Through the looking glass

It is with some reluctance that I write this post as I have generally been avoiding news reports concerning the massacare in Aurora, Colorado. As is often the case with tragedies that get a great deal of traction in the media, people come out of the woodwork exploiting that tragedy as a way to garner support for their particular political cause. There has obviously been a great deal of discussion about gun control (though apparently no one's opinion is changing), but I want to focus on a slightly different angle, promoted most recently by Jon Rappoport.

In an article published today on NaturalNews, and reprinted from his blog Rappoport suggests that the accused Aurora, Colorado shooter, James Holmes, was either (a) the patsy for some large conspiracy designed to change public opinion on gun control or (b) driven crazy by psychiatric drugs or (c) driven crazy by psychiatric drugs so that he could be used as the patsy or perpetrator of a mass killing designed to change people's opinions on gun control. The article itself is poorly written and reads more like a rant than any kind of thoughtful analysis, but I will do my best to unpack some of the fallacies lurking in it.

The first and most obvious is the post hoc fallacy. Rappoport doesn't quite come out and say that Holmes was driven violently insane by pharmaceuticals (though he does make that claim in his blog), but that does appear to be the major point of the article.  After making a number of unsubstantiated claims about the pressure being exerted by pharmaceutical manufacturers on law enforcement and the judicial system to suppress the medical records of Holmes in order to prevent tarnishing the reputation of the drugs Holmes was taking thereby causing people to refuse to take them thus hurting the profits of Big Pharma, Rappoport then launches into a lengthy (but more substantiated, at least there are references though almost all of them are over 20 years old) discussion of the potential psychotic side effects of Prozac. The clear inference here is supposed to be that Holmes took Prozac (even though there is no evidence that this was a drug he was taking, we will probably know more when his medical records are released during the court proceedings), this made him psychotic, and this psychosis led him to commit the crimes for which he is accused. This is a clear example of a post hoc fallacy in that the author is assuming a causal relation when all we have evidence for is a correlation (a correlation Rappoport invented for the sake of his article). Assuming that Holmes was taking some sort of psychiatric medicine, it seems far more likely that his underlying mental condition caused him to commit his crimes, rather than the medication he was taking to treat that crime. As a quick note, I have no evidence concerning Holmes' psychiatric condition or medication he may have been taking, I am merely trying to unpack and evaluate the argument Rappoport makes. For all I know, Holmes may have been perfectly sane and was not prescribed nor taking any medication.

Moving on, Rappoport then commits a rather large Hasty Generalization when he suggests that because there is some evidence of people becoming psychotic when they take certain classes of anti-depressants that therefore everybody who takes them will become psychotic. Again, there is no direct quote which shows a clear example, but the article as a whole is clearly trying to make the case that this generalization is true.

Lastly, Rappoport's article is filled with what can best be described as Bullshit. Bullshit occurs when one has no concern for the truth and just makes up whatever facts or stories will support one's position. For example:

So right now, in Aurora, there are pharmaceutical people on the scene. Not just low-level goofballs, but competent investigators. They want to know what drugs James Holmes was prescribed. They need to know. And behind the scenes, people with clout are making phone calls. These pharma types are talking to government agents and it's crazy time and damage-control time, and nobody is laughing. This is a high-stakes game. WHAT DRUGS WAS HOLMES TAKING?

Rappoport provides no evidence whatsoever that any of the things he describes in this paragraph are actually taking place. Similiarly, he writes:

[If] they could get to Holmes in his cell, they'd erase him. They'd make it look like a suicide. Today. What do you think "lone shooter" is all about? Yes, the covert op that very well may have used Holmes as the patsy, to push the government into banning guns, is a major piece here. But that work is done. Now it's "lone shooter" because getting rid of Holmes by killing him or warehousing him for the rest of his life in a mental prison, with brain-hammer drugs making him into a vegetable, means that the names of the psychiatric drugs he was taking before the massacre will be lost to history, and no one will take the criminal investigation any further.

