How to Persuade

A lot of people dismiss emotion in debate and by doing so they're throwing away their most effective tool. One of the goals of logic is to persuasion but it is simply not very effective because despite what some people say, humans are not primarily rational actors. We are emotive actors. Logic's real power is in evaluating the coherency of beliefs, not necessarily communicating them.

A lot more often than we'd like, we operate on an emotional conclusion and then attempt to use logic to rationalize it, and we can do this without being aware of it. This makes for an effective tool of manipulation or persuasion. It's an expedient backdoor into the human psyche.

Manipulation and persuasion aren't really that different aside from intent. If your goal is to sway someone, doing so for honest ends is simply persuasion while doing so for dishonest or malicious ends would be manipulation. Either way, you're working with something very powerful.

Playing on this, there are a number of effective tools of persuasion at your disposal:

• Emotional appeals, especially channeling powerful emotions like fear and anger: These cut right to our core, and if you can do that, it makes them want to believe you. At that point the other party will want to rationalize the position for you. Compassion can work too, but it depends on the opponent. Compassion is often more of a secondary tactic.
• Lead them to the idea to make them think it was theirs: This is a very effective way to appeal to someone's ego, and blindside them by incepting an idea. When done correctly you immediately make the other party deeply invested in the idea. At that point, you're done.
• Build a relationship with them first so they're more likely to listen. This can be easy to execute but does take some time to foster and maintain. It's also a secondary measure as you still have to persuade them, but it opens the door potentially to apply logic.
• Appeal to their self interest. This can sometimes work, but it's often difficult to get someone to believe you're appealing to their self interest, so it's a secondary tactic.
• Ask questions until they run out answers. This is effectively the socratic method, and is a slightly more effective way to apply logic in debate because it forces the other party to consider the questions. We're vulnerable to questions as statements tend to make people defensive, while questions tend to make them more introspective. This isn't as effective as an emotional appeal so it's a secondary tactic.

This list is not exhaustive.

Emotions are not meaningless. They have a place in argumentation because we are emotionally driven beings. It's not just about the effectiveness of using emotion in debate but also the ends are important. A significant part of living well is emotional satisfaction. Emotion is important, and it has a place in our discourse.

Chapter Review: Arguments and Logical Fallacies

This is a review of Chapter 10, Arguments and Logical Fallacies, of Steven Novella's 2018 book, The Skeptic’s Guide the the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. In this chapter, Novella marches through basic logic and the kinds of logical fallacies that people tend to rely to support their beliefs. The flaws are usually asserted unconsciously. The content of this chapter seems timely in view of the completely contradictory facts and arguments the two sides in the impeachment inquiry are hurling at each other. Novella points out that, in situations like this, one or both sides can be mostly wrong, but both cannot be mostly right.

The point of chapter 10 is to try to lay out the skills needed for critical thinking, something that humans are usually not good at unless they try to be good at it. Novella asserts: “Arguing is something that everyone does but few understand. Yet arguing is an essential skill of critical thinking.” Fortunately, the understanding needed is easy to grasp. Unfortunately, it takes time and sustained effort to learn to apply it.

Basic terminology

Logical fallacy: A logical fallacy is reasoning mistake or error that makes an argument invalid. All logical fallacies are non-sequiturs, which are arguments where the conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it. Novella describes it like this: “A logical fallacy is an invalid connection between a premise and a conclusion, where the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premise(s) but is argued as if it does.” The human mind did not evolve to do precise logic and people make various kinds of mistakes unless they are aware of the errors and consciously try to avoid them. Instead of using formal logic, humans usually rely on informal logic

Argument: An argument is what connects premises (facts) with conclusions (beliefs). Although people see arguments as something to be won and beliefs to be defended, that isn't how Novella sees it. Instead, an argument is an effort to find reasoned truth, not win points. To help people engaged in argument find truth, they would best try to find as much common ground as possible and then carefully proceed to engage with belief differences.

Assertion: An assertion is a stated or argued premise or conclusion without supporting evidence.

