why do we need the word agnotology when everybody already knows what the word propaganda means?

So much of what the left prints and disseminates is actually just propaganda. Calling it something else just muddies the waters. In deed, we could even use the more archaic, lies despite it’s religious and moral connotations.

agnotology = propaganda = lies = double speak = falsehoods. Birds of a feather as they say, birds of a feather are synonyms together
- Fai.Mao | 09/03/2013 @ 00:17
I consider myself a HIGH information voter.
I watch EVERY celebrity, and children of celebrity, clip on the web.
Especially at the red carpet/wardrobe malfunction forums.

What, exactly, is the distinction between “Latest studies show…”, and “Latest photos show….”.
(besides breadth and exponent of circulation of course)
- CaptDMO | 09/03/2013 @ 00:20
Fai.Mao: Why do we need the word agnotology when everybody already knows what the word propaganda means?

Agnotology refers to the study of societal ignorance. Propaganda is a method of influencing public perception.
- Zachriel | 09/03/2013 @ 04:47
So Agnotology is the study of societal ignorance that is the result of propaganda?
- Fai.Mao | 09/05/2013 @ 21:15
Fai.Mao: agnotology = propaganda = lies = double speak = falsehoods

Not all propaganda is false.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Unclesamwantyou.jpg/220px-Unclesamwantyou.jpg

Fai.Mao: So Agnotology is the study of societal ignorance that is the result of propaganda?

Ignorance has many causes.
- Zachriel | 09/06/2013 @ 04:39
Seems the word “calculated” is important. There has to be a calculated effort to mislead.

That would be important, because if a calculated effort is a key part of the correct definition, then there must be people being misled, and people doing the misleading.

Not all ignorance falls under agnotology.
- mkfreeberg | 09/06/2013 @ 05:54
mkfreeberg: Seems the word “calculated” is important. There has to be a calculated effort to mislead.

According to Robert Proctor, who coined the neologism, it’s the study of “ignorance making”. While it certainly can involve deceit, it also involves neglect, secrecy, tradition, or other forms of cultural selectivity. See Proctor & Schiebinger, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford University Press 2008.
- Zachriel | 09/06/2013 @ 08:24
It was actually “linguist Iain Boal…who came up with the term” at Proctor’s request. p. 27.

My hope for devising a new term was to suggest…[that] the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known — and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things.”
- mkfreeberg | 09/06/2013 @ 09:16
Keep reading:

We had originally spelled our new term with two a’s…

Proctor is using the plural possessive. He needed a new word, and consulted a linguist.
- Zachriel | 09/12/2013 @ 16:12
Two a’s. Oh right, that changes everything! I can see clearly now!

Um…no, that’s not true at all, actually. Two a’s?

Oh well.
- mkfreeberg | 09/12/2013 @ 18:30
our new term

Proctor is using the first person plural possessive adjective. He needed a new word, and consulted a linguist.
- Zachriel | 09/13/2013 @ 05:09
Those are big words strung together right there.

It was linguist Iain Boal who came up with the term.
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2013 @ 08:01
mkfreeberg: Those are big words strung together right there.

If you don’t understand a term please don’t hesitate to ask.

mkfreeberg: It was linguist Iain Boal who came up with the term.

Proctor is usually credited with *coining* the term, in association with Boal. However, if it will help, we’ll simply rephrase our previous position.

According to Robert Proctor, who worked with Iain Boal to coin the term, it’s the study of “ignorance making”. While it certainly can involve deceit, it also involves neglect, secrecy, tradition, or other forms of cultural selectivity. See Proctor & Schiebinger, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford University Press 2008.
- Zachriel | 09/13/2013 @ 08:06
If you don’t understand a term please don’t hesitate to ask.

I get the terms. I don’t get the connection. Not sure there is one.

I don’t think any of this really matters. I’m perfectly willing to accept at a high level the statement “Proctor coined the term” by writing a book making use of a new word, which we can agree while remaining technically accurate that the word is his. What interests me, and I think severian as well, is that by saying…

According to Robert Proctor, who coined the neologism, it’s the study of “ignorance making”. While it certainly can involve deceit, it also involves neglect, secrecy, tradition, or other forms of cultural selectivity. See Proctor & Schiebinger, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford University Press 2008.

