Truth Tables

Logic marches on

2007-02-09T19:44:00.000-08:00

even when life prevents us from posting, and the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance is doing us proud. This certainly isn't the first instance of activism via reductio ad absurdum (see, for instance, God Hates Shrimp and of course the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but it may be the most subtle. I actually had to read through their mission statement a couple of times before I understood its brilliance:

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:
add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

Well played, Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. In logic is strength.

Sometimes "post hoc ergo propter hoc" does some good work

2006-10-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

My dad pointed me to this article in the New York Times, on the new National Academies report on women in science. (Unfortunately the article is blocked to most users at this point -- I went through LexisNexis. The report can be read online for free.) Dad's a great guy, so presumably he pointed it out because I might think it was interesting (full disclosure: I work for the National Academies) or because it might lead to a lot of people asking for this book (full disclosure: I run the bookstore there), not because it's a poorly-argued penis-waving screed that would be guaranteed to piss me off. But it is, and it did.

See, I have this new theory about Republicans: their primary problem is their inability to deconstruct. This is not to say that they're stupid, or necessarily ignorant in any but a very specific way. Rather, they are self-centered (not necessarily egotistical, but cognitively constricted to their own perspective) enough that they have a hard time understanding how "the way things are" often reduces to "the way things have been" -- not to mention that they have no inclination to think this way. This is how you can have perfectly intelligent individuals saying ignorant shit like "we shouldn't have affirmative action, because blacks aren't as smart or don't perform as well as whites, so we're bringing down the overall level of the institution if we require a leveled playing field." They think they're being logical, but they have a huge blind spot when it comes to considering how background, socialization, privilege, and history might affect a situation. And that blind spot, as far as I'm concerned, all but nullifies the argument.

So now we have this John Tierney fellow saying, with a perfectly straight face, things like:

One well-documented difference is the disproportionately large number of boys scoring in the top percentile of the SAT math test. And when you compare boy math whizzes with girl math whizzes, more differences appear. The boys score much higher on the math portion of the SAT than on the verbal, whereas the girls are more balanced -- high on the verbal as well as the math.

The girls have more career options, and they have different priorities than the boys, as the psychologists David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow have demonstrated by tracking students with the exceptional mathematical ability to become top-flight researchers in science and engineering.

As adolescents, the boys are especially interested in abstract theoretical pursuits and "inorganic" disciplines involving things, whereas the girls are more interested in "social values," "people contact" and "organic" disciplines. Plenty of these girls end up going to graduate school, and some become superb physicists and engineers, but many choose law, medicine, education and so-called soft sciences like biology or psychology.

After decades of schools pushing girls into science and universities desperately looking for gender diversity on their faculties, it's insulting to pretend that most female students are too intimidated to know their best interests. As Science magazine reported in 2000, the social scientist Patti Hausman offered a simple explanation for why women don't go into engineering: they don't want to.

Period, end of story, all of women's innate inferiority explained! Except that this is all descriptive -- none of it, literally zero, is explanatory. Tierney doesn't even attempt to argue a biological basis for these differences, as many bigots do; he merely describes them, with the implication that their very existence implies the explanation he finds most easy and comforting. (Incidentally, I do not mean to imply that only bigots argue biological differences between male and female aptitudes -- there is some interesting research here, but see this post on why I think it should be used carefully.)

In fact, it doesn't work this way. Whether or not Tierney likes it, the phenomena he describes could be, and almost certainly are, not just causes but results. That is, certainly fewer women go into science because fewer women are interested in science -- but why are fewer women interested in science? Tierney's not interested in exploring that, but I am, and so are the conscientious scientists here at the Academies. In refusing to deconstruct what he sees, in taking at face value evidence that supports his preferences, Tierney is most certainly engaging in the "favoritism" of which he accuses the report committee.

When I say that "post hoc ergo propter hoc" is my favorite fallacy, I mean two things: first, I am a nerd, and second, I love that this simple phrase diagnoses so many logical and scientific missteps. I do not mean that I recommend that anyone assume that "after this" means "because of this." That said, there is some utility -- especially when discussing social science! -- to recognizing the impact of the past. Our present-day society does not exist in a vacuum, no matter how comfortable that idea is to the people at the top. It is irresponsible, ignorant, and logically and theoretically repugnant to assume any different.

