Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/06 10:40Oh my GOD, Joe Rogan and Phil Plait debating the moonlanding. This is possibly the best podcast in broadcasting history.
It's so nice hearing Phil on a high quality studio mic instead of on the phone or skype. Hearing Micheal interject here and there makes this even more bad ass.
I think I just had an orgasm on my ipod.
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jdmack
User Karma: 4
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/06 13:28I missed the show yesterday, and the podcast wasn't available before I left for work this morning, but I am looking forward to it! I met Phil Plait several years ago, which led me to check out his website, which led me to listen to podcasts of shows on which he appeared, which opened up a whole world of skepticism and critical thinking that I didn't know existed, which eventually brought me to the Penn Jillette show. How 'bout that?
J. D.
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mindme
User Karma: 44
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/07 05:58jdmack wrote: I missed the show yesterday, and the podcast wasn't available before I left for work this morning, but I am looking forward to it! I met Phil Plait several years ago, which led me to check out his website, which led me to listen to podcasts of shows on which he appeared, which opened up a whole world of skepticism and critical thinking that I didn't know existed, which eventually brought me to the Penn Jillette show. How 'bout that?
J. D.
That's a great story.
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Yeah they should have called it part 2 or something. I just assumed it was a repeat. Almost didn't download it.
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cafink
User Karma: 0
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 10:35I enjoyed the second episode much less than the first. In the first episode, Joe and Phil discussed some of the "weird" issues that conspiracy theorists have with moon landings. It was pretty interesting to hear. In the second, all they did was fight about politics (instead of science), and hardly touched on the moon landing itself at all--just a small tidbit about moon rocks.
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Jersey Nick
User Karma: 7
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 13:51I was bummed that they wasted half the show on the "Werner von Braun was a Nazi" tangent. I was relieved that Goudeau finally stepped in and put an end to it.
I feel terrible for Phil, but I guess he's chosen this battle. I am missing the entertainment value of this exchange - is it funny because Joe is crazy?
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Snerd
User Karma: 20
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 14:04Jersey Nick wrote: I was bummed that they wasted half the show on the "Werner von Braun was a Nazi" tangent. I was relieved that Goudeau finally stepped in and put an end to it.
I feel terrible for Phil, but I guess he's chosen this battle. I am missing the entertainment value of this exchange - is it funny because Joe is crazy?
Allow me to correct that:
it is funny because Joe is crazy.
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glessweasel
User Karma: 2
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 14:21I thought the first show was good, but this second one was disappointing. I have to disagree with penn when he said Rogan was "humble", the whole episode was Rogan trying to bulldog phil around. Rogan kept bending over backwards to defend his position in a loud obnoxious voice. As soon as Phil would think about his words or stumble a little, Rogan would take advantage and ask another louder question. This is the same reason Dawkins doesn't debate often, because you can win any debate even from ridiculous position (like the theory that we didn't land on the moon) Penn should have mediated a little better.
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Sc00ter
User Karma: 3
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 14:37glessweasel wrote: I thought the first show was good, but this second one was disappointing. I have to disagree with penn when he said Rogan was "humble", the whole episode was Rogan trying to bulldog phil around. Rogan kept bending over backwards to defend his position in a loud obnoxious voice. As soon as Phil would think about his words or stumble a little, Rogan would take advantage and ask another louder question. This is the same reason Dawkins doesn't debate often, because you can win any debate even from ridiculous position (like the theory that we didn't land on the moon) Penn should have mediated a little better.
"Critics object to the often unstructured nature of the debates, what they call a "shotgun" approach to presenting many arguments, bouncing from one issue to another by continually throwing out new claims without bothering to answer previous objections, each of which would require considerable time and information to refute, a technique which has been referred to as the "Gish gallop.""
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mddawson
User Karma: 5
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 19:48Gish once had a debate with Australian skeptic Ian Plimer, professor of geology at the University of Newcastle.
Plimer took a very aggressive stance and at one point offered Gish a chance to electrocute himself on bare wires since electricity, like evolution, is "only a theory."
If you can find it, Plimer's book "Telling Lies For God" is an interesting read.
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unigolyn
User Karma: 6
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 20:34Rogan is as crazy as a shithouse rat. The Nazi tangent was just plain ridiculous - the guy was a top level researcher, which meant party membership was required of him. Does Rogan also think people driving Mitsubishis are evil, because the Zaibatsu built Zeros during World War 2?