…y’all have left y’all’selves open to a charge of not reading y’all’s own citations. In fact, one could go so far as to say y’all have proven y’all don’t read y’all’s own citations. “Proctor coined it” is, after all, something that could only have been written by someone who skipped right on past page 27, or skimmed it ineffectively. I don’t think it’s a big deal, except for one thing: How the word was invented is central to the point y’all were trying to argue. Other than that, I’ll not fault y’all for it. I’ve “read” lots of books that I wouldn’t count as books I’ve actually read. But when I use them for reference material, I do try to achieve conceptual command of at least that part of it I’m trying to cite, as I start discussing them with other people. Especially when some tempest erupts and I try to convince the other person of how right I am.

Since y’all didn’t take that minimal step, it raises questions about y’all’s citations. Everywhere. Y’all’s point was that Proctor is the ultimate authority on how the word is to be used, because he coined the term — see this cit. over here. And then when we go look it up, we find according to Proctor himself: Oops! He didn’t coin the term.

Second thing I find pretty fascinating: The whole “concede nothing under any circumstances” severian was calling out before. Once it’s brought to y’all’s attention that Proctor himself says Iain Boal coined the term, y’all graciously reach waaaaay out to re-word it as:

According to Robert Proctor, who worked with Iain Boal to coin the term…

After trying to prop up the “Proctor coined the term” falsehood with…

Proctor is using the first person plural possessive adjective…

It’s like there’s some Obama-like individual within your collective who’s entirely incapable of grasping situations in which his or her nonsense has been called out, and the game is up. Like that person’s mother was entirely susceptible to little-lies, like “actually I was just putting the cookie back in the jar”…and so, throughout the lifetime, a feeling has set in that a big bundle of syllables will be good enough to bail that person out of any problem, thus there’s no reason to concede anything, ever, at all, even for purposes of argument.

Not that I claim to be above such errors. Far from it. I’m just studying this behavior because the subject is, after all, agnotology. Ignorance is preserved through lack of learning, and the first thought involved in any learning process is “I don’t know.” We all have to admit we don’t know things, in order to learn them. Failure to admit the learning is necessary in the first place, stands prominently as one of several ways ignorance persists.
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2013 @ 08:49
mkfreeberg: How the word was invented is central to the point y’all were trying to argue.

Sure. As Proctor, working with a linguist, coined the term, then his definition is the appropriate definition to use.

mkfreeberg: He didn’t coin the term.

Yes, he did coin the term. He had a need for a new word, consulted a linguist for an appropriate Greek equivalent, consulted with other experts, went through several iterations, then decided on a term. That’s what we mean by coining a term. However, if you prefer to say Proctor and Boal coined the term, that’s fine.

This doesn’t change the fact that the term originated in Proctor & Schiebinger 2008. The reason scholars coin technical terms is so that their meaning is not confused with other meanings.
- Zachriel | 09/13/2013 @ 09:35
This doesn’t change the fact that the term originated in Proctor & Schiebinger 2008.

Yes I agree 100% with that. The point you were trying to make relied on Proctor being the ultimate authority in how the term should be used. I agree with that 100% too. It’s rather self-evident.

It therefore would do absolutely no damage whatsoever, to the argument you were trying to build, if y’all were to say “YES, we were in error when we said Proctor coined the term, it was actually Iain Boal who did that.” Y’all could then go on to say, nevertheless, Proctor came up with the idea so it is a meaningless distinction. I would agree with that too. One hundred percent.

Therefore, it’s rather fascinating that y’all can’t do that. Now we’re going to have a bunny-trail argument about what the verb “coin” means?
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2013 @ 09:46
mkfreeberg: “coined the term, it was actually Iain Boal who did that”

That wouldn’t be accurate. Coining a term involves matching a word or phrase to a meaning. If a scientist discovers a new species, and wants to provisionally name it, she might consult a linguist to translate her basic concept into Latin, say Tardus exsertam, but she would still be credited with coining the name.

mkfreeberg: The point you were trying to make relied on Proctor being the ultimate authority in how the term should be used. I agree with that 100% too.

Good.
- Zachriel | 09/13/2013 @ 10:05
That wouldn’t be accurate. Coining a term involves matching a word or phrase to a meaning. If a scientist discovers a new species, and wants to provisionally name it, she might consult a linguist to translate her basic concept into Latin, say Tardus exsertam, but she would still be credited with coining the name.

I’ll take that as a yes, we do have to go down the bunny-trail of defining with electron-microscope precision the meaning of the verb “coin.” Now y’all have come up with an example that doesn’t work, but nevermind that, we’re to be dazzled by the Latin. And pretend the example is a good one. So y’all don’t have to concede anything, just like severian said.