Plan B and sex cults

2006-08-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a little behind on the latest outrages surrounding Plan B, the for-some-reason-disputed anti-conception (NOT anti-implantation) pill. So until my officemate told me, I was not aware that a deputy FDA administrator, Dr. Janet Woodcock, had expressed concern that the pill would take on "'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults." SEX-BASED CULTS. Because a) that's what adolescents do and b) that's what happens when you deal with urban legends. Watch out, Mythbusters.

Now, a lot of people have pointed out that for a right-winger to oppose a pill that can actually prevent abortion, he or she would have to either be a total hypocrite or an anti-sex pervert. This quote lends credence to the latter, though it hardly rules out the former. But let's leave that aside for now. Here's the problem I have with Woodcock's statement, beyond its immediate absurdity: Since when do cults spring up around things because of their availability?

I mean, I suppose it's one thing when you're talking about a "cult film," for instance. A film does have to be available in order to achieve cult status. But think about a cult like Heaven's Gate or Jonestown -- they thrived on promising their followers the unattainable, and if you look at the risk factors for cult recruitment, it's clear that they victimized people who felt they had nothing except that promise. For an even better example, think of the classic South Pacific cargo cult. A cargo cult is not started by people with plenty of food, smokes, and various exciting loot. A cargo cult comes from the availability and subsequent, sudden unavailability of cargo. Even if adolescents were as prone to the random creation of naughty sex cults as they are in Woodcock's dark fantasy world, it seems obvious that removing or restricting access to contraception is the best way to make those cults a reality.

Cognitive bias, and how it affects your plane ride

2006-08-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

This isn't precisely a fallacy, but I wanted to point out the cognitive bias inherent in the current ridiculous scramble at the airports. What we have here is an example of an availability heuristic, in which people tend to rate events more likely when they're memorable or emotionally charged. The possibility of explosive liquid on a plane is not any higher than it was yesterday, nor is the possibility of other easily concealed explosive material any lower. Because people reacted emotionally to the bust in England, though, the availability heuristic kicks in and makes everyone paranoid about liquids and gels -- just like they were paranoid about white powder after the anthrax letters, or white box trucks during the DC sniper nonsense.

You're always more aware of risks when you feel strongly about the possible outcomes -- maybe you've experienced them, or someone else has. For instance, I'm very careful about not leaving water on the stove unattended, because I once let it boil right through the bottom of the pot. For a long time I was scared of ticks, so I was unnecessarily careful about covering up when I went into the woods. On the more extreme side, everyone knows at least one person who's obsessed with spreading their own cognitive biases -- like maybe one time they found a bug in a Subway sandwich and now they proselytize against eating at Subway, or their sister had a rare mineral deficiency so they're insistent about the importance of taking vitamins, or they once got a hernia so now they nag everyone to do constant crotch stretches. Now imagine that person had armed representatives, big guys packing we-don't-fuck-around automatic weaponry, who were authorized to force you to take vitamins or stretch your crotch. That's pretty much the situation we have here.

If you're as irritated as I am that you have to be dramatically inconvenienced (and possibly threatened with weapons) because of unchecked cognitive bias at the higher levels, or if you're actually nervous that your seatmate's chapstick might explode next time you're on a plane, I recommend the comforting dose of reality that is John Mueller's excellent article "A False Sense of Insecurity?" (via Boing Boing):

The shock and tragedy of September 11 does demand a focused and dedicated program to confront international terrorism and to attempt to prevent a repeat. But it seems sensible to suggest that part of this reaction should include an effort by politicians, officials, and the media to inform the public reasonably and realistically about the terrorist context instead of playing into the hands of terrorists by frightening the public. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: "How worried should I be?" Instead, the message the nation has received so far is, as a Homeland Security official put (or caricatured) it, "Be scared; be very, very scared -- but go on with your lives." Such messages have led many people to develop what Leif Wenar of the University of Sheffield has aptly labeled "a false sense of insecurity."

Here you will learn useful facts (for instance, did you know that you're four times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack...in Israel?), plus you'll get a much-needed dose of rational thought. Read it, take a deep breath, and tell yourself that reason will win in the end. Meanwhile, if you're leaving on a jet plane, don't expect to be hydrated or moisturized during the flight, and pack an extra suitcase if you want clean hair or teeth during your trip.

Warning: Your mileage may vary, but personally, I won't be reading this article anytime close to an air-travel trip. The frustrated scene I would undoubtedly cause at the airport would get me on the no-fly list for life.

are you still being awesome?

