User:Paronomase/Pas même faux

If you're looking for this article in English, it can be found at Not even wrong.

Cogito ergo sum Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

Logical fallacy Syllogism Argument

General logic

Occam's razor Morton's fork Jonanism Argumentum ad dictionarium Apex fallacy Coincidence

Bad logic

Not even wrong Common sense Presupposition Affirming a disjunct Suppressed correlative Countless counterfeits fallacy v - t - e

“”Cette affirmation n'est même pas ignorante. Cette affirmation est de l'ignorance en résine. Comme si, après avoir pris toute la stupidité, puis l'avoir fait bouillir, tu avais gratté l'ignorance pure. Comme du "bein" cristallisé. C'est comme un "bein" cristallisé.

—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, faisant référance à l'une de ces déclarations absurdes.

L'expression Pas même faux réfère à toute affirmation , argument ou explication qui ne peut être ni correct, ni incorrect , parce qu'il ne rencontre pas les critères par lesquels ont peut évaluer son caractère correct ou incorrect. En tant que paralogisme plus formel, cette expression réfère à l'art subtil de former une conclusion ostensiblement "correcte", mais issue de prémisses fausses ou inapplicables.

La phrase implique que non seulement la personne dit quelque chose d'incorrect dans la discussion, mais qu'elle ne comprend même pas la "nature" de la discussion, c'est-à-dire ce qu'il faut comprendre pour pouvoir participer pertinemment.

Origine

“”Ce que tu viens de dire est l'une des choses les plus follement imbéciles que j'aie jamais entendues. À aucun moment, ta réponse délirante et incohérente ne s'est ne serait-ce que rapprochée de quelque chose que l'on pourrait considérer comme étant une pensée rationnelle. Toutes les personnes présentes dans cette salle sont à présent plus stupides qu'avant par le simple fait de t'avoir écouté. Je ne te donne pas de point, et puisse Dieu avoir pitié de ton âme.

—James Downey, Billy Madison

La phrase a apparemment été créée par le physicien Wolfgang Pauli, qui utilisait la phrase (sous la forme "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!" — "Non seulement ce n'est pas vrai, ce n'est pas même faux!") pour décrire un article obscur. Pauli était réputé pour sa détestation du travail bâclé, et pour ses objections quelques peu "colorées" audit travail. Le terme a depuis recueilli pas mal de popularité , parmi les personnes qui se dédient à réfuter la pseudoscience, pour faire référence aux difficultés rencontrées lors qu'elles sont confrontées à ses plus "beaux" arguments. Par exemple, les "trappes créationnistes", qui sont une série d'affirmations irréfutables (mais également indémontrables) qui défient la logique conventionnelle. It also applies to science stoppers.

Forme

If you look up "not even wrong" in the dictionary, or at least RationalWiki, you will find Deepak Chopra's face. Indeed, here it is.

“”Le kérosènene peut pas se mélanger avec le thimerosal!

Une explication ou un argument correct est facile à repérer; il peut ressembler à ceci:

“”2 + 2 = 4

Un argument faux a une conclusion incorrecte, mais est présenté de telle façon qu'on peut l'évaluer, comme cela:

“”2 + 2 = 6

The above two examples can be shown to be right and wrong; they at least make enough sense for us to spot where the error is. Something that is not even wrong is usually so far out of the ballpark or so far from reality that it is, quite simply, flabbergastingly irrelevant. For example:

“”2 + zèbre ÷ glockenspiel = l'homéopathie fonctionne!

This is far more than just an argument leading to a wrong conclusion. The premises aren't even related to the conclusion or are themselves completely nonsensical. In a way, a "not even wrong" argument is often an extreme non sequitur — such as by the homeopaths who claim that observations (later debunked as a measurement error by the scientists who made them in the first place) of neutrinos breaking the speed of light meant that all science was wrong and therefore homeopathy works. The premises, their arrangements, the conclusion, all are so divorced from facts and logic that even attempting to rationally engage with it gives it too much credit. Bad science or pseudoscience either can be refuted with known facts, or at least raises intelligible questions that can then be addressed; the most interesting question that not even wrong can raise is What is this person on? and perhaps Where can I get some, because it might help me make sense of this?

