So I lack tact. I would have been pleased if the fellow had left it there, but suggesting I get tips from Dilbert? Bad form.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
So I lack tact. I would have been pleased if the fellow had left it there, but suggesting I get tips from Dilbert? Bad form.
I’ve never liked tact. It gets in the way of people understanding what the hell you’re talking about. It also makes people think you’re a politician. Bah, to hell with tact.
Heh. Well, technically I would agree. :) But, it hasn’t kept me away. And it is just one thing that makes you PZ.
z.
He can’t even manage to spell your name correctly.
The tactful mincing of words shelters people’s fragile egos. It does nothing to disseminate information. Keep up the good work!
What are sciencest’s anyway?
Well, that might be the issue PZ – you’re not a “sciencest.” Only “sciencests” can’t communicate. And Dilbert? Zzzzzzzzzz….is this guy kidding? You’re one of the best blog communicators, imo, for a public who wants to read.
Shoot, Steve_C posted same time. :-/
Darn, Steve_C posted same thought at the same time. :-/
I hesitate to resurrect a debate that’s generated far too much resentment in the past, and I don’t mean this to endorse the portrayal of P.Z. as tactless (I wasn’t there, after all) but perhaps this guy’s story should remind us of a larger issue.
Whenever we become (justifiably) annoyed with IDers and creationists there are other people watching and listening. Some of them are unsure about where the truth lies, perhaps because they’re young and new to the material, or perhaps just new to the material at any age. Some of them may even be in the process that many of us (including P.Z.) have gone through – shedding the religious beliefs that they were brought up with.
To those onlookers, lack of tact and even outright hostility displayed not *to* them but in front of them, might be deeply offputting. I know that when I was in the early stages of de-conversion I felt very guilty and quite defensive. Seeing a lack of tact displayed towards people/views I had very recently identified closely with might have sent me back the other way.
So while the fiskings are always fun, we should remember all the people in the audience, and remember that we’re trying to help them see the light, even if we have no hope of talking any sense into the heads of the people we’re fisking or debating with.
I have to disagree. Nothing closes a mind faster than insults and condescension. If you can’t show respect for someone’s beliefs, at least try to show them some respect as a person. Otherwise, why should they care what you think?
To say you lack tact is…perhaps not without some merit, but certainly not the whole story.
Here you sit and explain basic points to us with nary a “stupid” on your lips nor your posts (if you’re thinking it, you’re certainly both allowed and, in my case, justified as I have no background in biology).
That’s not exactly lacking tact. Besides, a good teacher of those “sciencests” never lets tact get in the way of teaching.
sciencests: Noun. A pervert who sexually abuses scientists.
Morph
~ sciencests: Noun. A pervert who sexually abuses scientists.
Heh. I knew there was a bad joke in there somewhere. I was thinking of something witty to say, but that is just perfect. Ha ha ha…
z.
I’d quite honestly rather read the blog of someone without tact than someone who doesn’t know how to proofread…
stop with the ‘discussion’
demand to know where the ‘creator’ came from.
watch them run.
Calling a jerk a jerk is being truthful, not tactless – it’s a public service.
My non-god, no kidding. To salt one’s prose with such stunning syntactic and technical gaffes — while faulting another for communicating imperfectly — is the height of demiliterate arrogance.
Don’t you love it when someone attacks another individual’s communication skills and in so doing demonstrates their own surfeits? Please use spell check, Mr. Tact. We ‘sciencests’ can at least mind our Ps and Qs (especially population geneticists).
Well, there is a difference between calling a jerk a jerk, and calling a jerk a jerk-off. I guess it’s a strategic move – what kind of audience do you want? Do you want to be richard dawkins, or the howard stern of biology? Dawkins is elegant, but howard has a huge following.
There is a fine line between politics and tact. Politics is telling someone they are great when they are not. Tact is telling somene they are not great in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they are being assaulted or insulted.
I think a lack of tact can be balanced out by a bit of humor.
