Just How Much Fallacy is Your To Quoque?

07 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Philosophy, Politics

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Ad Hominem, Context, Critical Thinking, Donald Trump, Elections, False Alternatives, Logic, Rhetoric, Tu Quoque

We all learned that two wrongs don’t make a right when we were kids, didn’t we?

And we learned that ‘you too’ arguments are a fallacy back in Freshman logic class, right?

Right?

Okay, maybe not everybody, but this is a lesson a lot of us probably have in common. Most educated people ought to know that there is something wrong with answering a criticism by saying “you do it too!” or some variation thereof. Hell, most decent people ought to know better than that regardless of their education.

So, why do we do it?

Hell, almost everybody does it on at least some occasions. To be fair, some people do it more than others. They will do it every chance they get. Others try not to, most of the time anyway. So, the penchant for answering a serious concern with a quick ‘you-too’ gambit varies from one person to another, but I don’t know that anyone avoids it entirely.

This tactic also comes and goes with the times. It’s been particularly common for the last 4 years, so much so that folks even coined a new term for it; ‘whataboutism.’ The “Your side does it too” gambit has made a regular appearance in public debate for a long time, but it’s been particularly common for the space of about one presidential administration (or an administration plus the campaign before it). So, the internet collectively coined a new term to describe it.

Okay, but why is this kind of argument so common?

One reason? It’s not always a fallacy.

Another? For some people, it really is a way of life.

Variable Relevance: The (ir-)relevance of ‘you too’ games varies in a couple of interesting ways.

If someone corrects my behavior and I respond with “you do it too?” am I really engaging in a fallacy?

Variable Conclusions: If I mean by that you-too response that I am not really wrong, because you do it too, then yes. Hell yes! If that’s what I mean, then I am absolutely engaging in the tu quoque fallacy. If, on the other hand, I mean; “Okay, I need to correct my behavior, but so should you, because you do in fact do this too,” then my response is not entirely unreasonable. I’m not denying my wrong-doing in this instance. I am just asking you to correct your own behavior right along with me.

Alternatively, I could employ a ‘you-too’ argument by of refusing to accept a rule that I have good reason to believe others are not going to follow themselves. Let’s imagine we are playing a game of soccer and you tell me I should stop touching the ball with my hands. I could then say you do it too as a means of insisting either that you stop yourself or that we are just going to continue playing an odd game of soccer in which both of us are allowed to touch the ball with our hands. In this case, I am refusing to play by unfair rules, or unfair application of those rules.

It seems that there are at least some conclusions which could be reasonably drawn from a premise beginning with an assertion that is essentially saying “you do it too.”

Plus Alternatives: There is another context in which “you too” starts to become more relevant than it would otherwise be. In this case, the tu-quoque fallacy has some company, because the False Alternatives fallacy comes in here right along with it. This is the context of constrained choices. If I tell you that apples bother my teeth, so I don’t like eating them, it would normally be quite foolish to respond by telling me that cookies have too much sugar. Whether or not cookies have too much sugar, apples still bother my teeth (always feels like I am biting into styrofoam). That does not change if cookies are bad for me. So, the cookie-themed response seems quite irrelevant.

…unless I want a snack, and I have exactly 2 options!

If my universe of possible choices includes an apple and a cookie, then problems with one might very well be a reasonable answer to my expressed concerns about the other. It’s not so much a logical inference as it is a conversational implicature. A possible respondent hears me complaining about the apple, realizes I have offered it as a reason for choosing the cookie instead, and responds by reminding me of a good reason to avoid the cookie

Of course apples and cookies don’t make these arguments themselves, so if this is a concern about false alternatives, how does it relate to the tu-quoque fallacy? Well, it comes into play when the apples and cookies do make these arguments themselves, or at least when we divide ourselves up into an obviously apple camp and a clearly cookie camp.

Or maybe when we try to pick a President.

If I say that Donald Trump has been self-dealing throughout his Presidency as a means of saying he is a terrible President, it wouldn’t normally help matters to say that Hillary does it too (using the Uranium One story about her charity foundation for example). Neither would it help to raise the prospect of similar corruption on the part of the Biden family. These become relevant during elections precisely because the obvious alternative choice is understood, and so the range of viable possibilities is narrowed sufficiently to make these normally irrelevant arguments matter after all.

And here, 3rd party-proponents will have an obvious complaint of their own. What if there are better choices? What if you can point to a candidate that doesn’t have a history of self-dealing (or, more to the point, a history of having the charge of self-dealing leveled at them by political opponents)? That’s a reasonable concern and one that speaks directly to the very kind of problem that logicians are trying to call our attention to when speaking about ‘false alternatives’ and ‘tu-quoque’ fallacies. Of course, part of the concern here lies in just how viable the third parties really are and what you are trying to accomplish with your vote, both of which speak to the question of just how constrained the alternatives here really are. If a 3rd party might really win, then it would be quite illogical to respond to a criticism of one major party candidate as though it were an obvious endorsement of another. Conversely, you may know that the 3rd party is going to lose but choose to vote for them anyway as a means of signaling to the major parties that they should take you own political values more seriously. If enough others vote the same way, this could become leverage in the next election. If a 3rd party candidate is, however, not a serious contender for winning an election, and the election is just too important to risk on a symbolic statement, then we may be back in the realm of 2 real choices and dirt on one viable candidate really will have to be weighed against dirt on the other. In such cases, “your guy does it too” and “the alternative is worse” start to become relevant again.

Where your choices are constrained, criticisms of one choice can provide a meaningful response to criticisms of another, but this is still problematic. Such arguments don’t erase problems, and they don’t disprove initial claims. If you tell me, for example, that Hunter Biden was using his father’s position as Vice President under the Obama administration to make money, reminding you that the Trump family profits from his role as President (e.g. through fees paid by the Secret Service to Trump properties during his visits, use of political leverage to get Ivanka’s patents in China, or simply the profits made when foreign diplomats choose to stay at Trump properties while negotiating with him) will not prove the claims about Hunter Biden are untrue. If I want to do that, then I have to provide an argument directly debunking the claims about Hunter Biden activities. What do I get out of calling attention to similar shenanigans about Trump? I get an argument about the significance one relative to the other. I get an argument about how each balances against the other when we assume both criticisms are of roughly equal merit. That may not be the best argument I could produce on the topic, but it would not be fallacious. It’s in this context that ‘you too’ (or at least ‘your guy too’) arguments start to make a little more sense.

One fascinating thing about this is the way that the relevance of such arguments comes and goes. I understood claims about Uranium One, debunked as they are, as a concern in the 2016 election. It was fascinating to me, however, seeing Trump fans continue bringing this up in response to criticism of his actions well into the Trump administration. I found myself saying; “well let’s impeach her too” then, by which I hoped to suggest that this was no longer a relevant means of answering concerns about Trump’s own actions. As the 2020 election heated up, concerns about Biden became a more viable means of offsetting those about Trump (at least to those who care nothing about proportion or credibility of the sources). In terms of addressing the choice at hand, it was useful for the Trump camp to have a claim about political corruption in play precisely because they knew many such claims could be held against Donald. What the merits of each claim really are is of course a debatable question, but having comparable accusations on the table makes possible a kind of argument about how one wishes to weigh one relative to the other.

When we were all expected to weigh Donald Trump’s character against that of another person, complaints about that other person could pass a certain test of minimal relevance to complaints about him. So, the relevance comparison to other people to criticisms of Donald Trump came and went over the course of his Presidential administration. When he was operating on his own, and the only viable question was about his own competence and integrity, they should have gone away.

Of course they didn’t.

Constraining Personalities: This brings us to one last point; some people thrive on the sort of constrained choices I am describing here. When they face an open range of possibilities, they work very hard to create the illusion of constrained choices anyway.

Yes, I have Donald Trump in mind here.

I am also writing about his many fans.

There is a reason the Trump camp was such a source of whataboutism claims throughout his Presidency. This is both a feature of the base to which he consciously pitched his politics and to personality of Donald Trump himself.

Audience: There are people who live in a world of artificially constrained choices, and you can see it their responses to a broad range if issues. Did you say Fox news got something wrong? Well then you must be watching too much MSNBC. If there is a problem with capitalism, well then why don’t you just go try China? Don’t like Christianity? You must be an atheist! Is the American healthcare system broken? Well then, let me tell you the horror stories coming out of Canada! Concerned about police brutality? You must support riots in the streets! Don’t like coke? Shut up and drink your Beer!

And so on…

(Okay, I might not be that be that serious about the coke and beer example.)

