Alright. I should have posted this yesterday, but...I'm a slacker.
Okay, gut feelings. We all have these. They tell us what we think of situations, and give us a reaction for every situation.
But not always the correct one. Gut feelings are vestigial traits from more primal days. These days, there's not much we need to react to instantly. A car rushing towards us, or a bar fight, sure. But politicians, social issues, and arguments don't require instant action. All of these provide time for ample thought.
Gut feelings make us move away from thought. We hear a cry to action, and react. We see a person who we dislike, and act on this, with no real proof, just a feeling. We see text on the internet, and instantly make assumptions based on these gut feelings. In other words, gut feelings push us to make uninformed decisions. And all too often, uninformed decisions are the things which cause confrontations or strife to escalate.
I'm not making an argument about abolishing gut feelings, however. The subconscious can tell us more about many situations than we can consciously discern for many things. But it should not rule our decisions and opinions. You may think at first that your new boss is really sleazy for no reason at all, and spend the next week making snide comments behind his back...until you get to know him. You may do exactly what that radio talk show host tells you...until you realize that you're being fed a bunch of bullshit. Your gut feelings may still tug at you in these situations, telling you, "They're hiding something", or "You're overlooking something."
But life is not a movie. Your new boss is not an undercover spy whose mission is to ruin your life. That talk show host doesn't have some hidden insight, or some kernel of knowledge he's hiding from you, except maybe that by following him blindly, you're a sheeple.
So in other words, gut feelings are something you can use to shape a line of action for something, but make sure it is not your only reasoning for that action, and don't let it rule your other reasons. Take the time to think things through, from all sides of a situation. If you find your gut feelings are wrong, ditch them.
And there ends my rambling spiel. Good day.
Showing posts with label Logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Logic. Show all posts
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Updates And False Correlation
As an update to yesterday's post, I should amend something.
Although the courts are present to uphold law to deter crime, there are instances when "X should be met with Y". Namely, when you have experienced property damage or some other loss in monetary value. Whoever did that should be sued for the value lost. That falls under deterrence slightly, I suppose - "No crime will go without it's punishment."
Anywho, on to today's post, spurred on by recent experiences. It's a pretty simple fallacy today: false correlation. That is, saying X and Y are linked without sufficient evidence.
It's one thing to say "staying out in the sun for too long will give sunburns" than to say "popsicles cause sunburns". We can prove the former from scientific research and common knowledge:
- The sun produces sunlight
- Sunlight contains UV rays
- UV rays cause sunburn after prolonged exposure
Therefore over prolonged exposure to the sun, you will get a sunburn.
The latter statement cannot be proven, or at least, has not yet been proven. No evidence, no correlation. In many false correlations such as these, one should also consider a third element Z which may cause both X and Y, as opposed to X causes Y and Z is merely incidental.
Consider:
- People eat more popsicles in the summer
- People spend more time in the sun in the summer
- More time in the sun causes more sunburns
False conclusion: Popsicles cause sunburns.
Correct conclusion: The summer causes an increase in sunburns and popsicle consumption.
As in most cases, if you present a statement, you have the burden of proof. If you state something exists, whether it be an invention, a correlation, and object, or even a deity, you have to prove it. "Prove it doesn't exist" may be an answer you might consider. Don't. Why? Teapots.
Although the courts are present to uphold law to deter crime, there are instances when "X should be met with Y". Namely, when you have experienced property damage or some other loss in monetary value. Whoever did that should be sued for the value lost. That falls under deterrence slightly, I suppose - "No crime will go without it's punishment."
Anywho, on to today's post, spurred on by recent experiences. It's a pretty simple fallacy today: false correlation. That is, saying X and Y are linked without sufficient evidence.
It's one thing to say "staying out in the sun for too long will give sunburns" than to say "popsicles cause sunburns". We can prove the former from scientific research and common knowledge:
- The sun produces sunlight
- Sunlight contains UV rays
- UV rays cause sunburn after prolonged exposure
Therefore over prolonged exposure to the sun, you will get a sunburn.