I think too many people are way too used to having everyone bend over backwards to speak to them in “their own language”. Overly technical answers for non-scientists make educating the public harder. However, as a member of the non-scientist group, I think it does me a lot of good to put effort into understanding people who are better educated than myself. I’ve learned to be a better listener. This makes the whole communication thing a hell of a lot easier.
I also heard that there was a fine line between clever and stupid. But this might just be me. Maybe at the next talk you should try to make your presentation more warm and fuzzy, user friendly. You can put on a puppet show or provide pop-up books. Or maybe if you came out dresesed like a cuddlefish or a duck billed platypus! ok ok… i’m getting silly now. back to work.
sciencer: more sciency
sciencest: the most sciency
…
…
Heh. PZ, when you have an organized group trying to destroy something true and beautiful and immensely valuable, you need to respond with “tact.”
Being tactful has worked so well for all those victims of assault throughout history.
I get iain’s point, and agree with it. But still …
…
…
I think iain above has a bit of a point in that the hostility shown towards IDiots can be off-putting to outside observers, but I also think that the alternative – treating their specious arguments with respect and/or deference – is just as bad or even worse.
I’m pretty sure that pretty much all scientists, PZ included, would be happy to discuss the nature of evolution and unsolved questions within it with any genuinely curious outsider who simply isn’t parroting the DI’s stock questions. The anger comes from dealing with people who are completely disingenuous about finding answers, such as the DI, and the realization that such people are actively hurting science as a discipline. Quite frankly, I would argue that the reason that evolution isn’t well accepted by the public is due to the misinformation of the IDers and the suppression of evolution education by the general fundamentalist crowd over the past century. To turn around and somehow say that our ‘rudeness’ was really the problem is pretty annoying.
For me, these are the points I try to emphasize – scientists are always open to a discussion with people sincerely interested in understanding the world around them. People with an agenda (people who ‘know’ the answers in the absence of evidence, and are rooting around for flimsy justification), however, are treated with the contempt that they deserve.
In any audience, there’s guaranteed to be a certain percentage of people who are just sitting there with their buttholes a-pucker, waiting for someone to say something that is Offensive to their Sensibilities. Apparently, this is even the case in the fundiest of fundie churches–my in-laws’ church recently did a congregation-wide “Bible study” on how taking offense opens the door to Satan, ISYK–and is only to be expected in a forum where people are discussing something of actual consequence and potential controversy.
(And, to denise: I’m reading a thoroughly great book called “How to Read a Book” which dwells at length on the impossibility of learning anything from those whose terms and concepts you already thoroughly understand.)
gg said the following:
After a seminar a few years back, I was riding in an elevator with Temple Smith. He said, “Give a professor a nickel and he’ll lecture on anything. Give him a quarter, and you’re in real trouble!” I suppose I’m much the same way. I’m passionate about the sound of my own words; it’s a stormy relationship, but at least it’s usually a requited love.
Combine that endearing personality trait with my ownership of a tweed jacket complete with leather elbow patches, and I’m already on the tenure track.
“If you can’t show respect for someone’s beliefs, at least try to show them some respect as a person. ”
Erm – Nazis? Taliban? Opus Dei? Creationists?
Why?
OK, it’s an article of faith to me that busting people for online typos is something only a complete wanker does, but sometimes…
…imagining what a “cuddlefish” would look like is just too much fun. Surely one of you cephalopod fans can come up with a picture of this cute, amorous beastie?
Don’t be stupid.
sorry, can’t help but think of my son’s favorite quote:
Tack is for those too stupid for sarcasm.
Then again, maybe I could just find one myself!
http://www.cuddlefish.com.au/gallery/
Amazing what teh Google can show you, eh?
Tact specifically restricts the flow of information. It’s considered tactless to just out and tell someone they are wrong. You instead have to wheedle around to it.
If instead you just say “you are wrong”, you have time to explain why.
Besides, all groups have their tactful members and their tactless, I think PZ is simply filling an environmental niche.
There’s a big difference between showing respect for people and kowtowing to their ideas. PZ does the former, I believe, when he takes the trouble to explain biology. That’s not an easy thing to do. This may be too implicit for a self-righteous audience to notice — and really, which is a worse Us-Versus-Them mentality, the “war between science and religion” or the “cuddly atheists against evil, tactless ones”?