Most commonly, not even wrong arguments arise because of a lack of understanding in the person making the argument. For instance, a conspiracy theorist talking about people slipping "ionised radio waves" into someone's coffee — no one who knows anything on the subject could even think of a way that only one or two small misconceptions could lead to that, it really is not even wrong. Either through willful ignorance, or at best by being out of date with current research, they don't know enough about the subject to know what is needed to form a sensible argument. This can be caused by the Dunning-Kruger effect, where someone makes a not even wrong argument but lacks the meta-cognitive ability to recognise that they don't know enough even to make a wrong argument, never mind a right one.

"Not even wrong" applies especially when the premises of an argument are known to be false (based on observational evidence or similar), or when they are used to describe theories which cannot possibly be falsifiable or provide meaningful predictions. For example, any physical theory based on the existence of the aether would be classed as not even wrong. In this case, it is a type of informal logical fallacy (an error in the content of an argument) as using incorrect or non-applicable premises will always yield an incorrect answer. As the premises are wrong the conclusion is certainly incorrect, but the conclusion is at least correct based on said premises. The term "not even wrong" therefore describes this situation. The less strict usage of the fallacy to describe people who have no idea what they're talking about on any known level — whether it be Dewey Larson's model of the atom or Gene Ray's cubic time — is usually the manifestation of this in practice.

For a clear but silly example, one can say that "this chair is made of hard, solid wood, therefore I can sit on it". This is perfectly true, except in the case where the chair is made of jelly. The conclusion is correct based on the premise, but the premise is clearly not applicable. Therefore the conclusion is not even wrong.

Exemples

“”C'est comme si quelqu'un annonçait sa découverte révolutionnaire que P=NP implique N=1, et qu'ensuite les critiques répondaient sobrement que c'est faux, car l'équation P=NP peut également être résolue par P=0.

—Scott Aaronson.

The webcomic xkcd parodied the idea by suggesting that someone thought they had managed to disprove special relativity using a "racecar on a train" thought experiment. The blog Science and Math Defeated seems to be the real personification of what this comic strip is about; however, no one is 100% sure if it is real or not.

Examples in real life often involve "skeptics" arguing with established scientists. In climategate, for example, where a thousand e-mails from leading climate change researchers were hacked and released publicly, most critics seemed to not understand the basic meaning behind some of the emails (climate science and atmospheric chemistry are complex disciplines), instead preferring to quote mine a few emails out of context and misunderstanding the use of the word "trick". Climate science is one of the areas where "not even wrong" arguments are common, owing to the complexity of the system under study.

"Not Even Wrong" can apply to the Lenski affair, where conservative website owner Andrew Schlafly demanded that Professor Richard Lenski "release the data" on his long term evolution experiment. This stemmed from Schlafly's misinterpretation of the research paper in question (if indeed he actually read it – as Lenski himself observed, Schlafly almost certainly hadn't at the time of the e-mail exchange). The paper did in fact mention all the relevant data one would need to appraise the experiment. Schlafly's further criticisms regarding the statistics reported in the paper were certainly in the field of "not even wrong", owing to his complete misunderstanding of basic practice when applying statistics as well as ignorance of the computer programs used — confusing the professional software package Statistics 101 with an amateur website.

A classic example from evolutionary biology is the oft-asked question "Why are there still monkeys?" Another would be Scott Huse's belief that evolutionary theory means humans are descended from birds. Outside of evolutionary biology, another common example is the assertion that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!"

(And, for those who aren't familiar with the context of the quote above, P and N are not arithmetical constants in a multiplication equation, but rather P and NP are the full names for two very important sets in computational theory. ĤΨ = EΨ is another common equation to suffer from this for people viewing it for the first time. Basically, it comes down to whether all problems with solutions that are quickly verifiable are also quickly solvable, such as "I have 100 numbers, can I add or subtract some of them to sum to 0?", a huge deal as computers are asked to analyze ever larger datasets.)

Not Even Wrong: The Book (and website)

Not Even Wrong is a book about String Theory by Professor Peter Woit of Columbia University's mathematics department. He also has a blog of the same name at http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress.

Articles connexes

• Banana fallacy
• Peanut butter argument
• Crocoduck
• Fractal wrongness
• Non sequitur
• Time Cube
• Willful ignorance
• Wronger than wrong