Scientific Thinking: Validity, Debate, and Politics?
There are a great many topics that people disagree on, whether the cliché: politics, religion, ethics, or the common: "This is the best way to do such and such.", "This is what's right"... Regardless of what it is, people are generally pretty terrible at accepting and applying logic, or even the scientific method to their beliefs. To an extent, this is acceptable, natural, and fine. The book "The Righteous Mind Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt does a great job of going into depth of the psychology of these disagreements. On the discussion of logic though I've found there are three common somewhat intellectual responses used to simply disregard and dismiss what another person has said, especially when they do so under the veneer of being intellectual. This is ignoring all of the unintellectual responses such as calling each other names, ignoring what was said, etc... The three somewhat intellectual resp...