Hand Waving

These aren't the droids you're looking for... -- ObiWan? Kenobi
A term often overused by people who have no imagination, talent or intuition. They believe in only those of the past that wrote books about, and published papers about, but not realizing that which they dearly believe in, had itself come from someone who was once accused of HandWaving concerning that very thing. A term soon learned to be hated by many, and over-used by those who are in fear of losing a discussion, because the discussion has entered into things beyond their ability to digest and understand. So... they themselves scream and shout while jumping up-and-down and waving their hands violently in the air while pointing their finger, closing their eyes and ears, with episodes of obsessive chanting "HandWaving!, HandWaving!, HandWaving!, HandWaving!, HandWaving!... You see, it simply is not in the books, so how could it possibly be?...

--NonTopAnonymousDonor

Huh? It looks like something I might write, but I didn't write it. --top

Yes, I know. The 'Huh?' applies to the content, not the signature.
In an argument, "hand waving" is drawing or assuming conclusions without evidence. Outside of an argument, it typically refers to skipping over a complex explanation or assuming it is obvious. E.g., "Sam did a lot of HandWaving when asked how the rendering engine would work."

That the "sin" is "insufficient evidence". Why not just say "insufficient evidence" and explain why it's insufficient using the existing formal fallacies? Vague criticism is often useless. Here's an example algorithm for evaluating evidence: 

  if (evidence.count()==0) {
    print("No evidence given.");
  } else {
    while (i = evidence.getNext()) {
      analyzeInTermsOfFormalFallacies(i);
    }
  }
"Why not just say 'insufficient evidence' and explain why it's insufficient using the existing formal fallacies?."

Saying "you're HandWaving" is shorter, and HandWaving isn't simply insufficient evidence, it's no evidence at all.

It's often too lossy in the way it's used because it's not specific about where the specific problem actually is. It provides insufficient detail. In other words, it's too vague and does not provide enough detail for the author to go to the specific spot where the specific fallacy is and fix the alleged problem. It's like the error message, "Unknown error in application X, The application will be closed."

Huh? Making an assertion without justification is called handwaving. E.g., "Object oriented programming is clearly the obvious choice to use when developing business applications because of it is a uniquely suitable paradigm for such problems." The assertion is without evidence. Better would be "Object oriented programming is the obvious choice to use according to Erich Gamma, as described in <reference>," or "Object oriented programming is the obvious choice for the following reasons <insert bullet-points here, each based on logic, rhetoric or references.>

And if it's really used in place of "no argument given", then simply say, "no argument given". It's only one more and eliminates half the tree (algorithm above).

"Handwaving" is a familiar, informal, and appropriately deprecatory term for "no argument given". It has the added benefit of being seven keystrokes shorter than "no argument given".

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with it in that way. Perhaps it's region-specific? And the vast majority of the case where it has been used against me, I *did* supply an argument. It existed. It may have been disagreed with, but it did exist. It appears to me that it has morphed into a lazy, impatient, and rude way to say, "I'm just not happy with your evidence, so I'm going to be rude to you as punishment". If you misuse it or use it inconsistently, then grows fails to have any usable meaning and will be discarded by the reader as noise, like a screechy windshield wiper.

You might be familiar with a usage in which the term "handwaving" is applied to a situation in which extensive verbiage is supplied in order to give the appearance of evidence or argument, but none is present. Occasionally, someone confuses the verbiage with valid evidence or sound argument. If the person supplying said verbiage is, in fact, the confused party, that might account for misunderstanding the term "handwaving".

Still, focus on the specific verbiage that allegedly has the flaws in terms of the specific flaws with it, not summary judgments. They probably think they are perfectly valid arguments, and dismissing them with wide summary judgment is poor discussion form and fodder for flame-wars. And, it dilutes the term, making it barely more useful than "stupid". It appears to be lazy name-calling or non-specific intimidation to the other side and/or readers.

From what I've seen on this forum, most participants start out providing lengthy explanations to those frequently accused of "handwaving", but eventually become exasperated when the extensive, time-consuming, and carefully-crafted explanations appear to be ignored. In such cases, accusing someone of "handwaving" is as much an expression of long-term frustration as it is descriptive.