Premise: A premise is an asserted fact(s) that an argument is based on. These days, many, arguably most, political disagreements among people are pointless because they do not agree on the facts. There needs to be a logical connection showing the premises necessarily lead to the conclusion. If there are sufficient premises that are true and the logic is valid (and thus the argument is “sound”), then the conclusion must be true. For completeness, a conclusion based on an unsound argument can be true or false, e.g., all spheres are pretty, therefore the sun is a sphere.

Novella makes an important point: “There is no way to objectively resolve to resolve a difference of opinion regarding aesthetics, for example.” Thus to avoid bickering endlessly over inherently unresolvable, people can simply agree that the disagreement is unresolvable as a matter of aesthetics, moral choice and so forth. Inherent irresolvability appears to apply to many (most?) political disagreements where moral judgments are involved, e.g., what constitutes an impeachable act by a sitting president.[1]

Checking premises

The first thing to do when beginning to engage in argument, people would do well to check their premises or facts. Four problems can occur, (1) the asserted facts or premises are simply wrong, (2) the asserted facts or premises are possibly wrong and not verified enough, (3) a premise is hidden, e.g., evolution is false because there are not ‘enough’ transitional fossils, but the definition of transitional is different from the standard science definition, which makes the disagreement unresolvable, and (4) a premise(s) is based on a subjective judgment, e.g., an information source is ‘reliable’ without an independent assessment or a person asserting a premise that ‘feels’ correct.

Logical fallacies

1. Non-sequitur: All logical fallacies are non-sequiturs. The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow the premises. In giving his version of economic conditions in the US a few weeks ago, the president Tweeted: “Nobody has ever heard of numbers like that, so people want to find out: Why was it so corrupt during that election? And I want to find out more than anybody else.”  Here, the non-sequitur was a false connection between the economy in October of 2019 and the 2016 election.

2. Argument from authority: Appeal to authority can be probative, but it needs to be used carefully. Some non-experts in climate science, like me, tend to point to expert consensus about global warming, the human role in it and options to reduce it. Consensus expert opinion does carry some legitimate weight, but sometimes consensus is wrong. Sometimes, the appealed to authority really isn't an expert. Sometimes the appealed to expert is expert on one field but not the one at issue. Both undermines the persuasive power of the appeal.

3. Post hoc fallacy: This is among the most common fallacies. The fallacy goes like this: Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X. This argument is common in defenses of alternative medicines: “I took the pills and then felt better, therefore the pills worked.” The erroneous assumption is that because of their different positions on a timeline, the first event caused the second event.

The president used a post hoc fallacy when he asserted: “Since my election, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, SoftBank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart and many others have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.” Fact checkers found that those business decisions were make before the president was elected and not due to his role as president.

4. Whataboutism (tu quoque): This fallacy argues that since someone or some group did something in the past, doing it now is justified. The president and his supporters sometimes justify actions the president takes as justified because democrats did it. From my point of view, the whataboutism tactic appears to lead to a spiral down in civility and social norms. For example, the president asserted: “I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer’s wishes — when [Hillary Clinton] releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

5. Ad hominem fallacy: This is an argument that attacks the opponent or their motivations instead of their arguments or conclusions. Asserting that an opponent is closed-minded is a common form of this attack. Novella asserts that people accusing their opponent of being closed-minded tend to be “closed to the possibility that they are wrong.” In other words, there are times when a person one is engaged with is in fact closed-minded.

6. Appeal to ignorance (proving a negative, ad ignorantiam): This is a fairly common fallacy based on a belief that something is true because it has not been shown to be false. Proving a negative can be difficult to deal with and thus this fallacy can be difficult to deal with. For example, the president asserted the following to CNN about his election in 2016: “What PROOF do you have Donald Trump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalists? Do your job!” and “Pathetic – you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.”

7. False analogy: A comparison between two things are similar in one way are falsely claimed to be similar in a different way. An example is the president's complaint about how he sees his treatment by democrats: “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!” The president is being investigated and criticized, but that is simply not the same as being lynched. The president's claim ignores the difference.

8. Slippery slope: This fallacy assumes that one action or policy will necessarily lead to other, worse outcomes. The mistake here is the belief that one action, e.g., a law that requires universal background checks for gun purchases, will lead inevitably to an extreme ultimate position, e.g., all guns in private hands will be taken away by force.