It’s fascinating that we have to split hairs that finely on this thing, but when Sarah Palin says something true that y’all would like to find false, suddenly precision & detail don’t mean anything whatsoever. Even though, as noted, if y’all simply acknowledge it was the linguist who “match[ed] a word or phrase to a meaning” and not Robert Proctor, therefore your comment was indeed erroneous, it would do no damage whatsoever to the point y’all were trying to make. Wouldn’t even have scratched it. Proctor would have remained the ultimate authority on how “agnotology” is to be used. You have my agreement on this. But even so, y’all can’t admit what is plainly true: It was the linguist who “coined” the term. Reality, after all, must bend and yield to accommodate the theory…

Get Proctor on the phone! This needs to go into his book.
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2013 @ 12:13
mkfreeberg: I’ll take that as a yes, we do have to go down the bunny-trail of defining with electron-microscope precision the meaning of the verb “coin.”

It doesn’t take a microscope.

http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/encyclopedia-of-philosophy-and-the-social-sciences/n8.xml

http://www.wordnik.com/words/agnotology

http://books.google.com/books/about/Agnotology.html?id=M-FlQwAACAAJ

mkfreeberg: It’s fascinating that we have to split hairs that finely on this thing, but when Sarah Palin says something true that y’all would like to find false, suddenly precision & detail don’t mean anything whatsoever.

Palin claims there are death panels in the proposed legislation. When asked where, she points to section 1233, which isn’t a death panel by any means. In response to the hoorah rah, the final legislation removes section 1233. Palin still claims there are death panels. Right wing echo chamber says “See, Palin was right!”
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 07:13
We’re getting a fascinating look into agnotology right here. An influential cause of ignorance, and preservation of ignorance, is this “I’ll concede nothing” thing.

Start with the assertion that is never asserted, for it isn’t important in any way, and if it were ever asserted word-for-word it would be immediately suspect: When The Zachriel cite some work, we know they have read every single page within that work. A high bar, and there’s no disgrace in falling short of it. Lots of venerable advocates and dissenters cite things without reading all of them.

But the assertion that is not asserted, must be protected because the alternative would be to concede “Okay, right, we didn’t read page 27, so we’ll have to issue a correction even though it’s an entirely meaningless one.” That, because of the concede-nothing-ever rule, is off the table.

So now a falsehood must be perpetuated: “Coined” is meaningfully different from “came up with.”

One falsehood leads to another. The Zachriel read everything they cite; they do not have to, and should not, concede anything ever; “coined” and “came up with” are, somehow, meaningfully different things.

And another: If we “keep reading,” we’ll find something that turns this whole thing on its head — assuming that’s possible, since the entire sub-argument is insignificant in effect.

[redacted] it is our hope that readers will be convinced that there are a lot of good reasons to explore ignorance. There is surely quite a lot of it, as much as we are willing to let our arrogance acknowledge. Agnotology could be a challenge to hubris, if there is modesty in learning how deeply ignorant we are. Think of the countless different ways it is generated: by ingesting lead or by watching TV, or by fatigue or fear or isolation or poverty or any of the other myriad experiences that deaden human life. Think of ignorance generated by failures of the body, or failures to fund education, or free access to bogus information, or practices and policies that enlarge secrecy or prevarication or compartmentalization. People have extracted very different things from different kinds of unknowns, and will no doubt continue to mix suspect with admirable reasons for letting those flourish or disappear.

Some time into this project I learned that there already was a word that has been used to designate the study of ignorance, albeit with a quite different slant from how we shall be using the term. Apart from being obscure and somewhat inharmonious, agnoiology has often been taken to mean “the doctrine of things of which we are necessarily ignorant” in some profound metaphysical sense. My hope for devising a new term was to suggest the opposite, namely, the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known — and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things. In [redacted], I posed this challenge to the linguist Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term agnotology, in the spring of that year.

Coinage for science terms in Anglophonia is conventionally from the Greek, so that is where he started. Ignorance in Greek really has two forms: agnoia, meaning “want of perception or knowledge,” and agnosia, meaning a state of ignorance or not knowing, both from gnosis (with a long o or omega) meaning “knowledge,” with the privative (negating) a- prefix….

“I posed this challenge to the linguist Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term…” Y’all could just come out and admit y’all hadn’t read that part of it. There would be no price to be paid, since I’ve already agreed Proctor is the ultimate authority on how the word should be used, and that was the point y’all were really trying to make. But that would violate the concede-nothing rule. And so, because of the concede-nothing rule, not only is there this effort to keep both sides ignorant, but to purvey numerous falsehoods. And in other threads, as well as with the Palin comment (as has been pointed out many times, it was President Obama who brought up Section 1233), we’ve seen this many times before.

