Ranthropologist

Tag: critical thinking

  • Poli-critical Thinking

    Poli-critical Thinking

    I’ve been off the blogging radar for a while. It’s not that I haven’t been inspired to write – I have ideas all the time. But I’ve been spending too much time in the noise. There are so many things to read, so many voices clamoring to be heard over the din, and sometimes I got lost and overwhelmed with it all and I despair that there will ever be any understanding. I know I have friends who read my posts, and I appreciate it, but when I started this blog I nurtured secret hopes that others might read it, too. I have no desire to be well-known for what I write; my goal is to simply to share ideas in the hopes that others might find them useful. And in spite of my calling these posts “rants,” I also had (have?) hopes that I can hear other people’s ideas, even if they disagree with me. I feel strongly about many things but I have never expected other people to automatically agree with everything I say, or worse, be afraid that if they challenge me I’ll respond with rudeness or condescension. I have been guilty of arrogance and pretension, but I’ve gotten better at recognizing those traits in myself, partly through writing this blog. I don’t want to be a smug liberal, the type of ideologue who assumes that because of education and experience I’m somehow better qualified than other people to offer my ideas. And I don’t want to make broad generalizations about people I disagree with, either. It is too easy to believe that people who are anti-vaccine, for example, are crazy or stupid or brainwashed rather than sincere people with sincerely held, even if mistaken, beliefs. I am strongly pro-vaccine, and the science is on my side – but has anybody ever won an argument where they started out by saying “You’re a terrible parent because you won’t vaccinate your kids”? This is why I am such a fierce advocate of critical thinking skills. And yes, duh, everybody thinks critical thinking is important, and most people probably consider themselves to be good critical thinkers already. But in reality, it takes constant practice to keep from getting tangled in the thorns of fallacious thinking.

    So why have I decided to write a post now, after being silent since January? Because I want to talk about critical thinking in online commentary about politics. I’ve considered writing posts about specific political topics, but I made a sort of informal decision to just stay away from politics during this election cycle. I don’t expect to change anybody’s mind about who to vote for. The few things I’ve posted on Facebook have mostly been my dismayed reactions to Donald Trump, or shared articles that address misconceptions about certain candidates or their ideas. And full disclosure, for the sake of this post: I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, though ideologically I agree with much of what Bernie Sanders represents (and I have no space here to talk about why I decided not to vote for him in spite of that agreement). But as far as I remember I have not posted anything online exhorting friends to vote for Hillary or Bernie. Even the things I’ve posted about Trump have been mostly preaching to the choir, and the few online friends I have who are pro-Trump are certainly not going to change their minds based on anything I have to say. But if you are going to post about politics, the more you avoid logical fallacies, the stronger your argument will be. So here, in no particular order, are some of my observations and suggestions about how to think poli-critically.

    Facts. I’ve ranted about facts before, so I won’t get too detailed here, but people tend to confuse facts and opinions. Here’s the deal: a fact is a verifiable truth. An opinion is a judgement about a fact. So, politically, it is a fact that Hillary Clinton (whether through her campaign or the Clinton Foundation) has taken donations from Monsanto. It is an opinion that this makes her an unfit candidate for president. It is a fact that Monsanto manufactures the herbicide glyphosate; it is an opinion that this makes Monsanto an “evil” corporation. Don’t confuse the two. You can develop your own opinions, but you do not get to make up your own facts. (On a related note, I hope to soon write a post that’s been percolating in my brain for quite some time about Monsanto, glyphosate, the organics industry, and genetically modified crops. I have my issues with Monsanto, but glyphosate and GM technology are not among them).

    Ad hominem. Explained at length in this post, in politics ad hominem manifests itself almost exclusively as name-calling and insults. As I asked above, has anybody ever changed your mind by calling you an idiot? And even if you aren’t strictly trying to change somebody’s mind, have you had any interest in continuing a dialogue that involves name-calling and insults? Differences of opinion can be illuminating and constructive – and sometimes you actually do change your – or somebody else’s! – mind. That won’t happen if you engage in ad hominem.