9. Straw man fallacy: Here, a person uses a weak version or caricature of an opponent's argument and then attacks that. The opponent may not even hold the asserted straw man position. Novella argues that critical thinking demands that the strongest version of an opponent’s argument should be assumed and addressed. Examples include assertions by the president that (1) Democrats “don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth” and (2) Democrats “have become the party of crime. [They] want to open our borders to a flood of deadly drugs and ruthless gangs [and] turn America into a giant sanctuary for criminal aliens and MS-13 thugs.”

The red herring fallacy is similar to the straw man, but it asserts a fact or premise that looks true but is either false or irrelevant. An example is the president’s Tweet two days after Attorney General Sessions recused himself from Justice Department investigations of Russian attacks on the 2016 election: “Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.”

10. Tautology (begging the question): This fallacy relies on circular reasoning where the premise assumes the conclusion. Thus the argument is that since A = B, therefore A = B. The two sets of A = B tend to be worded differently, making them sometimes had to spot. One example is the president’s argument that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate because he did nothing wrong. Another example is expressed in a legal memo the president relies on in his own defense: “The President’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself.” That falsely argues the president cannot obstruct justice because the justice department works for him. Since the President tells the DOJ what to do, the memo argues, and any action he takes is leading justice, not obstructing it.

There are other fallacies, but these account for most of the common ones.

Footnote:

1. Pragmatic rationalism compared to arguments & logical fallacies: For people familiar with the pragmatic rationalism anti-ideology ideology argued here from time to time, its moral basis will probably jump right out as being in full accord with logic and what critical thinking requires. Specifically, the first two moral values are (i) conscious effort to try to see facts with less bias or distortion, and (ii) conscious effort to try to apply less biased conscious reason (arguments) to the facts that people think they see. The broad scope of disagreements that are not logically or objectively resolvable accords with the idea asserted here many times is that the best that people in civil, rational political disagreement can do is try to reach stasis, the point at which each understands why they disagree. Based on disagreements in my experience, about 85% of disagreements arise because of disagreements over facts. 

Disenfranchisement

The gig economy has replaced actual jobs with "gigs" that require no investment in the employee on the part of the employer.

The housing economy has decimated the middle class. This is very good for landlords.

The government and businesses are divesting from the people which leads to disenfranchisement. Disenfranchised people in turn, feel less connected to society. This impacts how we feel toward our neighbors and our community.

Society is growing apart, quite literally. We're just not that into each other. Maybe it starts with those who run things - the people with most of the wealth and power. Maybe they set the tenor, and they set the table. Maybe not. Maybe we do, and they're just following us.

Either way, now what?

Captive tigers in the U.S. outnumber those in the wild. It's a problem.

Some are in roadside zoos. Some are pets. Many are abused. A lack of regulation on big cats is putting animals and humans at risk.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/tigers-in-the-united-states-outnumber-those-in-the-wild-feature/#close

WE HEARD THEM before we saw them.

Their squawks echoed from inside the neat, ranch-style home, sounding more like parrots than tiger cubs. Then James Garretson carried Hulk into the living room, where the McCabe family waited on the couch. The kids giggled as he placed the squirming cub on nine-year-old Ariel’s lap and pushed a baby bottle into its mouth. “Hold the bottle, just like that. You got it?” She nodded.

Everyone beamed, fondling Hulk’s rough, striped fur as Garretson hovered nearby. The 12-week-old, cocker spaniel-size cat clutched the bottle in his oversize paws, sucking with wild enthusiasm. When the bottle was empty, the cub wandered onto the coffee table and swatted our photo gear.

Garretson lured him back with another bottle to give Ariel’s five-year-old brother, James, a turn. Then the rambunctious cub leaped off the sofa, grabbed me from behind, gripped my legs with surprising strength, and tore five-inch scratches into my thighs. He sank his claws in and held on. Garretson peeled him off, and all made light of it with nervous laughs. Playful. Just acting like a kitten.

We met two more tiger cubs in a back room at the Ringling Animal Care Center in Oklahoma (which has no connection to the famous circus). Outside, we watched six adult tigers lounge in their pools or stalk one another, overweight but seemingly happy and living in clean enclosures.