"Carefully crafted" my ass. The "frustration" is mutual, but at least when I give a burst of emotion, I don't lie to myself and claim it was done for a logical or lofty reason. It's merely textual emotion in all its human rawness and ugliness, a personal catharsis that will not "fix" the other party. That's all the hell it is. You deceive yourself into believing your BS like a Vulcan in denial. -t

Nice bit of HandWaving, there.

Everything I do in your eyes is HandWaving. Thus, why mention it? Tell me when I am not hand-waving, perhaps, to cut down on writing. I suspect it will only be when I produce a certified published double-blind peer-reviewed study, but you are not obligated to that, because you have a Free-to-Handwave card. From my observation, your algorithm is simply: -t 

  if (! contains(tops_argument, certified_published_doubleblind_peer_reviewed_study)) {
     print("Stop your HandWaving!");
  }
{RE: 'tops_argument': it seems to me that TopMind is arrogant enough to think himself so 'special' that there are unique rules against him personally. Confirmation bias for the anti-toppie conspiracy poisons his 'observations'.}

You're not handwaving when you supply any evidence for your assertions. Unfortunately, that seems to happen rarely.

Based on examples you've supplied, it's merely that you forget where the evidence was given, and just remember the introduction of a concept or claim. Thus, perhaps the fault is with your memory. I'm just saying it's something to consider and could explain our different interpretation of what's going on. I agree that ThreadMess format tends to push related materials apart making it easy to get lost. But, perhaps you can find a more polite way to indicate you don't know where the connections are.

No, it's not that I've forgotten where the evidence was given. It's that the evidence is rarely given at all, or that your evidence is not compelling, i.e., it is not convincing to the audience. The latter is a universal problem, not particular to this wiki, and probably the basis for most scientific debates. (Debates due to LaynesLaw are perhaps more common to engineering than science.)

Now you ware saying that "hand waving" may be used where evidence exists, but that it's not "compelling"? That's a different story. And, the "audience" being you? I didn't see anything close to a formal or signed poll. Besides, votes don't make truth (except maybe in definitions). If you disagree with my evidence, then disagree like a professional and move on.

"HandWaving" is certainly sometimes levelled against party B by party A when party B fails to provide what party A regards to be a cogent or compelling argument.

For example, I may say that based on Microsoft's past actions of A, B, and C, I project that MS will be fairly likely to do action D. You may disagree, and that's fine, but don't be rude about it. We take the known facts and past observations we've personally made about MS and the industry's reaction to it, and make assessments. Often our assessments differ. When you call the other opinion "hand-waving", you are suggesting that you are closer to the center of the universe and that your opinion has more weight for unstated reason. Accusations like "hand-waving" are simply unprofessional at that stage. And, are not useful to both the author and readers. "Hand-waving" is merely a rude stand-in for "I disagree with you" as far as I can tell. There's no distinguishing differences I can see between disagreements that "deserve" the hand-waving tag and those that don't, rendering it unusable. From my perspective, it looks like nothing but social immaturity.

Merely tagging a post with "HandWaving" isn't rude. It is a clear indication of a reader's appreciation (or, more accurately, lack thereof) for a particular argument (or, more accurately, lack thereof).

It is rude, because it's non-specific and usually used repetitiously. It also implies a motive to distract, like the magician association that somebody else mentioned. Perhaps it means something different in your mind, but you have proven a poor sample case of an average English speaker.

It's not rude, because it is specific (it means a lack of evidence or explanation) and repeated only as often as it occurs. What is rude is pointlessly tossing in an AdHominem attack. Was it necessary to suggest that I have "proven a poor sample case of an average English speaker", especially when said "proof" is (yet again, it would seem) an example of HandWaving?

From topic link intro: "An argumentum ad hominem is any kind of argument that criticizes an idea by pointing something out about the people who hold the idea rather than directly addressing the merits of the idea." [emph. added]

Evidence itself doesn't have "hands". Thus, in the head of most readers, the "hand" refers to the accused author, not the idea. And the hand is "something about the people", and not the argument itself. Thus, it logically follows that it's AdHominem.

