A few weeks ago I shared a video Daily Read that discussed why getting angry with people who disagree with you is a sure-fire way to get them to dig in their heels about their side of the argument. The video offered some great insight into how to have calm discussions with people that are more likely to get them to think about their position – and yours – rather than erupting in rage. Today I have another short video called “This Video Will Make You Angry” that discusses why sharing videos or other online content can cause us to get so angry in the first place. The video’s narrator calls these shared ideas “thought germs,” but he’s essentially using the original concept of memes (which didn’t used to mean a funny picture with a customized caption – it originally meant an idea or bit of culture that spreads from person to person and was coined by Richard Dawkins). The video argues that thought germs that make us angry are more successful because they are more likely to spread and be reinforced. It’s a fascinating video with some thought-provoking ideas, and it helped reinforce my growing knowledge that getting mad is getting us nowhere.
Tag: debate
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Logical Fallacies: The Straw Man
Over the past year, I have been increasing my consumption of online news from a wide range of sources. I am the first to admit that many of my sources come from a particular point of view. I make no secret about being politically liberal, and I feel that I hold my own very well when arguing for my positions. That said, I have started to become uneasy about how many people – myself included – can be easily led to accept an idea or an argument when it is tailored to support a specific ideology. This is why I advocate so fiercely for critical thinking and for exploring all sides of an issue. The thing is, it takes work to understand the other side, and it’s easier to accept the building, and then the tearing down, of the straw man.
I want to say from the outset that obviously not every argument for or against a position is based on the straw man fallacy, but it is frequently deployed, especially in the online debates that take place in the comment sections of the many sites I read. The danger of the straw man is that, for people who don’t do the work to explore the opposite side, they can accept the straw man as the actual position of the opposition. So what is the straw man? This is the fallacy of misstating or misrepresenting the other person’s position, and then making arguments that refute the misrepresented position. Essentially, it means that you are not actually refuting the other side; you are refuting your misrepresentation of the other side. This can be quite deliberate, or it can be inadvertent, but either way it does not serve the debate.
You see straw men all over the internet landscape, from mainstream news to social media to political sites, advocacy groups, and even charities. It is so much easier to win somebody to your position if you create an easily understood and fearsome straw man and then talk about how desperately it needs to be destroyed. The problem is that most arguments are much more nuanced than the opposition will present them to be. Now, I firmly believe that there are some arguments that do not deserve anything beyond an initial hearing. For example, the idea that to be balanced, news outlets must present both (or multiple) sides of an issue can have the unfortunate consequence of giving air time and the veneer of credibility to ideas that have absolutely no merit (for example, the views of young earth creationists – or to be honest, any creationists!). However, this is not what I am talking about with the straw man. The straw man is not an idea with no merit like young earth creationism; it is an idea that does not actually represent the opposition’s point of view but it is presented as if it does. A terrific example of this is the abortion debate. The straw man for pro-lifers is the idea that the pro-choice crowd is advocating for the heartless murder of cuddly babies. On the flip side, the pro-choice side creates a straw man when it says that pro-lifers are anti-woman and want to see women dying in back alleys with bloody coat hangers between their legs. Obviously I’m exaggerating to make a point, but I think you can see why straw men like this could rally people to a cause.
So what am I arguing for? Critical thinking, as always, but specifically I am asking people not to use the straw man. Take the time to try to really understand what the other side believes. Be open to listening (even though it may only take a few minutes to realize that you have good reasons to disagree). Don’t disrespect your opponent by inaccurately simplifying and/or twisting their position so that it’s easier for you to knock it down. I think this sort of thing is what divides us. It leads to screaming headlines and outraged reactions as straw armies rise and fall.
I hope it’s obvious that I realize there are people who believe in and will support some truly terrible, offensive, misguided, and/or frightening ideas, and those are the real positions worth fighting against. But what good do we do when we get people riled up over something that doesn’t actually represent the other side? How can we process, debate, and try to create actual change in the world if we aren’t discussing what other people actually believe? Is it really satisfying, in the end, to burn up all that straw and leave the real man alive and kicking? Or is it that we are afraid to contemplate that the other side may actually not be as awful as we make it out to be, and we will have to engage with an argument that may be well developed and defensible?
This is a tangled collection of ideas, to be sure. I want to reiterate, if it’s not clear already, that falling prey to – or deliberately deploying – the straw man fallacy against another’s position does not mean that the actual position is worth defending! But you still need to aim your attack at the other side’s actual argument. There is too much sound and fury over all our cultural conflicts already to waste time building and destroying straw armies.
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Logical Fallacies: The Red Herring
The red herring is an argument that I see deployed again and again, and I’m never entirely sure if the person deploying it is even aware that they are bringing up issues that are tangential to the debate at hand. The phrase originates from the days of fox hunting, when the scent of a red herring was used to distract the hounds from the pursuit of the fox. That’s exactly what the red herring does in an argument: it distracts the participants from what is really at issue, and they find themselves talking about onions when they started out talking about apples.
I get very frustrated when people deploy the red herring, whether they are doing it deliberately or unconsciously. Actually, it’s the unconscious deployment that gets to me the most, because it tells me that my interlocutor does not have a firm grasp on what we are really debating. I honestly think it’s a defense mechanism for most people. They bring up side issues as a way to distract from the fact that they really have no answer to whatever point their opponent is making. (As an aside, I want to clarify that my use of words like argument and opponent is not meant to say that I expect every difference of opinion to lead to anger; but when people disagree about something and they engage in conversation about it, they become like opponents in a refereed debate – only without the formality of an actual referee. Of course, sometimes the debate does devolve into an actual argument that is heated with emotion.)
