Detecting Logical Fallacies

I had some lectures on formal logic as part of a university philosophy course and reading current news stories is making wish I'd paid more attention. There are many ways of twisting logic to persuade an audience for a dubious argument, known as logical fallacies.

Your Local Epidemiologist has just published an article describing five common logical fallacies, using statements by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as examples. It's an excellent article, cleanly written with clear explanations and lots of examples.

How do we address the firehose of inaccurate information that is flooding the internet right now? It’s tempting to try to play whack-a-mole, tackling one rumor after another, and there is certainly value in addressing individual claims.

But emerging research shows that a better (and less exhausting) method —“prebunking,” or teaching people to recognize falsehoods before they encounter them—is highly effective. If you can teach people to recognize the common rhetorical tricks that are used to sell falsehoods, they can identify them for themselves in the wild, instead of relying on scientists and doctors to chase down every individual claim, meme, or video (which is impossible).

With that, here’s a prebunking lesson for you.

I can't recommend this article highly enough. Read it, remember it, and apply it in your daily reading. You won't regret it.  

Saturday Sounds - Philip Glass - 2019/05/27 - Live in Stockholm

This week's musical treat is a performance by Philip Glass with his Ensemble from Stockholm on May 27, 2019. I've seem Glass perform with the Ensemble many times (at least eight) and every performance has been wonderful. This concert is pretty much a greatest hits affair featuring selections from Music in 12 Parts, Koyaanisqatsi, Glassworks, and Einstein on the Beach among others. . 

0:02:00 the CIVIL warS: Cologne Section Act IV

0:11:26 In the Upper Room: Dance IX

0:20:39 Music in 12 Parts: Part I

0:27:35 Music in 12 Parts: Part II

[0:42:55 Intermission]

0:44:58 Koyaanisqatsi: The Grid

0:52:52 Glassworks: Floe

0:59:13 Glassworks: Façades

1:06:50 Glassworks: Rubric

[1:13:31 Philip Glass introduces the members of the ensemble]

1:15:25 The Photographer: Act III

1:38:18 [encore] Einstein on the Beach: Spaceship

[1:46:40 final applause and credits]

The video is not pro-shot and appears to be shot from a balcony close to the stage. Comments show that two good-quality mics were used so the audio is just fine. In any case, recordings of Glass' live performances are rare and this is a real treat. Enjoy. 

A Cautiously Optimistic Look at the Future

It's easy to get depressed when looking at the news and thinking that everything is getting worse. But there are some trends that provide some hope, at least in the middle and long-term futures. 

Science fiction author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, has published a blog post in which he highlights some things that might lead to cautious optimism about our future prospects. It's long but worth a read.  

Today I’m going to describe some hard, apocalyptic truths about our short-term future. Basically, using fossil fuels for geopolitical extortion is resulting in catastrophe. But then I’m going to make three unapocalyptic claims: first, that fossil fuel coercion is becoming structurally self-defeating; second, that future material scarcities that can be used to coerce weaker nations are shallower and shorter-lived than their predecessors; and third, that the limiting constraint on industrial civilization is ultimately ecological rather than technological or political. Finally, I’ll show how this is cause for a (cautious) optimism about our mid- to long-term future.

Featured Links - March 4, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Fat Signing Bonuses, and Concierge Service, for Family Doctors (gift link). "In a country where a quarter of the population lacks a family doctor, Canadian communities compete in a zero-sum battle to recruit family doctors." The competition for doctors willing to work in small towns is becoming more intense in Canada, and I suspect, in the US as well. 
• This Looks Like an Insider Bet on Aliens (archive link). "Someone just put a lot of money on ET." I wonder if they have inside information. 
• Nature Comms: The Risk of Kidney Disease Increases Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Compared to influenza. Yet another reason to do everything you can to avoid catching COVID-19.
• Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted. "As vaccination rates decline, the economic consequences will increase, research suggests."
  
• AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder. "Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower. And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago."
• John Shirley's guide to wrecking your career in science fiction. "A short memoir with  material that may be upsetting. Published for the first time at Boing Boing. Some of it's about Harlan Ellison, a hero of my youth--an enemy for a while, then a friend once more. Joe Straczynski, I review The Last Dangerous Visions, which you co-edited, at the end of this."
• A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a 'crematorium for satellites'. "When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on Earth. But increasingly, the way we build, launch and dispose of satellites is starting to change that."
• The Stupidest Glitch Imaginable Killed a $72 Million Lunar Mission in a Single Day. "NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite was supposed to map water across the surface of the Moon, but glaring design and testing errors killed it."
• Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash. "The fertilizer that feeds America is key to the president’s next confrontation with Ottawa." 'Next confrontation` There's more? Oh, joy. 