Perhaps all of us fall into this way of thinking from time to time, but some people really do seem to think in such terms on a regular basis. They live in a world of social Manichaeism, a world in which 2 rival forces contend with one another for control of the world and of our loyalties. Anything said against one can clearly be understood as support for the other, because all questions of value must be measured according to the standard of which force one wishes to align oneself with. Other options are always illusory. You are with the lord of light or you are with the lord of darkness, and if you don’t declare your loyalties openly, then that is a good reason to suspect you are on the wrong side of this conflict. In effect, such people keep making use of the false-alternatives fallacy because they actually do live in a world in which their choices are always constrained. Their assumptions about the world around them and the choices available to all of us consistently reduce all choices to a binary opposition.

Always!

Brief Technicality: I should add that the not all binary opposition are equal. What typically happens here is that people looking at contrary relationships often construe them as contradictory relationships? What is the difference? In a Contradictory relationship between two claims, they two have opposite truth values. If one is true, the other is false. If one is false, the other is true. In a contrary relationship between two claims, on the other hand, one of them must be false, but it is at least possible that both will be false.

In the case of either a contrary relationship or a contradictory relationship, you could infer the falsehood of one claim from the truth of the other, but you could only infer the truth of one claim from the falsehood of the other in the case of a contradictory relationship, not in the case of a contrary relationship.

Case in point: If I know that John is voting for Biden, I can conclude he is clearly not voting for Trump (unless he wants his ballot to be thrown out). If, on the other hand, I know he is not voting for Biden, I could not normally conclude that he is voting for Trump. He might be voting for a third party after all (and whether or not that is a good idea brings up all the points made above). So, political loyalties are not usually well modeled on the basis of a contradictory relationship. Such loyalties are contrary at best even if specific choices made on the basis of those loyalties (e.g. voting) might be framed in terms of contradictory relationships.

Another example? If you like capitalism, it’s probably safe to assume you are not in favor of communism, but could we really infer from a criticism of capitalism that you were a communist? No. You could be in favor of some alternative political economy. Old fashioned trade guilds, perhaps coupled with mercantilism, subsistence economics (as practiced in many indigenous communities), or good old Georgism (which may or may not be a form of socialism, depending on who you ask), all come to mind. (So, does rejecting the terms ‘capitalism’ or ‘communism’ outright as being to vague and sweeping.). Inferring support for one of these highly loaded terms from opposition to the other is hardly reasonable, and yet, people do it all the time.

People who should know better.

But people often treat contrary relationships as though they were contradictory, thus enabling a faulty implicature, the inference of a specific loyalty from criticism of an alternative commonly understood to be its opposite. This empowers both false alternatives and tu-quoque arguments. For some people this approach to decision making is just too gratifying to resist.

We sometimes encounter simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions, and hence make choices between contradictory values, but much of our thinking takes place in a world with a broader range of possibilities. Those locked into the mindset of Social manichaeism are constantly pushing us to think in narrower terms to begin with. If all of us are prone to miss the possibilities from time to time, then some people seem to take this as a point of principle.

Personality: Enter a living train-wreck such as Donald Trump! He thrives on constrained choices precisely because his own actions and his own statements cannot stand up to scrutiny on their own merits. Whatever the man may have been like when he was younger, he has long since accumulated a range of of bad deals, unpaid debts, and obvious lies in a personal history of chronically abusive behavior. His own credibility would never stand up to scrutiny, not from anyone making an honest effort.

So, how does he manage?

He always brings with him a broad range of bluffs and diversions, and one of the most important is a constant penchant for attacking someone in virtually any context, and for doing it in the most humiliating way possible. Every claim he might make, every question one might ask, is then subsumed under the effect of this personal attack. For those under attack, this means trying to balance the need to defend yourself against the effort to address any objective issues that may be on the table. For bystanders, it is a question of balancing concerns over Trump’s behavior against those he raises about others. In the ensuing hostilities, trump can raise and drop any issues he wishes, make false claims, and set them aside at his liesure. If he is caught flat footed, the solution is as simple as insulting the person who pointed it out or any source they may rely upon. The end-result is a choice between him or someone else, and any doubts about that other person whatsoever will be enough for Donald. He has spent his lifetime exploiting the benefit of the doubt. It is a benefit does not share with others.

The logic of the whataboutism gambit suits Trump’s style perfectly.

Is Trump University credible? What about Hillary!?!

Did Donald tell a lie? Ask Obama if you can keep your insurance!?!

Is he mistreating immigrants? What are the Dems doing to protect us!?! (…and after 2016, ask Obama, because he did it first?)

Is the Trump family self-dealing through their position in government? Where is Hunter!?!

You get the idea.

This is a man in deep need of enemies. The closest he will ever get to redemption lies in the hope that those around him will think him better than the alternative. Small wonder that he preferred to keep Hillary on the table as a kind of shadow President, a mythic character he could use as a whipping woman even in the 2020 election. At the peak of his Presidency, when she should have been off the table entirely, she was still the answer to concerns about Trump, replaced only when Biden stepped in to become Trump’s new foil, and only partially so at that. Trump has always needed a constrained choice to make a case for himself, because he is of no value on his own.

To know the worth of Donald Trump, one has always to ask what about someone else.

A man like that is made for the sort of strife we have seen this week, and throughout his Presidency. He is at his peak when the whole world has to think in terms of the constrained choices he seeks to bring about in all times and all places. For most of us these moments come and go. For the likes of Donald Trump, such moments are the only ones that count.

***

Is Donald Trump the only person like this? Not by a long shot, but he is my exhibit ‘A’, and as he is still in a position to do us all harm, he seems to be a relevant example. It was the dramatic nature of our recent elections that got me thinking about the way that certain arguments seem more compelling at some times than other.

I could just as easily have written an epitaph for nuance.

Perhaps that would have been more to the point.

Let us hope that subtlety finds room to breathe in all our minds sometime soon! It is one thing to say ‘no’ with conviction when that is what is called for, and it is quite another to live in a world that is polemics all the way down.

In the end, the point here is that there seem to be some folks who really thrive on the ability to reduce the world to a pair of choices under the assumption that to affirm one is to deny the other. Elections may be a special time to such folks, a moment in which certain patterns of thought seem a little less flawed and a moment in which the rest of the world may just be happy to join in that same pattern of thinking.

We probably all engage in similar patterns of thought in many other contexts, sports rivalries and all manner of brand loyalties come to mind. For my own part, I hope soon to set some of this aside and think about other things. I can’t quite say that i am ready yet.

I can’t quite say that the rest of America is either.

Hopefully soon!

I’ll Motte Your Bailey! The White Privilege Edition

13 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Justice, Politics

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Confirmation Bias, Critical Thinking, Motte and Bailey Doctrine, prejudice, Privilege, Race, Racism, Social Justice, White Privilege

Okay, I’m going to regret this…

What’s a “Motte and Bailey doctrine?” The term was coined by Nicholas Shackel. It describes a position in which somebody defines a term in narrow and well-defined terms in contexts of likely dispute and/or rigorous scrutiny, only to adopt a much broader and less rigorous approach to the same topic in practice (e.g. when speaking to a very friendly audience). The language comes from a medieval system of defense in which a tower (usually built on a mound) is surrounded by a stretch of desirable land. The tower on its mound (i.e. the Motte) is where the people of the community go for defense when attacked. The bailey is where people actually live and make their living. So, the concept here is really one of equivocation wherein people employ a strict definition of their stance when pressed only to get sloppy with it whenever opportunity tempts them to less than precise applications.

***

So…

Is “white privilege” a Motte and Bailey doctrine?

Well it certainly can be.

***

What’s the Motte version of “white privilege?”

As I understand it, the rigorous approach to “white privilege” is defined something like this; It is a range of unearned benefits conferred upon those perceived as white. [Alternatively, it is the lack of unearned debits conferred on countless underprivileged peoples as a result of their own (non-white) identity.] To say that this pattern has parallels to gender, sexual orientation, and range of other indices of social stratification is obvious.

What makes this the motte, as far as I see it anyway, is the lack of any direct assertions about the significance of this privilege relative to other issues. A white guy may have less to fear from the police during a traffic stop, for example, but he might still have grown up poor. He might still face discrimination if he speaks with a distinct regional accent. He could possess a disability, grow up with abusive parents, etc. Conversely, someone from an underprivileged minority group might still be wealthy, might still be connected, might still enjoy a range of benefits not available to all whites. In other words, the Motte version of this concept recognizes that white privilege does not automatically amount to getting the upper hand all across the board of social stratification. It is a ascribed status benefit enjoyed by white people. How that benefit stacks up against other such status benefits and detriments is another question.

What’s the bailey?

Well just ask critics of the concept!