2006-08-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Though I am so busy trying to figure out how to get myself, my guy, my cats, and my books halfway across the country that I don't have much logic left in me, T-Rex has got my back.

Motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking graph

2006-08-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

Via the inimitable Francis Heaney: Snakes on a Logic Puzzle!

Pacific Air Flight 121 is in trouble! Some motherfucker has released snakes on the motherfucking plane! Needless to say, the passengers are terrified, but there's good news! Samuel L. Jackson, that badass motherfucker, is on the flight! Six of the passengers--Barbara, Cindy, George, Mike, Ralph, and Tina--had particularly harrowing encounters with venomous snakes (a black mamba, a boomslang, an taipan, a gaboon viper, a king cobra, and a rattlesnake), but Samuel saved them all from certain death (he strangled one snake with his bare hands). Can you figure out what type of snake each person encountered and how Samuel took it out?

When you're finished with that one, you can consider the logic behind animal action films from another perspective:

Five separate movies were made soon after Snakes on a Plane appeared in theaters, each with a different actor, animal (one featured lemurs), and mode of transportation (in one instance, animals terrorized a small town on a Segway). All 5 movies signed a different major Hollywood actor...

I haven't done either of these yet (gimme a break, I'm at work), but they're at least high in entertainment value.

Do you have a weed-eater?

2006-07-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

Via A Blog Around The Clock: David Neiwert at Orcinus provides a humorous example of right-wing logic. Unlike most right-wing logic, this one's supposed to be a joke... but as David points out, life imitates satire. (So much for The State's "it's funny because it's not true" tenet.)

I should point out, because this is as good a place as any, that by adopting David's phrase "right-wing logic," I do not mean to imply that all Republicans think this way. I personally know at least one very logical right-winger, who -- surprise! -- also doesn't agree with many of the current leadership's positions. Rather, this is a type of logic that is rampant among current conservatives, though it's not universal nor entirely confined to the red states.

Collections of fallacies that aren't internet forums

2006-07-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

From the most recent Skeptics' Circle: Bronze Dog at Rockstar Ramblings is working on a list of meaningless words and phrases used to derail arguments. He's focusing mostly on discussions about new-agey things like alternative medicine, but these tactics crop up in any argument where one side wants to draw attention away from the inadequacy of their proof. The list includes grievously misused words like "quantum" and smokescreen arguments like "people have believed this for thousands of years." My personal favorite is the writeup on "science doesn't know everything," which as you may know is one of my all-time least favorite "arguments." Of course science doesn't know everything, it's a method for finding things out (mostly by assuming that you are wrong). But it's a really good method, folks.

From Bronze Dog's list, I also found some links to Skeptico's version of the same project. Skeptico has been collecting and repudiating fallacies for a while, and his descriptions and debunkings are thorough and excellent. There are fewer of them, but each one really explodes the fallacy it addresses. Thanks, guys, for doing your part for honest argumentation.

Jon Stewart, Public Enemy #1

2006-06-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

Researchers have found that, after an intermediate-level class in literature, students were more likely to be skeptical of one-sided textual interpretations!

No, sorry, sorry. Researchers have found that an adequate grounding in nutrition makes people more likely to read food labels thoroughly before purchasing!

Sorry, sorry again. No, what they found is that watching "The Daily Show" made people more cynical about politics. You can see why I got confused. After all, the basic principles are the same: making people aware of the various facets of a complex topic will usually cause them to be more discerning. That's why people with something to hide tend to simplify.

This is only a problem when people parlay such results into headlines like "Jon Stewart: Enemy of Democracy?" The implication is that, by making people aware of the complexity -- and often the ugliness -- of politics, Stewart will induce a sense of apathy among the youth, and prevent them from voting. There are a few mistakes here. First, there's an unstated assumption that "The Daily Show" presents an inaccurate view of political events. Since this isn't so, despite TDS's status as a humor program, we must entertain the possibility that it's the events themselves -- not Stewart's reports -- that are causing cynicism. As Nick argues, it's democracy, not reporting on democracy, that's harming democracy. There is also, to my mind, a serious misunderstanding of the significance of cynicism. The unstated assumption is that cynicism leads to apathy, but I find that a slightly jaundiced view of politics is necessary to avoid hopeless idealism and promote a down-to-brass-tacks sort of activism. Plus, if Stewart makes people cynical, he makes them even more righteously angry. I don't have study data on that, of course, but I'd like to see it done.