When Science Fiction Moved the Markets

A week ago, the markets had a bad day. The Dow dropped by about 800 points. In a blog post, Paul Krugman made the case that the cause was a science fiction story in the form of a fictional financial report from 2028. 

Last weekend Citrini Research released a report — on Substack! — titled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. The report, which rapidly went viral, laid out a scenario for economic and financial chaos caused by AI, written as if it were a retrospective published after the dire developments it projected. Although it’s always hard to know why financial markets move on any given day, the report may have played a role in Monday’s 800-point decline in the Dow. Science fiction moving markets? Why not?

There are two distinct questions about the huge reaction to a report that didn’t actually contain any news. It was just opinion, albeit cleverly presented. The first is whether the economic scenario the report laid out makes sense, to which the answer is no. The second is why investors are so on edge that such a report could elicit such an extreme reaction.

The report, which is really a rather dry science fiction story in disguise, makes the case that AI will completely disrupt the economy over the next few years. Not being a financial analyst, I can't comment on the accuracy of the report's predictions, but Krugman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, doesn't think they make much sense. 

Still, the fact that the report might have contributed to a large and sudden (albeit temporary) market decline shows that there is widespread concern about the long-term effects of AI technology on the economy. 

It'll be interesting to see if the report makes it into any year's best science fiction anthologies next year.

Movie and TV Reviews - February 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in February. A bit shorter than usual because we watched a lot of winter Olympics.

Movies

• Predator: Badlands. The second half  of the movie was OK but by that point I had lost interest. Prey is still the best of the Predator flicks. (Disney+)
• Mars Express: We haven't watched much anime recently, but I saw a review of this on Gizmodo and it looked interesting, It was one of the best anime films I've ween, on a par with Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Highly recommended. (Amazon Prime rental)

TV Shows

• The Night Manager (season 2): Not as good as the first season, though it did pick up halfway through. It felt like a cookie-cutter thriller without the sublety of the first season. (Amazon Prime)
• Shetland (season 10): The series continues with a typically dark, complex plot set in the barren windswept Scottish islands. One of our favourite shows. (BritBox)
• Antinques Roadshow (season 27): Now that we've worked our way through all 28 seasons of Antiques Road Trip, we're back to the PBS stalwart. 
• Live at Massey Hall: A Celebration of Gordon Lightfoot. An omnibus concert recorded at Toronto's historic Massey Hall to celebrate the life of the late Gordon Lightfoot. I liked that they didn't perform just the hits but dug into his back catalog. Worth watching just for the performance of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". (CBC Gem)
• How to Get to Heaven from Belfast: My sister described this show as "quirky" and that it definittely is. It's also very complicated, occasinally dark, and often funny. You'll need closed captioning for this one. (Netflix)
• McDonald and Dodds (season 4). Another British police procedural that falls somewhere in the middle of the cozy to dark spectrum. I liked this season more than the previous ones. (BritBox)
• Grace (seasons 1-2): Another troubled detective British police  procedural that permiered in 2021 but we're just catching up to now. On the darker side as theyse things go with good writing and acting.
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: I don't remember much about the original Dunk and Egg stories on which this series is based but no matter, it's quite watchable and better than I expected. We binge watched the whole season in one evening (yay for short episodes). (Crave HBO)

Saturday Sounds - Grateful Dead - A Beginner's Guide: David Lemieux

This week's musical treat is an introduction to the music of the Grateful Dead assembled by David Lemieux, the Dead's archivist. He's picked five songs that offer a glimpse into the varied styles of the Grateful Dead: the powerhouse arena rock of Morning Dew, the out there psychedelic improvisation of Dark Star, the blues rock of Viola Lee Blues, the jazzy improvs of Eyes of the World featuring Branford Marsalis, and the delicate acoustic textures of Bird Song. 

It's a good starting point for those who aren't familiar with the Dead's music and I've enjoyed listening to all of these again. I don't think I could improve on it, though might do a post with my suggestions for a second chapter.