How many times has a white guy told you he grew up in a trailer park or a crowded shack in response to comments about white privilege, or otherwise commented on countless travails of her or his early life in an effort to demonstrate that he or she did not have it easy? These arguments wouldn’t work against the motte version of this concept. They only work if ‘white privilege’ clearly entails an easier life for all white people, or at least the vast majority of them. As the possibility that other indices of social stratification would come into play is already built into the motte-version of ‘white privilege,’ all of these arguments fall well short of disproving that concept.

They really do.

So, why aren’t these points just straw man arguments?

They aren’t straw man arguments, because proponents of white privilege don’t always stay in the motte. Sometimes, those employing the notion really do seem to think (or at least say) that whites are uniformly better off. I have personally been told in no uncertain terms that I have had an easier life than they have because I am white, and I have certainly heard the sweeping comparisons from others invoking the notion of white privilege. Additionally, the practice of dismissing anything a white person says on the subject of race, racial privilege, or other social justice themes by reminding us that we speak from a position of privilege tends at least to erase the narrow definitions of the motte and nudge us all closer to a broad generalization about the overall status of white people relative to on-whites. Sometimes, people using this concept really do seem to be painting a simple picture of privilege that squashes a number of other measures of privilege and oppression under the weight of race. All-too-often the notion of white privilege, defined narrowly when scrutiny is likely, becomes in practice a categorical assumption that all white people have it better than all any-other-kinda people.

So, if it is tempting to dismiss the critics of white privilege for attacking a straw man, that temptation must be tempered by the awareness that at least some proponents of the notion actually embody that straw man, at least when they are on a roll.

***

And here is where the whole metaphor begins to fail us. Do people shift back and forth between strict and loose definitions of ‘white privilege.’ Yes, they do. They also do this with debates about the existence (and nature) of God, support for law and order, use of terms like ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism,” or the love of rock and roll.

Wiggle room happens!

While we might want to encourage people to stick to a single definition of the key terms they use (or even to hold opponents in a debate responsible for doing so whether they want to or not), it is somewhat of a distortion to suggest that this is unusual. It is also a distortion to suggest that it takes the form of two clearly defined variations. Often the slippage is more subtle than that.

And of course it doesn’t help that nobody seems to trust anybody enough to anybody enough to grant them the benefit of the doubt on this topic. To hear some people talk, the very notion of white privilege will bring about the downfall of America, taking Europe with us, and fairly clipping the wings of half the angels in heaven. They can’t even address the motte version of the concept, and they certainly won’t concede it. Others will assume the only reason for expressing skepticism on this concept is a clear dedication (Whether conscious or not) to the support of white privilege. The principle of charity, long advocated by introductory logic teachers all across the land, just isn’t welcome in social justice debates of the modern world. When we acknowledge doubt at all, we tend not to give the other guy the benefit of it, and since nobody is getting any of this benefit themselves, we are that much more stingy about giving it to others.

Dammit all anyhow!

…and of course one of the benefits some of us do enjoy here is the privilege of experiencing this as a largely theoretical subject. For some folks the problem is a lot more urgent than others.

***

In this case, in particular, the middle ground is critical, not because all things moderate are great and wonderful, but because there is a critical question here, one that falls squarely on the boundaries between the motte and the bailey of this particular notion.

Relative to other indices of ascribed social status, just how important is ‘white privilege?” In the life of any given person, or the prospect for a positive outcome in any critical situation, just how likely is white privilege to make the difference? I can well understand that a black man might enjoy the secondary benefits of wealth or that a white man might face discrimination for being poor, but how does wealth (or the display of it) really stack up in comparison to race?

In attempting to answer this question, we do so haunted by the specter of confirmation bias.

White folks like myself typically underestimate the pervasiveness of our privilege. This was once brought home to me quite vividly when driving with my gal, Moni, in the passenger seat. Seeing a police officer race up beside us on the highway only to motion at me to slow down, she was shocked to see how easily I got away with driving over the speed limit. (In my defense, I wasn’t going that fast. Honest!) This is an event she now commemorates by taking pictures of me ‘criming while white’ whenever she gets the chance. Of course, I haven’t always gotten a break from cops in such situations, but after talking to her, I have come to realize that my own ideas about how a traffic stop is likely to go vary considerably with her own, and yes, I do put the difference down to race.

Of course, some in the social justice camp may be a little too quick too assume that racial identity has made the difference in this or that situation, but of course, not all biases are equal. If I was to bet on this, I would put my money on the likelihood that those of us enjoying white privilege miss its effect in our lives far more than those who lack this privilege see it when it isn’t there. In any event, the answer to how much weight white privilege gets in comparison to other indices of social status is going to be heavily skewed by the impact of this very phenonomenon (along with other all the other variables that skew the way that humans experience and treat each other).

The notion of ‘white privilege’ isn’t sufficiently robust without accounting for its relative weight. If we just say, “yes, that’s a benefit, one of many,” then all we are doing is acknowledging that race is one of many things that could trigger prejudice, and that when this happens white people are likely to benefit from the effect of that prejudice.

That takes ‘meh’ all the way to 5!

Simply saying that whiteness is just one index of unearned privilege among many others invites us all to shrug our shoulders and go back to whatever else we were doing. Perhaps we will notice when it matters; perhaps we will not. That position is not just a motte; it’s a meh. We can do better than that.

If on the other hand, we say that white privilege trumps all other considerations in all imaginable contexts, then, well, that just isn’t true. There are at least some contexts in which class, regional dialect, age, health, sexual orientation, personal connections, or any range of considerations could trump race. That white privilege skews the likelihood of positive privilege in some of these areas (e.g. class) more likely is certainly true, but at least some of the time, being white may not matter as being something else.

Some of the time.

In the end, the concept of ‘white privilege’ isn’t significant until we assign it some weight relative to other things that can skew the way that people treat one another.

As I write this, I am envisioning a much-needed trip through the relevant statistical research, but for now I mean to wrap this up by simply framing the position that most sense to me. It is the notion that white privilege, at least in the modern United States, is the most critical index of social status, at least when you account for both the likelihood that it will come up and the impact it will have. There may be less-severe sources of social bias which are more prevalent, and there may be less common sources of bias with more substantial impact when they do occur, but in the long run, white privilege is more likely to make a difference in a critical situation than class, region, age, etc. Do I believe this? Yes, though I am quite open to reconsideration and/or modification of the position.

***

So where does this leave us, or me at any rate?

I reckon us (me), somewhere in the transition from motte to bailey. I am grumble when I see the easy assumption that white people just have it better than others. I grumble more when I talk to white people who can’t even grasp the possibility that their whiteness might have given them an edge in life, at least some of the time. I reckon, the most appropriate thing to do here is to think of this in terms of priorities. As far as social ills go, this is at (or damned near) the top of the hierarchy. It isn’t the be-all and end-all of social justice, but I’d be hard pressed to think of anything more critical to address than racial disparities. That’s not a blank check written for anyone who wants to cash in on the claim to fighting for social justice. A certain amount of mere noise attaches itself to every signal, and shameless opportunists find their way into every cause. Still, I do think this problem is real, and I want more folks who enjoy white privilege would take the notion seriously.

***

It occurs to me that I may have just taken ‘meh’ all the way to 6, but it really does seem to me that the issue only gets interesting when you start asking how important white privilege is relative to other sources of social status. In suggesting that white privilege is more important than other variables, I am certainly picking a fight with anyone who seeks to deny that white privilege exists altogether, and also with those who see it as just one variable drowning in a see of other claims on our social conscience. To say that any other variables of social status could even be weighed against race and white privilege in any manner puts me at odds with quite a few of the proponents of the notion. I may have staked out a position on the middle ground, but in this instance, I doubt this will prove convenient.

Spurious Responses

01 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Politics

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Critical Thinking, Defensiveness, History, Internet, Pinterest, Quotes, Rationalization, spam, Spurious Quotes

Been thinking a bit lately about THIS old post?

It’s still an interest of mine.

So, I sometimes make a point to call out the spurious quotes thriving all over the net these days. It’s not the most noble of personal callings, I know, but I noticed a long time ago that the information correcting some of this stuff isn’t often found in the same electronic neighborhood as the political pornography in which these bullshit quotes normally reside. So, I reckon it ain’t the least useful thing a guy could do with a spare 15 minutes or so to introduce the author of an un-sourced quote to a well reasoned debunkitation.

I’m often fascinated by the responses I get.

***

I was quite interested when Pinterest suspended my account for a few weeks, …I think over this. I could be wrong, but I do think this pastime is what did it.

The thing is, you can find the same spurious quotes in countless memes all over Pinterest. It’s just so damned easy to spread information when all it takes is the click of one ‘save’ button. The net is full of ccrap, I know, but the political hashtags at Pinterest are a particularly bullshit rich environment.