How did Reagan put it? “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” Perhaps this is how, and why, they do: The concede-nothing-ever rule.

Prof. Proctor, please call your office…
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 07:31
mkfreeberg: “Coined” is meaningfully different from “came up with.”

Translating an idea into Greek is not coining a word. We provided an example. You merely waved your hands, but didn’t respond.

mkfreeberg: If we “keep reading,” we’ll find something that turns this whole thing on its head

Yes, Proctor claims at least partial ownership of the term. When we pointed this out, you again merely waved your hands.

In any case, we agree that the term originated in Proctor & Schiebinger, that Proctor ~~coined~~ commissioned a word to stand for a particular concept that he was working with, so his definition would be canonical. That’s the whole point of ~~coining~~ commissioning a new term, so that it can be ascribed a specific meaning.

mkfreeberg: Seems the word “calculated” is important. There has to be a calculated effort to mislead.

According to Robert Proctor, who ~~coined~~ commissioned the neologism, it’s the study of “ignorance making”. While it certainly can involve deceit, it also involves neglect, secrecy, tradition, or other forms of cultural selectivity. See Proctor & Schiebinger, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford University Press 2008.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 08:13
Also, when we pointed out multiple sources that credit Proctor with ~~commissioning~~ coining the term, you again merely waved your hands.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 08:32
…you again merely waved your hands.

This may come as a shock, but there are things that aren’t worthy of much more than that. Even when unnamed collectives take the time to type them into little edit boxes on the Internet.

I see y’all are still proving what I just pointed out, about the “concede nothing ever under any circumstances” rule leading to the perpetuation and preservation of ignorance. So since the vector & bearing of the conversation are both unaltered, there isn’t anything demanding a response.

Prof. Proctor, please call your office…
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 08:59
mkfreeberg: This may come as a shock, but there are things that aren’t worthy of much more than that.

Oh, you’re just trolling then.

You had said, “Seems the word ‘calculated’ is important. There has to be a calculated effort to mislead.” That is false. It remains false even if you can’t admit it, even if you refuse to engage the discussion.

Proctor uses misinformation from anthropogenic climate change deniers as an example of agnotology. Some of the misinformation from deniers is calculated, but much of it is simple distrust of those who communicate uncomfortable facts.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 09:39
Oh, you’re just trolling then. You had said, “Seems the word ‘calculated’ is important. There has to be a calculated effort to mislead.” That is false.

Could be. But, right now, we’re discussing y’all’s insistence that y’all don’t need to correct the statement “Proctor coined the neologism.” Even though, stooping to the level of slightly altering this, would do absolutely nothing against the point y’all were trying to make.

Point being that the “concede nothing under any circumstances” rule has a direct linkage to the proliferation and preservation of ignorance, and the manufacture of flotsam-jetsam supporting “information” that is false.

We’s doin’ agnotology here…
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 09:47
mkfreeberg: “Proctor coined the neologism.”

* Translating an idea into another language is not coining a word. Example provided.

* Proctor claims at least partial ownership of the term. Text provided.

* Multiple sources that credit Proctor with coining the term. Links provided.

mkfreeberg: slightly altering this

* We did.

According to Robert Proctor, who ~~coined~~ commissioned the neologism, it’s the study of “ignorance making”. While it certainly can involve deceit, it also involves neglect, secrecy, tradition, or other forms of cultural selectivity. See Proctor & Schiebinger, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford University Press 2008.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 09:57
And…according to this ever-expanding, snowballing catechism of codswallop, that rolls downhill and accumulates yet more & more layers of nonsense every time y’all don’t want to concede something — linguist Iain Boal did not “coin” the term, because there’s this huge difference between “coin” and what the linguist actually did. And y’all are now using the more accurate verb “commission” instead of “coin”; nevertheless, because of the never-concede-anything rule, we have to diminish the linguist’s contributions, even though Proctor himself clearly doesn’t think this contribution is negligible in any way.

When y’all have this pecadillo that so predictably and inevitably leads to these additional layers being added to the downhill-rolling, ever-expanding snowball catechism of silliness, it’s worth studying. We’s doin’ agnotology here, after all…
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 10:31
mkfreeberg: linguist Iain Boal did not “coin” the term, because there’s this huge difference between “coin” and what the linguist actually did.