Bhagavan “Doc” Antle (far right) poses with his staff (left to right), Kody Antle, Moksha Bybee, and China York, in a pool used in his tiger show at Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina. Young cubs are a big part of the business; packages for playing and having photos taken with them run from $339 to $689 a person. At about 12 weeks old, cubs are considered too big and dangerous for tourists to pet.

That was in September 2018.

I later learned that seven tigers under Garretson’s care at another facility had killed a woman in 2003. Court documents noted the cats were “extraordinarily hungry” and had reached through flimsy cattle fencing to rip Lynda Brackett’s arm off “in a feeding-like frenzy.” The 35-year-old, who worked there as a volunteer, bled to death. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) fined Garretson $32,560 and ordered him to never again exhibit, breed, buy, or sell animals that required U.S. federal licensing—including tigers. But by 2017 he was working at the Ringling center with new cats. The center was operating under a USDA license held by his girlfriend, Brittany Medina.

Four months after my visit, Garretson was evicted from the property, which was leased in his name. A team from Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge drove from Arkansas to rescue the six adult tigers. One, named Diesel, was too ill to stand. He died four days later of a treatable bacterial blood infection thought to be carried by fleas and ticks, says veterinarian Kellyn Sweeley, who treated him. Hulk and the two other cubs had disappeared.

My visit to the Ringling center with photographer Steve Winter was just one stop during a two-year investigation into why there are likely more tigers living in cages in the U.S. than remain in the wild. We wanted to find out who owned them, what their living conditions are, how lax regulation has allowed them to proliferate, and how they’re traded around the country.

Among other things, we found that most tigers in this country live in small zoos and animal attractions—known generally in the industry as “roadside” zoos—where care standards can vary widely, in some cases endangering the animals in them and the humans who visit them.

Tigers are in crisis. At the turn of the 20th century, when Rudyard Kipling penned The Jungle Book, about 100,000 of the majestic cats roamed across Asia. They were wiped out by trophy hunts in India, the 1960s fashion craze for fur in the United States and Europe, the cats’ shrinking habitat, conflicts with people, and poaching. Today perhaps 3,900 remain in the wild. Tigers hover closer to extinction than any other big cat.

After years of reporting on the illegal wildlife trade in Asia, I decided to look into tigers in America when I heard a talk by Carson Barylak, a policy specialist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

She said there may be 5,000 to 10,000 captive tigers in the United States. No one, including government officials, knows exactly how many there are, and there is no overarching federal law regulating big cat ownership.

Barylak showed a multicolored map illustrating a random patchwork of state laws. Some states ban private ownership. Others require a permit. Four have no statewide laws at all. In some places, it’s easier to buy a tiger than to adopt a kitten from a local animal shelter.

You can get a USDA license to exhibit or breed gerbils—and then exhibit or breed any animal you want, including big cats. Entertainment drives the breeding and trading of tigers in the U.S., specifically attractions that allow customers to pet, feed, and pose with tiger cubs. Commercial breeders provide a constant supply of babies. Within some states, such commercial activities are legal if properly licensed by the USDA, which is tasked with enforcing minimum care standards for animals under the Animal Welfare Act. But we found mistreatment of animals and a range of illicit activities, including illegal wildlife trafficking, at many facilities we visited.

Tiger cubs are a gold mine, especially white ones. Tourists hug, bottle-feed, and snap pictures with adorable babies at roadside zoos, county fairs, and safari parks. A quick photo op or five-minute cuddle runs $10 to $100. A three-hour zoo tour with cub handling can run $700 a person. Guests often are told they’re helping to save wild tigers. They leave happy and post selfies on social media.

ALL THE REST:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/tigers-in-the-united-states-outnumber-those-in-the-wild-feature/#close

John Robson: As long as the press eulogizes ex-Jesuit crackpots, we look stupid complaining about Trump

If we want better political debates we need better political hygiene, with everyone refusing to tolerate behaviour on “their side” they rightly deplore in partisan foes. But I increasingly believe better intellectual hygiene is even more urgent. For instance we should grab for the mental floss when we read in Britain’s normally reputable Daily Telegraph that “Salvador Freixedo, who has died aged 96, was a defrocked Spanish priest who became an authority on UFOs and the paranormal.” We’ve got to get that little green stuff out from between our ears.