    Fundamental attribution error. You can read about this fallacy in more detail here. In politics, this tends to manifest itself as a sort of ideological tribalism: me and my group are right because we are more knowledgeable or ethical or clear-headed or realistic. The other side is wrong because they are uninformed or ignorant or brainwashed or bigoted. You make right choices because you are smart and ethical; they make wrong choices because they don’t know any better or because they are morally flawed (this is also ad hominem). To avoid this error, it is wise to bear in mind that people with different political ideas think YOU are the one who is uninformed, etc. Consider that they may actually have a logical, rational, and well-thought-out basis for their beliefs, even if you don’t agree (see fact vs. opinion above). Obviously this isn’t always going to be true of another’s opinion – but it may also not be true of  YOUR opinion.

    Confirmation bias (aka the echo chamber). This is one of the biggies, which is why it has made multiple appearances in my writing. This is the classic human tendency to only remember the things that support our points of view, and to forget or reject everything else. It is what causes people to stop looking as soon as they find what confirms what they already think. People also have a tendency to surround themselves with like-minded people and sources of information, which is why confirmation bias creates an echo chamber of self-fulfilling opinions. It happens to all of us, all the time. Do you believe that Hillary Clinton is innocent of anything other than poor decision-making regarding her email server? You can find all the articles you want to support that opinion. Do you believe that the Democratic party’s elite stole the primary from Bernie Sanders? You can find all the articles you want to support that idea, too. And when someone points out an article or a set of ideas that refutes your opinion, you can reject it for any number of reasons to resolve the cognitive dissonance and continue confirming your bias.

    The Genetic Fallacy. One of the most common reasons to reject an alternative point of view is to impugn the source. This is an example of the genetic fallacy, wherein you reject or accept an argument based on its origins rather than on its merits. So in the case of politics, if an article in The New York Times points out Donald Trump’s many lies and inconsistent statements, a Trump supporter can reject it because it comes from a paper that is generally considered to be liberal. I have to say I find it highly amusing that people of all political stripes will use the epithet “lamestream media” to lambaste and reject any article with which they disagree. And the genetic fallacy works the other way when you use it to lend credibility to a source. This has echoes – pun intended! – of the echo chamber, because we tend to seek out the sources we already agree with. So to avoid this thinking error, rather than accept or reject a source because of where or who it comes from, weigh the argument on its actual merits. Sometimes even the sources we trust are wrong, and the ones we usually reject are right! I admit that this is one of the hard ones for me – I want to believe in the credibility of my go-to sources, but I have made it a habit to fact-check against multiple sources before forming a solid opinion.

    I’m going to stop here for now, but I may add to this list in a later post. I have no illusions about this little post making any difference to anybody, but it feels good getting it off my chest. And I make no claim whatsoever to being immune from these same mistakes, but I have made a conscious and continuing effort to be aware of them in my thinking and my writing. It’s why I continue to engage, civilly and respectfully, with the people with whom I disagree (although I generally won’t tolerate name-calling). It’s why I can debate somebody on politics or culture in one post, and post a happy face on a picture of that same person’s kids in another one. It’s why I teach anthropology. And it’s why, after being careful to avoid errors in my thinking as much as possible, I will ultimately reject certain ideas and embrace others, and defend my point of view logically but passionately. If I do come across as smug or condescending at times, well – that’s just something else to work on, and I have no doubt that this political season will give me plenty of opportunities.

  • Facts and Fauxpinions

    Facts and Fauxpinions

    A few days ago a friend linked to an article on my Facebook page and asked “is this you?” I read the article, titled “No, It’s Not Your Opinion. You’re Just Wrong,” and laughed. I laughed at first because it sounded like something I would say, and I laughed as I read the article because it made a serious point in a humorous way. This is not just a Daily Read post because I want to expand on some of the things mentioned in the article. I suggest reading it first, because the author, Jef Rouner, makes beautiful work out of distinguishing between facts and opinions. The point of this post, inspired by Rouner, is to provide a discussion of some of the critically important concepts he addresses.