Further, if somebody is bothered by it, then stop doing it if there is a sufficient and easy alternative. Create an "insufficient evidence" tag or something. Don't argue that they shouldn't be bothered by a phrase; instead simply use an alternative. Most people learn this lesson by the time they are a teen.

So... Your objection is to the term 'HandWaving' itself, not to its substance? You don't object to being accused of lacking evidence, only to being told you lack evidence via the phrase "HandWaving"?

It still may be rude if not done in a proper context, but at least it better communicates what you really mean. "Hand-waving" is too jargony and can be interpreted many different ways. (If "no evidence" still rude, then it doesn't belong in this topic anyhow.) And please make a distinction between "no evidence given" and "insufficient evidence". That way I know if I need to point out spots that you perhaps missed via a PageAnchor or the like. I'll make an honest attempt to fix specifically-identified problem areas. I simply ask for clarity. Nebulosity is frustrating. State specifically what the problem is, and specifically where the problem is. Vague criticism is usually worse than no criticism. -t

Wouldn't it be better for you to learn to construct sounder arguments? Then this would be much less of an issue. Then, if you are still accused of HandWaving, an appropriate response is to make an even more watertight argument. That way, you might have a chance of winning the debate. You certainly won't win it by being offended.

My arguments are just fine. You are just biased. Whenever I try to dissect and narrow down specifically what you are complaining about (which is tough because you are evasive), it's often just a difference in opinion rather than some universally objective falsity. I do not believe you are capable of objective assessment when it comes to your HobbyHorses. Your ego taints your objectivity. -t
Hand waving is, among other things, a metaphor for avoiding communication.

Also known as magic hand waving or the Jedi mind trick.

Hand waving doesn't have anything to do with solving HardCodingProblems? or VooDoo. It's the practice, when confronted by a hard problem, to explain it away as an artifact of an incorrect point of view or an emotional reaction.

Used when: We hope that by hand waving the problem will magically go away.

It is often used to avoid an explanation when a problem hasn't been fixed but the symptoms have gone. Instead of acknowledging the difficult issue and working with another to analyze it and find a solution, it is simply made to magically disappear by invoking some explanation which seems to cover the facts but in fact simply hides them through various techniques.

Some hand waving tricks are: etc.
Hand waving was always the way my physics professors would discuss 'cutting out' some fairly complicated, not-really-relevant-to-the-discussion mathematics during lectures. "If we wave our hands over the chalkboard, we get the following..." -- ChadThompson

traditionally, this is how some physics professors deal with fairly complicated, extremely-relevant-to-the-discussion mathematics as well ;)

[I actually had a calculus instructor who would use this technique for cutting out long winded and boring proofs. Sadly, he sometimes also cut out vital and impenetrable proofs, leaving his students in the dark. A buddy of mine joked that when he was solving heavy math on the job and he'd get to one of these kinds of problems he would tell his boss that he'd been trained to wave his hands.]

See: JD Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics for the seminal work on hand waving. ;-)

A maths professor at University of Helsinki used to warn people that the following would be a load of inexact hand waving when he started (finally) to talk about things like graphical representations and real-world-ish applications for the theory being taught.

He could have meant it literally being that it's about graphics which he was attempting to "draw" in the air.
During a meeting about some new interface, a colleague of mine described his new idea as The Handwave of the Future
Waving hands can be a kind of "show me" in the best sense. Some things are hard to describe formally in words. It is easier to point to the thing, or draw it, or draw enough of it that the other person will recognize it from their own experience. A problem arises if they don't have that experience.

Really. Hmm. If you can't put it in to words then you don't know it yourself, pal. Show me the money!

Yaa, really. If you think you said what you meant then you are dangerously close to megalomania. Is it 22:40 just now? 22:41? 22:40:45? 22:40:47? 22:40:47.75? I humbly put forward the notion of progressively precise inexactitude (There must be a way to say this. You know how it is: we can be very precise and dead wrong ... maintaining accuracy while working with minimal precision, something like that.) ... moving towards closure ... it's a fractal sorta cosmos. -- BenTremblay