The latter statement cannot be proven, or at least, has not yet been proven. No evidence, no correlation. In many false correlations such as these, one should also consider a third element Z which may cause both X and Y, as opposed to X causes Y and Z is merely incidental.
Consider:
- People eat more popsicles in the summer
- People spend more time in the sun in the summer
- More time in the sun causes more sunburns
False conclusion: Popsicles cause sunburns.
Correct conclusion: The summer causes an increase in sunburns and popsicle consumption.
As in most cases, if you present a statement, you have the burden of proof. If you state something exists, whether it be an invention, a correlation, and object, or even a deity, you have to prove it. "Prove it doesn't exist" may be an answer you might consider. Don't. Why? Teapots.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
I Am Justified!
No, you aren't.
Going back to this post, I mentioned this whole "Group X is Y so I am justified in doing Z!" This simply does not work. You may feel justified, but merely feeling justified (crap, another thread. I'll get to gut feelings tomorrow I guess) does not make you truly justified.
But this is a more complex break in reasoning than most. There are several places where it can be rooted in. But first, the basics.
X should be met with Y.
"A punch should be met with a strike back."
Unless Y happens to be deterring future occurrences of X, X should not be met with Y. All that does is cause the other party to redouble their efforts. If Y happens to deter X, but only incidentally, that doesn't count. Revenge may taste sweet, but when you get down to it, revenge serves no purpose. One side gets hurt, the other side gets hurt, and everybody is happy. Right?
Nope. Retaliating will not undo what has happened - the best thing which can be done is to deter future actions similar to what happened.
It's quite easy to slip into this fallacy however. The courts, the penal system, etc. It's all there to deter crime, but when punishments get served, it can seem as if it were a sort of revenge. But at the heart of the matter, that system is there to prevent crime by showing that crime will be punished. The line between prevention by punishment and punishment (and then saying you did it to prevent) is fine, the divisor being that in the latter, the motivator is revenge, while in the former, it is to prevent others from suffering the same.
Alright then. So, what thought processes could this possibly be rooted in?
Logical - "Logic demands that X be met with Y." - Sorry, no. Can't correct this apart from heavy usage of "Why?"
Ethical - "After X occurs, I am ethically and morally bound to do Y." - We are not ethically bound to punish people. This person probably has the whole punish/prevent bit mixed up. Clear that up for them, will you? You may have a harder time if this person bases this in religion, or even atheism.
"As a Christian, I have an ethical directive to prevent abortion."
"As an atheist, I have an ethical directive to prevent the spread of religion."
And so it goes on. The above are stereotypically extremist sorts of people. More on that later, too.
Legal - "There is a law which states that after X occurs I must to do Y." - Not even close. I'm pretty sure (but not completely!) that there are no laws stating that you must retaliate/press charges/etc.
There may be more categories I'm overlooking. Let me know if there are.
Going back to this post, I mentioned this whole "Group X is Y so I am justified in doing Z!" This simply does not work. You may feel justified, but merely feeling justified (crap, another thread. I'll get to gut feelings tomorrow I guess) does not make you truly justified.
But this is a more complex break in reasoning than most. There are several places where it can be rooted in. But first, the basics.
X should be met with Y.
"A punch should be met with a strike back."
Unless Y happens to be deterring future occurrences of X, X should not be met with Y. All that does is cause the other party to redouble their efforts. If Y happens to deter X, but only incidentally, that doesn't count. Revenge may taste sweet, but when you get down to it, revenge serves no purpose. One side gets hurt, the other side gets hurt, and everybody is happy. Right?
Nope. Retaliating will not undo what has happened - the best thing which can be done is to deter future actions similar to what happened.
It's quite easy to slip into this fallacy however. The courts, the penal system, etc. It's all there to deter crime, but when punishments get served, it can seem as if it were a sort of revenge. But at the heart of the matter, that system is there to prevent crime by showing that crime will be punished. The line between prevention by punishment and punishment (and then saying you did it to prevent) is fine, the divisor being that in the latter, the motivator is revenge, while in the former, it is to prevent others from suffering the same.
