Critical Thinking: Straw Men and Confirmation Bias

Last time I talked some about the importance of checking the source when presented with questionable or sensational information. I also spoke briefly about the Slippery Slope/Just in Case Fallacies, and quote mined/cherry-picked information.

Today I'll talk about the dangers of confirmation bias and the Straw Man Fallacy.

Confirmation Bias

Simply put, confirmation bias refers to people's tendency to seek out and place special significance on information that confirms, reaffirms, or validates their preconceived assumptions, hunches or prejudices.

For a great example of large-scale confirmation bias we can turn to pop culture: The fucking 2012 Mayan Calendar thing.

For anyone that has been locked in a Siberian gulag for the past ten years, the Mayan Calendar Thing has been a widespread conspiracy theory based on the ancient Meso-American Long-Count Calendar. The calendar 'ends' on December 21, 2012. By 'ends' I mean 'starts over.'

Now, the Long Count itself is a truly amazing accomplishment of mathematics and astronomy. Especially when one considers that they used a counting system grounded in a base of 20 (and occasionally 18,) unlike the Western world which uses the base 10 decimal system we're all familiar with.

Their math classes were fucking hard, though.

But that's not what we're here to discuss. Someone, somewhere, decided that since the calender ends on December 21st, that must mean that the world will end on December 21. Which is about as infantile as assuming your parents stop existing when they leave the room. Especially when considering that the Mayan's themselves didn't appear to think anything of the sort. For the Mayans it appears that the completion of a count was a reason to celebrate, such as the Western calendar turning 2000 (minus the Y2K nonsense).

But due to Man's natural affinity for adventure and mystery and narrative, the idea caught on.

This is where confirmation bias comes in. If someone approaches this suspecting that something big may happen on December 21, then there will be no shortage of evidence and predictions to reinforce that belief.

Just for some examples of what this evidence might look like, check out http://2012apocalypse.net/.

We've got predictions from the Bible, the Qur'an, and Nostradamus. We have natural disasters, world leaders and great wars. But the thing is this: Those predictions are so vague that they can be retrofitted to match anything at any time. That's the thing about predictions like that. If I was to write something like

     And lo, a great Beast shall arise in the East bearing a black crown
     Elevated above mortals he shall be heralded as the flying god
     His sign shall be the flaming bull
     His name shall be Archangel, Edom, Moab
    The youth of the world will supplicate at His feet
     By this shall ye know Him

the ink wouldn't even have a chance to dry before people could start linking it to modern events.

The Beast was Michael Jordan, by the way.

Add to this the fact that no one seems to be able to agree what, exactly is supposed to happen on December 21st. An extinction level meteor strike? Reversal of the magnetic poles? WWIII? The return of the Ancient Aliens? Galactic Alignment? Global spiritual enlightenment? The Rapture?

The fact is is that there is about equal probability of all of these happening: slim to none. For some of the less unlikely ones, well, a geomagnetic shift could happen. Or rather could begin to happen, since the process might take up to 10,000 years to happen.

Meteorite? Well, while that's certainly something that could happen at some point, at five months out I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed something.

Planet X? There is no Planet X/Nibiru. That hypothesis relied on gravitational anomalies in our solar system. But these anomalies are far too small to account for a planet. Besides, it would probably be visible to the naked eye at this point.

The fact is, there are only two things we'll know for certain will happen on on December 21st: The Long Count will start over, and the people that made fortunes peddling 2012 conspiracies will begin formulating their excuses and looking for new lines of work.

The Straw Man

There's recently been a movement by the politically correct crowd to have this fallacy renamed the Non-Gender-Specific Straw Person Fallacy. This is because people are idiots and pussies.

If you're going to rename it to something somehow less offensive, then go with the Training Dummy Fallacy, since that's what it refers to. Or the Scarecrow Fallacy, since scarecrows are awesome.

I am your friend! Your soul is safe with me!

Anyway, the story is back in the day when soldiers trained for combat they used straw men to practice their swordplay/marksmanship on. These straw men were, of course, much easier to knock down than real combatants. As a logical fallacy it refers to the technique of taking the opponent's argument or stance, making a ridiculous or inaccurate misrepresentation of it, and attacking the misrepresentation, instead of the the actual argument.

For some great examples of this just take a look at the Great YouTube Theist vs. Atheist Debate, or Any Political Humor Page On Facebook.

 

The above meme has been making the rounds of Facebook lately, so I'll use it. Now, atheism is the absence of a belief in god. That is what it is and all it is. This straw man is great because it's actually a lot more complicated than the point it's supposed to be arguing against. Atheism does not address the beginning of the universe, if it even had a beginning. It doesn't address abiogenesis or evolution, and it motherfucking goddamn certainly does not involve magic. It is the lack of a belief in god. A= without. Theism= belief in god. Atheism.

If that meme wanted to be accurate it would say: ATHEISM: Because theists haven't met their burden of proof. Which, admittedly isn't as humorous.

This is a really, really pervasive technique. Especially on the Internet. Some examples can include:

• Prima: I think we should have stricter gun control regulations.
• Secunda: Why are you trying to take away my Second Amendment rights?

Or:

• Prima: I think hard work should be rewarded.
• Secunda:  So you think billionaires shouldn't be accountable to the law?

Or:

• Democrats want to turn our country over to Islamic extremists.

Or:

•  Mitt Romney wants to implement a system of serfdom and debtor's prisons.

So it's definitely something to keep an eye out for. Particularly when the party being Straw Manned isn't around to defend their stance. Additionally, some people can use it in much more subtle and convincing ways than I've illustrated here.

 Next time I'll be talking about Paredolia and Equivocation, some big-ass words that describe some simple-ass things.