Oddly, I consider myself an authority on UFOs, too. It all began decades ago when I wasn’t driving down a lonely road late one night and my car engine mysteriously didn’t conk out just as an eerie blue lack of light failed to shine through thick fog not enveloping me, casting no long spindly shadows from three invisible beings that weren’t even there.

Perhaps you dismiss this weird tale as mere anecdote or the result of the drugs I didn’t take that evening. The human brain is fallible, after all, and our senses can cheat. Which could explain why I failed to detect what Freixedo did and wrote some 30 books on: non-corporeal entities lurking in giant spaceships or caverns a kilometre deep, or wandering invisibly in our midst, masquerading as the one true God for centuries to drink our blood and feast on brainwaves caused by pain and suffering. But (gasp) I am not alone.

Oddly, I consider myself an authority on UFOs, too

 

An amazing number of other people have not detected aliens. Indeed, nearly 70 years ago physicist Enrico Fermi did a back-of-the-napkin calculation of how many habitable planets there should be, some surely with intelligent life, then noted the absolute lack of radio waves bringing I Love Xhtl from distant stars and asked “Where is everybody?”

That all our sensors missed them because they’re hiding in caves, which to be fair Freixedo said might be just 100 metres deep, is such rubbish you might ask whether I’m drivelling on about it because aliens probed my brain, found nothing, and left. No. It’s because this Obituary 9 from Outer Space appeared in real newspapers including Monday’s National Post. And as long as the press runs horoscopes and eulogizes ex-Jesuit crackpots, we look a bit silly complaining about Donald Trump.

Yes, it’s odd to have an American president who looks like the reassembly job after an alien probe went badly wrong, leading to a Neptunian ruckus about who forgot to take pictures beforehand of how the hair originally went. And surely Trump calling his conversation with the Ukrainian president “perfecto” emits a weird orange glow.

What of it? His partisans will jeer “told you so,” while Democrats express outrage that such a thing is possible depending on your definition of the word “is,” then nod gravely at Elizabeth Warren’s $20.5-trillion plan for free health care on the Brezhnev plan. And as Ottawa temperatures plunge to -10 by Thursday we’re told little plant food molecules are creating runaway heating that hides in the deep oceans and we can all fly to Tofino using wind power.

Oh dear. Was that snide? Well, I am a columnist. And even if we let Elvis RIP we’re going to have some frustrating arguments. Which is precisely why if you think there’s too much nonsense out there (if not, you clearly inhaled something), the place you have to start is in here. You must patrol your own brain for random bits of rubbish as well as tangled loops of pseudo-logic.

It’s not easy because of the cliché that I am principled, you are stubborn and she is ideological. Our own ideas seem clear and factual to us while our adversaries plainly have some form of mental disorder. And as the human brain is fallible we are never going to get rid of all its failings by using it; in life as in philosophy we are both doctor and patient. What’s worse, conspiracy theories have a lurid appeal because they make us feel important enough to be worth plotting against.

Conspiracy theories have a lurid appeal because they make us feel important enough to be worth plotting against

 

Still, there’s wrong and then there’s just plain stupid. Respectful tributes to a theological-freak, sociological-fool UFO “expert” are in the latter category. Along with anti-vaxxing, micronutrients, 63 genders, vegan diets, smoke enemas and pyramid power.

Much idiocy has to do with health, followed surprisingly closely by monetary policy. But it’s also found dangerously close to the public-affairs mainstream. Like glowing obituaries to former Communist Party USA head Gus Hall, an unrepentant Stalinist, when he died in 2000, including Peter Jennings intoning on ABC that “Even after his friends … abandoned the cause, Hall never wavered.” Neither did Himmler. Would you applaud him?

If not, why applaud someone whose faith in little green men outlived his faith in God? Is your brain lurking invisibly deep underground?

