this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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I have doubts that any credible and serious scientific discovery would involve this degree of anthropomorphism when it comes to assigning motivation to an animal's behavior.
But let's say I ended up with a hecking case of brain worms who devoured the vast majority of my critical thinking skills and was able to completely ignore that first point, this still doesn't quite compute. If you've ever had cats and/or dogs in your life, then you are probably also aware that each one has its own unique personality and behaviors. Even if we assume that they have human-like rationalizations and emotional capacity, does it even make sense to believe that they all uniformly perceive people in the same uniform manner?
This part was very obnoxious and not needed fyi.
I mean, he's walking through his very solid reasoning for why the headline fails the sniff test, despite being a factoid that is frequently repeated through many channels by many people.
People talk all the time about how we need to strengthen critical thinking skills in the general public. Outside of formal training, this is what that looks like: a culture of publicly explaining the thought process that leads you to question something that many others have accepted without question. The knee jerk reaction of criticizing such statements as rude or overly negative is a big part of why these skills have such a hard time spreading, since people who have the skills feel it's not socially acceptable to share their conclusions.
You're very lenient with what you call a skill considering the part I mentioned doesn't convey any reasoning. Maybe I'm glossing over something but to me it sounds like a bunch of self-righteous filler. I'm not arguing with the contents of the statement that follows, I actually agree there. I just felt compelled to address the pretentiousness because it almost made me skip the informational part.
"This claim leans heavily into anthropomorphizing non-human things, and that is very rare in rigorous science. Therefore I suspect this is not an accurate representation of rigorous science."
Is clear and valid reasoning
Is clearly conveyed by the part you mentioned
Presents a straightforward reasoning tool people can apply more generally to help them identify cases where scientific results are likely being misrepresented. Exactly the kind of tool that someone can adopt to become better at applying critical thinking in their life.
Is much more useful in a broader set of circumstances than the more specific arguments that appear later in the comment to further deconstruct this specific case.