Wow. To suggest that Dilbert’s blog is a better bridge to the gap between scientists and non-scientists is utterly absurd. Since when has dilbert EVER said anything remotely scientific or philosophical that hasn’t been ripped to shreds by real scientists or philosophers, thus causing Dilbert to go on and on about he was “just joking” and that he’s “not really serious”?
To suggest that this doofus is better at explaining scientific ideas to non-scientists than someone who has been specifically doing this for a very long time is rather insane.
I love that he somehow jumps from the idea that you have no tack, and in the same breath says that scientists as a whole have no tact. I love sweeping generalizations like that, almost as much as I love Scott Adams’ work.
My rule of thumb is really quite simple: the amount of tact one should employ is inversely proportional to the distance from the individual one is addressing. So, talking to someone in a personal conversation would require far more tact than writing a post on a blog about that person.
I go both ways on this. On the one hand, a slap in the face does get one’s attention. It also makes one highly defensive. But, after the dust settles, a slap in the face can make people reevaluate their positions.
Tact, on the other hand, is less jarring than a slap in the face but it can masquerade as tolerance, in this case for things that shouldn’t be tolerated.
People like PZ and Sam Harris slap people. They slap them hard and the people getting slapped don’t like it. But the ones who think probably wake up the next day and think long and hard about this stuff. The ones who don’t think (e.g. but I feel in my heart the love of Jesus!) are not going to think either way. So we may as well slap.
Do people taking PZ etc to task for their lack of tact not understand the difference between creationist shills and the public at large? How is insulting buffoons like William Dembski and Scott Adams – who richly deserve it and who won’t change their minds in any case – somehow also insulting the average layman on the street?
It’s a tactic: assuming the mantle of victimhood on behalf of the audience to generate sympathy and demonize the opponent. Its entirely dishonest.
Ya know, it’d be different if the whole ID/Creationism thing wasn’t such a huge, steaming pile of nonesense. It’s been thoroughly debunked, and anyone who espouses it is either just plain ignorant of science or they’re intentionally muddying the waters, in other words, lying. The ignorant deserve a modicum of tact and patience. They ask a question or show a lack of knowledge in the subject, and they’re polite about it, sure, be nice when you correct them. The minute they start trotting out stuff “how can there be morals with evolution” or “if man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys” or “the scientific mafia is holding down the evidence for ID” or “how can evolution make an eye” or any of the number of blarney these yay-hoos blabber out, then the gloves off. Life’s tough and not everyone’s gonna love you like your momma.
It’s way past time. For cryin’ out loud, there’s no reason not to have a working knowledge of evolutionary biology in this day and age. The information’s right there at our collective fingertips, literally. Why in the name of Elvis Aaron Presley would you respect someone who can’t show you enough respect to do the basic research before shooting off his/her big mouth?
the scientific mafia……
somebody’s gotta make a movie about that.
Dilbert makes me miss Calvin and Hobbes so very, very badly! The jokes were funny, the drawings were lush and beautiful, and the science was quite often correct. Look at all those dinosaur strips: after a few early mistakes Watterson was quite abashed about, he did his research. He didn’t just give us Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex (the only dinosaurs which existed when my mother was Calvin’s age, or so she tells me), but filled the Sunday pages with packs of Deinonychus and herds of Chasmosaurus.
We also saw time dilation (testing special relativity with a wagon) and walked through the canyons of Mars. Even the sheer silliness had meaning and structure: the duplicators and transmogrifiers had unintended consequences, like all technology, which worked themselves out through plot and character.
Calvin and Hobbes blended wide-eyed wonder with a dry, witty skepticism. It looked askance at public schools and organized religion both. It was a gift given us by a man who quite literally would rather have his integrity than a million bucks plus a movie deal with Steven Spielberg.
