CriticalReason

At the time of this writing much of the discourse surrounding social media is related to the emerging problem of fake news. Actually perhaps “emerging” is a little misleading, as what is currently deemed “fake news” is just the old problem of misinformation given a new label. The specific term seems to have come to prominence in the days after the 2016 election, with many blaming the results of the election on misinformation spread by social media.

What is new, however, is the sheer amount of misinformation out there and how the simultaneously developing problem of internet information silos assists in its propagation. Digital content creation tools have never been easier to access or more ubiquitous, and while that brings forth a host of benefits such as more diverse viewpoints, it also creates that much more misinformation, spread by those who are either uninformed or manipulative. This overabundance of misinformation is not helped by the dual threat of confirmation bias and information silos. Algorithms created to cater to internet users, by providing them with only information that will be relevant to them personally, end up creating information bubbles that admit few outside opinions or facts. This problem is further compounded by a natural confirmation bias, human tendency to seek out and engage only with information that reinforces already held beliefs and viewpoints. These two aspects combined lead to a situation where algorithms used by social media platforms reinforce an already human tendency to self-select information, and either misinformation or information presented through a biased lens is propagated throughout that existing bubble.

The solution to this multi-faceted problem must be as multi-faceted as the problem itself. New algorithms will have to be created which expose social media users to differing viewpoints and stories, but equally people must be taught to engage critically and skeptically with the stories and claims they encounter. People must be encouraged to seek out differing viewpoints, to get past inherent biases and self made echo chambers. At the moment, it would seem large sections of society simply do not possess the skills needed to critically engage with news stories found online. Consider a recent study done by the Stanford History Education Group, which found that most students in the public school system cannot distinguish fake news from genuine news stories.

The experiment run by the group asked students at several levels of education, from middle school to college, to evaluate the credibility and accuracy of various articles and ads presented to them as news sites, tweets, infographics and other websites. Most students were able to successfully distinguish ads from news articles, but most students also failed to distinguish traditional news reports from “sponsored content”, despite content being clearly labeled as such. They saw no reason to be suspicious of content that was being sponsored by groups with agendas, and even with the ability to use the internet and search for outside information on the source, did not pick up on potential conflicts of interest when examining websites funded by lobbying groups. More than 80% of middle-schoolers who took part in the experiment couldn’t discern what the difference was between sponsored content and non-sponsored content, which is rather disturbing when 88% of young adults regularly get their news from some form of social media.

(Let me do due diligence before moving on. It is not necessarily that sponsored content cannot is entirely fake or that it cannot make arguments worth hearing. If an argument is supported by solid reasoning and evidence than the origin of the claim should not matter. Yet when seeing sponsored content, one should be extra careful to read the article with a skeptical mind and seek out alternative viewpoints.)

It is clear that the skills needed to effectively engage with news and information in this current era (an eye for possible bias, a skeptical mind, a willingness to seek out other viewpoints, etc.) are deficient in many members of society, and it is not entirely their fault. The public school system must begin teaching the sorts of skills needed to effectively navigate today’s news world. Furthermore it falls to all of us in society to encourage critical thinking and diverse viewpoints, to keep each other honest and informed.

Let me say also that skepticism is not the same thing as refusing to engage with a person or source. A worrying trend is the refusal to engage with traditional news sources, a fundamental distrust people seem to have developed in institutions. Distrust in governmental bodies, distrust in academic institutions, distrust in news media, and distrust in the very scientific endeavor all seem to have increased in the past few years. There is an assumption that the educated elite of society, who have spent their lives studying and thinking about their own fields, are out-of-touch, power hungry, corrupt, or utterly mistaken. What has taken their place is a reliance on anonymous twitter users, viral images, reddit/tumblr armies, Youtube celebrities, caps lock posts and yes, fake news.

It is good to practice skepticism, but that skepticism should be applied equally to every claim you interact with, not just to those who represent “the establishment”. It is good that the internet enables more diverse viewpoints, but standards of evidence and logic need not degrade to accommodate them. Experts on fields of inquiry and politics should be heeded, not worshipped blindly of course, but given a benefit of the doubt until an individual has done the amount of homework necessary to call their views into question. Yes, no doubt modern news media deserves much of the criticism it receives, as focused as it is on tabloid stories, celebrity gossip, and the shallow bias coverage created by the 24-hour news cycle.  However, remember that not all news media is the same, and to distinguish between individuals and institutions. Good institutions have self-correcting mechanisms like fact-checkers and ethics boards (many news companies have these, surprise surprise), the self-correcting mechanisms of science work the same way. If we are prepared to dispose of an institution, we should have something better to replace it with. At this moment, I venture to say we do not.

