Bullshit

Despite the fact that I've agreed with them largely in previous episodes, and partially in this one, the latest Bullshit is, well, bullshit.

In previous episodes, they've argued about things that are demonstrably provable in one way or another. This time, they've taken to the fairly political arena of organic foods. And they have no idea how to argue their case. They presented no supporting facts, they argued points that their opponents didn't make, and generally looked like asses. Even the parts with which I agreed were poorly argued.

P&T need to stick to disproving ESP, alien abductions, etc. -- those places where trickery, their area of expertise is involved. In this episode, no one was trying to trick anyone else (except in the fad diet department); they just had differing views. Even in the fad diet stuff they made unsupported claims and, to my amazement, hired someone to go on a fad diet and then made fun of him for being on it. What's the deal with that?

I'm almost inclined to stop watching.

Haven't seen the episode yet. Curious to see it now.

As much as you've commented on liking it before, and as much as you comment about skepdic.com with your knowledge of argumentive fallacies, I think you will be interested. It's amazing how often in this episode they use the same kinds of arguments that they make fun of other people for using in earlier episodes.

Which is not to say that they don't have some good points, but their arguments for them are mostly laughable. This episode, it's like they just wanted to make fun of some people that they don't like.

I think they did a decent job debunking the Greenpeace argument that GE foods aren't tested, and showing the harmful impact on human lives their GE arguments have. The diet portion could have been much better.

The only one I saw was the ESP one. I was ROFL, esp. when the guy claims he's regressed patients as far back as 5 million BC!!! And the woman who was Josephine's (of Napoleon fame) best friend, wouldn't she have spoken fluent French in the regression and not English with a cheesy French accent?

It's amazing how often in this episode they use the same kinds of arguments that they make fun of other people for using in earlier episodes.

I'd buy that. I've seen them do it to a small degree in earlier episodes. For instance, doing a very unscientific test regarding the taste of bottled water... in New York, which is known for having particularly good tap water.

Who's "them", "they" and what is this an "episode" of?

Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" on Showtime, Friday nights.

Thought Bitt was just venting.

Penn & Teller keep getting close, but never hit the nail right on the head. I agree that the bottled water test had a certain amount of bogosity. Tap water quality varies widely depending on where you are, and on the quality of the pipes in your building. My old grad-student apartment had horribly rusted pipes. The shower had a nice orange stain around the drain. Sure 'nuff, the water tasted like crap.

The organic food bashing also pissed me off, mostly because they didn't talk about the evils of the companies making the genetically modified seed (plant it, and you don't get any seeds you can reuse for the following year) never mind the lurking time bomb of genetic monocultures and their susceptibility to hyper-specialized pests and diseases. It's an interesting question, whether the Greenpeace dude was as much of an idiot as they showed him to be, or whether they edited him into looking like an idiot.

They certainly made the anti-secondhand smoke people look far more idiotic than they actually are. It doesn't take rocket science to conclude that secondhand smoke is the same crap as first-hand smoke, which has been shown upside down and backward to be bad for your health.

The shower had a nice orange stain around the drain. Sure 'nuff, the water tasted like crap.

I certainly hope you weren't drinking from your shower floor!

They certainly made the anti-secondhand smoke people look far more idiotic than they actually are. It doesn't take rocket science to conclude that secondhand smoke is the same crap as first-hand smoke, which has been shown upside down and backward to be bad for your health.

Is there anything contradicting their claim that all the second hand smoke reports are based off the exact same report that they said was flawed?

I'd also be interested in information countering the the food parts. I'm not a pure organic foods person, and the story did irritate me a bit with the Greenpeace people boycotting all forms of GE foods.

I think they did a decent job debunking the Greenpeace argument that GE foods aren't tested, and showing the harmful impact on human lives their GE arguments have. The diet portion could have been much better.

I thought the exact opposite. Okay, not really. They didn't do a good job on the diet stuff, either.

SPOILERS!

But I don't think they did an even remotely good job debunking Greenpeace. They only presented a very little of Greenpeace's argument about GE foods. The thing that they didn't show is that there really is no approval for animal feed GE foods, and we eat those animals. In addition, it's pretty hard to keep that GE pollen away from the FDA-approved crops. Not to mention the times that non-approved GE crops ``accidentally'' get in human food products.

They never presented any argument that it might be okay to use GE foods in areas where there's famine, but not in areas where there's a superfluity of foods (a fact they point out repeatedly in the first half of the show about dieting), to try to minimize any potential risk. They also didn't state that there have been no long term studies to determine GE impact.

They presented Mr. Borlaug as a great humanitarian for saving a billion lives (and I'll agree that he is), but they didn't even begin to present the fact that the fact that we can't feed all of these people is because there are so many of them, and that he's simply prolonged or created those billion people's agony, along with that of their children and their children's children, etc. (I don't agree with that argument necessarily, but it's obvious and it was never touched.)

They also undercut their whole argument by saying in their closing statement that these underdeveloped countries don't have appropriate irrigation, farming equipment, or farming techniques. How about trying to fix that first instead of monkeying with genetics? It seems a very logical first step. Not to mention all the farmers in the US we pay to not grow food. Why not pay them to grow food and donate it to the famine-stricken?

But my favorite part was when they were putting words in the raw food guy's mouth. He was promoting eating raw food, and from that they take that he's against everything they're for. He ended up making some vague claim to that effect, but it sounded a lot like he was hounded into it. And that was just one instance where they equate anti-GE with organic with whatever else they felt like bashing on.

Anyway....

There is a grammatical error in the Grammar Chief's original post in this thread. Who can find it first?

There is a grammatical error in the Grammar Chief's original post in this thread. Who can find it first?

Too easy.

--those places where trickery, their area of expertise is involved.

Missing comma after "expertise."

Good Job.

Hmm... is punctuation considered part of grammar?

Certainly. At least as much as spelling.

Also repitition:

...present the fact that the fact that we can't ...

Not sure that is classified as grammar.

Heh, only on this board does a rant have to be grammatically accurate.

I believe that I may be being held to a higher standard for some reason.

The organic food bashing also pissed me off, mostly because they didn't talk about the evils of the companies making the genetically modified seed (plant it, and you don't get any seeds you can reuse for the following year)

Isn't this the same for hybrids? I seem to recall from people in high school (FFA} that you couldn't plant the hybrid seed (corn, for instance) to get more hybrids. Feed companies have been doing this for a long time. Are GE plants sterile?