I want to talk about the process of argument and the mechanics of debate today, and I'm going to use the "Intelligent Design" debate to illustrate it, purely because a couple of my friends have been talking about it recently. I'm using "Intelligent Design" as an example, but it could equally apply to the recent fracas at the Oxford Union, or any number of other political hot potatoes. It certainly applies to Prime Minister's Question Time.

There is a hierarchy of evidence. This applies in law as well as science. The most reliable evidence is evidence that you have observed yourself, especially if you have observed it many times. This is empirical evidence. The next most reliable evidence is the empirical evidence of other people, especially if there are lots of them and they all agree. Getting towards the unreliable, there is "I read it in a book", with citations to show how reliable the book is. Then we have hearsay. Hearsay is when you (or your witness) haven't actually observed anything yourself, but you sort of recall someone else saying they have observed it, only you can't quite remember where or when... Then there is bald assertion. This is when you say that something is so, and you don't NEED evidence, it just IS, and you know it!

If you are watching or listening to a debate, you will often see/hear horrendously bad debating tactics used in order to derail the opposition. Both sides of the "Intelligent Design" debate can be guilty of this, and it makes me very very cross. Muddying the waters to make your opponent look bad makes you look bad too, and we need to teach this to children (and politicians) so that proper reasoned debate can be had.

- If you use ad hominem arguments, YOU LOSE.
- if you try and assert a position with no evidence to back yourself up, YOU LOSE.
- if you think that because you read it in a book or saw it on TV it's true, YOU LOSE.

I actually physically head-desked at this comment to Mat's entry. Not because of the position the commenter takes (she's been a friend for ages, and I love her dearly, before you think I'm just attacking a random person, too!), but because of the phrase accepting without question all the evolution stuff we learn in high school. The whole point of science, or research, of good debate, is that you don't accept ANYTHING without question! You look at the evidence, weigh it and evaluate it, see if there is research to back up or contradict your position. Just because your teacher says so, doesn't mean it's right. Just because the government says so, doesn't mean it's right. Just because an eminent scientist says so, does not mean it's right. If LOTS of eminent scientists AND your teacher AND the government say so, then it's PROBABLY right, but this is still not enough to be certain.

I know people like certainty; I know most people feel comforted and reassured by someone who is absolutely certain that X is true. But if that person has no basis for their certainty, or a very shaky basis ("it says so in the bible" or "my priest says so") and they are arguing against a person or group with lots of very good evidence on their side (a couple of millennia of empirical research by thousands of scientists, much of it church-sponsored) then how is that the person with the shakiest evidence gets the most credence? How in the name of monkey bollocks have the creationists even got to the point where the "Intelligent Design" debate is even called a debate? I don't understand why so many people give as much weight to "well, we've believed this for years and anyway God says so" as they do to "We've shown that this is true by experimenting and replicating the results many times".

* sigh *

This is descending into rant. I am happy to promise that I will teach my daughter to question, to research, to not accept things without question, and to always look for the motivation of the person asserting bald facts to her. But how many others are willing to do the same? People like certainty. Most people don't actually WANT to think, they want to be told what to say and do because it's easier. This makes me profoundly depressed.

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So, onto more cheering subjects: Vince Cable watch

Today's Cable fangirling comes courtesy of Mike Smithson on politicalbetting.com and Charlotte Gore. Gratified that I am that so many people seem to be coming round to my point of view, the scenario Mike Smithson postulates, that whichever of the two posh boys wins the Lib Dem leadership election will be overshadowed by the towering Collossus of Vinceness, might be a bit of a worry for my Lib Dem friends. Happily, Millennium Elephant has the solution:

Clearly the PROBLEM with the Liberal Democrat Leadership contest is that there has been a TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT and Captain Kirk has been split into his AGGRESSIVE KILLER side and his FLUFFY BUNNY side. The ANSWER is obviously that we need Mr Scotty to FIX it so that we can RE-COMBINE him.

Anyone got a spare transporter?