It's obvious at this point that we here at Truth Tables like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. We consider them to be ambassadors of logic and reason. And this sort of overblown well-poisoning is really unnecessary. Must we really leap from "people express more political cynicism after watching 'The Daily Show'" to "'The Daily Show' will keep people from voting"? The argument, besides being oversimplified, relies on covert premises and disingenuous assumptions about causation. If you were actually watching Jon Stewart, Richard Morin, you'd have better reasoning than that.

Making the internet a more logical place to be

2006-06-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

Once again, I shirk my blogging duties, choosing instead to recognize the achievements of someone else. What can I say, there's just too much sublime logic on the internets for you to spend all your time listening to me. Or even Laura.

Today's Logic Award honoree comes via Coturnix. I hadn't read Pandagon before, but it's going in the blogroll forthwith. Check out "Pandagon Goes Undercover the Lazy Way on a Catholic Anti-Contraception Seminar," Part One and Part 2, and don't forget to read the comments for additional decimation of flawed statistics, semantic imprecision, and straight-up lies. Fun to read and downright cheer-inducing. If I had some friends over and some clothes on, I would do the Wave.

Enjoy your cancer, slut!

2006-06-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

Another good read on the HPV vaccine that you and I may be denied, disgraceful tramps that we are. In Virginity or Death!, Katha Pollitt points out that the underlying logic of the war on reproductive rights boils down to a simple choice: virginity or death. In so doing, she nicely exposes some of the false rhetoric of the right (which is of course our bread and butter):

Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

Check it out, and make sure to watch for the zingers:

I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about "life" than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex--pregnancy, disease, death--abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It's honor killing on the installment plan.

You don't get much more pithy than that!

Sliding the slippery slope in both directions

2006-06-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

This is why I'm wearing a shirt that says The Fake News Is All I Need.

Watch below as Jon Stewart eviscerates Bill Bennett with the cold diamond-edged blade of rational thinking.

Anyone who's against gay marriage clearly has not thought of the awesomeness that would be a Stewart-Colbert marriage.

NB: Not sure why the video's a little jumpy, but it's the longest one I found on YouTube.

That's enough, San Diego

2006-06-07T05:25:00.000-07:00

I spent most of yesterday rocking a practice LSAT (I'm hoping to teach test prep as a stopgap job -- it's just about the only way you can teach logic without a philosophy degree, so that's pretty appealing). It's not too surprising, then, that I spent most of last night having an irritating perseverative dream wherein I was trying to solve a logic puzzle about Jeeves and Wooster -- something about which days of the week Jeeves could rescue Bertie from various situations.

Imagine my delight, then, at waking up to the following bit of crystalline thinking on NPR. With their usual polite incomprehension of right-wingers, NPR was asking a San Diego resident why he voted to instate another Republican in the wake of the Cunningham fiasco:

Guy: Whull...I just... believe in the Republicans. I don't think the Democrats have... what I want in a party.

I know this sounds like an exaggeration, and I'm having trouble finding the audio (the report I found is a different Bilbray report), but I assure you that this is an accurate a quote as I can manage. The mushmouthed voice of the Right, offering you a super-pithy example of begging the question. Unless the NPR correspondant's prompt was actually "please show us how to beg the question in as few words as possible," instead of something more like "sir, did you not notice that the last Republican you guys elected was ludicrously corrupt or what," then I think I was justified in yelling a lot and putting my pillow over my head.

Cancer Good, Condoms Bad

2006-06-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

Glamour, of all places, has a new piece called The new lies about women's health. Of course, as some point out, the new lies are the same as the old lies. In other words, none of this is surprising to anyone who's been following this administration's disgusting repudiation of all things scientific. The upshot is: ladies, we need to get rid of this administration as soon as possible, and meanwhile, make sure you know your doctor's policies on emergency contraception. Gentlemen, this is your battle, too, unless you'd like a whole lot more kids a whole lot sooner than you'd planned.

Apart from the Bush administration's generalized Evil, the reason this particular instance of it is worthy of our keen logical minds is that the rhetoric employed--besides clearly having nothing to do with the real reasons behind the policies described--uses a fallacy that gets thrown around a lot in politics: the perfect solution fallacy. This type of bad reasoning says that if your solution to a problem can't fix it completely, then it shouldn't be implemented (also, incidentally, begging the question of whether a perfect solution exists).