    I continue to feel concerned about the availability of so much information through the internet. Our ability to do a Google search and open ourselves to a world of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but it has a dark side. I’m not going to harp on the point here since I’ve addressed it many times before, but a lot of the problem comes from an inability to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies, data and anecdote, science and snake-oil. Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. We deploy motivated reasoning to justify our beliefs and choices. We are easily bamboozled by sophisticated nonsense. We are prone to a whole host of logical fallacies, a subject I’ve only barely managed to skim so far. We tend to stop cold on our quest for knowledge when we come across a source that backs up what we already want to believe, and scoff at or dismiss information that refutes our beliefs; that is, we fall prey, sometimes willingly, to confirmation bias. And we will reject the arguments of others by throwing out a few non-arguments in response: “I’m entitled to my opinion.” “I’m allowed to have my beliefs.” “I have the right to free speech.” Aside from the fact that these statements are not actually arguments but are instead information-free, knee-jerk, defensive cliches bereft of any logical content or reasoned rebuttal, they are also frequently wrong.

    To begin: an opinion is not a fact. Neither is a belief. This reiterates what Rouner says in his article, but it bears repeating: an opinion is a judgement of a fact. A fact is a verifiable truth. The earth’s existence is a fact. That the earth is round is a fact. That the earth orbits the sun is a fact. These facts have all been verified. None of them is an opinion. If someone says to you, “In my opinion, the earth is flat,” they are not actually stating an opinion; they are making a claim that the flatness of the earth is a fact. They are wrong. Opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with it. This example is obviously ridiculous, but it applies to other areas of fact. Evolution is a fact that has been verified. Yet there are plenty of people who will say that in their opinion, evolution – especially of humans – has not occurred. Again, this is not an opinion because an opinion is a judgement of something. So, you could say that in your opinion, scientists who study evolution are arrogant; but if you say that evolution, in your opinion, is wrong, you are using opinion the wrong way. You cannot substitute an opinion for a fact. If you do not think evolution occurs, then by all means marshall whatever evidence you can in support of your hypothesis, but leave your opinions out of it.

    This confusion of opinion with fact happens all the time. It tends to occur when people are unable to marshall the evidence to support their ideas, so all they can say is “Well, I’m entitled to believe that evolution didn’t happen.” But are you? Are people really entitled to dismissing known facts because it happens to not match with their ideological predilections? I sometimes wish we could do this, but it just doesn’t work: facts don’t give a shit about your opinions or your beliefs. I think that when someone rejects a fact because it is not true, in their opinion, we should call those fauxpinions.

    Related to the unsupported, non-entitled opinion is the lament that a person’s right to free speech is being suppressed by those who deign to argue with, dismiss, or ignore a person’s non-factual fauxpinions. Again, this happens when a person is unable to pull together a body of actual facts and evidence to support their side of the argument. I wish I didn’t have to point this out because it’s so achingly obvious, but somebody disagreeing with you does not constitute a violation of your freedom of speech. A debate does not constitute a free speech violation. A ban or an unfriending is not a free speech violation. A deleted comment is not a free speech violation. Someone pointing out where you may be wrong is not a free speech violation. Someone having a different opinion from you – and yes, even though I have harped on facts, it is obviously possible to have different actual opinions about a fact (e.g. different opinions on the death penalty) – is not a free speech violation. Even the loss of commenting privileges on a website, or the deleting of your account, is not a free speech violation.

    So what is a violation of freedom of speech, then? It is when the government suppresses speech. That’s it. It’s really that simple. If any government official, agency, bureau, department, et al deletes your Twitter account, then, my friend, you have experienced a violation of your freedom of speech. If Twitter deletes your account, they are not violating your free speech. They may not be justified, but Twitter, Facebook, the comment section in your local paper, your Tea Party cousin, your socialist aunt – none of these entities is obligated to listen to you or allow you to say whatever you want to say. So please, for the love of speech, do not whine about how your rights have been violated because somebody blocks or deletes or, god forbid, disagrees with your speech. You may have the right to say it, but I have the right to disagree with it, ignore it, or dismiss it.

    We all have a lot to learn online and from each other. We will all have different opinions about the facts we encounter. We will all sometimes feel dismissed or ignored by people who disagree with us. And we should all learn to back up what we say with logic and reason, avoid fauxpinions, and know the difference between facts and opinions. Our speech will be better for it.

  • Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    I really shouldn’t have to point this out, but after a few days of seeing the primacy of the Kate Steinle killing on Fox News (as seen from the treadmill at my gym), I am compelled to share the data. Here’s the deal: Steinle’s killer was an illegal immigrant. The shooting took place in San Francisco, which is a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants – a designation that means the city will not use municipal funds to enforce federal immigration laws; nor will they routinely question people about their immigration status. Here’s the part I shouldn’t have to point out: Steinle’s killer, Francisco Sanchez, did not kill her because he is an illegal immigrant. Being an illegal immigrant did not cause him to shoot her. There is no causative element between his immigration status and his actions. Granted, if he wasn’t in San Francisco, he couldn’t have killed Steinle; but it is a massively fallacious and illogical cognitive leap to assert the proposition that being an illegal immigrant is causative. Correlated, yes; causative, no. Here’s the basic assertion: Sanchez killed Steinle. Sanchez is an illegal immigrant. Therefore, illegal immigrants are killers. This is like saying that all fish swim. I also swim. Therefore, I am a fish.

    I realize that I’m simplifying this – I don’t think any rational person is actually proposing that all illegal immigrants are killers or criminals. But the sensationalizing of this story and the framing of it as a consequence of illegal immigration gets to me, because the data do not support the proposition that illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminal. That’s where we get to the Daily Read for today. This article from The Economist gives the data, which show clearly that Latin American immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. It’s a brief but illuminating read that, among other things, reports that “America’s major cities, and the country as a whole, have seen a significant decline in rates of violent and property crime over the past 30 or so years. Crime has fallen even as the proportion of Americans born on foreign soil has grown, and as rates of unauthorised immigration have gone up.” So as far as I’m concerned, it’s irresponsible and disingenuous for Fox News and other media outlets to claim that Steinle’s death is a direct consequence of illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, and worse, that immigrants to this country are more likely to be criminals.

    Not Here to Cause Trouble

  • Opinions Unhinged

    Opinions Unhinged

    Lately my motivation for writing has been at a low ebb. Even posting more than occasional “Daily Reads” has been an effort. It’s not because I’m not reading anything worth sharing; it’s more that I’ve started to feel overwhelmed with how much there is to share. I use the media aggregator site Feedly to gather all my news sources in one place, and if I fail to check it before the end of the day I’ll often have more than 200 headlines tempting me to click – and I’m only gathering feeds from 14 sites (ranging from NPR to Jezebel, with some blogs thrown into the mix as well). I end up feeling exhausted by it all, even though I end up bypassing many of the articles. Often I will click on a promising headline only to find the article wasn’t worth it; or even worse, give in to the temptation to click on something that is more titillating than thought-provoking (Jezebel does this to me all the time – although the site posts many worthwhile and thoughtful articles, they are also awash in cute animal videos and celebrity gossip). But I’ve decided that the most exhausting part of this whole exercise is cutting through the ideological mud-slinging and self-righteous preening I encounter in much of what I read.

    I am so. tired. of people burying what are otherwise worthwhile arguments about important issues in a heap of hyperbole about how people who have a different point of view are worthless pieces of shit. I am sick of seeing headlines in publications like Salon that describe conservatives as “unhinged,” “foaming at the mouth,” and “lunatic.” I am so over reading descriptions of dissent as “blistering” or “harsh” or “scathing” when the opinions themselves turn out to be reasonable and well-founded critiques. Why does everything have to be described using the most over the top adjectives possible? And more importantly, why is it that having a different opinion makes a person mentally ill?

    This is really the crux of my problem. When you dismiss an opponent as insane, that means that you are not engaging with the meat of their argument. Publications that trade in hyperbolic descriptions and headlines are engaging in click-bait tactics, and it is to the detriment of the carefully considered arguments and opinions that the articles themselves often contain. I realize that these publications need to make money, and page-views are critical to the bottom line… but we as readers are being done a disservice. Moreover, the arguments and opinions themselves are also being ill-served. Believe me, I have my visceral reactions to some of the points of view of people with whom I strenuously disagree; Ann Coulter, for example, makes my blood boil (and not incidentally, she is a good example of a person who cynically leverages hyperbolic and vitriolic attacks into a scheme to separate a certain segment of the population from their money). But in the end, trading in ad hominem attacks and ridiculously over the top exaggerations does no service to reasonable and intelligent debate.