Alright then. So, what thought processes could this possibly be rooted in?
Logical - "Logic demands that X be met with Y." - Sorry, no. Can't correct this apart from heavy usage of "Why?"
Ethical - "After X occurs, I am ethically and morally bound to do Y." - We are not ethically bound to punish people. This person probably has the whole punish/prevent bit mixed up. Clear that up for them, will you? You may have a harder time if this person bases this in religion, or even atheism.
"As a Christian, I have an ethical directive to prevent abortion."
"As an atheist, I have an ethical directive to prevent the spread of religion."
And so it goes on. The above are stereotypically extremist sorts of people. More on that later, too.
Legal - "There is a law which states that after X occurs I must to do Y." - Not even close. I'm pretty sure (but not completely!) that there are no laws stating that you must retaliate/press charges/etc.
There may be more categories I'm overlooking. Let me know if there are.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Fallacious Arguments
And we're back with a whole new fallacy!
"I have suffered [X] and that justifies my doing this!"
That is, where this is something negative or douchey. Nothing along the lines of, "I suffered fighting in Vietnam and that justifies me applying for veteran discounts." That's fine. It's statements more along the lines of, "I nearly died three months ago because someone almost ran me over in a car, that justifies me being a dick to you, because you drive a car!" or "/b/ trolled me so hard and that justifies me hating you for browsing /b/!"
It's not the ones which logically go from point A to point B which are fallacious. (Quite obviously?)
It's the ones which overgeneralize, which lump people into groups based on one or two traits. I vehemently hate this in all its forms. Racism, sexism, stereotyping (but then, again, pardon me for saying this, there's a difference between using trends and stereotyping. I'll explain that later. Promise.)
Let's take the car statement into consideration.
"I nearly died three months ago because someone almost ran me over in a car, that justifies me being a dick to you, because you drive a car!"
The line of thought, I imagine, goes something like this:
- I nearly got run over by a car
- Cars run me over
- People who run other people over are dicks
- Dicks deserve to be treated badly
- If you drive a car, you will run someone over
- Therefore I am justified in being a dick to you
First off, sweeping generalization. That's the first problem with the argument. This person automatically assumes that since one car driver nearly ran him over (and it was only his fortuitous car-dodging skill which saved him) other car drivers must do the same thing. In fact, since some other car drivers do this, all of them do it, since they all drive cars, and even getting into a car means you have a chance of running other people over.
Sure, there's a chance. But that chance is minute, negligible even. It's increased for careless people, distracted people, drunk people, et cetera. You might as well argue that you should be a dick to all people since they step on your shoes. Accidents happen.
Anyways, moving away from the specific ways that this argument is fallacious (Oh, the irony), let's move to the next fallacy, as it's been established that over-generalization, or even generalization at all, is bad.
"Dicks deserve to be treated badly."
What. Is it ever arguable to say, this guy deserves X because of his behavior? I suppose this is just my opinion, and either side is arguable, and thus doesn't count as a fallacy so much as a clash of opinion. That's another thing which can be argued later (in the spirit of preventing this post from dragging on too long.)
So we get that this person is generalizing to come to his conclusions. If you're unconvinced that extreme generalization is bad...
- All people in the Middle East are terrorists
- All Christians are bible-thumping Darwin-haters
- All atheists are immoral sinners
- All people who don't drive electric cars don't care about the environment
- All politicians are only powered by money
Is that enough? I hope it is.
As unrealistic as the whole "car argument" premise is, it is likely to manifest itself in other forms, perhaps less conspicuous ones in everyday life. I chose a more striking argument to show how invalid these things are under scrutiny.
So, why is this invalid? It sure is invalid, but why? If all you can say is, "that's a fallacy derp", well, you've just bloody proved him wrong, haven't you?
Of course not. You've got to have logic.
The easiest way to take down a generalization is to say that not all X are Y. Provide examples, it helps if you can do that. If they don't believe you, provide other examples of other generalizations (see above). Hopefully they'll come to understand why they're wrong in using generalizations. Below are a few nitpicky arguments which might be used.