The Glamour article details many instances of this fallacious thinking, the most impressively irrational of which is about HPV. First, the background:

A few years ago, several conservative congressional legislators asked King K. Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., how well condoms protected against STDs. "They asked whether condoms were effective against everything," says Dr. Holmes, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the world's leading experts on STDs. He told them yes, condoms were especially effective against HIV, and worked well against all STDs with one exception: human papillomavirus, or HPV, a few strains of which can cause cervical cancer. At that time, he said, researchers suspected that condoms did offer some HPV protection, but the data were incomplete.

So the reseachers told legislators that condoms protect against HIV and all STDs, except for HPV, which they did not have enough data on. Sounds pretty good, right? Certainly a lot better than unprotected sex, which protects from none of these things. Clearly you are not a right-wing activist:

Through lobbying and testimony before Congress, the religious right attacked government sex-education programs that included information on condom use. The Family Research Council argued that such programs expose "our youth to incurable disease on a daily basis. Most notable among these diseases is human papilloma virus, HPV."

Let's take a moment to appreciate how absurd this is.

Scientists say condoms are "especially effective" at protecting you from STDs. They're not so sure about HPV (though it looks promising).

The Family Research Council says that teaching about condom use exposes people to disease.

Deliciously irrational!

In effect, the FRC and others are trying to exploit a perceived failure in an otherwise effective solution to argue that the solution shouldn't be implemented at all. They ignore all incremental gains that condoms provide--such as protection against that inconsequential little virus, HIV--so that they can peddle their fantastically useless abstinence-based "education."

When we keep following the HPV example, we find that the fallacies get deeper and the rhetoric gets emptier:

Soon, there will be another weapon even more effective against HPV than condoms. The drug company Merck has found that its new vaccine Gardasil is nearly 100 percent effective against the HPV strains that most often cause cervical cancer. Another vaccine, Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, appears to be just as effective.

...But conservative groups began voicing objections as soon as the drugs started making headlines. Sen. Coburn, for one, testified before the House of Representatives that "going after one or two types [of HPV] is halfway," a charge health experts find illogical since the HPV strains prevented by the vaccine account for most cases of cervical cancer.

Wow. Because the vaccine only works against one form of HPV, instead of two, we should not allow it. Even though it's a goddamn cancer vaccine. Well, gee, why bother trying to cure cancer if we can't do it already? Why treat cancer patients if they're going to die or lose an organ or a breast anyway? Why should any of us do anything but lie down and wait for death?

Illogical thinking has a breaking point, a thought past by the whole line of reasoning should crumble. If the anti-sex forces in America didn't have enough of these already, the fact that they are actively opposing a cancer vaccine should be it. But of course it won't be. And, as the Glamour article's section headings neatly illustrate, that makes these nutjobs' irrational thinking our problem:

YOU MAY NOT HAVE ACCESS TO EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION

YOU COULD BE DENIED RAPE TREATMENT

YOU WON'T GET ACCURATE HEALTH INFORMATION

YOUR TAX DOLLARS FUND MISLEADING SEXUAL-HEALTH PROGRAMS

YOUR DOCTOR MAY BE FORCED TO LIE TO YOU

HEALTH RESEARCH MAY BE STALLED

The article tries to end optimistically, with "SCIENTISTS FIGHT BACK" as the last section, but I for one feel too sick by the end to feel much hope. Those all-caps statements above are what happens when illogical misanthropic dogma subverts science.

This might be a good time to find out where your local Planned Parenthood is.

----

The article in Glamour also talks about the denial of access to Plan B. The logical extension of this idiocy is, of course, more abortions.

Faulty generalization in uno, faulty generalization in omnibus

2006-06-05T06:24:00.000-07:00

I know I just gave one of these, but listen, it's warranted (and besides, it's my photoshop and I can do what I want). Check out Respectful Insolence for an incisive unmasking of the fallacious reasoning behind a popular gambit: the inappropriate application of the legal concept "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." This is such an over-the-top crackpottish move, and yet it actually makes use of a pretty deft shift in scope. Orac, the brains behind Respectful Insolence, gives it the treatment it deserves.

