Logical Errors That Are Destroying America
It’s a miracle that human beings even invented the idea of logic. Our brains are mushy, squishy blobs of liquid and goo that create internal pictures, emotions, memories, language, and information from interacting chemicals squirting around. Perhaps the mushy, squishy make up of our brains and thoughts accounts for the mushy, squishy thinking that many of us do, and that we all do at least some of the time.
Logic here refers here to the way we draw conclusions based on information or evidence. As a reasoning species, we try to make decisions and act after thinking things through, gathering information and deciding on a right course of action or settling on what we feel is the most accurate way of understanding an issue.
That’s the theory at any rate.
Too often, people take shortcuts, usually because they have a bias about how they would like the world to work or some idea of what they would like to happen and they rely on shoddy logic to back them up. This shitty logic is limited in its effects if it only influences how you sabotage your own life or serve your own worst instincts. However, when influential people with dubious intent go on the road with their terrible ideas and faulty logic, its destructive force multiplies and can become catastrophic.
Scapegoating is one form of bad logic. It’s really an example of a logical fallacy known as oversimplification. Life is complex and the reasons why our lives might suck may be an interlocking series of various forces coming together. But you can’t be mad and shake your fist at and blame a complex system. It’s more satisfying to name one thing as the problem and to blame that thing, even if it is not related to what is plaguing you.
Enter the scapegoat, the convenient, easily understood reason you can blame for your woes. Ask the Jews in 1930’s-1940’s Germany how damaging this shortcut to thinking can be. Ask the Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990’s after radio programs demonized them for years. Ask the intellectuals beaten and killed during China’s cultural revolution. In the United States today there are a number of scapegoats, but the simpleton’s victim of choice is the immigrant, specifically immigrants south of the border. Donald Trump helped stoke this longstanding fear and resentment towards immigrants, which has led to unprovoked attacks and at times murder while the perpetrator screams “go back to your country.” The U.S. government has torn children away from their parents and are, at this writing, planning to keep some indefinitely, thanks to the current administration’s disregard for immigrants thanks to scapegoating.
To perhaps draw our attention to instances of faulty logic so that we can recognize them in ourselves and others, so we can curb them and keep each other honest, I offer some of the following examples of issues with logical thought that are corrupting our ability to reason and make sound decisions.
Identifying with Your Thoughts
Identification with your thoughts is not so much a classical logical fallacy as a quirk of human consciousness that keeps us from being conscious of or examining our thinking. Because we live with our own thoughts, we assume that they are real things and we believe ourselves to be beholden to and shaped by them.
Thoughts are just thoughts. They do not exist. You can think of hating someone and you can think of a birthday cake. You can think that people are out to get you and just as easily think about a cute name for a kitty cat. Thoughts flit around in our brains, swimming by like minnows. But at times we grab them and fixate on them and choose to believe them, even contrary to available evidence that they are bullshit.
But you are not your thoughts. Your identity is not composed of what you think. People’s perceptions of your identity are formed by the thoughts you choose to think, express, and act on. If you can think one thing, you can think something else. If you choose to think thoughts that hurt people, you can choose to think thoughts that help people. Helping people is objectively better than hurting them from a purely external, physical point of view. It makes the world a better place to live in for people to be kind and to help one another.
Hasty Generalization:
Hasty generalization occurs when you use a small sample size (like your own opinion or set of friends) from which to draw a conclusion. Because something may be true of a small number of perhaps non-representative members of a group, the hasty generalizer concludes that what is true of them is true of every member of the group.
Examples:
- None of my friends are voting for Candidate X, so nobody is voting for Candidate X.
- The few crime stories I see on the news show African Americans committing crimes, so most crimes are committed by African Americans.
The fact is that you don’t know most people; you know a tiny fraction of people. You cannot dispute polls or surveys with your own personal experience because your views may not reflect those held by the majority of others. You can dispute polls for other reasons. Investigate how they are conducted. For instance, polls conducted by calling people’s landlines have a bias toward those who own landlines (not everyone has one), which suggests home ownership, perhaps a particular age range, and the availability of someone who is home when the poll is conducted. Online polls are particularly susceptible to manipulation as people take them more than once or alert their like-minded friends to descend on the survey to sway it.
But your own opinion and those of your friends are not a sufficient measure of whether you can conclude something is accurate or true. Therefore, stop acting as if your personal opinion is what everyone believes. Doing so closes off your ability to listen to others and to receive credible information that may contradict you.
Appeal to Anonymous Authority
This is a particular favorite of Donald Trump. An individual suggests as evidence that “people” have said something or that “experts” have proven something, but they give no details, no evidence, other than referring to a vague, unspecific source. This is a ploy often used to make it look like the speaker has evidence when there is none.
Example:
- People are saying that the economy is great.
2. Experts tell me that this new tax bill will make you rich.
Evidence from sources is supposed to back up your statements by showing that experts in the field support your idea or that you have based your idea on studies and statistics from credible researchers. Having no actual experts or “people” to back you up does not help your argument. Likewise, do not be swayed by people who pretend that their ideas are popular or views are widely held based on zero support from real sources. Be skeptical. Seek more information.
Appeal to Tradition
Appeals to tradition occur when someone suggests that something is worth thinking/doing/continuing because things have always been done that way.
Examples:
- We should keep our racist sports logo because we’ve had it a long time and it’s a tradition around here.
2. Priests should not marry or be women because that’s not how the church has always done things.
Because something has been done for a long time does not serve as evidence that it is true or correct. Slavery existed for hundreds of years. That fact does not mean that it was worth preserving. Southern racists during the civil rights era of the 1950’s argued that Jim Crow laws mandating separate facilities for African Americans was a tradition and, therefore, needed to be preserved as part of their “culture.” Nope. Oppressing people for a long time does not excuse you from respecting other people’s rights as free citizens in a free country.
Traditions do not have inherent value. Instead, we have to look objectively at what the reality is and at what effects those traditions have.
Invincible Ignorance
This logical fallacy occurs when someone simply refuses to accept or believe any evidence, no matter how credible, overwhelming, or compelling. The person is determined to believe what they believe no matter how uninformed or wrong it is based on numerous studies, statistics, or stories by those with the education and/or background to be believed.
I like to call this the asshole fallacy, because if you can’t be dealt with, if no information can reach you, if you are so obstinate that you believe you are correct despite piles of evidence to the contrary, those are all signs that you might be an asshole.
It’s my belief that this fallacy stems from fear generated by the first item I mentioned — identifying with one’s thoughts. If someone’s entire identity is tied up in a set of thoughts s/he mistakes for his/her identity, anything that contradicts those thoughts would feel like a threat. So rather than be introspective or question personal assumptions, such a person hunkers down into his/her bunker of misinformation and half-baked ideas and becomes defensive, fearful of having a false identity crumble apart.
But accepting information and changing our minds is not painful, although it can be uncomfortable. But if it comes from a place of being open and emerges by employing reason, it will ultimately help not just yourself, but the rest of the world around you. Spreading falsehoods weakens us. Engaging in informed dialogue strengthens us.
There are numerous other fallacies that impair people’s thinking. I encourage you to look around, find more examples, notice them in everyday life. When we are aware of them, we become less apt to be fooled by them.