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-robson-why-laud-someone-whose-faith-in-little-green-men-outlived-his-faith-in-god#comments-area

Chapter Review: Core Skeptic Concepts, Memory and Perception Fallibility

“In the last two decades, while we’ve been fighting for science and reason, it seems like the stakes have only gotten higher. My own profession -- medicine -- has been thoroughly infiltrated by the pseudoscience of so-called “alternative” medicine. The very process of science is under attack. There are entire movements dedicated to denying and opposing the hard-won fruits of scientific discovery. And now it seems that truth and facts themselves are easily tossed aside as an inconvenience. .... “scientific” skeptics are not philosophical skeptics, professing that no knowledge is possible. We are also not cynics .... We are not contrarians who reflexively oppose all mainstream opinions. The term “skeptic” has also been hijacked by deniers who want to be viewed as genuine skeptics (asking the hard and uncomfortable questions) but are really just pursuing an agenda of denial for ideological reasons.”
--Steven Novella, The Skeptic’s Guide the the Universe

This is a review of the Introduction and Chapters 1-3 of Steven Novella’s 2108 book, The Skeptic’s Guide the the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. Novella is a clinical neurologist (Yale University) and a well-known skeptic and pseudoscience critic. Several discussions that Novella posted on his blog, NeuroLogica blog, are the source of several discussions here, at least in part. His book is easy to read. It is intended to be a handbook that serves as “one giant inoculation against bad science, deception, and faulty thinking.” Novella is concerned about pseudoscience. He argues “good clean science blends imperceptibly into blatantly absurd pseudoscience,” making it easy for people to see truth and reality in the false and fantasy.

Chapter 1: Scientific Skepticism - Core Concepts

Chapter 1 describes the core concepts that scientific skepticism is based on. These ideas help skeptics parse reality from false, fake, fraudulent and fubar. The first concept, respect for knowledge and truth, is so fundamental and undeniable some may think it pointless to even mention it. The idea may be fundamental, but in both politics and science respect is almost universally claimed, but often not actually practiced to a large extent. The body of evidence showing flawed respect for knowledge and truth from cognitive and social science is large and now reasonably considered mainstream expert consensus belief.

Skeptics rely on another concept, science vs. pseudoscience, to help keep a focus on one of the main tasks Novella asserts for skeptics: “Skeptics are the first, and often the last, line of defense against incursions by pseudoscience.” He argues that the skeptic mindset is not common in academia.  Not only do skeptics need to know the science, they also need to understand how science goes wrong, leading people to form and defend false beliefs, even in the face of contrary evidence or logic.

One can imagine that many academic scientists would take exception to Novella’s argument that skepticism is not academia’s strong suit. Despite those complaints, Novella's argument has substance things in view of the replication crisis (scientists often cannot reproduce their results) and the weakness of the common statistical measure of what is “real” (p or probability measure; p ≤ 0.05 is considered more or less real[1]) and how the unconscious p-hacking bias often reaches that threshold, even when it is not true reality.

Novella describes several other core concepts, one of which, neurological humility, is quite important. This concept focuses on maintaining self-awareness of how easily we deceive ourselves: “Being a functional skeptic requires knowledge of the various ways in which we deceive ourselves, the limits and flaws of human perception and memory, the inherent biases and fallacies in cognition, and the methods that can mitigate all these flaws and biases.”

Chapter 2: Memory Fallibility

Memory drift: Decades of research has shown that memory is not a photographic or computer-like recall process. Memory formation and recall is a dynamic, distortion-inducing mental process. Memories are reconstructed each time they are recalled. Inherent biases and beliefs slowly change memories on each recollection. Vivid childhood memories from decades before are usually significantly or mostly false, sometimes completely false.

Novella writes:

“We don't have squishy camcorders in our skulls. Memories are constructed from imperfect perceptions filtered through our beliefs and biases, and then over time they morph and merge. Our memories serve more to support our beliefs than to inform them. In a way, they are an evolving story we tell ourselves.”

