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  scns
  The article links to an article about Sagans' prediction of the decline of america. Strangely fitting nowadays.> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…https://www.openculture.com/2025/02/carl-sagan-predicts-the-...
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  kitd
  - Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives.- See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.This is good advice IME. Get well acquainted (like REALLY well acquainted) with opposing viewpoints, such that you could argue them better than their proponents. See also "Argue Well by Losing" by Phil Haack [1].Somewhat relatedly, the ancients viewed Rhetoric as the purest expression of intelligence. It required you to have deep knowledge of a topic, including all arguments in favour and against (implying deep empathy with the audience), and the ability to form coherent and meaningful argument. Modern political "debate" is ludicrous in comparison.[1] https://haacked.com/archive/2013/10/21/argue-well-by-losing....
• analog31
  I think the notion of considering all points of view depends on the assumption that people are arguing in good faith. When this breaks down, I don’t think we can just throw up our hands and give up, but the baloney detection kit needs to be updated. I don’t have a blog-worthy list of answers, but it’s something I at least think about.One thing we can do is a kind of meta-analysis, where we check on the condition of our own baloney detection kit. For instance, if I reject an idea and it later turns out to be true, did my BDK fail? Does it need to be updated? Or are a few scattered failures OK? You can treat the BDK as a testable hypothesis like anything else.
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  zyxzevn
  While skeptical, he did not have much skepticism against mainstream theories.I think it needs another item in the list: For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory?And I would upgrade this one: If there’s a chain of physical evidence (was argument), every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of themAnd when breaking these items do not mean that something is false. It means that the arguments and evidence is incomplete. Don't jump to conclusions when you think that the arguments or evidence is invalid (that is how some people even think that the moonlanding was a hoax).
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  chistev
  Acclaimed science author Carl Sagan illustrated this challenge with his “dragon in the garage” analogy. If someone claims to have a dragon that is invisible, silent, intangible, and undetectable by any means, there is no practical difference between the dragon’s existence and non-existence. Similarly, without verifiable evidence, the existence of an immortal soul remains unproven.https://www.rxjourney.net/the-possibility-of-life-after-deat...
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  goobert
  A significant amount of modern academia would dissolve if this was applied
• dredmorbius
  Sagan's kit is one of several similar resources I'd turned up ... over a decade ago now ... when I'd begun considering the matter of epistemics in media, particularly online discourse. The situation's not improved.My catalogue is here: <https://web.archive.org/web/20200121211018/https://old.reddi...> (archive).It includes in addition to Sagan: Rory Coker's precis on pseudoscience, the Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense, the concept of falsifiability, an informative (if excruciatingly painful) BBC docu on stupidity, Frankfurt's "On Bullshit", Ferguson on why youth culture made everything suck, Brandolino's Law, Silver's Bullshitter's Inequality, a relationship between the Kübler-Ross model and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense, and Adams's 'B'-Ark.
• coolhand2120
  I love this. I drill this into my children, they have it memorized.
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  eafer
  I wonder how well Sagan's own "baloney" holds up against his kit. Historians despise the guy for all the stuff he made up about the library of Alexandria, Hypatia, Eratosthenes, etc... People still repeat a lot of that to this day.
• nobody9999
  Original Title:Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It
• th0ma5
  [dead]
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  jgalt212
  In these fractious times, I think we're all very good at scrutinizing other side of the aisle, and not so good at self-reflection.As a committed centrist, I am very good at fairly scrutinizing everything. /s
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  kgwxd
  The people for whom this stuff isn't glaringly obvious, relatively early in life, will never get it. Except, maybe, specific instances that directly affect them in a bad way. Switch "brands" and they'll be fooled again. They'll probably even double-down on it.