Isaac Asimov said that, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

Richard Feynman said that the fundamental principle of science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Scientists like Feynman understand the value of good reasoning, skepticism, logic and rationality. Yet as Carl Sagan argued the benefits of such traits and tools aren’t merely benefits to science, they apply just as necessarily and just as effectively to everyday life.

The intention of this post is to be a guide to encouraging scientific thinking and skepticism within your normal life, to inducting the tools into your mental toolkit. In the previous post I argued that while the most intellectually responsible thing to do is to vet each piece of information you encounter, in practical terms this is not possible. It is simply not feasible to look up every last claim that passes your way. There is a real, tangible benefit to having good heuristics, to having a finely honed BS detector.

This post will be broken into three parts - The first portion is Carl Sagan’s Nine Principles for scientific and skeptical reasoning, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The second is a list of common logical or rhetorical fallacies, these are in no particular order, but they are what I have found to be the most common. The final part is 12 questions that you can ask of a claim to help determine how likely it is to be viable (its chance of being BS), adapted from work done by Skeptic magazine.

 Part 1 – Principles for Scientific and Skeptical Reasoning

 Here are Sagan's Principles for sound reasoning and scientific thinking:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

(Try to see if a source other than the source making the claim has verified/reported the facts in question. The more sources you can find independently verifying these facts the better, as a single source might be biased .)

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

(No doubt we can all think of authority figure who is wrong about something. Though I should note that this does not mean that experts should just be dismissed out of hand, they are more reliable than not as they have spent their lives investigating a topic, just be sure not to take expert opinions are set in stone fact.)

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

(Acknowledge the bias you have for ideas that are yours or that you hold dear. If you leave it up to others, you will be expose… and then laughed at.)

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them. A single weak link in the logical chain can doom the entire theory.

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

(Only use Occam’s Razor when two hypothesis explain the data equally well, don’t be tempted to fall for a simpler sounding solution if it explains less.)

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Part 2 - Common rhetorical or logical fallacies

No doubt you have heard of one of the many logical fallacies observed in the tragic landscape that is internet arguments. There are many logical/rhetorical fallacies out there but the following are (in my perception) some of the most common.

Ad hominem – The ad hominem attack is an attack on the person making the argument, it does not respond to the argument at all. - Ex. Insults and attacks on the person’s character.

Argument form authority – This is the reliance on the fact that the claim came from a perceived authority figure, rather than on good evidence or reasoning. - Ex. “My dad works at Microsoft and he says they are putting chips in all their products that steal your soul!”

(This is something you will often see in claims made by alternative medicine. They will frequently have proposed experts touting the effectiveness of their products but frequently those PhDs were earned in something completely unrelated to any medical or biological fields.)

Appeal to anecdotal evidence – Relying on personal anecdotes as evidence. The argument is often made by someone who believes that their personal experiences reflect the nature of the entire world, not realizing they are not statically representative of the world. - Ex. “My neighbor hates road noise and still would never vote for a city noise ordinance.”

Appeal to ignorance – An argument that if something is not known to be false, it must be true. - Ex. “There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist.”

Argument from adverse consequences - Saying that because the implications of a statement being true would create negative results, it must not be true. - Ex. “Legislation to reduce greenhouse gases would negatively impact certain companies, therefore greenhouse gases do not negatively impact the environment.”

Weasel Words - The usage of vague, non-specific terminology or references. "They don't want you to know about this…" "Some people have gained massive benfits from our products..." Who’s “They”? Which people, specifically?

(Frequently used to make outrageous claims without having to provide a specific example, especially if it would seem dubious or improbable if a concrete example were offered.)

Special pleading – When the maker of the claim argues for special considerations for a particular premise of theirs. Usually this is because in order for the argument to work, they need to provide some way to get out of a logical inconsistency. Very frequently the sign that an argument is logically foundering. – Ex. “People who drive drunk should receive prison time, but you should overlook it in my case since I am usually such a good person.”

