Critical Thinking: Checking The Source

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Critical thinking is one of my favorite things. Seriously, I wish it would have been stressed more when I was growing up. And that's probably why I get so irritated when people don't do it.

I was talking to a friend, and she pointed out maybe I should write about it. Sort of a tutorial of how to detect disingenuous bullshit. Which was a brilliant idea.

1. Check the Source

Whenever I hear an amazing or shocking claim these days it has become second nature for me to ask "How do they know that?" and then try to find out. In fact, the habit has become so ingrained that I forget that just a few years ago I hardly ever thought that.

And it's great advice. Particularly with our media here in America, where the paranormal and pseudo-science is generally equivocated with actual science. I mean, if I go to the Documentary section of Netflix and see a documentary on the evolution of primates next to a documentary on Ancient Aliens, how would I be able to tell which one was a real documentary, and which one was paranoid, sensationalist bullshit cobbled together from broken parts? The gods of ancient cultures were really aliens genetically modifying and artificially speeding the development of humans? How do they know that?

Answer: Check the Sources.

Here's a good example that showed up on my Facebook wall the other day: Leaked Army Doc Outline Plans For US Re-education Camps.

Now, I've already mentioned how I'm not immune to bias, and I generally go into anything on InfoWars expecting it to be total and complete lunatic fear-mongering. And knowing that about myself I know that I can't just call bullshit and move on. So, What does the source have to say?

• Side note: Often these kinds of alarmist propaganda pieces won't even have a source. More on that later.

Alright, so what's the claim? The claim is that InfoWars has gotten its hands on a leaked Department of Defense document that "contains shocking plans for “political activists” to be pacified by “PSYOP officers” into developing an “appreciation of U.S. policies” while detained in prison camps inside the United States."

That's some scary sounding shit, right? Well, lets look at the document, which can be found here.
 
Now, that document is over 300 pages of military jargon. And who the fuck wants to wade through that, right? Well, lets see if we can find a summary.

And right here, in the Preface, it describes the purpose of this document, which is that it "provides guidance for commanders and staffs on internment and resettlement (I/R) operations." Now, internment and resettlement is an unpleasant reality of warfare. It's not always gonna be a nice thing, and nobody really wants it to happen, but it does. Civilians get displaced, prisoners get taken, and those prisoners can be on both sides.

Now, since these kinds of things are going to inevitably happen, wouldn't it be nice if there was some kind of uniform Field Manual that could be used so that everyone knows what to do and how to do it? I mean, we don't want to just execute a bunch of newly homeless civilians for living in the wrong place, do we? We don't want prisoners just vanishing in a puff of lost paperwork, do we?

And that's what this field manual is. It's a manual of what to do if and when these kinds of things happen.

The InfoWars article continues with some really misleading cherry-picking of information to make it seem as if "man-made disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and incidents in the U.S. and its territories,” "may be performed as domestic civil support operations.” Which is really fucking misleading as these things go.

How do I know that? Well, I checked the document. Take the direct quote in the article, copy it, go to the manual, conjure our old friend ctrl+f (find,) and paste the quote in. Then it's merely a matter of reading the quote in context.

The section that the "may be performed..." quote was taken from was referring to "controlling civilian movement and providing relief to human suffering." Now, relieving human suffering seems pretty cut-and-dry, but what about 'controlling civilian movement?' That shit seems ominous as hell, right?

Well, not really. If there's about to be a firefight between two groups of lunatics with assault rifles you probably don't want children wandering onto the field. You also probably don't want possible insurgents or spies just wandering around the command post with a camera and a notebook.

Now for the most alarming part of the article, the claim that the DoD has "shocking plans for “political activists” to be pacified by “PSYOP officers” into developing an “appreciation of U.S. policies” while detained in prison camps inside the United States," that I mentioned above.