We provided our reasons, which you have ignored. If you prefer, you can say that Proctor and Boal worked together to coin the term. That would certainly be fair and is consistent with Proctor’s use of the plural possessive adjective.

mkfreeberg: And y’all are now using the more accurate verb “commission” instead of “coin”;

Which you claimed we hadn’t done.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 10:49
Notably, Proctor & Schiebinger used climate science denialism as an example of agnotology.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 10:51
If you prefer, you can say that Proctor and Boal worked together to coin the term. That would certainly be fair and is consistent with Proctor’s use of the plural possessive adjective.

I agree.

Which you claimed we hadn’t done.

The point is, y’all can’t admit y’all had made a claim that didn’t hold up. Even though, as is demonstrated by y’all’s “which you claimed we hadn’t done,” it is very, very important to y’all to force others to admit the same thing under similar circumstances. And in the case of the erroneous “Proctor coined the neologism,” if y’all were to concede that this statement was entirely incorrect (which “if you prefer, we can say this other thing instead” doesn’t do), it would do absolutely no damage to the point y’all were trying to make.

An agreement of “let’s reword it this way then” is the very best y’all can manage. Kinda like the kitty cat climbing out of the bathtub so fast her fur doesn’t even get wet. Y’all just can’t admit y’all made an incorrect statement because y’all hadn’t read y’all’s own citation…on page 27…even though there would be absolutely no disgrace involved in doing so.

The point isn’t to smack y’all down over it. It’s just to illustrate the “concede nothing under any circumstances whatsoever” rule.

Fascinating.
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 10:54
mkfreeberg: And in the case of the erroneous “Proctor coined the neologism,” if y’all were to concede that this statement was entirely incorrect

It wasn’t entirely incorrect, which you have finally admitted when you agreed that “Proctor and Boal worked together to coin the term”.

mkfreeberg: An agreement of “let’s reword it this way then” is the very best y’all can manage.

It’s entirely appropriate to reword a claim to avoid veering from the topic at hand.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 11:02
But normal people would be willing to say “You’re right, we missed that part of it, Proctor didn’t actually coin the term…but anyway…” and then proceed to the point y’all were trying to make. Without even losing a smidgen of momentum. It can be done. Y’all should try it sometime.

But NO. This illusion of “Our repository of information on this subject matter…and that one…and that one over there…is complete and we have nothing left to learn” must endure.

What’s fascinating is not this “pecadillo,” it’s the ever-expanding snowball-catechism of silliness that must grown and grow as a result. The catechism counsels us that “coin” has a significantly different meaning, in this context, from “came up with.” Even though y’all have graciously switched to “commissioned,” supposedly just to suit my idiosyncratic preferences…y’all can’t bring y’all-selves to admit there was a preference-neutral necessity involved in backing off y’all’s earlier claim. The ever-expanding snowball-catechism of silliness therefore counsels us, additionally, that y’all had read page 27, along with everything else, possessing a godlike command of all information ever written or recorded on the subject matter, and all other subject matters — knew all about Mr. Boal’s contribution and deliberately chose to say “Proctor coined the neologism” nevertheless.

Apart from systematically proffering more and more silliness — God only knows what the catechism will persuade us to repeat back to it tomorrow — and skipping past the very first stepping-stone-comment that leads to all learning, “I don’t know,” it impresses me as requiring a sustained and exorbitant expenditure of effort. On the other hand, I am perfectly willing to admit I don’t know any of these things for sure. I use the word “seems” and “appears” an awful lot. I like that way better. Much of our learning comes from being willing to admit we don’t know things. All of it, in fact, one might plausibly argue.

Meanwhile, I have conceded that for purposes of the point y’all were making, this distinction is entirely inconsequential. I’ve conceded (in the post itself) that this is my first experience with the word “agnotology” and as such, I’m still in a learning process about it. And I’ve conceded that I only learned about Mr. Boal after I followed up on y’all’s citation — something it’s now clear y’all didn’t really want me to go & do. I don’t know what else I need to concede to make y’all feel comfortable typing in the words “Yeah you’re right, it’s not correct to say Proctor coined the term, when Proctor himself is saying it was this other guy who did that.” Not sure what else I can do. Oops, I just did it again. Anyway…now we know from where much of the silliness comes. Not from learning, but rather from a refusal to learn, by way of a refusal to admit any further learning is required.

Paging Prof. Proctor…
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 11:43
mkfreeberg: Proctor didn’t actually coin the term.

That’s contrary to when you agreed that “Proctor and Boal worked together to coin the term”.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 11:50
Proctor said Boal “came up with” the term.