Observational selection - Focusing on evidence that supports your case while ignoring evidence that disproves it. This is a form of selection bias, where you count the hits and forgetting the misses. – Ex. When a person notices something they never noticed before and wrongly assume that the frequency has increased.

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics – Simply not understanding how statistics work. - Ex. Being surprised that half of all Americans have an IQ that is below average of 100 when 100 was set as the average score in the first place.

Confusion of correlation and causation – Simply put, correlation does not imply causation. Two things can be correlated without having any causal relationship between them. - Ex. If a friend of yours came to you telling you about this awesome new hydra repellant they bought, and they know it works because they haven’t seen a single hydra since buying it, they are confusing correlation and causation… you should also probably stop talking to them.

(Related is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which is thinking that something caused something else simply because one thing came first chronologically.)

Excluded middle or False dichotomy – Asserting that there can be no middle ground between two options, that you can only pick one option or the other. – Ex. “Buy our product and live, or don’t buy it and die horribly.” And most famously, “You are either with us or against us.”

Suppressed evidence and half-truths – Suppressing or leaving out relevant information when making a claim. Frequently seen in the debate surrounding global climate change. Climate change deniers like to argue that there is still debate amongst scientists over whether anthropogenic global warming is real. This may be true but it is 99% of scientists debating that last 1%. What was ignored is that the overwhelming consensus on the issue is that global climate change is a very real phenomenon.

Slippery slope – Condemning something that is loosely related to something that is morally wrong via asserting that negative consequences will necessarily result from allowing the first thing. – Ex. “If we continue to allow legalized abortion, soon we will be euthanizing people under 18 years of age.”

Tu quoque – “You do it too!” Claiming that since the source of an argument has acted in ways inconsistent with the argument it must be wrong. This focuses on the hypocrisy of an individual rather than dealing with the argument the individual made. A person may have sincere beliefs and good reasoning/evidence to back up their position, but still not be able to follow through on it due to lack of willpower.

Strawman – Making a dishonest characterization of somebody’s argument, misrepresenting their argument to make it easier to defeat.

(The internet’s favorite person to argue against.)

As a final note, keep in mind while that an argument may use a logical fallacy this does not mean the conclusion of that argument is wrong. It is possible to get to the correct conclusion of an argument by incorrect means, so don’t completely toss out an argument simply because of the presence of a logical fallacy. However, it does mean that you should pay very close attention if a fallacy is spotted.

Part 3 - Skeptical questions to ask about a claim:

Does it align with the way the world usually functions:

Is someone offering you something extraordinary for little to nothing in return? Has someone contacted you offering to give you 100,000 dollars if only you’ll pay them 500 to help them get across the country? There’s very rarely such a thing as a free lunch, and if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Beyond that remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 Approximately how reliable is the source of the claim?:

Learn about the source of the claim. If they show you a bunch of data and there are errors in the data or claim (and there often is), the errors shouldn't skew in one particular direction or another. They should not be making incorrect claims but only on one side of the argument for example. Keep an eye out for potential bias and potential conflicts of interest.

 Have claims been independently verified by someone else?:

Remember that scientific claims should be, if at all possible, testable and repeatable. Likewise facts and reports should be independently confirmed by others unrelated to the person or group making the claim, to eliminate possible biases and confabulation amongst like-minded group members. If there’s a hot new item out on the market making really bold claims, but nobody else seems to have tested or reviewed it yet, you should be suspicious and you probably want to hold onto your money for a while.

 Have people tried to disprove the claim?:

What are the counterarguments to the claim? Remember that scientific claims should be, if at all possible, testable and repeatable. If other people have managed to replicate an experiment, you can be more assured of its veracity. Remember that science works by trying to disprove a claim, the more people have tried to disprove it but it survives, the more likely it is to be true. There are countless tests of the theory of gravity everyday, and nobody goes on about it being “just a theory”.

 Is there a preponderance of evidence?:

There should be many multiple pieces of evidence, not just one. Look for concordance between varying fields of study. One of the reasons the theory of evolution is so compelling is because it is supported by multiple fields of investigation. It isn’t backed up by only the fossil record, it’s backed up by DNA research and morphology. The more evidence you can find coming from more places, the better off you are.

