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.

Critical Thinking: Checking The Source

Note: The gray links go to relevant sources. The purple links go to ads.

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.