Again this appears to have no basis in reality, and no evidence beyond Rappoport's wild speculations. This is, quite simply, bullshit.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In Rob Reiner's masterpiece, The Princess Bride, the character of Vizzini keeps using the word 'inconceivable' to describe things that have already happened. In the clip above, Inigo Montoya calls him out on it, suggesting that Vizzini isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is. This raises an important point about definitions and about being careful in one's choice of words, seeking to pick the best word for the situation, something Vizzini clearly fails at.

An important fallacy that revolves around the misuse of words and their definitions is Equivocation. This is a fallacy arising from the misuse of words that have more than one meaning or denotation (the dictionary meaning of a word; the objects to which the word refers). This fallacy generally arises when a word is used with one meaning in one part of the argument and then a different meaning in another part of the argument.

I found several nice examples of this fallacy in an article published on Answers in Genesis, a creationist, anti-evolution website. In an article published today, Bodie Hodge takes issue with an editorial in the NewScientist discussing secular approaches to morality (oddly enough, Answers in Genesis does not link to the article in question though they do provide a reference for it). There are many fallacies in this short article, but I want to focus on the Equivocations. The first example can be found when Hodges writes:

Next they say, “Altruism for example can benefit your genes and disgust can protect you from disease.” What do they mean by “benefit”? Did you catch that? They are appealing to some overarching “good” in the universe by which to judge something as a “benefit.” Secularists are borrowing from the biblical worldview when they propose that something such as a “benefit” or “good” exists. By so doing, they undercut the very argument they are trying to propose.

The equivocation here is with the word "benefit." In the context of the NewScientist article, the word is clearly meant to be understood in an evolutionary context in the sense that altruism can confer a survival advantage on entities that possess that trait. That is, entities that are altruistic are more likely to survive and reproduce and pass this trait onto their offspring. This is really a non-moral use of the word 'benefit', but Hodges misinterprets this word as making a moral claim with respect to some transcendent moral standard. Interestingly enough, the author of the editorial explicitly avoids moral terms like "good" in favor of a non-moral term like "benefit" yet Hodges still equivocates.

We can see a similar Equivocation in the next paragraph when Hodges argues:

Furthermore, who are these people to say that “disgust” is a good thing or that being disease-free is a good thing? Such ideas are a reflection of Leviticus and the cleanliness laws from the Bible, which teaches to resist effects of a sin-cursed and broken world. But how can an evolutionist say that preventing disease is a good thing? Perhaps catching a disease and dying is what is needed for the next step of evolution.

I must first note that the NewScientist editorial never says that disgust or being disease-free are good things. All the author is saying is that disgust can be a useful attitude because it can help organisms avoid substances which can be potential vectors for disease. From the standpoint of the organism in question this is useful as avoiding disease increases the chance of survival and reproduction, but again, these are clearly non-moral concepts. Hodges, however, equivocates and tries to give this word a moral sense.

Hodges continues his deliberate equivocations in the next paragraph:

Next, they comment that “this picture is progress, but it can also lead to a kind of fatalism, a belief that our moral values evolved for a good reason and so we should stick with them.” So, now they are appealing to an overarching concept of “good” by which to judge these things? For people who claim that they no longer believe in morality being “handed down from on high,” they have twice appealed to something higher that determines what is good and bad and governs everything. This is self-refuting!

In this case, the author of the editorial does actually use the word "good" but it is again being used in a non-moral sense. The "good reason" referred to is clearly intended to be interpreted in evolutionary terms, but Hodges again equivocates and assumes that it is being used to refer to some transcendent moral standard, leading him to accuse the NewScientist of begging the question or being inconsistent.

In summary, the editorial in the NewScientist uses a number of terms that are clearly intended to be non-moral concepts that should be understood in evolutionary terms, but Hodges deliberately misinterprets them to be referring to moral concepts. This is a clear case of Equivocation in that the word is being used with one meaning by the NewScientist but then is being given a completely different meaning by Hodges in order to draw a conclusion critical of the NewScientist. Hodges keeps using that word. But, in this context I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

More on why the media sucks.