 Are the people making the claim providing positive evidence?:

“My inability to disprove your theory is not at all the same thing as you having proved it true.”

The people making the claim need to have actual positive evidence of their own. If they are simply just dismissing evidence presented to them and unwilling or unable to present evidence of their own, that should raise serious questions about the validity of their claim. Consider how hard it is to prove a negative. I can’t prove that the interior of Neptune is not filled with mole-like robots, but that does not mean you should suppose that claim to be true. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim.

Do personal beliefs influence the claim being made?: People have biases, including scientists. (And me.) But science tries to do all it can to help account for those biases. This is the reason for anonymous peer review boards and  double blind studies. Watch out for claims being made that seem to be pushed forward by personal agendas.

 Does the source often make claims of a similar sort?:

Very often people who make extraordinary claims tend to believe in other extraordinary things. A Bigfoot hunter may not only believe in Bigfoot, but also Nessie and hundreds of other cryptids as well, all of which have a low likelihood of actually existing. In addition they may believe in UFOs and alien abductions. This suggests they are unlikely to be following a trail of evidence to a conclusion, but are instead cherry-picking data which supports favored and similar phenomena to support a particular worldview.

 Are the individuals making the claim behaving in a scientific manner?:

Are those behind the claim behaving like scientists? Are they testing their claim, trying to falsify it? Is it falsifiable? One of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory is that it is, by its nature, not falsifiable. Any evidence levied against it can always be waved away as part of the conspiracy. Someone who is behaving in a scientific manner is always open to reviewing evidence that might contradict or falsify their claim. Scientists are always trying to find alternative explanations for a phenomenon. Pseudoscience often looks for evidence then fits the evidence into the theory they want to support.

 Does the new theory being proposed account for as much phenomena as the old theory?:

In any theory there may be a few things that are mysteries or unexplained phenomena. Science will continue to try and improve on the theory to account for these discrepancies. Yet often a new theory that may one phenomena at the expense of all the other currently explained phenomena, which means it is not as good of a theory.

 Is there a reliance on jargon or obfuscation?

If something has many unfamiliar words or phrases, or else seems to contain a lot of scientific sounding terms in inappropriate contexts you ought to be suspicious. One of the hallmarks of pseudoscience is that it often has scientific trappings. As an example, in physics the term “energy” only means an  objects ability to “do work” – to move something or affect a change. Yet a lot of, shall we say, new age-y types tend to use the term energy to refer to some form of mystical vitality or lifeforce. There is similar abuse of the word “quantum”. To be clear this does not mean whenever there is a term you do not understand that you should be suspicious, merely that you should exercise caution if terms are misused or else a passage seems to be constructed with a deliberate attempt to confuse/mislead.

 Is it too simple?

Let’s propose that somebody came to you selling a mysterious black box that claimed to fix everything wrong with your car. Would you but it? No, you wouldn’t because you understand that the various things wrong with your car each have their own unique cause and need to be addressed individually. Similarly, it would not be a good idea to buy a cure-all potion that promises to fix all your health problems. The world is a complex place, there are no cure-alls. Once again, if it seems too good be true, it probably is.

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A large part of this blog is going to be encouraging people to think skeptically and reason critically. This seems pretty obvious if you’ve read the blog name, but I really want people to be able to effectively reason about all the information they encounter in their daily lives. Information is everywhere and not all of it is representative of the facts.

The technologies that have propagated throughout the digital age have brought with them many benefits, but also many challenges. It was theorized that creation of the internet and accompanying digital technologies would create a populace that was more educated, engaged, tolerant, curious, and open to other viewpoints. It was thought that a more intelligent, cosmopolitan society would develop by through easy access to information on a level unprecedented throughout history. I believe this has occurred, in many ways people have benefited from these powerful tools. Yet a developing problem is the creation of echo chambers, information silos, and the acceleration of fake news. Algorithms created to endow users with the content most relevant to them end up creating information silos that admit few outside opinions and facts. Your Facebook news feed prioritizes content it thinks you want to see, so do your Google search results. The result is an information stream tailored to you so well that information that is not immediately relevant to your personal environment is often missed, an information bubble.

