Thinking Clearly

Those who read this blog with any regularity likely know that I make frequent reference to the importance of critical thinking. As I have said before, it is an ideal toward which I am always striving, never claiming to have perfected the skill.

When I was teaching high school seniors, we did a unit on Orwell and the use of language combined with an examination of rhetorical devices and logical fallacies. I would have the students clip things out of the newspapers (yes, they were still fairly widely-read in those days), and they would tell the rest of the class what language errors and logical fallacies they found. The results were mixed, as there is a certain maturity, intellectual level and contextual knowledge needed for sustained critical analysis.

Nowadays, given the bombardment of arrant nonsense that social media and extreme websites embrace and spread, critical thinking is more important than ever; admittedly though, it goes against a strong and widespread inclination to indulge in what I call lazy thinking. 

Real thinking can be hard work, but the following helps in our efforts to spot and refute bad arguments.

1. Appeal to ignorance

This is when a lack of evidence is interpreted to mean a claim is real – rather than placing the burden of proof on the person making the claim. It's a fallacy that commonly underlines arguments for conspiracy theories. Ask one of the estimated 10 million-plus people who believe that lizards run the world about the evidence for their claim, for example, and they might counter, "Well, these lizards are too clever to leave any evidence – that's what makes this situation so dangerous! How can you be sure it's not true?" You might wind up scratching your head, but, hopefully, it's not because you've been persuaded; it's because they've set you the trap of the "appeal to ignorance" fallacy.

 

 2. Ad hominem

This is a fallacy in which a claim is rejected on the basis of an aspect of someone's character, identity, motivations, or even the relationships they have with others. Think of the health professional who is told that they are only recommending vaccines because they must be a shill for Big Pharma, or the research of climate scientists being dismissed on the basis that they must be ideologically motivated.

3. Slippery slope -

This is the argument that taking one step, or putting into place one measure, will inevitably lead to more and more drastic measures – like an object sliding down a slippery slope. [It could be called the Domino Theory of the mind.] It's particularly common in debates over policy. Think of the argument that some opponents of same-sex marriage made against legalising it in places like the US or Europe. In 2016, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that many people who were against the policy were persuaded by the argument that it would lead to greater sexual promiscuity across society, and threaten their own way of life. This particular argument is fallacious because, rather than debating the policy change itself (whether same-sex marriage should be legalised), the policy was dismissed because of the fear of its predicted outcome (the breakdown of traditional society).

4. Strawman

I see this one on social media, especially, all the time. It's misrepresenting the argument of the other side to make it seem more ridiculous, and therefore easy to defeat. Think of someone who puts forth a nuanced argument that excessive sugar intake may raise the risk of health issues like heart disease. A strawman response would be, "Oh, so what, sugar is killing everyone and should be outlawed? That's absurd!" This distorts the original argument, making it easier to defeat – a strawman.

 5. Appeal to authority

This pernicious argument holds that someone's credentials, fame or reputation alone prove that they must be right. If people perceive someone as an authority, they have an innate cognitive bias to assume they have expertise in all things (even subjects they have no background in). 

More problematic still is the version known as "appeal to irrelevant authority". Our tendency to believe something because, say, a celebrity states it, even if they have no expertise at all in the topic at hand – a classic tendency in today's influencer-obsessed world. But "irrelevant authorities" aren't always so obvious. Take arguments about climate change, for example, when sceptics quote someone like a theoretical physicist as an expert – despite the fact that theoretical physics generally has very little to do with climate science.

 

6. False dichotomy

Presenting a complex scenario as if there are only two either-or, often opposing options, rather than multiple options. Think of that famous, often-recycled and even ancient phrase, famously used by President George W Bush shortly after 9/11: "You're either with us or against us." It implied to the international community that they had only two options – back the United States completely, including in its invasion of Afghanistan, or consider themselves enemies. In reality, of course, there were a spectrum of other options nations could take, and kinds of allies (or enemies) they could be.  

7. Whataboutism (also called whataboutery)

Sometimes considered a type of red herring – a logical fallacy that uses unrelated information to redirect away from the argument's flaws – whataboutism is intended to distract attention. It describes when, normally in response to an accusation or a question, someone responds with their own accusation. 

In politics, one of the most infamous examples has been when Russia is accused of human rights violations, and its leaders respond "Well, what about the West?". While a whataboutism can serve to illustrate hypocrisy, it deflects from the original argument.