I wrote recently about how eduction is being used to distort the political message of Barack Obama. In the Washington Post on Thursday, Aaron Blake also writes about this example of eduction and discusses a new one being used in political ads by the Romney campaign. While I certainly applaud Blake for informing his readership about these deceptive tactics, I must say that his general conclusion about this is fairly disturbing, and explains much about what is wrong with the Media in the US:

But the fact is that these two comments further clarify a picture (or caricature, depending on where you stand) of Obama that’s already out there. And plenty of — nay, almost all — people who don’t dissect this stuff as much as we do are going to take the pulled quotes at face value.

Essentially, Blake is arguing that these uses of eduction will be successful because they are used to merely reinforce already existing political opinions. That is, if one thinks that Obama is hostile to business, the eduction I discussed won't raise many eyebrows because it will simply reinforce one's already existing opinion of Barack Obama. This is certainly true (and the comments to Blake's piece certainly reinforce exactly that conclusion), but Blake seems to miss the fact that this mistaken impression of Obama is partly the fault of people in the Media who do nothing to correct these fallacies or provide the context that would show how deceptive these uses of eduction are.

There are certainly many people in the US who will hate Obama no matter what he says or does (because he is black or because he is a Democrat or for some other reason), and there are many people in America who will love Obama no matter what he says or does (because he is black or because he is a Democrat or for some other reason). Political ads and news stories will obviously have no effect on these people, but there is also a range of people who look to the Media to help them sort out these issues. When people in the Media abdicate this responsibility and fail to call out lies and fallacies when they occur, they instead amplify and propagate them and make matters worse. It is very disturbing to read an article in which a member of the media basically "gives up" and essentially admits that his work is pointless.

h/t to Atrios

Thomas Friedman is very inconsistent

As many have already noted, Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times is idiotic. Friedman has a long history of making idiotic comments, but for the purpose of this blog I want to highlight a specific example of Inconsistency he commits. He begins by addressing the current situation in Syria and comparing it to Iraq:

And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America.

The conclusion then is that the problems of Syria can only be resolved via some sort of large scale military intervention. A military intervention that, in Friedman's opinion, is the only way to prevent Syria from reverting to a Hobbesian state of nature. This is all fine and good, but a few paragraphs later in the same editorial he writes:

Because of both U.S. incompetence and the nature of Iraq, this U.S. intervention triggered a civil war in which all the parties in Iraq — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds — tested the new balance of power, inflicting enormous casualties on each other and leading, tragically, to ethnic cleansing that rearranged the country into more homogeneous blocks of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

So, rather than the "well-armed external midwife" of the US preventing civil war, Friedman now argues that the US was one of the causal factors for that civil war. This is a serious inconsistency. Either the US can prevent civil war through military action or it can't.One can't argue that it can do both at the same time. Then, in the very next sentence he writes:

But the U.S. presence in Iraq contained that civil war and ethnic cleansing from spreading to neighboring states.

So, to follow Friedman's argument, the US is necessary to prevent civil war, but the US caused civil war, but it prevented the civil war it caused from spilling into neighboring countries. Given this kind of reasoning, one might legitimately ask why it was necessary for the US to go and start a civil war in the first place. Given these kind of radically contradictory and inconsistent claims, all made in the same editorial sometimes one immediately after the other, I have to seriously question whether or not Friedman actually reads the stuff he writes. And I must further ask why his editors let him get away with this nonsense.

h/t to Glenn Greenwald

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomena in which vague or random stimuli perceived as significant or meaningful. The classic example is when one sees shapes or images in the clouds. Some fantastic examples, both astronomical and mundane can be found here. Pareidolia is generally visual, but there are also interesting examples of audio pareidolia. The example I want to visit today comes from the official logo for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games being held in London. Here are the four official versions of the logo plus the official logo for the Paralympics (far left):

Ignoring for now the ugliness of the logo, it does present some excellent examples of pareidolia. First, Iran has claimed that the logo is racist, incorporating the word Zion, a biblical term for Israel. If one looks carefully at the logo one can see this. The shape in the upper left is a Z, just below it is the I, the upper right shape can be seen as an O, and the bottom left shape is a sort of sideways N.

