Thinking about thinking (without the BS)
The first logic class I ever took was in a philosophy course in college. And that’s part of the problem.
I don’t mean the problem with me, though there are many. I mean the problem with our politics, our civics, and just the way we get along (or don’t) right now. One way we could help with all that, believe it or not, would be to teach logic the way we teach math: Start early, keep at it, and make it required. I’ve taught logic to fourth graders, proof you don’t need a Ph.D. to share the basics and get kids in the habit of evaluating claims and thinking about their own thinking.
One deceptively simple definition of logic is "the study of correct reasoning, especially regarding making inferences."
Logic is about understanding what follows from something else, what must be true, given a certain premise. It’s about the leap from A to B, or in logic parlance, from p to q, as in “if p, then q.” Logic is what takes us from a premise, via inference, to a conclusion. Let’s say all cats have tails. In that universe, if it’s a cat, then it must have a tail. Get it? Of course you do.
But speaking of cute (we hope), imagine a toddler who lives with a cat and recently learned the word “kitty.” One day, the toddler is cruising around in the back of mom’s car and spots a fuzzy, four-legged animal. The toddler joyously points at this poodle and yells “Kitty! Kitty!” Mom smiles and chooses not to shatter the happy moment with a distracted-driving lecture on logical fallacies.
I, however, have no such qualms (sorry kid): This toddler, perhaps forgivably, assumed all cute fuzzy four-legged animals are “kitty.” That’s a common flaw in logic, a logical fallacy, and not just among toddlers; it’s often called hasty generalization or overgeneralization. And this type of fallacy and others are everywhere. They’re used, believed, repeated, broadcast, printed, and repeated some more, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly. Once you’re familiar with them, you see them everywhere, especially in election season. I’ll bet a beer and a biscuit that after reading the prime offenders below, you’ll notice them regularly between now and November, and maybe for the rest of your life (again, sorry, but you’re better off). So here are just seven of many deadly logic sins, a most-wanted list of tried-and-true, mass-misleading fallacies, simplified and combined for easy reading:
Fancy Latin name: ad hominem ("to the person")
Simple description: Attacking the person, not the argument or position.
Example: In a debate, Candidate A makes a policy recommendation. Opposing Candidate B says, “What do you know? You’re just a [insert any term seen as denigrating]!” Candidate B has certainly disparaged Candidate A but in no way addressed the policy suggestion. Fallacious fail.
A similarly invalid and unfair cousin of ad hominem is guilt by association. A more positive but equally fallacious relative is appeal to authority. (Seen any attack ads or endorsements lately?)
Fancy Latin name: post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this therefore because of this")
Simpler science-y description: correlation is not causation.
So-simplified-it-actually-had-to-be-longer explanation: Just because event A precedes event B does not mean A caused B.
Example: In February of a U.S. president’s first term, the unemployment rate falls sharply. The president declares, “See! I’m a job-creating president!” In reality, it’s unlikely that the president — though his paddle is bigger than the average citizen’s — significantly changed the course of the supertanker that is the U.S. economy in one month. There are likely other reasons or causes for the improvement.
Yummier example: Crime rates rise as ice-cream consumption rises (that’s generally true, by the way). Fallacious reasoning: Clearly, ice cream is making people go insane with pleasure and commit crimes, plus ice-cream addicts are jacking people to get ice-cream money.
Actually, it’s just that ice-cream consumption and crime rates both tend to rise in summer. Along these lines, with the clear exception of my magic Boston Celtics socks, your lucky hat, lucky shoes, or — apologies to an AL.com Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist — lucky fish before Alabama games did not cause your team to win. Unless, of course, you literally (and accurately) threw it in the opposing team’s faces at a key moment during a game.
Fancy name: false dichotomy
Simple name: either-or thinking
Simple description: Simplistically presenting the complex, gray-area world as if there are only two choices.
Real example: After the 9-11 terror attacks, some political leaders said, in effect or exactly word-for-word, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Uhm … actually, no. Someone can hate the terrorists and be against what you’re doing, too. Reality is not nearly as simple as your kindergarten-level portrayal. It almost never is. Advertising often relies on a false dichotomy, too: Use this product or you’re a chump. Again, no. I can avoid your product as if it’s a smelly guy with a bad cough and a machete and yet still not be a chump. Matter of fact, since you tried that fake, weak, fallacious Jedi mind-trick to try to capitalize on insecurity, using your product is what would actually make me a chump.