In other words, memories are flawed from the time we create them. Once created, they change over time to make them more consistent with our beliefs. One common error-producing process is fusion of details from different memories into a single memory. Another common error-producing process is confabulation, a process that Novella describes as just making stuff up. Our brains confabulate to make memories consistent and continuous, with gaps filled in with made-up events. We sometimes invent details of an event to emphasize its emotional significance.[2]

Memory implanting: On top of memory drift, memories can easily be implanted in our minds. That is the reason that witnesses in court cases are not supposed to talk to each other before testifying. when people discuss an event together, they generally change each other's recollection of the event. And, it is worse than that. Research shows that people simply imagining an event sometimes leads them to create a false memory that the event was real. Fortune tellers, clever lawyers, marketers and political propagandists can implant false memories into most people, including parties and witnesses testifying in trials, to help them get what they want. This happens all the time.

Novella writes:

“A 2015 study by Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter found that many adults can be convinced they committed an nonexistent crime after just three hours of interrogation by police. She reports: ‘Our findings show that false memories of committing crime can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same kinds of complex details as real memories.’ ....  Memories can be distorted by suggestion. Merely suggesting a detail to someone while they are recalling a memory may cause them to incorporate that detail into their memory. If, for example, they saw a hooded figure and couldn’t discern the figure’s gender, an interviewer referring to the person as ‘her’ could be enough for the memory to change to one of a hooded woman.” 

Another important aspect of memory is that there is no correlation between our level of confidence about a memory is and its actual accuracy. We tend to have high confidence that our memory of significant events is accurate, e.g., the Challenger shuttle explosion, but research evidence shows no correlation. Novella comments: “We tend to think that vividness and confidence predict accuracy, but they don't. The clear lesson here is that we all need to be humble when it comes to accuracy of our own memories.”

Chapter 3: Fallibility of Perception

Perception is an ongoing iterative process in near real-time. It is a complex process that is highly filtered by the brain. It is not a passive process like a camera simply recording incoming light. The process is open to illusions and misinterpretations. The relationship between the real world and what we perceive is imperfect.

A first part of the brain (1) interprets sensory inputs, e.g., from the eye, then (2) that processed information is sent to a second part which interprets it, and then (3) sends the processed information back to the first part, which then (4) adjusts what is perceived it better fit the interpretation and (5) sends the adjusted information back to the second part for further processing and adjustment. The process operates constantly under two brain-created illusions. The first is that perceptions are literally accurate and real, and the second being a belief it is all happening in real time. The reality of perceptions is limited to the serious limits on both our senses and our brain’s ability to process it in time.

Out of body experiences are illusions that can be created. Certain drugs can do this and so can certain kinds of brain seizures, Virtual reality goggles can also create out of body experiences.

“First, we feel like we are in our bodies because our brains compare what we see and what we feel. We literally see ourselves in our own body, and we feel the parts of our body, and when those things synch up, our brain constructs the sensation of being in our body. This construction can be disrupted, which results in an out-of-body sensation. .... The lesson here is that even the most basic components of your existence are actively constructed by your brain. each component can be disrupted and erased. How does all this affect critical thinking? Well, just as with memory, be wary of saying, ‘I know what I saw.’ Hmm ... no you don't.”

Footnotes:
1. The p-value for a scientific test of a hypothesis is the probability of obtaining the observed results of a test, assuming that the hypothesis being tested is correct. It is the probability of the observed results or event fits with the tested hypothesis. A p-value of 0.0382 means there is a 3.82% chance the observed results could be random or have happened by chance. There is more confidence that a test result is real when the  p-value is lower, for example less than 0.01 (a 1% chance the observed results could be random). There is growing criticism in the scientific community that 0.05 is not stringent enough for results to be considered reliable and instead, p-values less than 0.01 or even 0.001 should generally apply.

2. Novella cites the instance of Hillary Clinton claiming to have been under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996. Videos of the event showed there was no sniper fire or any other danger. The event was actually uneventful. Her recollection of the event was simply false, or she was lying. Her brain could have confabulated sniper fire to accord with her understanding of the very real danger of being in Bosnia (details described here by fact checkers) at the time of her visit. It is thus possible that Clinton herself did not know why she said what she said years later about the event. The fact checkers did not take the possibility of memory confabulation into account and accorded Clinton’s statements about the trip Four Pinocchios, which is defined as ‘whoppers’.