In addition, consider the challenge of information overload. As storage capacities for data continue to improve, distribution of data becomes ever easier, and the bar for content creation approaches the floor, the average person lives in a thick cloud of data smog. Digital content creation tools are now so ubiquitous and cheap that the playing that now almost anyone can put their opinion out into the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing, certainly a diversity of viewpoints in welcome in society, but one of the results is an environment where individuals are constantly overwhelmed with information. Moreover, your average person often has little to no guidance for how to effectively parse and scrutinize the information they receive. Consider how much data you are exposed to on a daily basis. How many photos, status updates, news articles, videos, forum posts, songs, commercials, political diatribes from the weird guy on the bus, etc. do you encounter every day? A massive amount, no doubt. Do you have time to personally vet the accuracy of every last piece of information you receive? How much time do you want to spend everyday Googling claims about the world around you?

It is becoming increasingly evident that just as important as access to information is the ability to effectively reason and critically analyze information encountered. However, these important abilities are deficient in many members of society.

Companies like Facebook and Google have recently voiced a commitment to eradicating fake news. Indeed, the problems of echo chambers and fake news might be helped by tweaking algorithms. Yet a more powerful and less stop-gap measure would be to train individuals to effectively sort, scrutinize and utilize the information they receive. This is one of the aims of this blog. I aim to help people develop better reasoning skills and improve their ability to detect fake news, pseudoscience, and dubious claims.

Part of the aim of this blog, in addition to encouraging critical thinking and improved reasoning, is to foster better discourse. The internet has given billions of people access to the internet putting an unprecedented number of individuals in contact with one another. However, along with these benefits certain drawbacks have emerged. The level of anonymity on the internet, combined with the sheer ease of access, and the remote nature of online conversations has led to a perceived drop in the quality of discourse. Add these elements to a society that (at least in America) has seen a rise in partisanship along with a general widening political divide, and it becomes impressive when an internet discussion goes for more than a few replies without devolving into name calling and vitriol.

I’d like to focus first then, on constructing tactics to follow for better discussion and dialogue.

I think a good first step is this – Stop arguing, start discussing. We need to reframe how we think of discussions with others in general. When I say the word argument, chances are you think of one of two things: 1) A philosophical argument – a presentation of reasons to adopt a position. 2) An event where a lot of screaming and shouting takes place where one side wins and the other loses. I believe that we should try and stop having the second kind of argument. We need to come to the table ready to have honest discussions with others, and to get beyond the idea of winning or losing an argument. The problem with thinking about arguments in a win/lose dichotomy is that it implies an equivalence between learning and losing. If you have your ideas defeated by another’s argument, you have the chance to learn something. Yet if you think that having your arguments defeated is losing, something to be ashamed over, you put up a barrier to learning. We need to try and get to a place where we look at those we are having discussions with as partners on a search for truth and not as adversaries to win an argument against.

Once we’ve (attempted to) put aside our egos and sit down for a productive discussion, we need a framework to propose successful critical commentary around. In his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, philosopher Daniel Dennett distilled advice from the social psychologist Anatol Rappoport into a model for constructive criticism of an argument.

Use the following steps:

Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”  

(This serves two purposes. First, it assures that both parties are on the same page and that you are not arguing against a straw man. Second, it assures your target/interlocutor that you are paying attention to what they say and that you are taking them seriously.)

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

This is the beginning of what I hope to be an enlightening, engaging, educating and profitable journey for myself and many of my readers. I am starting this blog with the hope that it will serve as a tool to educate people about how to reason more effectively and think critically/skeptically. I am starting this blog at the end of 2016 when reason and civilized discussion appear to have fallen on hard times. This blog aims to not only arm people with the tools they need to reason carefully and critically, but to then discuss their thoughts and ideas with others in a way that is more productive and compassionate than so much of discourse tends to be on the internet. I could no doubt write much about myself, but I will refrain from doing that and simply tell you the basics - I am a recent college graduate with plans to attend grad school. I hope to pursue a Master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction. My undergraduate career was varied and interdisciplinary, being educated in psychology, biology, computer science, creative writing, philosophy, communication, and electronic media. Despite my liberal arts education, I have always had a great love for science and believe that many of the problems in today’s world could be fixed if people understood the ethos of the scientific endeavor and understood how to apply those principles to their own lives. In concordance with that worldview I have created this blog as an attempt to communicate the importance and methods of science, philosophy and epistemology more generally.