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In the US, it's presidential election season.
There are lots of people expounding
upon all kinds of high-stakes topics--
what's best for you, what's best for the country, what's
going to keep everyone safe and successful-- candidates,
pundits, your pals making points,
making promises, making arguments.
And in the course of the political proceedings,
I've seen plenty of the fallacies
that we've covered before here on Idea Channel.
But there are a few cropping up that we haven't yet covered.
So I thought we'd better.
But first some business.
First, repeat after me.
Because someone uses fallacious reasoning,
that does not make them wrong.
See our Fallacy fallacy video for more.
Second, often with fallacies, it's imagined
they're ideally replaced with facts, reason, empiricism.
For better or worse, though, political rhetoric,
like a lot of theory, philosophy, and social topics,
is really largely about subjectivity--
what's right, fair, or just.
These determinations may be influenced
by what they ultimately lay beyond-- facts, reason,
and empiricism.
Fallacies are deployed, often unintentionally,
as a way to make subjective arguments
appear rational where there is, in fact, no fact, only
preference.
And at base, that's OK.
But ideally, politicians, for instance,
are honest with their constituents
and have the confidence and courage
to say what they believe without dressing it up as logic.
Being fallaciously literate is one of many ways
we can hold our politicians accountable.
And third, unlike our previous fallacy videos,
these fallacies will not be released individually-- one
convenient package right here.
OK, on with the show.
Our first fallacy is the appeal to emotion,
or, as I like to call it, appeals to the feels.
An appeal to emotion is exactly what
it sounds like-- someone appeals directly
to the emotions of their audience or interlocutor.
The appeal to emotion is very effective in that it bypasses
all the stuff that's hard about making good arguments-- rigor,
coherence, consistency, supporting material--
and it hits them right in the feels.
This fallacy preys on an audience's fears,
guilt, pride, their sense of self-worth, high or low,
through flattery or confirmation that yeah, they got it bad.
It's fueled by hate of, support for, or hope regarding
all manner of topics-- whatever feeling is most
useful for making the point.
A classic appeal to emotion is the old cliche, won't somebody
please think of the children.
As another example, candidates Mike and Straw Mike
are debating the benefits of nutritional education.
The truth is, Americans consume 47% more sodium per day
than recommended.
Cheeseburgers are not a daily meal.
If we educate the public, cut sodium intake,
according to the CDC, we could save $26 billion
in health care costs.
But cheeseburgers make this country great.
After a long, hard day of good old-fashioned American labor,
what are you going to do, eat a salad?
No, you earned that cheeseburger.
Don't you let the government tell you what to eat.
Cheeseburger, cheeseburger.
Here, Mike has statistics about sodium intake
and uses one popular food item as a metonym for a larger
dietary issue.
Strong Mike seizes on that item and connects it
to things he knows the audience feels great pride in,
feels satisfaction about, and also have great fear of.
A cheeseburger in this moment becomes a very complex symbol,
all thanks to Straw Mike's appeal to emotion.
It's worth noting, though, that appeals to emotion
aren't always verboten.
There are topics which, rightfully so,
deal exclusively in feels.
So there's no avoiding it, and you may even
want to appeal to emotions to get people hyped.
The problem arises when you bring a spoon to a knife fight
and appeal to emotions during discussions about not emotions.
On to fallacy number two-- the non sequitur.
Non sequitur means "does not follow" in Latin.
There are many types of non sequitur fallacy,
but across the board, they all contain
a conclusion that doesn't follow from the premise.
First, we're going to talk about the fallacy of the converse,
AKA affirming the consequent.
Here, a premise is stated, like if Janet
has lots of experience, then Janet is good at her job.
That premise is then used to confirm its converse.
Janet is good at her job, therefore
Janet must have lots of experience.
Even if the premise is totally true,
the conclusion doesn't logically follow.
This is a non sequitur because Janet
could be great at what she does and be the newest hire.
Experience is a sufficient, but not necessary,
condition for crushing it at the office.
Often, in political speech, abbreviated converse fallacies
are used to build credibility, like if I'm not
so great to work with, why have I been so successful?
Or why would I ever lie?
I would just disappoint my constituency.
A related fallacy is that of the undistributed middle.
This is where the subjects of two premises
are incorrectly associated because they share a term.
So for instance, premise one-- all bicycles
are single-track vehicles.
Premise two-- all pogo sticks are single-track vehicles.
Therefore pogo sticks are bicycles, which would be rad,
but unfortunately is not the case, because the converse
of the first premise-- all single-track vehicles are
bicycles-- is not true.
Importantly, the first premise doesn't even
need to be correct.
People just need to accept it as noncontroversial
so the speaker can move on to their now
even more spurious conclusion.
Because it's about categories, set membership, and what things
are, the fallacy of the undistributed middle
becomes a powerful tool of political rhetoric
when its premise involves false equivalencies, stereotypes,
common sense, and appeals to emotion.
For instance, Mike and Straw Mike
are talking about their constituency.