I can say it in a few different ways, but what needs to be said in response to these fake quotes is usually pretty simple, and I can’t help thinking a good link to Mount Vernon or Monticello.org ought to find itself somewhere in the response. The link alone really ought to suffice. The trouble is that these misquote-laden memes are distributed through a variety of different accounts on Pinterest. If I’m posting a lot of links to the same page correcting them, then of course I am the spammer.

Oops!

Don’t get me wrong, the principle in question makes a kind of sense, as does its application. You don’t want someone posting the same link over and over again on a social media platform, but it does create an ironic outcome. In this instance, at least, it seems that’s a lot easier to spread disinformation than it is to counter it.

Oh well!

***

Before moving onto the more personal responses I’ve gotten over the years, I must admit that my own tone here varies. If I think the person passing along a fake quote has done so accidentally, I try to just call attention to the problem. Hell, I reckon I’ve probably made this mistake myself once or twice. It ain’t no hanging matter; I just want to correct a (hopefully honest) mistake. If, on the other hand, the fake quote is accompanied by narratives about how teachers, media, and liberals are too damned deceitful to share the ‘truth’ of the quote, I must admit, my own response is likely to come with a little sarcasm on the top. There are of course other signs of bad faith that I typically meet with a more combative tone.

Sometimes I’m nicer about this than others.

Also, sometimes, I just ask people for a source to see what they come up with.

Anyway…

***

Oh yeah, my first post on this topic, the one about Abe Lincoln, has a couple rich responses of its own. Still kinda chuckle about those.

***

By far and away,, the most interesting response I get is the occasional effort to document the quote by linking me to the ‘spurious quotes’ pages at Monticello or Mount Vernon. Seriously, this has happened a few times.

“Did you read it?” I ask.

At least once, someone realized their mistake at that point and owned up to it. She gets props for doing the right thing.

Once I was assured by someone that clearly hadn’t read the material that he totally had read every word of it. He also assured me that he understood what ‘spurious’ means. Yep! Definitely! We went a few rounds on that, before he dropped out of the conversation. A ‘block’ button may have been pushed. I dunno…

Others simply stopped responding immediately.

Someone else told me I was being rude.

…which was of course true.

***

Several people have tried to tell me that the quote in question may have been undocumented, but that it accurately reflected what the person to whom it was attributed really did believe. I got this at least once with a popular bastardization of George Washington’s first address to Congress.

…right after I had explained in detail exactly how the quote misrepresented him.

It seems that to some people making this argument these quotes are a kind of Kantian thing-in-itself (a truth truth-in-itself?). The truth as they envision it rests over and above the facts, even the facts of its own expression. If you can’t find one clear expression of that truth in the messy real-world of the historical record, that doesn’t matter, because we know the truth and the source to whom it has been attributed must have known it. So they might as well have said it.

It’s all true anyway, so what’s the problem?

This is one of the more disturbing responses I get, because it reveals an air tight echo chamber in the thinking of the person in question. They love America’s founding fathers and they love their guns and such, and two things they love must love each other, and so when the real-world George Washington doesn’t live up to their masturbatory fantasies, well then, they can just speak up and say what he woulda said anyway.

The rationale also works for any number of subjects certain people feel America’s founding fathers must certainly have loved every but as much as they do.

…even if those founders didn’t actually say so.

Not much to be done about folks who reason like that.

***

Another common response is to ask how I know the quote isn’t real.

…and that’s one of those moments when I remember why burdens of proof matter.

***

A related tactic is to assure me that the quote is real and tell me to do my own research. Faced with credible sources that claim the quotes can’t be found in any known archives, those using this tactic assure me that the quote is real and that we skeptics really ought to work harder.

…which brings to mind words like ‘gaslighting’, ‘trolling’, ‘asshole’, and a quick end to the conversation.

***

Sometimes people complain that my efforts to check them reveal a character flaw on my own part. Don’t I have anything better to do?

No such questions seem to have been asked about the time it takes the individuals in question to pass along a spurious quote. But of course, we all have much more important things to do when the one we are presently engaged in turns out to be a little frustrating. It’s human nature.

***

Probably the most common response I get to declare the source of the quote irrelevant. It’s the idea that matters, I am told, and surely that idea is true. So, it doesn’t matter if Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or any other made up source didn’t really say what they were supposed to have said. That’s not the point. The point is it’s true.

I must say that it’s an interesting coincidence that so many timeless truths that could come from any source really, seem so often to be attributed to sources of great political value. It’s also an interesting coincidence that so many of them seem quite useful to specific political agendas today, agendas which often sail under the banner of faithfulness to American principles and respect for the wishes of America’s founding fathers. It’s really quite convenient that so many questionable quotes would seem to provide the politics of the people in question with the authority of a voice from the founding fathers. The sources really don’t matter, so it seems, not after the source has been debunked.

Perhaps I could be excused for thinking the source mattered, at least a little, before that source came into question.

What I always find most interesting about this tactic is how seamless the transition is from presenting an undocumented quote to declaring the named source irrelevant to its content. People employing this tactic rarely take so much as a moment to acknowledge their error. Often they avoid conceding the point altogether as they shift from a historical claim about who said what to a kind of Platonic reasoning in which the idea itself is all that really matters.

And thus a person wholly unconcerned with the falsehood of a factual claim suddenly becomes the priest of a timeless truth.

***

Oh yeah, some people don’t respond at all. Some just keep right on producing the bullshit quotes too. This is particularly true of some websites like BrainyQuote. It’s also true of some dedicated ideological warriors. They just keep right on posting the fake quotes long after a reasonable person might have at least quietly deleted the material from a blog or a social media account.

***

There is one response that gets me every time, and that’s the one where somebody simply acknowledges the mistake. Often this is followed by a ‘thank you’. Maybe they take down the quote. Maybe they just let their acknowledgement of the correction stand for itself in the discussion. Either way, it’s a class move.

These days, such responses surprise me a little more than they ought to.

…and that’s kinda sad.

***

I suppose it doesn’t really surprise me that people would respond defensively to such things. People don’t usually like to be corrected. I know I don’t. And of course, any of us could get things like this wrong. That’s not terrible. It’s human. Still, some of these rationalizations do seem to give you a peak behind the curtain, so to speak, into the mind of someone for whom due diligence is simply unthinkable. They must be right one way or another, so they seem to think.

…even if they are wrong!

Kathy Griffin and the Meta-hypocrisy Shuffle

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Critical Thinking, Decapitation, Donald Trump, Humor, Hypocrisy, Kathy Griffin, Reflexivity, Rhetoric, Violence

170530144046-kathy-griffin-tyler-shields-exlarge-169

Nope! Not reproducing the actual image.

Just when you thought the whole damned controversy was in your rear-view mirror, along comes some damned blogger to put all the ick right back on the table. Well suck it up, dear reader, cause I got a bloggitation to bloggitize over this.

…okay, please?

We all know the story, right? A little while back, the comedian, Kathy Griffin, posted a picture of herself holding up the severed head of Donald Trump. Don’t worry, it was fake. Donald survived the whole ordeal, but suffice to say, it was a rather controversial image. Naturally, a great deal of outrage was soon to follow. I have no doubt that a good number of those complaining about her stunt were simply using it as grist for the mill. I also have no doubt that a number of her critics were genuinely appalled by Griffin’s stunt. Which critics fit into which category is another question, and not a very interesting one at that.

What I find especially interesting about this story is the role hypocrisy as a theme in this particular kerfuffle. It’s hardly surprising to see that theme pop up here. Really, it’s just the sort of story that begs for accusations of hypocrisy, and those accusations soon made an appearance. Various parties on the right wing accused ‘lefties’ or ‘liberals’ of hypocrisy for making such a big deal of violence and violent rhetoric on the part of the Trump campaign when we produce violent rhetoric such as that of Griffin. Those of us on the left (myself among them) complained that the right makes hay out of Griffin’s image while condoning the actual violence of people like Montana’s Greg Gianforte or for that matter supporting Donald Trump’s flirtations with mob violence. Of course each side is fully capable of responding to accusations of support for violence (whether tacit or overt) by pointing at still more support for violence on the other side.

…and the internet becomes an angry infinity mirror.