Simple name: straw man
Simple description: Distorting an opposing argument so you can more easily knock it down.
Example: Candidate A says, “Foreign aid often includes products that U.S. businesses make, then get paid for, and even so, it accounts for less than 1% of the national budget. I’m OK with keeping foreign aid expenditures where they are.”
Candidate B responds indignantly, knowing a loud show of emotion will be broadcast all over, "Why do you care more about foreigners than you do about U.S. citizens?!?"
That, of course, is not what Candidate A said, but it might soon be spread around the world.
By the way. this response also includes another type of logical fallacy, a non sequitur, Latin for “does not follow.” Fallacious panderers often get their money’s worth by using several fallacies simultaneously.
Simple name: overgeneralization
Simple description: Drawing a conclusion based on too little evidence.
Toddler example: See above how every cute fuzzy four-legged animal equals a kitty.
Adult but still cat-lover example: “My cat has a tail, and so does every other cat I’ve seen, so all cats have tails.” (Understandable, but wrong. See Manx cats, mutations, rocking chairs.)
One dangerous brand of overgeneralization is stereotyping, or unfairly attributing a quality to an entire group of people, like “all Asians are _____,” or “women are _____.” Stereotypes are sometimes positive, often negative, but always wrong with specific, actual people. They’re also straightforward examples of how simplistic, sloppy thinking can hurt people.
Simple name or description: slippery slope
Simple description: You assume, without evidence, that one event will lead to other, often undesirable, events.
Real example: A well-known pundit in 2009 repeatedly said that allowing same-sex marriage could lead to humans marrying animals, including goats, ducks, dolphins and turtles. If it came down to it, I guess I’d choose a dolphin (I value intelligence and love to swim), but to my knowledge, there have been no hot-zones of inter-species matrimony since gay marriage became legal. Likewise, no matter your views on the subject, we can all agree that few if any human-turtle hybrids are walking around, which helps show the fallaciousness of that particular slippery-slope argument.
Simple names: false equivalence or false analogy.
Simple description: You assume things that are alike in one way are alike in other ways.
This fallacy is painfully common in politics and media perception. It’s even a crutch or a byproduct of overworked, lazy or otherwise compromised news producers: “I don’t care that 99.9% of the field is saying X! Get that bombastic suspiciously funded contrarian who’s saying Y in the studio and give him equal time — that’ll make for interesting (and misleading) TV!” Or, “You’re saying my political party is corrupt. So is yours!” Or, “You’re saying my news source is slanted. So is yours!” This reflexive both-side-ism appeals to our American egalitarianism. But facts aren’t egalitarian. As the heartless killer Marlo in “The Wire” explained, they’re one way, not another way. It’s highly unlikely that Political Party A and Political Party B commit identical transgressions and to an identical degree. It’s also highly unlikely that News Outlets C and D are biased, inaccurate, misleading or damaging in the same way, to the same degree, and to the same number of people.
These are some of the most common errors in logic that can mislead us even from true premises to false conclusions. But even airtight logic can bring us to false conclusions if a premise is false. Logic matters, and the facts it depends on matter, too.
Learning about logic, which is what joins facts into the web of how we understand the world, is one type of a valuable but rare endeavor: thinking about our own thinking. I know some of you would love to get that clueless uncle or gullible Facebook friend thinking, period, but thinking about our own thinking does improve thinking in general. It makes it less automatic, less reflexive, less taken for granted, and less impervious to the insane idea that we might be wrong. That’s crucial because, in addition to swimming in logical fallacies and purposeful misinformation, we’re all lugging around an unfortunate filter psychologists call “confirmation bias.” It’s one of the most important truths anyone can grasp: We all tend to accept evidence that supports what we already believe but dismiss what would undercut our beliefs. Given that backdrop, skilled media manipulators, and bias-boosting social-media algorithms, bad logic that seems like common sense is all the more seductive and misleading.
Carsen is a reporter and editor turned teacher who lives in Birmingham.
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