    This is a paradox I have long pondered: the person whose views you find so objectionable finds your views to be equally objectionable. A person who is opposed to gay marriage feels just as strongly about the rightness of their take on this issue as I feel right about my view that marriage should be available to all. This does not make the person who disagrees with me unhinged. People who embrace conservative views genuinely believe that their approach is what is best for the country (and the world), just like I genuinely believe that progressive principles are what is best. How are we ever supposed to have any sort of constructive conversation about our differences when we – and the media we are exposed to – label those with different views as crazy? Why do we take the easy way out by calling names and thus ignoring the substance of what a person believes? By doing that, we run the risk of overlooking sincerely held – and potentially damaging or dangerous – beliefs; that is, if we can arrogantly dismiss someone as crazy (or ignorant or stupid), then we are missing the opportunity to spell out, with rationality and reason, why we believe that person to be wrong.

    When someone defends the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of Southern culture and history, rather than as a symbol of racism, how likely are you to get that person to listen to and acknowledge the deeply rooted and horrifying history of chattel slavery associated with the flag if you start the conversation by calling that person a racist? (If you have any doubt whatsoever that the Confederate battle flag was flown in the cause of defending slavery, I implore you to click that link.) When a person states that their religion prohibits them from acknowledging marriage as anything other than one man and one woman, what are the chances they’ll engage with you in a productive conversation if you tell them they are a bigot? Is an anti-vaxer suddenly going to start vaccinating his kids because you tell him that he is a bad parent who is putting others in danger? Is it possible for us to acknowledge that people can have strongly held beliefs about things that we may consider to be wrong without assuming that those people are 100%, irredeemably bad? The world is not that simple.

    I want to be very clear here: I am not making an argument for excusing racism, prejudice, intolerance, irrationality, or bigotry. I am making an argument for engaging with people respectfully, even if we don’t respect the basis of the opinions they hold (although, to be sure, there are some opinions and ideologies that don’t deserve to be engaged with at all because they are so extreme, e.g. Holocaust denial or the Westboro Baptist Church. In that case, I think the best approach is to not give those people a platform). As I said above, the person you disagree with feels just as strongly about her opinion as you do about yours. Would you be willing to listen to what she has to say if she leads off by telling you that you are crazy for having your opinion? Nobody’s mind has ever been changed by insults; if anything, minds are solidified when faced with personal attacks and vitriol. Sadly, in this new media world of clicks, ads, and anonymity, I’m afraid that the attacks will win, and debate, rationality, and respect will continue to lose.

  • Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Are you confused by science reporting about health and nutrition? Have you given up listening to what the media reports about our diets and what foods are good (or bad) for us? If you answered yes, I’m not surprised, and I fear that reading this article will give you even less confidence in media reporting on these important topics. But I still think you should read it. John Bohannon explains the hoax he perpetrated with the help of some German researchers in a bid to illustrate how easy it is to dupe the media into publishing bad science. In brief, Bohannon did an actual scientific study that generated real results showing that eating a bar of dark chocolate every day accelerates weight loss – but his methodology was full of holes and his conclusions were weakly supported. Nevertheless, when he got his study published in a pay-to-play “science” journal  that will take any study as long as the author pays the fee (an enormous problem itself and the topic of a future rant), and then released an accurate – but detail-scant – press release trumpeting his results, it was snapped up immediately and uncritically by media outlets throughout the globe and published with no scientific fact-checking.

    The upshot? We need more critical thinking not just in our media but in media consumers. People need to be taught how to critically evaluate how a study was conducted and ask the right questions: what was the sample size? What statistical tests were used to calculate the results? How many parameters did the study measure? I realize that learning how to do this takes education and experience, but we need it. It’s not enough to rely on media outlets to do it for us when their bottom line is driven by clicks, shares, and page-views. And this article also illustrates why it is so unbearably easy for the unscrupulous purveyors of modern snake-oil to fool their customers with sophisticated nonsense. It’s a large part of the reason the anti-vaccine movement has any traction at all, why the Food Babe has any followers, and why homeopathic remedies have yet to be banned from store shelves. We have to learn for ourselves how to spot bad science.