You can put it into two paragraphs of dense mathematical prose, describing how four things inter-relate with a wide variety of strange Greek letters and function names, or you can write some diagrams on the board and do some gesturing. There's no way out of needing to do the former, but that doesn't mean the latter doesn't have its place and will often be much, much easier to understand. That's why things like "Physics classes", even at higher levels, still have classes, and not just "book readings". I can put it into words, but the words may be well-nigh incomprehensible compared to the demonstration.
In the mathematical world hand waving has a bad reputation, similar to "proof by intimidation", where you simply announce that a step in a proof is obvious, with the implication that you can't really prove it. Sometimes you are even right about that. :-) Proof by intimidation involves raising one's voice and works best in a classroom situation. -- RobertField

Gee, that almost sounds like PointlessEvangelism. -- JasonNocks

I don't think I've ever heard "hand waving" described in a positive sense as at the top of this page. It always refers to magic hand waving. Drawing useful pictures or providing a real explanation is not hand waving. The term comes from magicians' practice of doing things that distract the audience from what is really happening. -- KrisJohnson (with minor edits, sorry)

As a former stage magician, I always took magic hand waving to refer to Prestidigitation, or SleightOfHand. We would sometimes even call it hand mucking. Distracting the audience is MisDirection?, and is best done using attractive assistants :) Cheers, -- JasonNocks
Use PerlLanguage? Need results, fast, but tired of all that tedious programming stuff? Use Acme::Handwave!

http://help-site.com/c.m/prog/lang/perl/cpan/02/acme/acme-handwave/_d8861
This whole topic/complaint is too vague to be useful. It needs a serious rework to have any usable meaning.

So you say. What evidence to you have to claim it "too vague to be useful"?

It lacks anything close to precise rules/algorithms for determining an objective Boolean result. How does one distinguish from "changing the subject" for example? Some examples of phrases processed through a rule-set may help clarify and/or test such a system.

So you're saying that, for a topic or complaint to be useful, it must have precise rules and algorithms for determining an objective boolean result? Can you defend that position? Also, can you provide a precise set of rules and algorithms for determining the existence of precise rules and algorithms? If not, your own complaint against HandWaving is too vague to be useful, according to you.

I won't claim it's the only way, but a vast majority of "good" rules/principles are that way. The alternatives are usually pretty ugly, convoluted, and have too many factors to test properly. I suspect most uses are cases where the claimer cannot or is unwilling to be more specific about the criticism, such as, "You still have not explained how you got from step 6 to step 7." KeepCriticismNarrow. It is about as specific as "stupid".

You complain about HandWaving because it is vague: there are some cases where qualification as "HandWaving" is open to dispute. I suggest this doesn't hinder its utility. Some things are clearly HandWaving, some are clearly not HandWaving, and others are open to reasonable dispute. Humans can make much use of such a concept. You claim that this is "ugly, convoluted, and have too many factors to test properly". In light of KeepCriticismNarrow and your above statements, your argument is logically inconsistent and hypocritical because (a) it lacks precise rules/algorithms for determining "ugly", "convoluted", and "too many factors to test properly", and (b) you do not 'narrowly' criticize the above description HandWaving.

Perhaps you should lead us by example, Top. Make it clear even to SchizoidGibberishWikiAuthor exactly where improvements need to be made, but KeepCriticismNarrow. Surely you you can do that much, right? If you can't point out precise flaws in blatantly "off-topic" nonsense - and I don't have a precise rule/algorithm for determining whether a subject is "off-topic" - then how can you expect people to point out precise, narrow flaws in even more subtle and deceptive forms of nonsense such as HandWaving?

Isn't there a better-defined existing fallacy your complaint fits? Red-herring, perhaps? Strawman? These are just my best guesses to what you really mean since I don't think "hand waving" carries sufficient precision to narrow it down or exclude the formal ones. I cannot read your mind. -t

We don't need a new formal fallacy anyhow (FallaciousArgument). You haven't showed that the existing ones are insufficient. And if you do create a new one, please I beg make sure the sucker is clear-cut. Let the Vulcans create and test them, not Picasso's. -t

Sometimes I'll deviate from this "rule" myself. However, if somebody suggests that it's not specific enough, then I try to turn back to the classics to flesh out the details. -t
See: VoodooChickenCoding, CargoCult, XpAsCargoCult

NovemberZeroNine CategoryJargon
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