Okay, now that's a pretty good indication that this is an absolute Frankenstein of cherry picked quotes. The reason I think that is because instead of having "One long, unbroken quote that may give a clear understanding of what the manual actually says, like this," we have instead a "series of" short, "unrelated quotes," pieced together from different "parts of the manual" in an attempt to convey a very "different meaning" than was intended by the author.

And yes, I am picking on a conservative website, and yes, I do have a liberal bias in real life. But having said that, any time someone sees a quote arranged like this, there should be some red flags going off.

Now, the manual does provide guidelines that include Psychological Operations (PSYOP,) officers looking for insurgents, dissidents and malcontents that may try to organize and lead a revolt or cause disturbance while they are interred. Because those are things that might happen.

It is stretching credulity to imply that just because there may be a malcontent who may organize a disturbance while being detained, and that that malcontent may even be an American civilian on American soil, and may need "pacification programs using a variety of media. Music and news (from approved sources), I/R facility rules, and in-processing instructions are broadcast using facility loudspeaker systems augmented by loudspeaker systems organic to the tactical PSYOP detachment," this in no way implies that there is a plan to make this happen.

So, here's the conclusion I draw from this. InfoWars found a manual on what to do when both the military and Department of Defense are involved in an Internment and Relocation operation. The manual included guidelines for what to do in case this operation happens on American soil, as unlikely as that is. Infowars decided that since it could happen, that it will happen, and since it will happen, it must be part of a plan to make it happen.

 This is an example of the Just in Case fallacy, which was made by presenting a Straw Man of what the manual actually said. The case is made on the worst possible outcome, rather than the most likely. This is sort of like making a slippery slope argument like

1. Displaced Civilians are a reality of warfare.
2. Rules should be enacted to deal with such eventualities. 
3. The Rules should include domestic situations.
4. The Rules will be open to abuse.
5. The Rules will be abused.
6. Eventually, the Rules will be used to inter innocent civillians.
7. All dissent will be silenced via the Rules.

 and then cutting out steps 3-7.

Now, what do we do when a similar claim is made without a source? To give an example, I'll use a 'report' from Conservative Monster, a 'news' site that provides twitter-length news articles, such as

• "Russia and their Muslim terrorist friends in Iran will not be too pleased if Romney beats the Democratic voter fraud machine."

I'm not bullshitting when I say that that one sentence is the entire article.

"This seems so true!"

So, how do they know that?

Now, personally, I find it impossible that anyone would consider that a statement of prima facie fact. First of all, huh? Second of all, why would Russia and Iran be unhappy with Romney winning? Third of all, what evidence do you have of Democratic voter fraud? Fourth of all, what leads you to believe that Russia is friends with Iranian terrorists? Are you Facebook friends with Russia and notice Russia likes a lot of posts by guys named Muhammad SuicideBomb and Abdul FlamingMartyr? Fifth of all, if the Democrats have a 'voter fraud machine,' whatever that is, wouldn't that imply that they're using it to prevent Romney from winning? If so, how does Romney plan to beat the Fraud Machine? Throw a wrench in its gears? Hack its website? I literally have no idea what a voter fraud machine is or how it would be beaten.

The good thing about these kinds of claims is that since they're asserted without evidence they can be dismissed without evidence. This is popularly known as Hitchen's Razor, although I don't think it's officially recognized as a philosophical principle the way Occam's Razor is.

The bad thing about these kinds of claims is that they're such a pain in the ass to debunk or disprove. Since the author doesn't cite any sources or relevant studies we have no real idea where this information is coming from. Personally, I suspect paranoid delusion. But unless I'm willing to spend days and days searching for articles linking Russia to Iranian terrorists or finding out what the fuck a voter fraud machine is, and I'm not, then it's probably going to go unchallenged. Which is a shame, because some people will accept it as Gospel truth.

And I mean Gospel in the sense that even though it's provably insane and wrong people will still believe it.

Next time, assuming I don't lose interest like I usually do, I'll be discussing confirmation bias and maybe straw man arguments. Or maybe something else.