More Blue Ridge Parkway views

 

An unknown flower by one of the overlooks.

Many of the roads follow stream beds up into the mountains. We only saw one place where the Parkway had been damaged by erosion from the hurricane floods last year...where they had shored up the edge of the road and put in new plants, as well as new pavement along the edge. No other damages were evident on the stretches of the Parkway we traveled.

We hoped the clouds would blow away with sunshine getting warmer closer to noon. And that's what happened. 

With a bit of editing, I found these red specks down in the valley from the Pisgah Inn. We were at 5000 feet elevation there.

Mt. Pisgah is at 5721 ft in elevation

The view from the Pisgah Inn is looking south.

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Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. 

-Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (1892-1975)

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Carl Sagan lays out what he calls his “baloney detection kit.” This assembled metaphorical box of tools for diagnosing fraudulent arguments and constructing reasoned ones involves these nine principles:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives.
• See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
• If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.
• If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
• Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified…. You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

As McCoy points out, these techniques of mind have to do with canceling out the manifold biases present in our thinking, those natural human tendencies that incline us to accept ideas that may or may not coincide with reality as it is. If we take no trouble to correct for these biases, Sagan came to believe, we’ll become easy marks for all the tricksters and charlatans who happen to come our way. And that’s just on the micro level: on the macro level, vulnerability to delusion can bring down entire civilizations.

“Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking,” Sagan cautions. “But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world — not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.” McCoy urges us to heed these words, adding that “this kit is not some perfect solution to the world’s problems, but as it’s been utilized over the last few centuries” — for its basic precepts long predate Sagan’s particular articulation — “it has enabled us to create technological innovations and useful explanatory models of our world more quickly and effectively than ever before.” The walls of baloney may always be closing in on humanity, but if you follow Sagan’s advice, you can at least give yourself some breathing room.