So, what’s interesting about that? It’s the role that accusations of hypocrisy can play in facilitating, …well, hypocrisy. Think of it this way: You see somebody do something outrageous (and by outrageous, I mean something likely to rouse disapproval in the public sphere), and you want to criticize them for it. The problem is, you’ve done something like that yourself in the past, or at least you’ve supported other people who did. This creates a problem in that your own condemnation is likely to come across as an inconsistency. One potential solution to that is to conjure the image of critics who have condemned this behavior before and castigate them for supporting the behavior now. That way, you don’t have to actually put your own cards on the table. You don’t have to actually say that you are now condemning the behavior your once supported. Instead, you just say; “look at the guy who is now supporting behavior he once condemned!” If you do this right, you can effectively play both sides of the game without anyone noticing. All they see is that you are commenting on someone else who is playing both sides of the field. It’s an exercise in projection of course, and a remarkably effective one at that. It’s what I like to call the meta-hypocrisy shuffle.

I should add that it isn’t really necessary to point out any actual instances of hypocrisy on the part of any particular person to make this stratagem work. It is often enough to talk about ‘liberals’ or ‘conservatives’ (or any other group) and simply tell the story of how the other side is full of hypocrites. The ploy can be just as effective in this abstract form as it can be with real life examples. Plus, it avoids the inconvenience of having to address the details of anyone’s actual behavior, much less to deal with their own response to your criticism.

So, what am I saying here? I am saying that a lot of people on the right used Kathy Griffin to field an argument about liberal hypocrisy all the while hiding their own hypocrisy on the very same subject. That’s the argument I want to make anyway, but reflexivity being what it is, I must also concede that a lot of liberals did the same. What I don’t have to concede is that all parties involved in the controversy are equally guilty of this vice. Quite a few people on the left really did condemn Griffin’s behavior, and I certainly have known a number of Republicans who have condemned Donald Trump’s more violent rhetoric. (I’d say that’s one of the differences between a ‘conservative’ and a ‘deplorable’.) Griffin did in the end, lose at least one gig (actually several, it seems) over the whole matter. I could only wish the same was true of Donald Trump. Be that as it may, the point is that this trick (and the criticism I make of it) can indeed cut both ways, but that possibility does not mean the cut is equally warranted.

I don’t know how productive a debate would be over which political groups are more consistent on this (or any other) issue, but I do think some individuals at least have managed to show some consistency on the issue. Sadly, they are often tarred with the same hypocritical brush as their flip-flopping allies have been. Again, the story of hypocrisy alone is often sufficient to make the argument stick, sufficient even to the degree that those who are rigorously consistent on an issue may well be accused of hypocrisy by someone who is himself or herself simply doing the meta-hypocrisy shuffle.

It’s worth bearing in mind here that there is at least one angle on such issues that the whole question of hypocrisy doesn’t seem to address, and by this I mean the integrity of a committed partisan. You could take a relentless commitment to one side of a debate as a kind of integrity in itself. You could see the willingness to field arguments in direct contradiction to one’s own personal record as an instance of taking one for the team. Perhaps it is even a kind of courage. If so, that’s a courage I hope never to have, but so be it, the ethic is out there. Some clearly ascribe to it. Most of us, I think, prefer to field arguments that we find personally plausible, and most of us at least try to accomplish some level of consistency in our moral judgements.

Some try harder than others.

One thing worth considering here is the medium that delivers this message. In person, I suspect we are more likely to forgive each other’s inconsistencies, if for no other reason than because we are likely to see them coming from people whose shifting patterns parallel our own. If I contradict myself in the process of complaining verbally about some damned Republican, odds are rather likely that I am talking to somebody who is just as pissed about that damned Republican as I am. Confirmation bias being what it is, they are just as likely to grab the nearest rhetorical hammer, and just as likely to think it oughtta be used to smash him as I am. Likewise, a Republican jabbering on about a liberal is likely to be doing so in the company of other Republicans who also think rathe rpoorly of the bastard. It could be, that I’m missing something here, but I tend to think verbal exchanges make it a bit easier to skate by on this issue, to shift around one’s values without anyone noticing, and more particularly to avoid becoming the target of someone who seeks to hide his own inconsistencies in a story about ours.

Not so, the net.

All sorts of different people read controversial statements on social media, and that includes the guy who likes to complain about your kinda people even as you’re trying to vent spleen about his kind. In some places, like Facebook, I think, folks may make an effort to set aside their grievances and remember that the guy who just posted the outrageous meme will be sitting across from them at Christmas dinner. In other places, like Twitter, each and every comment expressing a different point of view seems to be fair game. What’s worse, the 140 character limit on tweets thins out the context of any statement a great deal, so it’s tough to tell how people generally approach these things. If someone criticizes Kathy Griffin (or doesn’t) only those who follow him carefully will notice whether or not that criticism squares with his general approach to the issues. The temptation is of course to assume the worst, not for the least of reasons being that the worst often seems to be driving the public debate on such media platforms. So, if a given Twitter-Republican really is just as hard on right wingers who make use of violent rhetoric, few of his more liberal readers will ever know. Likewise, a Twitter-Democrat who doesn’t support images like those produced by Kathy Griffin is as easily accused of liberal hypocrisy as any of those who simply laughed and retweeted her without the slightest thought about the matter.

The way Twitter (among others) thins out the context of political rhetoric facilitates a degree of hypocrisy. That same thinness also makes it easier to substitute general stories about this side or that side of a given debate for genuine comments on actual behavior, stories which fill in the details of people’s political orientation without checking those details against their personal history. This I think, makes the meta-hypocrisy shuffle just a little bit easier. You can always pretend the other side flipped first.

…and that makes it a little easier to flip yourself.

When Trolling Douchebags

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics, Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Critical Thinking, Donald Trump, Douchebag, Election, Ethics, Friedrich Nietzsche, Internet, Melania Trump, Misogyny

trumpcrop5 “When trolling douchebags, take care not to become a douche yourself.”

I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. I’m almost certain my man Friedrich was talking about Trump when he wrote that. He was trying to tell us to be careful how we criticize Trump, because Trump is full of idiot and when you argue with idiot, you get idiot sauce all over you.

Make a note of that Hillary!

“Cereal?” You may be asking, but I can assure you that Nietzsche was totally cereal with all of this stuff, cause the man was a totally cereal kind of guy.

…at least about how you should argue with Trump. Or with the idiots who support his Trumpery badness.

Nietzsche’s point of course was that you really should watch what you say about Melania Trump. I know this, because I asked him. I asked Nietzsche straight up. I said; “what do you mean dude?” And he told me I shouldn’t really call him dude. He said Zarathustra would not approve. He then told me the whole damned quote was actually about Melania Trump. He wanted us to know that people should watch what they say about her.

“Surely, you don’t mean,” I said to Nietzsche, “that we can’t criticize her for plagiarizing Michelle Obama in her speech at the GOP convention.”

“No, that’s fair game,” he said. “You can totally criticize her for plagiarism. You can even take a few extra digs for saying she wrote it herself just before blaming the fact that she didn’t write it herself on the ghost who didn’t write it herself either. Damned ghosts anyhow! You just can’t trust a ghost to write new stuff you can take credit for these days. Rich folks ought to be able to take credit for the work of others. It’s the American way!”

I thought he had a point.

Nietzsche added, that you could probably criticize Malania and the whole Trump camp for pretending Obamas are the Devil himself when they actually seem to find some merit in what at least one of them does.

I asked Nietzsche if the devil has multiple personalities. He said only when he’s from Kenya. That’s all Nietzsche was wiling to say about that subject, so we moved on.

I asked the old philosopher if we could criticize Melania for saying she graduated from a place that never spat a degree her direction. He said, surely we could. I also asked Nietzsche if we could raise questions about her immigration status when she came to the country. He told me that was probably okay, but it would really depend on the questions. Did we really want to encourage Trumpery people to think of immigration as a bad thing? I agreed that might not be wise.

“So what’s the big deal anyway?” I asked the old curmudgeon. “What is it we are not supposed to say about Melania?”

“Oh, you can say anything you want.” Nietzsche assured me. “Without gods, everything is totally cool.”

“So then what’s the problem?” I asked again. “Can we go after Mrs. Douchebag or not?”

“Of course you can, but if you go about it wrong, you will become a douche yourself. You’ll be talking along, or tapping away at your keyboard and suddenly your mouth and your fingers will be the mouth and fingers of a douchebag. If you’re cool with that, then it’s all good. But if you don’t want to become a douchebag, then you should watch what you type about Melania.”

I told Nietzsche that I really didn’t want the mouth and fingers of a douchebag.

“Well, then take care of what you type!”

“Okay!” I was getting a little exasperated at this point. I mean, Nietzsche may not be a systematic philosopher, but this was a little cryptic even for the proto-gonz himself. “What exactly is it that I might not want to type about Malania.”

“Don’t slut-shame!” he said. “That way lies douchetude.”

“Cereal?”

“Totally cereal!”