And his "I don't know who the cabal behind globalization is, but it's a fact that they exist" lunacy is almost as crazy as his implication that the Cold War could well have been a sham, with the Soviets being in on the whole hoax for... Well, how's he supposed to know.
He also suspects that NASA killed three astronauts because of a citrus fruit?
This sort of informal debate is completely unsuited for beating someone like Rogan - if they were given five-minute turns to speak uninterrupted, Plait would wipe the floor with him. I certainly didn't think Penn's praise of Rogan's knowledge was apt, because Rogan's debating style amounts to yelling, going off on tangents, and screaming "Gotcha!" when Plait didn't know some arcane minutiae of some lunatic theory of his.
I also love how his stance on the head of NASA resigning didn't change, but .
Rogan: "He stepped down two days before Apollo 11, why would he do that unless it was a hoax?!" Plait: "No, it was more like a year, and it was because Nixon got elected, which is normal." Rogan: "How do you know this? What was the EXACT date?" Plait: "Let me see... 'James Webb stepped down months before...'" Rogan: "See! Months! Mere months! Explain THAT!" Plait: "It says October 7th, 1968, which is almost a year before July 1969." Rogan: "That's not a year. You said year. Von Braun was a Nazi evildoer!"
So basically Rogan says "two days", an error of 283 days, then swiftly changes his position to "months" until that turns out to be nine and a half months, which means Plait was being inaccurate. Well, Plait got it wrong by 22%, while Rogan was off by 99.3%.
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Sesh
User Karma: 8
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 21:30Spot on, I couldn't agree more.
Rogan is an idiot. He views debate like it's some martial arts fight instead of a 2 way dialogue. He spends much of his time on his web forum arguing with people often college age backed up by some RoganNerd groupies and if he starts to lose an argument tends to come up with great counters like 'I'm richer than you.'
Conspiracy theorists really remind me of religious wack jobs. People like Alec Jones are the evangelists. Like religious people they hate the idea that shit happens and try and find solice in ludicrous arguments. They NEVER even 1% of the same effort attacking or examining their own nut theories as they do the more obvious truth.
One of the hundreds of examples of this is the 9-11 Pentagon conspiracy about the size of the hole and how it was a cruise missile rather than a plane that hit it. The fact that all the passengers on the flight 'disappeared' is brushed away as an almost insignificant detail.
After many arguments with them online I've come to the conclusion they're really not worth the effort.
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Sesh
User Karma: 8
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/26 21:32Sc00ter wrote: glessweasel wrote: I thought the first show was good, but this second one was disappointing. I have to disagree with penn when he said Rogan was "humble", the whole episode was Rogan trying to bulldog phil around. Rogan kept bending over backwards to defend his position in a loud obnoxious voice. As soon as Phil would think about his words or stumble a little, Rogan would take advantage and ask another louder question. This is the same reason Dawkins doesn't debate often, because you can win any debate even from ridiculous position (like the theory that we didn't land on the moon) Penn should have mediated a little better.
"Critics object to the often unstructured nature of the debates, what they call a "shotgun" approach to presenting many arguments, bouncing from one issue to another by continually throwing out new claims without bothering to answer previous objections, each of which would require considerable time and information to refute, a technique which has been referred to as the "Gish gallop.""
Great post. I've seen it done quite often and it bugs the hell out of me.
I think Dawkins talks about it in his book where he points out how much time it takes to scientifically prove every evolution.
It's good to know next time it happens I can just say "Gish gallop" and go and do something more productive with my time than trying to shoot them all down...
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unigolyn
User Karma: 6
Re:Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait! - 2007/02/27 01:08Rogan obviously bamboozled Penn into thinking he's worth the effort, because during the first debate, he claimed to be "skeptical" of the moon landing, saying he "had questions" and had gone out of his way to only look at "reputable" sites.
Once he sized Plait up, he realized he could just outyell him in a free-form radio debate and just went eight kinds of crazy. Comparing it to a martial arts match is very apt. If there is another Plait v Rogan, it needs to be a more formal debate.
But in truth, Plait is overkill for Rogan - any second-rate high school debate team member could demolish him.
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