    I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How.

  • Web of Echoes

    Web of Echoes

    I remember when I got my first email address. I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University in my third or fourth year (somewhere around 1993-94) when the administration decided to assign every student, teacher, and staffer their own personal address. I don’t recall being particularly excited by this development; I do remember that I embraced the usefulness of email pretty quickly.

    Coming around to accepting the internet in general was harder. If there was a World Wide Web, I didn’t know about it yet, and my brief exposures to technologies like Gopher that were used to remotely search the computers at other universities only made me confused. I didn’t see the point, and I dismissed the idea that I would ever need to use this new technology. I was fortunate that my roommate had a computer that I used for word processing (if I remember correctly, the program was WordStar, and it relied on function keys since this was a pre-mouse PC), but it never occurred to me that I would have a need for one of my own once we went our separate ways after graduation. Even as I got better at using the computer in my job at the Interlibrary Loan department at the HSU library and saw its utility for making it easier to match people with books and articles from other institutions, I had no inkling of what the future held. Stubbornly, even as I moved back to San Diego and got a computer expressly for the purpose of emailing with my long-distance boyfriend who was still at HSU, and signed up for my first commercial internet account (AOL, of course!), I told myself that I had no need for “surfing the web.” What a silly waste of time, I scoffed.

    Who’s scoffing now?

    Over twenty years past that first email address, I am now a daily and steady consumer of web-based content. I get my news from online sources. I communicate primarily through email at work (and by text with friends). I open my day with a bowl of cereal, a mug of coffee, and Chrome; I read online articles in the company of lunch at work; I skim through my social media accounts while eating dinner at home, or while standing in line at a store, and even right before going to bed. And for a while now, I have come to feel that all this exposure to online content has made my brain feel… clogged. A month or so ago, I started addressing the clog by reducing the amount of time I spend on social media (I only skim through the top few Facebook statuses when I get online now) and I don’t click on every single titillating headline on Feedly, where I aggregate most of my news and information sites. I had developed a severe case of FoMO (Fear of Missing Out, for the uninitiated) and that was contributing to the brain clog. I feel a little more clear now that I have stopped manically scrolling through post after post on FB until I find the last one I saw. I have a little more time to read actual paper books now that I am only clicking on the Feedly articles about real, hard news and mustering up the will to pass up the gossipy soft “news” about celebrities or car wrecks or scandalous-sounding crimes (I have written about the difference between hard and soft news before, only I called it News and news).

    I am feeling more at peace with the amount of time I spend reading online content, but I am still uneasy. In particular, I feel that we long ago passed the point of diminishing returns with the internet. As much as there is to praise about the democratizing power of the web and the ability of people from all over the globe (at least, those with internet access, which even in the United States isn’t everybody by a long shot) to access information, there is as dark side to all this instant access. The dark side is the fact that anybody who can access the web can add content to the web.

    Why is this bad? The answer should be obvious: people can say and write whatever they want, and they have no burden of proof. There are obviously websites and sources that are more trustworthy than others, but that doesn’t stop people from finding things on websites that are misleading, manipulative, or outright fraudulent and accepting them as true. The internet is the modern version of the snake-oil salesman’s wagon, but instead of traveling from town to town looking for marks, the snake oil peddlers of the internet are never more than a click away. For somebody like me, who values critical thinking, the scientific method, rationality, and skepticism, this aspect of the information age is ominous indeed. The democratizing power of the web has bred a vast and expanding digital library full of truth and fiction, but there is no librarian to make sure all this content is appropriately catalogued. It has become an enormous echo chamber, where we shout what we want and hear it echoed back to us from the sites and articles and social media posts that we already want to believe. No matter how crazy an idea may sound, I can all but guarantee that you can find some source backing it on the web.

    None of these ideas should be revelatory, and I expect that everyone reading this has already drawn these conclusions. Still, as I continue emerging from my brain clog and find new ways to cope with the ceaseless internet echoes, I believe these are things worth thinking about. We would all do well to think more carefully about the amount of time we spend online, and certainly to think very carefully about the conclusions we draw from what we read. It’s too easy to believe that the echoes are the only sounds we need to hear.