And that is why we need to keep fighting to make
sure everyone feels welcome.
Not true here.
We're doing great.
People who don't support me, they're
all short-sighted narcissists, like those millennials.
Those millennials only care about themselves
and what's happening right now, on Twitter, probably.
The only group of people who don't support
us-- the kids and their phones.
Who needs them?
Where Mike, it seems, seeks plurality,
Straw Mike is confident in his success without broad appeal.
He has, however, fallaciously argued
that since all people who aren't swayed by his politics
are narcissists-- a premise which is likely untrue--
and that all millennials are narcissists--
a second untrue premise-- the only people who
aren't swayed by his policies are millennials--
a fallacious conclusion.
Even so, this argument could reaffirm
for Straw Mike and his constituency who is and is not
a part of the in group, meaning though it is fallacious,
it's not without value.
There are many more non sequitur constructions,
and they are all useful to know.
We'll put links in the Doobly Doo.
Our final fallacy for today is the appeal to nature.
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This is where one claims that something
is natural, and therefore good, or unnatural,
and therefore bad.
Often those who commit this fallacy confuse
ideological positions for logical and therefore
natural and therefore correct.
To put it another way, perpetrators of this fallacy
assume that their feelings on issues
indicate what is truly the case, or what
is natural about those issues, when in fact the issues at hand
are likely neither natural nor unnatural,
and even if they are, often their naturalness
factors directly into their quality either very
little or not at all.
This fallacy is often compared to
the philosophical distinction between is and ought,
AKA Hume's law.
When talking about the state of things,
people may mistake their opinions
about what ought to be the case for facts
about what is the case.
A notable example is found with same-sex marriage.
Many people say that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.
This is a fallacy because marriage is, in fact,
a social legal contract maintained individually
by the people and institutions who practice, perform,
and uphold it.
What they mean to say is that in their opinion,
marriage ought to be between a man and a woman,
because as proponents of this view
are often quick to point out, this is what they find natural
given their worldview.
As another example, Mike and Straw Mike
are debating armed conflict.
Military operations should be our last resort.
It's diplomacy now or diplomacy later,
and after trillions spent and countless lives lost.
You just don't get it, do you?
People don't listen until you threaten them.
And we're unsafe until you do.
You know, man's been doing it forever.
If you think talking solves problems,
you're denying your nature and the nature of the people
who are going to shoot first.
Where Mike is advocating for potentially
drawn-out, potentially wimpy-sounding foreign policy
solutions, Straw Mike has appeal to emotions
related to safety and combat prowess,
and made the argument that war is part of human nature,
and therefore good.
It is who we are.
It is who our opponents are.
And so it is desirable and effective.
This conclusion is, of course, fallacious.
That is all for this fallacy video.
There are many, many more bad, incoherent,
inconsistent but no less convincing
arguments that are going to be made
this political season, and every other political season
everywhere else for the rest of time, for that matter.
So please listen carefully.
Think deeply.
And be considerate.
That includes being considerate when
you do, during the course of conversation,
political conversation doubly so, spot a fallacy.
If someone attempts to appeal to your emotions or the emotions
of the audience, if they don't distribute a middle term
or claim something is unnatural and therefore bad,
I'm going to go on the record that shouting,
hey, that's fallacious, you did a fallacy,
is counterproductive and against the spirit of conversation.
If you want to fight, shout all of the inane slander you want.
I mean, I don't think you should, but that's me.
If you want to discuss, asking questions
that reposition the speaker and get
them to contradict themselves while you
offer your perspective is always more productive.
Telling someone they're wrong just
makes them entrench deeper, especially when
it comes to political topics, where,
as we said at the front of this episode and NPR put so well,
sometimes the facts don't matter.
We are not going to be doing a comment response
video for this fallacy episode.
But if you want to use the comments
below to keep track of and discuss and point out
all of the different fallacies that are perpetrated
during the course of this political season and others,
I think that would be pretty rad.
Just as a reminder, there is no comment response video
this week.
But if you haven't yet, head over to the Idea Channel
Subreddit and check out the thread for our book club,
the discussion of "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote."
It has been super fun.
It may turn into a video.
There might be a comment response style
video that happens out of that.
We'll see.
Still kind of working it through.
But the discussion has been so fun.
Also, I know, short notice, but if you are in or around
New York City later tonight, Wednesday, August 31,
I'm going to be at the Atlas live event
at Union Hall in Park Slope.
I'm going to be talking about people
playing games against artificial intelligence.
Maybe I'll see you there.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a Subreddit links
in the Doobly Doo.
And the tweet of the week comes from Ken Kire,
who points us towards a very apropos PostSecret.
Also, it's just nice to know that PostSecret is still
doing their thing.
I, for whatever reason, checked out of PostSecret
a little while ago, and it's heartening
to see the PostSecrets are still being posted.
And last but certainly not least,
this week's episode would not have been possible or good
without the very hard work of these cheeseburger lovers.
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