The red herring seems to come up regularly in arguments that are about sensitive subjects such as gun control or gay marriage. I generally see it used when a person is arguing from emotion rather than from logic. For example, I might say that stricter gun control laws could have saved the lives of some of the 194 children who have died from gunshot wounds in the year since the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012. Someone deploying a red herring might say “But what about all the people who used guns to defend themselves since Sandy Hook?” There may well be many cases of people deploying guns in self-defense since then, but that is not what the argument at hand is about. Bringing up guns used in self-defense is a distraction from my hypothesis that stricter gun control may have prevented the deaths of some children. My argument says nothing about whether stricter laws might have hindered those who used guns to defend themselves. Although that may well be the case, it is not the point of this particular, specific debate.
Another situation that I’ve encountered many times is when the red herring is used to put people on the defensive. It usually takes the form of a question, wherein your interlocutor will say, “So you’re saying that we should (such-and-such illogical leap)?” It is so easy to be distracted by this and to start defending yourself from the stinky fish being lobbed in your direction! As another example, if I say that I am opposed to the “stop and frisk” policy in New York City because I think it unfairly targets minorities, a red herring-lobbing opponent could say, “So you’re saying that a suspicious looking person should never be stopped by police?” Of course that’s not what I’m saying, but if I lose my cool and chase the herring, the chance to talk intelligently about the merits of the stop and frisk policy is lost.
I’m using broad examples on purpose to try to illustrate the red herring. Obviously, in the course of having conversations about these issues, many different points will be made about different aspects of particular issues. And in many cases, I’ve found, no matter how hard you try to keep your debate partner on point, they will keep tossing the fish. The hardest part when you are trying to concentrate on a specific point is not allowing yourself to be distracted by the scent of the herring, and to keep your eye on the fox… or in some cases, to simply disengage from the hunt.
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Logical Fallacies: Ad Hominem
It’s been a while since my last post, primarily because much of my attention has been focused on my other endeavor over at the Rock and Shell Club. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been nurturing several rants, large and small. I am occupied by the usual topics of critical thinking, the over-saturation of social media in our daily lives, and the peaks and valleys of capitalist consumerism. One goal I’ve been considering for quite some time is to develop a curriculum or course description for an anthropology class that centers around the topic of critical thinking. More specifically, I’d like to teach a class that discusses how and why people think about things the way they do. Anthropology is ideally suited to such a topic, because anthropological analysis requires cultivating the ability to see things from other points of view.
Michael Shermer wrote a book that I would require for my class: Why People Believe Weird Things. This book clarified and helped me conceptualize many of the things I was already thinking about the workings of the human brain. I believe that having a good understanding of how people think is absolutely crucial to living a fully aware life. Even more important, understanding how thinking works, and how it can trip us up, helps us be more careful about our own thinking process. It’s one thing to criticize and evaluate others’ ideas; it’s something else entirely to be able to turn that process back onto your own analyses. I think the world would be a better place if more people did this. To that end, I’d like to discuss, in a series of posts, some of the basic logical fallacies. These are the things that seem to be the most common in people’s thought processes, and the things I think everybody should know and look for in their own thinking. They are also the things I’d start with in my eventual class on critical thinking.
A fallacy in thinking basically means coming to an irrational conclusion that is not supported by the facts. Instead of arguing from a factual or rational basis, logical fallacies tend to revolve around arguments that stem from emotion, appeals to the spiritual or supernatural, personal attacks, or errors of cause and effect. They fall into many categories and some are more common than others. One of the most common, and simplest to explain, is the ad hominem argument. An ad hominem argument is generally understood as one in which you attack the arguer rather than the argument. This is commonly perceived as a personal attack, where you berate, insult, or criticize the person with whom you are arguing. However, it is important to note that an ad hominem argument does not have to be an attack per se; it is simply an approach by which you say something about the arguer rather than the argument. So, to take a simple example, you could say “You only support gay marriage because your brother is gay; therefore, gay marriage shouldn’t be legalized.” In this argument you aren’t saying anything negative about your interlocutor; but neither are you saying anything factual, rational, or logical in support of the position that gay marriage should or shouldn’t be legal.
The ad hominem argument does absolutely nothing to advance your case. If it is the kind of ad hominem that actually stoops to the level of a personal attack, then I feel it may actually impede your case – not in a rational sense, because the ad hominem argument does not in any way negate the logic (or lack thereof) of your position – but because it degrades and impedes constructive discourse. No matter how much you may personally disagree with someone’s position, no matter how much personal animosity you may feel towards them, no matter how egregious or offensive or bigoted or immoral you may find their position to be, none of those feelings have any bearing on the logic of either your or your opponent’s position.
I started with ad hominem not only because it’s the simplest, but it is extremely common and, I believe, extremely damaging. If you use it as a personal attack, your bring yourself down. If you use it to question or draw attention to the arguer rather than the argument, it does nothing to help prove your case. Believe me, I know what it feels like to get angry during a debate, and I know what it feels like to want to call your opponent names or question their character. Resist the urge. If your position truly has merit, that in itself should give you the ammunition you need in your fight.
Speaking of which, once you’ve retired the ad hominem argument from your arsenal of false weapons, you are on your way to making more room in your quiver for logical arrows. In the next post, I’ll address some of the more complicated, but still common, logical fallacies that remain.