Crooked Thinking

Why the Internet is Fixated with Hitler

In a world where formal education has a weight put upon it that it cannot possibly bear, it is to be expected that the “system” will crack. Virtually all of Athenian society looks to formal education as a redeemer, a saviour from all social ills. The result: more and more people successfully graduating from the system who cannot read or write. This is not likely to change until Athens comes to the realisation that education cannot save anyone nor can it redeem society from all its ills--which will hopefully lead society to focus upon what is the proper competence of education and a reshaping of the system.

But in the meantime, we are going to have to put up with a lot of ill tempered, ignorant, and frustrated people in the community. People who cannot think their way out of a wet paper bag—they cannot think because they have not been taught how to think. They have not been taught the difference between straight and crooked thinking. The formal education system has been too busy running around attempting to fix all the ills of society.

As a result, public discourse in our day is largely a spectacle where individuals hurl epithets at one another, and play the man, not the argument. This of course is a fallacious ploy and will never actually win an argument. But it does enable one to strut one's stuff, swell out the chest, and feel good. Criticising the man who is making the argument, not the argument he is making, is of course a fallacy of relevance known as ad hominem. In most cases, ad hominem is the preserve of a lazy, untaught, ignorant, or incompetent mind.

It is stock-in-trade for politicians—which is probably, at least in part, why they are generally so poorly regarded. Somehow the electorate senses they are charlatans but is not sure why. It is also stock-in-trade for the blogosphere. If you look at debates on posts, usually by around the fifth comment, ad hominem has taken over and the protagonists are hurling insults at each other. It is heady, powerful impressive stuff—but only to those who cannot distinguish crooked from straight thinking.

This phenomenon actually led to the identification of a new informal fallacy. Noticing the common trend, someone proposed an “internet” law of argument that runs: the longer an on-line debate continues, the probability that a protagonist (or his position) will be compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises exponentially. He called this the Reductio ad Hitleram. The reductio ad Hitleram is a specific form of ad hominem.

Another oh-so-common fallacy is begging the question. This leads one to assert as true what one really has to prove, in order to carry the argument. Normally, arguments represent conclusions which are derived from, or implied from, premises. If an argument is taking place over a particular conclusion, usually the focus will turn back on the original premises of the argument to test whether they are true. When protagonists prove unwilling or unable to subject the premises to scrutiny and examination, but just continue to rely upon them and assert them, they end up begging the question—which means that they have reasoned in a fallacious circle.

To illustrate, we were recently observing a “debate” on a blog over global warming. True to form, within four posts it had turned into an ad hominem, vituperative slanging match. But thrown in to the mix was a wonderful example of question begging. The issue started off with the observation that recent data (past five nine years) shows that the earth is not warming, but level pegging (temperature wise) but that particularly in the past year, it cooled rapidly, as the globe had one of the coldest years in a long time.

The advocate for the global warming thesis posted a rejoinder to the effect that though the data showed the earth was cooling, “underneath” it was really warming all the time. So, the data is not relevant; it is disguising what is really happening. If you broke out his argument into a more formal frame, it appeared to run as follows:

Man-made emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming.
Man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have increased substantially over the past nine years.
Therefore, over the past nine years the globe has warmed up (substantially?), regardless of what the data shows.

The opposing side was arguing that the data showed that the globe has not warmed—that is, the conclusion of the argument appears to be not just unproven, but wrong. Normally, if question begging had not been introduced, and people were thinking in a straight and critical fashion, one would then move back to the premises and begin debating them. If we were to do that, there remain three possible alternatives: either man-made emissions of carbon dioxide do not cause global warming, or man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have not increased substantially over the past nine years, or both premises are wrong at the same time. And so the discussion would continue—in a helpful and constructive fashion.

Needless to say, this did not occur, for the global warming protagonist simply re-asserted the two premises. He was begging the question. He was asserting what he needed to prove, in order to carry his argument. He was reasoning in a circle—which is to say, he had no argument to bring. In the light of this, it is understandable that very quickly the debate degenerated into hurling insults at one another. What else was left to be done?

Circular arguments cannot be tested or falsified. They are unchallengeable dogmas. To the extent that they inevitably lead to an elevation of some aspect of the creation as an ultimate truth, beyond rational examination or testing, they represent an irrationality.

So pervasive is crooked thinking in our public discourse that Contra Celsum is considering running a series of posts on formal and informal fallacies and identify examples we come across in our daily lives. It can be quite fun—spotting the fallacy—like those children's books where you had to find the key character hidden somewhere in an illustration.

But let's all remember that a study of formal and informal logic, while invaluable in identifying crooked thinking, is far less helpful in enabling us to reach the truth. In order to do that, we have to commence with premises that are true to begin with—and that's entirely another matter.