Handwave

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Handwaving is the act of glossing over a difficult or superfluous component in an argument, treating it as a black box for the purpose of a discussion. The assumption is that the component in question is either outside the scope of the current discussion or simply doesn't need to be understood by the listener; as a result, handwaving can sometimes be used as a form of misdirection or outright bullshit in order to advance a faulty argument.

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[edit] Skinner constant

Skinner’s Constant, or Flannegan’s Finagling Factor, is: "That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided into, added to, or subtracted from the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten."

There's a great many ideas that would work if just one important item wasn't completely unknown. For such things we have the Skinner constant, the mathematical equivalent of a handwave.

[edit] Examples

[edit] What we are really interested in

Woo-defender: Magnet therapy has been proven to work in so many cases.

Scientist: Well designed clinical testing has shown no correlation between the use of magnetic therapy and any improvement in health.

Woo-defender: Clinical trials may be fun to chat about but we are talking about the thousands of real life successes here. There are millions of them. It is the billions of real life cases of success with magnetic therapy in real life magneto-medicine that we are interested in.

[edit] Just a theory

Creationist: As we can see...if evolution really worked then pilots who fly a lot would have grown wings by now.

Scientist: That's not how evolution works. Evolution is based on natural selection from traits over time. As humans, we don't have any sort of gene that allows us to fly, since we don't need to. We can't even grow our own wings at will. It's not genetic at all. Unless a flood covers the Earth and we're forced to live above ground, then maybe, over hundreds or thousands of generations of natural selection, we may sprout wings.

Creationist: That mumbo-jumbo is just a theory. Show me a pilot with feathered wings!

[edit] Left as an exercise

Usually, the term "left as an exercise" (originated in and largely used in mathematical and computer science circles) implies that part of a proof or algorithm is sufficiently elementary as to be either obvious or readily worked out by the reader or student. However, it can be used in two less-than-sensible ways:

  1. As a potholed introduction to an exceptionally difficult or unsolved problem
  2. As part of an argument by intimidation

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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