After you give another example, say the "atheists are immoral" one.
Scenario: "Oh, well that's true too."
Solution: Give another example. If that fails, bang head on wall (even better, band their head on the wall), make even more extreme generalizations. Make some that are personal to them.
Scenario: "Well, that doesn't even apply to this. What we're talking about and your example are two totally different things."
Solution: This person can't grasp metaphors or abstract concepts. Walk away, shaking your head.
I had a few more in my head earlier, can't remember them for the life of me. Ah well, just means you get a shorter post, haha.
"I have suffered [X] and that justifies my doing this!"
That is, where this is something negative or douchey. Nothing along the lines of, "I suffered fighting in Vietnam and that justifies me applying for veteran discounts." That's fine. It's statements more along the lines of, "I nearly died three months ago because someone almost ran me over in a car, that justifies me being a dick to you, because you drive a car!" or "/b/ trolled me so hard and that justifies me hating you for browsing /b/!"
It's not the ones which logically go from point A to point B which are fallacious. (Quite obviously?)
It's the ones which overgeneralize, which lump people into groups based on one or two traits. I vehemently hate this in all its forms. Racism, sexism, stereotyping (but then, again, pardon me for saying this, there's a difference between using trends and stereotyping. I'll explain that later. Promise.)
Let's take the car statement into consideration.
"I nearly died three months ago because someone almost ran me over in a car, that justifies me being a dick to you, because you drive a car!"
The line of thought, I imagine, goes something like this:
- I nearly got run over by a car
- Cars run me over
- People who run other people over are dicks
- Dicks deserve to be treated badly
- If you drive a car, you will run someone over
- Therefore I am justified in being a dick to you
First off, sweeping generalization. That's the first problem with the argument. This person automatically assumes that since one car driver nearly ran him over (and it was only his fortuitous car-dodging skill which saved him) other car drivers must do the same thing. In fact, since some other car drivers do this, all of them do it, since they all drive cars, and even getting into a car means you have a chance of running other people over.
Sure, there's a chance. But that chance is minute, negligible even. It's increased for careless people, distracted people, drunk people, et cetera. You might as well argue that you should be a dick to all people since they step on your shoes. Accidents happen.
Anyways, moving away from the specific ways that this argument is fallacious (Oh, the irony), let's move to the next fallacy, as it's been established that over-generalization, or even generalization at all, is bad.
"Dicks deserve to be treated badly."
What. Is it ever arguable to say, this guy deserves X because of his behavior? I suppose this is just my opinion, and either side is arguable, and thus doesn't count as a fallacy so much as a clash of opinion. That's another thing which can be argued later (in the spirit of preventing this post from dragging on too long.)
So we get that this person is generalizing to come to his conclusions. If you're unconvinced that extreme generalization is bad...
- All people in the Middle East are terrorists
- All Christians are bible-thumping Darwin-haters
- All atheists are immoral sinners
- All people who don't drive electric cars don't care about the environment
- All politicians are only powered by money
Is that enough? I hope it is.
As unrealistic as the whole "car argument" premise is, it is likely to manifest itself in other forms, perhaps less conspicuous ones in everyday life. I chose a more striking argument to show how invalid these things are under scrutiny.
So, why is this invalid? It sure is invalid, but why? If all you can say is, "that's a fallacy derp", well, you've just bloody proved him wrong, haven't you?
Of course not. You've got to have logic.
The easiest way to take down a generalization is to say that not all X are Y. Provide examples, it helps if you can do that. If they don't believe you, provide other examples of other generalizations (see above). Hopefully they'll come to understand why they're wrong in using generalizations. Below are a few nitpicky arguments which might be used.
After you give another example, say the "atheists are immoral" one.
Scenario: "Oh, well that's true too."
Solution: Give another example. If that fails, bang head on wall (even better, band their head on the wall), make even more extreme generalizations. Make some that are personal to them.
Scenario: "Well, that doesn't even apply to this. What we're talking about and your example are two totally different things."