I found that out after checking out the citation you helpfully provided, after saying Proctor coined the neologism. Which raises a question, that’s been raised before, about y’all not reading y’all’s own citations.

To repeat, I’d let that go since there’s no disgrace in admitting it. Except — y’all won’t admit it. Which reinforces what I said in other threads, that it seems whenever y’all’s theories run up against reality and find an unworkable conflict there, y’all seem to think it’s reality that has to do the yielding, and it’s theory’s place to emerge victorious.

Whatever works for y’all. I like my way better. I don’t think theories do very much good when they don’t reflect reality. And the reality is, Proctor himself said Boal came up with the term.

Are y’all trying to say Proctor is the ultimate authority on how the neologism should be used, and on climate change, but can’t be trusted to tell us who “came up with” the word he commissioned?
- mkfreeberg | 09/14/2013 @ 15:22
mkfreeberg: Proctor said Boal “came up with” the term.

* Translating an idea into another language is not coining a word. Example provided.
* Proctor claims at least partial ownership of the term. Text provided.
* Multiple sources that credit Proctor with coining the term. Links provided.
* Proctor and Boal worked together to the term. As you agreed.
* You have continued to ignore the original point, even after we restated it.

mkfreeberg: Are y’all trying to say Proctor is the ultimate authority on how the neologism should be used,

As it is Proctor’s neologism, and he ~~coined~~ commissioned it to distinguish it from other related terms, yes, he is the authority on its meaning, as you have already agreed.

mkfreeberg: and on climate change

No. Proctor defers to the proper authority on climate change, that is, climate scientists.
- Zachriel | 09/14/2013 @ 19:09
Translating an idea into another language is not coining a word. Example provided.

Right. Y’all got called out on not reading y’all’s own citations. Which is certainly no crime, not falling short of any kind of performance bar…certainly not any reasonable performance bar. But y’all can’t say “Ah, right, we weren’t aware of that, oh well we learned something today” so now, by putting on this false charade that y’all were actually familiar with every word & letter of the treatise before y’all cited it — something nobody is demanding or expecting out of y’all — y’all are busy rationalizing away, and thus manufacturing nonsense.

Ignorance could be understood as the failure to comprehend what is true, the acceptance of what is untrue, or any combination of those. The middle among those three things, we see here, is what comes to pass when people, or collectives of anonymous busybodies on the Internet, are too reluctant to admit their shortcomings. On the other end of this spectrum, I’m learning all sorts of new things by freely admitting I had no prior familiarity with the word “agnotology.” I like my way better.

No. Proctor defers to the proper authority on climate change, that is, climate scientists.

Then it is an entirely meaningless note to make to oneself, whether or not Proctor is among those seduced by the climate-change scam. Although I suppose we could take a cue that just because one comes up with a new concept about the study of ignorance, that achievement is in no way a guarantee that such a person cannot fall victim to ignorance.
- mkfreeberg | 09/15/2013 @ 09:24
mkfreeberg: I like my way better.

* You explicitly stated you won’t respond to the points raised. Your way.

* Translating an idea into another language is not coining a word. Example provided.
* Proctor claims at least partial ownership of the term. Text provided.
* Multiple sources credit Proctor with coining the term. Links provided.
* Proctor and Boal worked together to construct the term. As you agreed.
* You have continued to ignore the original point, even after we restated it.
- Zachriel | 09/15/2013 @ 10:58
Right. And this is the part where y’all show me how “right” y’all are, by showing how static y’all’s ideas, conceptions, cognitions and perceptions are. In other words — how improbable it is in the moment, and infrequent it is across an expanse of time, for y’all to learn anything. This is the part where y’all make a point of pride out of it.

I like my way better, because I prefer to form my understanding of reality around an accumulation of information, as opposed to a recalcitrant resistance against learning new things. But whatever floats your boat.
- mkfreeberg | 09/15/2013 @ 11:12
mkfreeberg: I prefer to form my understanding of reality around an accumulation of information

Well, no. You clearly do not.

mkfreeberg: And this is the part where y’all show me how “right” y’all are, by showing how static y’all’s ideas, conceptions, cognitions and perceptions are.

What we’re doing is showing that we are willing to defend our position, while pointing out that you have explicitly refused to defend yours.
- Zachriel | 09/15/2013 @ 11:16
Neither position requires a defense.
- mkfreeberg | 09/15/2013 @ 12:29

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AgnotologyMonday, September 2nd, 2013

Agnotology
Monday, September 2nd, 2013