There is no magic elixir that inoculates us against the ignorance so pervasive in the world today, and the problems will only be compounded by the increasing use of AI. Whether it will prove a winning or a losing war remains to be seen, but do we have any real choice other than to fight the good fight?

 

 

The Signs Are Everywhere - Part 2

You can access part one here.

Logical fallacies

The reason why there's a 97% consensus is because of the many lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming. Human fingerprints are being observed in heat escaping out to space, in the structure of the atmosphere and even in the changing seasons. Another denialist technique used to counter the weight of evidence is the logical fallacy.

The most common fallacious argument is that current climate change must be natural because climate has changed naturally in the past. This myth commits the logical fallacy of jumping to conclusions. It's like finding a dead body with a knife sticking out of its back, and arguing that the person must have died of natural causes because humans have died of natural causes in the past. The premise does not lead to the conclusion.

The Signs Are Everywhere

It is only the ideologically blind who refuse to see the signs. Whether we live on the West Coast, Central Canada, or the East Coast, we are being affected by climate change, More protracted droughts. More wildfires. More oppressive heatwaves. Or unseasonably cool conditions.

Of protracted winters I will not even speak.

So what is to be done about the obdurate climate-change denier? Other than ignoring them, we can confront them with the facts they so willfully dismiss. We do that by first recognizing their sleazy and unscientific tactics. Here is how we do it:

One of the deniers' favorite strategies is to invoke fake experts.

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. This has been found independently in a number of studies, including surveys of Earth scientists, analysis of public statements about climate change and analysis of peer-reviewed scientific papers. How might one cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific consensus? One technique is the use of fake experts.

We see this in online petitions such as the Global Warming Petition Project, which features more than 31,000 scientists claiming humans aren't disrupting our climate. How can there be 97% consensus when 31,000 scientists disagree? It turns out 99.9% of the petition's signatories aren't climate scientists. They include computer scientists, mechanical engineers and medical scientists but few climate scientists. The Global Warming Petition Project is fake experts in bulk.

More to come.

Absolutely!

For me, one of the biggest offenses against logical thinking is absolutism, which essentially says there is only one right answer, that everything is black or white, with no gradations of gray. An example would be Vic Toews infamous assertion, when controversy erupted over his deeply flawed Internet surveillance bill, that those who opposed the legislation were siding with child pornographers. Another would be George Bush's claim, after 9/11, that 'You are either with us, or with the terrorists.'

Despite what the above examples might suggest, such thinking, sadly, is not the exclusive domain of those with limited intelligence; we all have the potential to fall into the absolutist trap. I am no exception, despite the fact that I try as much as possible to practise critical thinking.

Yet sometimes, there seems to be only one ineluctable conclusion to be drawn, as absolutist as it may appear. Such is the way I felt this morning upon reading Tim Harper's latest column. Entitled A hand stretched across the aisle in the print edition of the paper, the piece details the efforts of the NDP's Nathan Cullen and Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray to promote a one-time co-operative pact among the three parties in order to unseat Stephen Harper in the next federal election. Elegant in its simplicity, the plan would work as follows:

... seats held by the Conservatives in which the governing party received less than 50 per cent of the vote would be targeted for co-operation... Each of the three parties would nominate their own candidates and, assuming all three parties backed co-operation, the single candidate would be chosen in a run-off.

This way, of course, the centre and left would not be siphoning off votes from each other, which is what occurred in the last election, allowing Stephen Harper's crew to come up the middle and form a majority government despite being supported by only a minority of voters.

Joyce Murray avers that the majority within the three parties (this includes the Greens) support the notion, but what is telling is the reaction of the party leaders and leadership aspirants: NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has forbidden his MPs from responding to a letter from Green Party leader Elizabeth May championing the notion. Montreal MP Marc Garneau accused [Murray] of giving up on her party. And Justin Trudeau, of no fixed ideology, and, who once flirted with the idea of co-operation, has slammed the door on the prospect.

For me, there are no shades of gray, no nuances, in their flat rejection of the one strategy that could break Harper's stranglehold on Canada. Each is consumed with the bald lust for power. All other considerations, including what is best for the country, are secondary. I can see no other explanation.

So whether I am guilty of absolutist thinking or have drawn the only reasonable conclusion possible, I leave to the reader to decide.