Solution: This person can't grasp metaphors or abstract concepts. Walk away, shaking your head.
I had a few more in my head earlier, can't remember them for the life of me. Ah well, just means you get a shorter post, haha.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Fallacious Arguments
Stop dicking around and answer me directly!
First in a series of posts about how to answer logical fallacies and all sorts of fallacious arguments. First person writing will come later on.
"If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide."
Explaining the fallacy: This is based on a fallacy known as affirming the consequent as well as the false dilemma fallacy:
Affirming the consequent:
- If X is true, Y is true
- Y is true, therefore X is true
False dilemma:
Either you're with us, or you're against us.
- If you have done something wrong, then you have something to hide (True, generally)
Thus if you have something to hide, you have done something wrong. (Affirming the consequent)
Either you have something to hide, or nothing to hide. (False dilemma)
Therefore if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.
Why this doesn't work: To put it simply, people have things they want to keep private. That's why there are privacy issues. Just because you haven't robbed a store, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know what you do in your free time. There's a reason you don't spill your life's story to every person you meet.
In addition, it is likely you have dirty laundry - i.e. you have done something wrong. It's just unlikely that it's related at all to the issue. For instance, if you're discussing having your gear searched for a cellphone you didn't steal, and you happen to have copious amounts of drugs in your backpack, you aren't likely to let anyone rummage through your stuff. Just because you haven't done something wrong related to the situation doesn't mean you haven't done anything wrong, or that you should be willing to let them nose into your private affairs.
How to poke holes through it:
- Offer to be searched only after you have searched through all the private material of the other person. This should stop them in their tracks as they realize why. If they answer with "I asked you first, therefore you should be searched first" or something along those lines, see future posts poking holes in that. If they right out refuse without considering facts, stop talking to them. They're not just ignorant, but unwilling to check themselves.
In the off-chance that the person is a person of authority, and you can't just walk away, bring up the 5th amendment and if they request to search you, ask for their search warrant. Likely if they had a search warrant in the first place, you wouldn't be having this argument.
- Point out their fallacy. If they are logical at all, they will find another path of attack or drop it altogether. Otherwise, see above.
First in a series of posts about how to answer logical fallacies and all sorts of fallacious arguments. First person writing will come later on.
"If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide."
Explaining the fallacy: This is based on a fallacy known as affirming the consequent as well as the false dilemma fallacy:
Affirming the consequent:
- If X is true, Y is true
- Y is true, therefore X is true
False dilemma:
Either you're with us, or you're against us.
- If you have done something wrong, then you have something to hide (True, generally)
Thus if you have something to hide, you have done something wrong. (Affirming the consequent)
Either you have something to hide, or nothing to hide. (False dilemma)
Therefore if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.
Why this doesn't work: To put it simply, people have things they want to keep private. That's why there are privacy issues. Just because you haven't robbed a store, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know what you do in your free time. There's a reason you don't spill your life's story to every person you meet.
In addition, it is likely you have dirty laundry - i.e. you have done something wrong. It's just unlikely that it's related at all to the issue. For instance, if you're discussing having your gear searched for a cellphone you didn't steal, and you happen to have copious amounts of drugs in your backpack, you aren't likely to let anyone rummage through your stuff. Just because you haven't done something wrong related to the situation doesn't mean you haven't done anything wrong, or that you should be willing to let them nose into your private affairs.
How to poke holes through it:
- Offer to be searched only after you have searched through all the private material of the other person. This should stop them in their tracks as they realize why. If they answer with "I asked you first, therefore you should be searched first" or something along those lines, see future posts poking holes in that. If they right out refuse without considering facts, stop talking to them. They're not just ignorant, but unwilling to check themselves.
In the off-chance that the person is a person of authority, and you can't just walk away, bring up the 5th amendment and if they request to search you, ask for their search warrant. Likely if they had a search warrant in the first place, you wouldn't be having this argument.
- Point out their fallacy. If they are logical at all, they will find another path of attack or drop it altogether. Otherwise, see above.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)