I have to admit, I was a little taken aback by this whole thing. I mean, I really didn’t expect a conversation with Nietzsche in the first place, but nobody really expects that. What I really didn’t expect was that slut-shaming would be his biggest concern about election politics in the U.S. Maybe that wasn’t his biggest concern, but that’s what he chose to tell me at any rate. It really seemed to be the main point of the conversation.

“Why?” Nietzsche asked, “Why would you go after her anyway? Hasn’t the man himself given you enough cause for complaint to fill countless servers with perfectly sound criticisms? Does the image of Trump himself not make you want to claw your own eyes away from your face? Does his voice not make traitors of any ears foolish enough to pass along the sound of it? When you have Trump University, why would you bother about Melania’s degree? When you have Trump saying stupid things on a daily basis, why would you care if Melania chooses to channel Michelle like some drunken psychic who mistakes a radio for a ghost? Sure, you can make some good points about Melania, but the real story is always going to be the festering bloodfart beside her. Why on earth would anyone take the time to score a little field-goal against Melania, when you could score a game-winning touch-down against Trump himself? He’s the candidate for POTUS, and he is way worse than his wife will ever be? He’s worse than anyone’s wife will ever be. Hell, the Donald is worse than worse. He’s a singularity of worsitude? There is absolutely no reason to cap on Melania when her husband himself is such a bundle of dumbfuckery that the heavens themselves have been screaming “you’re fired” ever since his campaign announcement. Seriously, you have to ask yourself, why anyone with that much material on the Donald would instead choose to go after his wife? That just smacks of misogyny. I’m saying that, and I’m a notorious misogynist.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Your writing about women is pretty bad. And when did you start using football metaphors?”

“When you decided to write me into this damned blog post.”

He had a point.

I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation. Nietzsche was getting a little belligerent at that point. Also his Superbowl predictions seem a little far-fetched to me. Really, you just don’t want to know.

My main point, Nietzsche main point, is that one ought to think twice about attacking Trump through the use of Melania’s nudie pics. It’s become a rather common game on certain social media circles. Some people like to circulate racy photos of Melania Trump along with a comment or two about how she could be our First lady. Yesterday the hashtag #TrumpsMexicoTripSayings even had someone suggesting a donkey show for Melania, thus mixing racism with misogyny. It’s an ugly argument, and one that doesn’t do a damned thing to show just how bad Trump would be as a President.

The problem here isn’t really fairness to Trump, or even Melania. Neither Melania nor Donald will suffer much as a result of such idiocy, and these memes aren’t going to cost him the election, but the notion that a woman deserves punishment for her own sexuality is toxic as Hell. It does hurt people. Maybe not the wives of billionaires, but it hurts people just the same. An objection to commercial nudity is also pretty damned hypocritical when coming from people who consume such images themselves, all the more so for those spreading such images while criticizing Mrs. Trump for appearing in them.

With enough mental gymnastics, you could probably concoct a respectable-sounding argument about the topic, but at the end of the day, you are still using a woman’s body to attack her man. That way does lie douchebaggery. Nietzsche is right about that.

So, anyway, that’s what Friedrich Nietzsche has to say about this election. I asked him if I could share his thoughts on the subject. He said I could, but only if I did so by means of a completely ridiculous literary device.

An Accusatory Confession

21 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by danielwalldammit in Minis

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bias, Catch-22, Cognitive Bias, Confirmation Bias, Critical Thinking, Psychology, Recursion, Reflexivity, Thought

selfie fail?

Okay admit it!

When you learned about “Confirmation bias,” your first thought was that this totally explained how some other guy could be so completely wrong.

You did, didn’t you?

…at least, I hope it wasn’t just me.

Pay No Attention to the Abe in the Corner!

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

America, Critical Thinking, Founding Fathers, Government, Guns, Internet, Memes, Politics, Satire

One of the most beautiful gifts of the internet is the ability to learn at a glance the wisdom of America’s founding fathers. In fact, one can often find these pearls of wisdom beautifully packaged in nice visuals. They are perfect for a tweet or a quick illustration, and so very informative. Most of all, they are ever so conveniently one quick google away.

Take for instance the warning these men left for us regarding the evils of big government! Thomas Jefferson is particularly valuable in this regard. Why you could almost imagine him to be commenting directly on current affairs couldn’t you? Isn’t Tom just swell?

(You may as usual click to embiggen any of these quotations)

Thomas Jefferson was particularly keen on the importance of political dissent.

Thinking along similar lines, our founding fathers spoke directly to the issue of gun control. I mean, these comments are just so perfect. You’d almost think some of these quotes had been written by folks working for the NRA. Check it out!

More than that! Our great founders were no friends of the nanny state. They were quite clear that people shouldn’t expect too much from government. It’s there to give everyone a chance, but folks really shouldn’t expect any more than that. You read some of these things, and you can’t help thinking it’s almost as if they were actually thinking about the New Deal. I guess these guys were just prescient or something.

James Madison wouldn’t have any truck with this notion of a living constitution. He’d school the modern liberals right quick about that nonsense!

On religion, let me tell you, the founders of our great nation were clear about the importance of the Christian faith!

Oddly, the founders were also pretty damned clear about the evils of Christianity. Apparently, they had strong views on that too.

…It’s just a little strange.

I know this is getting to be a tiresome theme in this post, but the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson is not to be outdone. At times, he could almost seem to be a contemporary motivational speaker. Watch out Tony Robbins!

Not to be outdone, even George Washington carved his legacy into this little gem about taking responsibility for one’s personal mistakes.

Honestly, the wisdom of the founding fathers would seem to be amazing at times. Sometimes their prescience is uncanny. It’s an amazing thing to see just how well-suited their statements can be to present-day matters. Luckily, that wisdom was not limited to the original founders. It was around in the civil war era too. Could anyone possibly be more on the mark than Abraham Lincoln?

Seriously!

Listen to Abe folks.

Your Lips Say ‘No’, But Your Eyes Say ‘Chicken-Whistle Star-Bullets!’

01 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in atheism, Movies, Religion

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

atheism, Critical Thinking, Debate, Film, Movies, Religulous, Reliion, Rhetoric, Sarcasm

So I finally watched Religulous. I found it a truly underwhelming experience. Honestly, I think I must be over the joys of poking holes in religious thinking. In other news, boxing with Girl Scouts no longer brings me quite the same thrills that it used to.

…at least on Thursdays and Saturdays. It is entirely possible that I may relapse on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Okay, it’s not always that easy, I know; sometimes I meet a religious person with genuinely challenging thoughts, but perhaps that is my point. One can find a pretty broad range of qualities fitting under the heading of ‘religion’, and it can be just a little too easy to look for the easy pickings. Some people treat debunking religion as a sport, and those people rarely seek out the challenging thinkers. No, they hunt the naive in remote and highly uneducated corners of the globe; they sniff out the cooks and the crankcases. I should point out that the sport-debunker isn’t always an atheist, but of course, this time it is.

Religulous is the intellectual equivalent of a canned hunt. In this movie, Bill Maher seeks out and makes a fool of one believer after another and I cannot help but think most of those interviewed have been selected for their capacity to appear nutty to the rest of us. Maher does little to explore the intellectual lives of any of those interviewed in Religulous. His discussions bear a strong-resemblance to a cross-examination in a courtroom (or at least a courtroom drama). Maher’s questions rarely veer far from the effort to produce a contradiction or an implausible claim, and he doesn’t hesitate to interrupt, argue, or insult his subjects at any point in the movie. Not wanting his subjects to go-off half-mocked, Maher includes several segments in which he trashes those already interviewed while driving about, presumably on the way to the next ambush interview. When he does interview intelligent believers, Maher’s sole interest seems to be getting them to help debunk their brethren. The most interesting and complex thinkers in this movie would easily include a number of Priests but they are of interest to Maher only insofar as they help us to dismiss the beliefs of others.

I have to admit, there was a time when I would have been into this. Now, I just find it rather predictable.

…and pointlessly rude.

Ironically, I think Maher’s snide disrespect for his quarry in this film actually blunts the force of his criticism and lets them off the hook. In interviewing John Westcott, an ex-gay minister, for example, Maher makes a point to suggest the sexuality of the man’s children remains in question. In the commentary track, he further laughs at the irony of a man denying his homosexuality when Maher can tell by his behavior that the man is gay. Personally, I think this underscores the irony of a man proporting to call a believer to task for mistreatment of homosexuality while exhibiting all the insight and sensitivity one might expect to find in the boys locker room of a high school football game. Maher’s games do absolutely nothing to reveal the intellectual dishonesty and outright harmfulness of ex-gay therapies and related ministries. While Maher plays to the cheap seats by making fun of the man and his children, the interview goes nowhere. Maher learns nothing about the minister’s actual point of view, and he does nothing to show us just how harmful these organizations can actually be.