When I try to name heirs to that spirit, I can think of xkcd, Unshelved and Sinfest, maybe others too. . . . But it’s quite easy to name strips which don’t appear on that list at all.
abeja:
Have you seen Stevem’s String Kings?
Read the rest; it’s good. . . .
I thought sciencest was when you date people from the same lab as you.
“the only dinosaurs which existed when my mother was Calvin’s age, or so she tells me”
That doesn’t sound quite right :-)
I distinguish three levels of rhetorical heat (each of which subsumes the previous):
1) Statements of first-order fact: “X is false because [explanation]”
2) Value judgements: “X is stupid” [including equivalent (and more colorful) epithets like “bollocks”, “steaming pile of shit”, etc.]
3) Personal attacks: “Anyone who believes X is a moron”
I think we should always be ready to use level 1, without hesitation, eg: “YEC contradicts every significant advance in natural science in the past 200 years”; “ID is a piece of political propaganda which says nothing scientifically”.
There’s probably occasions when escalating to levels 2 or 3 is appropriate (certainly, I’ve done so during my Usenet days), though less often (I suspect) than our emotions urge us to. To me, #3 is the nuclear option — I’ve given up hope of rational dialog with the other party; from now on they’re just a rhetorical punching bag. I think the decision on how blunt to be should be a tactical one, as in any act of communication and persuasion: consider your audience, and what you want them to take away from hearing you, and how best to achieve that. (Bearing in mind that sometimes your intended audience is not the person you’re speaking to — who may be a hopeless case — but an uncommitted third party looking on.)
Actually, I’ve seen PZ be quite tactful, before somebody tips their hand as a troll. The thing is, it’s a standard tactic of bullies in general to claim that you’re being “hostile” or “rude” — the real point is that they don’t want to let you defend yourself.
I just faced this in a real-life confrontation. This “kid” (20s?) on the subway had been yelling at and cursing out his girlfriend for 15 minutes. Shortening the story, he eventually “tipped his hand” as a bully, with some line like “yeah, everyone’s looking at you because you’re a lying bitch!” That seriously pissed me off, and it probably showed on my face, because he came over saying “you look like you wanna do something”.
I stood up, and informed him that if he so much as laid a hand on me I’d be calling the police — and there were plenty of witnesses. After that, I otherwise carefully avoided making any threats, or returning his insults. What makes this relevant was that one of his first lines was “well, I’m feeling kind of threatened,” upon which I calmly listed all the ways he’d been acting pretty threatening. I wound up facing him down until he (and the girlfriend) got off the train.
I think that you can never be “tactful” enough for some people (like, you know, wimps), so it shouldn’t be too much a concern.
Blake:
All I can say is, Laughing my ass off. That one’s a keeper.
Blake Stacey–
I couldn’t agree with you more about Calvin and Hobbes. It puts most other comics to shame. If you haven’t already, you might want to check out a comic called Ozy and Millie, which is thematically and stylistically quite similar to Calvin. I also agree with your inclusion of xkcd. I have a webcomic myself, but it isn’t nearly as good as the one’s you’ve mentioned. Alas, I can only dream that one day my comic becomes as good as them–i couldn’t care less about Dilbert, though.
That’s not really a personal attack. The speaker is saying that anyone, not a specific person, is a moron for believing X. A personal attack consists of directing your attack at the person instead of the argument or belief. For example, “George W. Bush is a moron, so whatever he says regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is probably wrong.”
Tact + demented fuckwit = more demented fuckwits.
Roll on, P.Z.
Cuttlefish! Cuttlefish! Ack! I’m Hukt on foniks!
well, so much for trying to sound intellegent.
Still, a “cuddlefish” would have to be adorable. And who could argue with a face like that?
“OK, it’s an article of faith to me that busting people for online typos is something only a complete wanker does, but sometimes…
Or maybe if you came out dresesed like a cuddlefish…
…imagining what a “cuddlefish” would look like is just too much fun. Surely one of you cephalopod fans can come up with a picture of this cute, amorous beastie?
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | February 20, 2007 12:11 PM “
Khan:
Gee, no one’s ever had trouble spelling “Mhyarrez” before! :-)