A far more disturbing example of pareidolia in this logo can be found by following the links here. WARNING! Once you go down this rabbit hole, you can never come back and you will always see the logo in the way described there. I saw it, and now I can't unsee it. You have been warned.

As critical thinkers, it is important to be sensitive to the possibility of pareidolia because often charlatans and quacks will make a big deal out of some supposed image they have seen (the face on Mars is an excellent example of this), when really it is just their own perspective or psychological issue being brought to bear on the image. Just because we see something doesn't mean it is really there.

Bain or Bane Part Deux: Plausible Deniability

In an earlier post, I noted how Rush Limbaugh was using a Loaded Question to imply a conspiracy between the Obama Administration and Hollywood to link Mitt Romney and his private equity firm Bain Capital with the villain of the new Batman film, Bane. Rush Limbaugh has since walked back this claim saying:

I never said that the villain was created by the comic book character creator to be part of the 2012 campaign. I never said that at all. Everybody's out there running around saying I got this giant conspiracy theory that the Batman people, the creators, the comic book creators, created this thing to campaign against Romney. I never said that. I didn't say there was a conspiracy. I said the Democrats were going to use it, which they are. Jon Stewart's harping on it.

Aside from a bit of straw manning, Limbaugh is technically correct. He never directly asserted that there was a conspiracy, he merely implied it via the questions he was asking. And this brings up an important point about the effectiveness of loaded questions. One can ask as many loaded questions as one wants, but as soon as one is challenged on the assumptions underlying those questions, one can merely respond by saying that he never assumed anything, he was merely asking questions. This is why loaded questions are such an effective rhetorical strategy, they give the questioner plausible deniability if he or she is ever challenged on the assertions underlying those questions.

As is often the case, South Park provides a perfect encapsulation of this point:

Dances With Smurfs
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

Fox News Eduction

Fox and Friends, a morning news show on Fox News, has recently provided an excellent example of Eduction. As a quick reminder, eduction is quoting something out of context, generally to change or obscure its original meaning. Lets begin by taking a look at what Fox and Friends showed:



So, the folks at Fox & Friends are claiming that Obama said that small business owners did not create their businesses, and that someone else was responsible. In general, whenever one sees that blurring or dissolving between two clips, one should be very suspicious. Now let's take a look at what Obama actually said:



When we see the full context of Obama's remarks, it is clear that he is not claiming that small business were not the result of hard work by entrepreneurs, he is merely saying that government, through the building of roads and infrastructure, creates an environment in which entrepreneurs can then invest their energy in creating new businesses. He is not saying that small business owners don't build their business, he is saying that they don't build the roads and bridges that small business (and all businesses) depend on. So, by selectively quoting him out of context, Fox & Friends created the impression that Obama said exactly the opposite of what he was saying.

What is particularly disturbing about this is that other networks have picked up this distortion and repeated it. As MediaMatters has noted, Erick Erickson repeated this same falsehood on Wolf Blitzer's show on CNN, going so far as to argue:

For [Obama] to say somehow that if you've built something, you didn't really build it, other people do -- no one denies that other people contributed to your success in life, but, I mean -- this is just grade school Marxism that he's uttering.

In fact, all Obama was arguing was just the point that Erickson said no one denies! I certainly expect these kinds of distortions from Fox News, but it is really disturbing to see CNN repeat the same nonsense without even bothering to check and see if the criticism is accurate. The take away from all this is the obvious point that Mainstream Media in the US is worthless.

h/t to Atrios