Essay talk:How to spot a parody

On razorz

Hi A. Good stuff. But you write close to the start:

• It's also a broad application of Hanlon's Razor, which states that something is more likely to be attributed to a cock-up or incompetence than to malice. So in this case we can consider Poe's Razor, which says something is more likely to be attributed to parody than reality.

But if we think about it, "parody" could well be regarded as "malice". In other words, Hanlon's Razor would suggest that what you see is more likely to be exactly what it appears to be, and not a complex invention.

But you suggest a hypothetical Poe's razor "which says something is more likely to be attributed to parody than reality. But rather than being a broader application of Hanlon's Razor, Poe's razor (if I understand your point correctly), seems to be a flat contradiction of Hanlon's.

On the other hand I may well have missed the point completely.--Bob^{"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."} 11:34, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I see your point there. But it's all a question of intent. Perhaps it would be better of stated as a reverse. But consider the tamtampamela video; she was stupid to joke about that sort of thing (and I'd say any "parodist" that is perpetuating a straw man is being stupid), so indeed it was stupidity over malicious intent. I'll think about it a bit and change it if I can't think of a better way of connecting the two ideas, now you've mentioned it I don't think there's a solid 1-to-1 mapping of Hanlon's Razor to this. ^sshole 11:47, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, I just read that bit at the beginning and thought ... "But....". The piece in general is first-class though.--Bob^{"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."} 11:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this some more. The skeptics position is not "What seems to be true is true" nor "What looks like parody is parody." The position has to be "I don't know, and I won't decide until I get some more evidence". Anything else just gets you into confirmation bias.

Having said that, that really is the thrust of the rest of your essay. --Bob^{"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."} 06:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That's a good enough skeptical position, but the point of heuristics isn't to supersede that or replace it (though ~90% of the time when I see people talk about Occam's Razor that's exactly what they're doing.). It's to allow you to make a decision or judgement that, although may not be informed, still lets you move on in a practical sense, perhaps make new decisions about where to look for your evidence. Otherwise you'd constantly be an agnostic about absolutely everything in the world because complete and total infinite certainty isn't possible. So you just side with what is more likely given what you know. In the case of spotting parodies, if you know nothing but the content of what you're reading and it's sufficient to set off an alarm bell of some kind, the odds are that it's for a good reason. ^postate 11:25, 9 April 2012 (UTC)