And I wonder if I am supposed to be pleased with this?

Maher is casting religion in a bad light, and in this movie (as in other contexts), he does sometimes score a hit, or even a home-run. I should be able to enjoy this, and I would, if I thought Maher was doing a consistently good job of it, but what bothers me most about this movie is a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t an exercise in healthy skepticism, that in fact Maher is selling a message that doesn’t quite fit the label on the packaging. Shallow as it is, Maher’s engagement with the proponent’s of God-talk is not merely intended to show us how foolish they are. He is building a narrative with assumptions going well beyond the foibles of his hapless quarry.

One particularly telling moment occurs during an interview with a Muslim cleric. the man’s cell phone goes off, and the ringtone is Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Maher suggests that this is odd. The prospect that a song called ‘Kashmir’ might strike a cord with a Muslim seems to have completely escaped him. More to the point, he doesn’t ask why the Cleric uses that ringtone or what it means to him. To Maher it seems to be self-evident that the Cleric’s choice of music reveals an inconsistency. He drives this point home further in the commentary track, suggesting that people steeped in outdated beliefs should not get to use modern conveniences.

The mode of engagement used here is consistently that of polemics. Maher wants to poke holes in religion; he doesn’t want to understand anything else about the people he is talking to, or at least he doesn’t want to show us anything else in the final cut of the movie. To describe the end result as superficial would be giving superficial a bad name. But of course there is something a little more insidious at work here. It arises in the notion that religion is simply outdated, that the cleric’s interest in a cell phone is simply incommensurate with religious beliefs. This is old fashioned unilineal evolution, the belief that human history follows a set course. To Maher (and evidently his producer) it goes without saying that religious beliefs are chatter out of place, so to speak, and that history is incomplete so long as these throwbacks remain with us. This is the key to his polemic approach. He wants to show us that religion is stupid, urge us all to leave it all behind, and thereby advance one further step in human history.

In taking this approach, Maher is unfortunately (and ironically) doing a good deal more than debunking the beliefs of his interview subjects; he is advancing a faith of his own, a faith in Progress with a capital ‘P’, and a specific vision of that Progress. The film ends with an emphasis on growing conflicts between Muslims and Christians, and a recurrent expression of fear that these faiths will lead us to nuclear disaster. Maher addresses the claim that these conflicts are really political, and of course it is easy enough for Maher to assert that they are also religious, but of course this is a unique marriage of the fallacies of straw man false alternatives. The question is not which category various conflicts fall into, but rather how politics and religion intersect in actual human history. That is a question Maher is completely unprepared to answer, or even ask. He relies on a stock vision of humanity’s course throughout the film, and herein lies the value of his deceptively simple interview agenda. So long as we are focused on the foibles of the faithful we may not take the time to think critically about Maher’s own millenarian vision of the future.

This is bait & switch.

Maher quite rightly calls some of his interview subjects to task for glossing over the role of faith in political violence, but his refusal to address the politics is itself a telling source of ignorance. He is telling as simple story in which the source of modern evil is found in beliefs and beliefs alone. If only we can deal with the bad beliefs once and for all in the fashion of lunch-room debate tactics, then the world will be a better place.

In advancing this simple message Maher shows us that he has a lot more in common with believers than he would suppose.

A Bullet Point Mind

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Education, The Bullet Point Mind

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Communications, Critical Thinking, Education, Power Point, Public Speaking, Slideshows, Speech, Visual Presentations, What not to do

Relevancy – Perhaps Paradoxical

I still remember the first day I learned to dread the power point presentation. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve seen good ones. I have at times been well pleased to take in a well designed power point presentation. If only I could have more of those days, and fewer of the kind that I have so often grown to expect.

Anyway…

I was sitting in a lecture hall many years ago listening to a colleague do a training for the rest of the faulty at our college. She was trying to teach us something about assessment techniques for accreditation, but the fact is that this particular colleague had nothing to say about the topic, and she was painfully slow in the way she was not saying it. The overall effect was a lot like a sedative and one of Pink Floyd’s longer and slower songs. Every point this woman made began with a new slide that added a phrase or quick sentence. She would stop talking, click a button, wait to see the new phrase appear and then pause long enough for us to read the phrase ourselves (twice). She would then read the phrase and give us a little more time to let it sink in. In a rare moment of personal empowerment, our illustrious lecturer would add a comment or two about the phrase before moving onto the next one. Mostly, she just let us take in the power of each individual bullet point. So, I’m sitting there watching this and trying desperately not run screaming from the room as I study the slide-show and wonder why I hated it so much. Of course training days are often a painful experience, but this was a special kind of heck, and the source of my particular sorrow on that day wasn’t immediately apparent. Eventually, I come to a realization.

It’s her outline!

What my colleague had chosen to pass off as a power-point presentation was nothing more than the outline for her speech, exactly the sort of outline we had all learned to write in our Freshmen Composition and Speech classes. There it was, unfolding there on the screen, one line at a time, as if it were some sad librarian’s version of dramatic tension.

Far from enhancing the presentation, this visual was slowing the speaker down and enabling her to avoid the responsibility even to explain the connections between the points of her talk. The speaker didn’t need to decide how each individual bullet point related to the major themes of her discussion; all she needed to do was read them at us. The visual served to occupy our attention and help us to forget that she had crammed a whole 5 minutes of information into an hour-long presentation. In effect, the presenter had looked into the heart of her software and found a new and improved means of bluffing.

…Would that this was a unique experience!

This technique also seemed to lend an ontological claim to the individual bullet points. Things that a person might just say offhand, or as part of a larger argument often seem to acquire a objectivity all their own, standing up there on a screen. A list of bullet points might contain causes, effects, and side comments to a larger heading, all quite unmarked in the visual. The verbal presentation did nothing to clarify matters. I grew slowly to realize the presenter did not herself know exactly how each sub-point of her presentation related to the main themes. She knew only that the topics traveled in a pack together, so to speak, and she wanted us to know that too. The visual solved this problem by telling us exactly how each point related to the next.

…mainly vertically.

This was the secret of the power-point visual, it lent the illusion of mystic substance to each individual point while undermining the need to explore rational connections between the. Each individual point on the screen in front of us looked terribly important in its own right, certainly more important than the explanations that connect each point to the others. Those connections didn’t appear on the screen. the bullet points did. They mattered more.

…and critical thinking wept!

It’s the Sub-Deduction Stupid: Scalia’s Thoughts on Absurdity and Gay Rights

30 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Justice, Politics

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Critical Thinking, Gay Marriage, Hollingsworth v. Perry, Homosexuality, Lawrence v. Texas, Marriage, Reductio Ad Absurdum, United States v. Windsor

Time was when Antonin Scalia seemed fairly dedicated to the pretense of Judicial restraint. These days he appears content to be known as a political lobbyist for the right wing echo chamber. We can see this in the increasing number of public statements he has made on a range of political issues, effectively tipping his hand to those weighing their prospects in the legal arena.

…all of which makes Scalia’s role in the gay rights cases recently argued before the Supreme Court (Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor) that much more disturbing. Not surprisingly, the subject has come up in his extra-judicial engagements. Asked to defend his equation between homosexuality and sundry horribles such as incest, bestiality, and child pornography (among other things) in Lawrence v. Texas, Scalia made the following remarks at Princeton University:

It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,'” Scalia told [freshman Duncan] Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?

Condescension aside, what Scalia is saying is basically Freshman Logic material. In his Dissenting opinion for Lawrence, Scalia had indeed used the standard argument form of a reductio ad absurdum against the position taken by the majority (holding that a Texas law banning sodomy was in violation of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment). A reductio ad absurdum essentially consists of an attempt to derive an absurd conclusion from a given claim as a means of refuting it. If a given assertion can be shown to lead to absurd implications, so the logic goes, then one ought to reject it. In this case, the claim at stake would be something along the lines of a restriction on judgements (or laws) against homosexual activity. Scalia hopes to show that this holding will lead to an intolerable list of absurdities.

I sincerely doubt that Hosie failed to recognize the argument form, and Scalia’s response does little to shed light on the logic of his argument. The question in this case is more properly, whether or not Scalia’s had successfully shown that the claim made by the majority in Lawrence was actually absurd. In essence, the question is whether or not Scalia had successfully negotiated the transition from the claim he wished to refute to the absurdity he wished to assert in his argument. That transition is sometimes described as the ‘Sub-deduction’ of the argument. That is, in this instance, where the real argument lies.

And here is where the story gets interesting.

