Constructive Debating for the Space Community

It is important the the space community be as constructive as possible. If we want to see the development of a space based world economy, then we must not waste resources attacking each other. Yet, the space community is at war. A common complaint on The Space Show, hosted by Dr. Livingston, is that many members of the space community are vicious and nonconstructive.

I do not believe this is intentional, we all want this common dream to come true, none of us would do anything to prevent this common dream from coming true. I believe the cause is current education system failure to teach logic and critical thinking, preventing those who go through the educational system from presenting arguments in a clear, precise manner.


I am writing this piece to true to end this silly war with in the pro-space community. We need every resource, every passionate person and every thought. We can not discourage the people we need to complete this goal because of vicious attacks. We all must avoid the following logical fallacies at all costs, not only do they make our arguments weak, they destroy our community.


Ad Hominem Arguments: Ad Hominem Arguments are defined as “disputing a position or argument by criticizing its source” (1). This type of attack robs the space community of the precious human resources we need to move forward. For example, let's say a person, without an engineering, science, or math degree, designs a rocket. According to this hypothetical person's calculations, this rocket will reduce launch costs. It would be destructive to argue against the rocket design by attacking the person's education level and competence. This sort of attack will demotivate a highly interested amateur rocket designer. These attacks could even force this hypothetical, highly motivated person out of the space field forever. A more constructive response would be to attack the design itself, pointing out flaws and explaining those flaws. This will allow that highly motivated person to grow and learn, increasing that person's value to the space community.


Straw Man: Straw Man is defied as “disputing a position by exaggerating it, misrepresenting it, or otherwise distorting it. Putting negative spin on an opponent's ideas” (2). A common counter argument seen in the space community is claiming an idea is “anti-space”. As an example, just because someone disagrees about space solar power does not mean that a person is even against space development; that person could be pro-space but anti space solar power.


Furthermore, attacking those who disagree with space development and exploration will only strengthen their positions, so it shouldn't matter whether or not someone believe are disbelieve in this field. We must be kind to both our side and the opponent's side to move forward, because in the end, our opponents are our watch dogs, they will catch errors we miss. That, is essential to this dream.


“Argument” from Outrage and Scare Tactics: These fallacies create a negative environment within the space community. A hostile environment is not conducive creativity, which we need lots of.


Group Think: “When loyalty to group values affects one's own judgment”. It leads to the acceptance of ideas formed and believed by the group without critical thought. Agreeing with ideas without critical thought could allow for flaws to be accepted as truth.


Source(s):

All quotes: Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker. Critical Thinking. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007

A Flaw in My Last Post

I have a very strong bias in support of NASA and all they do, so in my last post, Creativity in Negative Times, I assumed that NASA would be open to internal innovation. But, I have found evidence that proves this is not the case. While dropping entrecards I ran into a mispelt bog [sic]. The first post was an embedded youtube video called Barriers to Innovation and Inclusion directed by NASA astronaut Andrew S. W. Thomas. This video is based on real events that occurred at NASA.
The video details the following roadblocks to innovation at NASA. They are...

• Superiors wanting to stay within their comfort zones
• Compartmentalizing employees
• Assuming ideas from contractors means they are wasting working time and contract restrictions (It is possible that a passionate employ spends his/her free time doing work)
• Fear of retribution from superiors and other departments
• Fear of losing a contract because of an idea
• Lack of trust in employees and deferring problems to the chain of command
• Conformity to the current direction/Institutional inertia
• Ad Hominem Arguments (Attacking the source of an argument or an idea to disprove the argument or idea)
• Risk aversion
• Worrying about the process to develop the idea with disregard of the outcome.

So, it seems that NASA is not as supportive of innovation as I originally assumed. I found an article about someone who tried to fix this called Wayne Hale's NASA Blog: Stifling Dissent, but after working on fixing this problem...

Still, it is hard to tell how effective the change effort has been. Even though I personally try to solicit information from a variety of folks in a variety of places and ways, the reports were generally that alternate opinions are welcomed, dissent is accepted and evaluated, and we are doing better than ever.
But the anonymous polls and [Internet] feed back says there is still a lot of work to be done.
Recently I had a couple of events which affected my thinking on this. I have been out of the Shuttle Program manager job for almost a year now and a trusted coworker just a week ago told me that people in his organization had been prevented from giving me important alternative choices for some program choices that occurred a couple of years ago. This was staggering. It was happening right in front of me and I was totally unaware that people - who I trusted, who I hoped would trust me - kept their lips sealed because somebody in their middle management made it clear to them that speaking up would not be good.

I will write further blog posts about this flaw I found, it is fascinating and I want to understand why it occurs. This is only my opinion though, is there good that can come out of what I think is a flaw in NASA's management.