The sub-deduction of Scalia’s argument comes in a weak and a ‘strong’ version. By ‘weak’, I mean ‘truly shitty’ and by ‘strong’ I mean rather heartless’, but allow me to demonstrate…

Sub-Deductions in Need of a Workout: Sundry net warriors will be familiar with the weak version, because we’ve heard it from conservative Christians for years. It is essentially an argument against moral relativism, or at least a certain straw rendering thereof. We heard it a little more in the wake of Lawrence, and frankly, Scalia’s remarks in this instance tended toward the weak version, if only because their brevity does little to shed light on the logic of his original argument on the subject. Rick Santorum gifted us with one of the best examples of this tripe in an interview with USA Today back in 2003:

You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it’s in the privacy of your own home, this “right to privacy,” then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it’s private, as long as it’s consensual, then don’t be surprised what you get. You’re going to get a lot of things that you’re sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don’t really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don’t be surprised that you get more of it.

Here, Santorum treats the right to privacy as an abandonment of moral principles altogether, arguing that if we can’t condemn homosexuality, then we can’t condemn anything. We can’t stop people from molesting children; we can’t stop polygamy; we can’t stop any number of horribles from happening. It’s worth noting that in this instance Santorum was arguing that the sex abuse scandals of the catholic Church were essentially a problem of homosexuality, which is in itself a pathetically ignorant position to have taken. But I suppose it’s fitting that someone facing what he takes to be the obliteration of moral judgement would respond to that by abandoning any honest effort to address the actual claims at stake in the issue.

Yes, Rick Santorum lives in a special place where ignorance and dishonesty come together and start a family, but sadly, he has a lot of neighbors in the land of ignorance which is the weak version of this argument. A large number of conservative Christians have approached the notion of a right to privacy in precisely these terms.

Setting aside the folk-demon of relativism, the problem with this take on right to privacy is it ignores the essential balancing tests by means of which that right enters into the American legal system. The point of a right to privacy has never been that you actually get to do anything you want so long as it’s in the privacy of your bed-room, but rather that government interest in stopping you must be weighed against the right to privacy. In simple terms, if the government has a legitimate interest in doing so (say if you are hurting a child), then the right to privacy folds and the government wins. If no such government interest is present, or if that interest pales in significance to the cost to others, then the right to privacy wins.

Here the sub-deduction fails for precisely the same reason that moral opportunists find it attractive in the first place. They hope to refute the notion of a right to privacy by connecting it to a range of genuinely harmful activities. Faced with a choice between condemning homosexuality and allowing child abuse, practitioners of this stratagem hope that most of us will throw the gay folks under the bus. But when real harms can be shown, the right to privacy would not prevail, and the sub-deduction fails.

The courts have never presented the right ti privacy as an absolute boundary to government regulation; it is if anything a sort of raising of the ante, a provision that requires government officials to show they have a good reason for what they are doing. Rick Santorum and Christian net-warriors all over the land don’t seem to understand this.

Scalia does, at least when he needs to.

Mach-Macho-Subdeductions: Now we come to the strong version of Scalia’s argument which is a rejection of the balancing tests themselves, at least as applied in Lawrence. In this case, Scalia isn’t making a broad point about the value of moral judgements. His point isn’t that granting a right to privacy leads to the destruction of western civilization, or that it will lead us to turn our children over to the nearest sexual predator. No, in Lawrence, Scalia was saying that the courts should not be the ones to weigh the benefits of legislation against the costs to people’s privacy, or at least that the court had failed to articulate a principle in that case which would enable it to make a sound distinction between issues like homosexuality and those likely to be regarded as more abhorrent, even to those in favor of gay rights. Absent a clear and coherent principle on which to make a decision, Scalia suggested that the court was making just the sort of judgement call that legislators ought to be doing, not judges. Such judgement calls are intrinsically political, and ought in Scalia’s view to be left to those branches of government best suited to making political judgements. It is in other words a variant of his oft-repeated call to Judicial restraint. Hence, the following remarks from Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence (at 603-4):

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual acts. But persuading one’s fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one’s views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts-or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them-than I would forbid it to do so. What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new “constitutional right” by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that “later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,” ante, at 579; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.

There is in the strong version of Scalia’s argument a logical consistency which is entirely lacking in the pop-Christian variants of this same position as articulated by Santorum and legions of faith-bigots happy to explain why homosexuality is wrong. Where Scalia was actually making a point about the nature of Judicial reasoning, various cultural conservatives have carried forward that argument in the form of a simplistic claim that if we can’t condemn homosexuality, then we can’t condemn anything.

In the babblerized version of the reductio ad absurdum, the sub-deduction simply does not follow. In scalia’s, it is at least plausible.

Balancing the Unbalanced: But where does that leave us? Scalia would say that that it leaves us with a better balance of powers and a stronger system of checks and balances. Yet, one can see in Scalia’s own writing and comments hints at the costs of such an approach. Regarding the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade, for example, Scalia offers the following:

Many States would unquestionably have declined to prohibit abortion, and others would not have prohibited it within six months (after which the most significant reliance interests would have expired). Even for persons in States other than these, the choice would not have been between abortion and childbirth, but between abortion nearby and abortion in a neighboring State.

Here Scalia makes an interesting point, that removing the precedent of Roe v. Wade would not necessarily have meant an immediate ban on abortions everywhere, but rather the creation of legislative options which some states would take and others would not. The actual choices presented to women with unwanted pregnancies would then be a question of travel (at least for those in geographically unfortunate circumstances). It’s an interesting scenario, and one in which the right to have an abortion does not die with Roe v. Wade, but that scenario would of course be cold comfort for those women unable to travel. The right to an abortion now enjoyed under Roe would translate through this scenario into an option more or less available, depending on one’s finances and/or family obligations.

The right thus becomes a privilege, and that privilege then falls beyond the reach of many that need it most.

One imagines that the right to engage in homosexual acts (or any number of proscribed sexual practices) would translate into a similar choice under Scalia’s approach, and residence might soon become a function of sexual proclivities. Do you want the right to have sex with your own gender? Better then to move out of a red state under this approach. And we can only imagine just how much more heartache this will cause in some instances, and how many lives lived through deception in others.

Apparently, this is an acceptable outcome in Scalia’s view.

It may well be that the right to vote as a minority could also become a function of where one lives if we are to give up the ‘racial entitlements‘ included in the present voting rights act, as Scalia terms them. Granted the issue there is a technical one, pre-clearance of voting procedures for selected states, but the language of Scalia’s recent questions in reference to the Voting Rights Act is more than a little disconcerting.

Or consider Scalia’s remarks in Oregon v. Smith, 1990. In the majority opinion for that case he argued that the free exercise clause of the First Amendment did not provide members of the Native American Church with a valid reason for exemption from generally applicable state laws banning use of peyote. Scalia then moved on to suggest that while states might allow for such an exemption, it was not required of them, hence leaving the rights of religious freedom for the Native American Church open to the political process. What Scalia wrote next has always struck me as one of the most telling features of his approach to jurisprudence.

It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.

Here Scalia has essentially conceded to the tenuous status of minority rights under his approach (though perhaps he would say that they are not rights, as such). Those with less leverage over the political process must simply accept a reduced set of options? What are the benefits? The court will behaving as it ought to under Scalia’s view, showing proper restraint and deference to the legislative branch of government.

The problem in this instance is not as simple as the utter foolishness seen in remarks like those of Santorum, or even that of Scalia’s answer to Hosie; Scalia’s argument in Lawrence seems plausible to me, at least on the face of it. The problem is that the value which is central to Scalia’s argument in this instance (the strong version of the sub-deduction) is awfully hollow in comparison to the conceded costs of its adoption. What Scalia offers us is a narrative in which every part of government rests in its proper place. What he is willing to sacrifice in order to get that value is the actual liberty of countless minorities seeking only the enjoyment of options fully available to the rest of us. The absurdity to which Scalia points us is one in which judges behave a little less like judges, and quite frankly some of us find that a little less absurd than the notion that liberty is best preserved by leaving this and so many other issues central to the happiness of many at the mercy of a political process which has proven time and again that it is inadequate to ensure.

Irony of Ironies: It is worth noting that the strong version of Scalia’s argument empowers the weak version. Whatever else he is saying, Scalia is also saying that if enough people seem to think that the only way to save our children from a list of horribles too awful to bear is to deny those of homosexual orientation the liberty to conduct themselves as they see fit, then they are within their rights to pass all manner of laws restricting gay rights. No effort to show that homosexual conduct really will hurt anybody would be needed in Scalia’s approach, at least not i the courtroom.

And in the legislatures and the court of political opinion, flippant remarks like those Scalia gave to Hosie, and patently offensive rhetoric like that of Santorum will be all that is needed to consign some people to lives lived without the benefit of meaningful liberty.

Absurd, indeed.