Steel your stomach, because here's an example of the tactic that Orac so handily demolishes:

For half a century now historians have told us that during World War II the Nazis had a policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe, along with homosexuals and Gypsies. We are told that millions were "gassed" at German camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

We have been told that the ghastly process of mass murder was also carried out in Belzec, Buchenwald and Sobibor. And aren't there thousands of survivors who "escaped the gas ovens" and swear that all this is true?

And didn't the Nazis make lamp shades from human skin, and manufacture soap from the fat of exterminated Jews? Of course, you may answer, everyone knows it. After all, aren't such bars of "Jewish soap" on display in museums in Israel and other countries? How can there be any doubt?

"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," or "false in one thing, false in everything," was a Roman legal principle. If a witness may not be believed in one thing, he should not be believed in anything. This principle is as valid today as it was two thousand years ago.

Well, of course it is, my horrible little friend. But did you catch the switcheroo here? It's an almost admirable feat of sleight-of-logic -- a little Latin amphibology, and "false in one thing, false in everything" becomes "false in one part, false in all." A rule used to cast doubt on a single witness (if she has lied once, all her statements should be under suspicion) is suddenly and absurdly expanded to apply to historical accounts or scientific theories (if any part has ever been shown to be false, the whole thing must therefore be false). Simultaneously, inaccuracy in fact or scope becomes equivalent to lying. Here's a sample syllogism: Perjury invalidates a testimony. Scientists once thought that heat was a fluid. Ergo, thermodynamics is a lie. But of course, the sleight-of-hand involved makes it hard, at least for the credulous, to perceive the stark absurdity of the argument.

Orac offers examples of this fallacy at work in our mutual bete noir, "intelligent design" theory. Here's his take on why the tactic, inappropriate when discussing history, is even more ridiculous when attacking science:

The problem is, this principle doesn't work in science. Why? The scientific literature literature is littered with papers whose results were later shown to be either incorrect or only partially correct. In most cases, being incorrect doesn't mean the scientists were lying, and it is the totality of the evidence that must be weighed. Moreover, it is not valid to treat all of science as a single source. Science is not a single witness that can be interrogated. Well-accepted scientific theories (like evolution, for example) are supported by many interweaving lines of evidence from many different sources. If you impeach one minor source or piece of data, that does not invalidate the rest of the supporting data.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Orac, sir, a logic award to you.

beg your pardon (and your question)

2006-06-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

Since my wrists and hands have been all tingly lately from too much typing, I didn't finish a post on correlation and causation I was working on this week. But never fear! Since I can't logic up the internets today, I'll let T. Rex do it for me.

Make sure to mouse over the comic for an excellent slogan for logicians.

Logic Award! (No money attached)

2006-06-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

I figured we needed the ability to reward people who are increasing the net logical worth of the web. Man cannot live by identifying fallacies alone. On that note, meet the first recipient of the Truth Tables Logic Award: Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, for Answering an Anti-Gay Marriage Argument. Ed had pointed out in a previous post that "no one has ever made a coherent, much less compelling, argument for why allowing gays to get married will do anything whatsoever to damage heterosexual marriages," and someone saw this as a call to outline an incoherent, non-compelling argument, and then to point at it proudly like a kid who's just gone in the potty for the first time. Ed's refutation is can't-miss reading, and a beautiful illustration of how informal argumentation should go -- he thoroughly demolishes the other argument without being snarky or rude. If I were still teaching rhetoric and composition, I'd make it required reading for our refutation unit.

God appears, or disappears, in a puff of logic

2006-05-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing occurred to me the other night. We were talking about the fact that even the Vatican finds "intelligent design" to be objectionable, and Dan summed up the Pope's position as something like "if God exists and is active in the world, then scientific evidence -- including the evidence to support evolution -- must be true." This isn't precisely the official position, but it's a good amalgam of John Paul II's impressive rationality and Consolmagno's anti-ID statements.

I tried formalizing this argument, but it involved a lot of predicate logic, which I'm not super at, and am currently relearning. So here's the informal gist: If God exists, then God is active in the world. If God is active, then all evidence (i.e. all observation of the world) is God-caused (or at least God-approved). Conclusions from God-approved evidence are true (this is just a fundamental precept of religion). There exists evidence for evolution; therefore evidence for evolution is God-approved. Hence, evolution is a true conclusion.

Put it all together, with some identity substitutions and liberal use of the transitive property, and what do you get? "If God exists, then evolution is true." Now here's where things get interesting. A statement of the form A -> B (if A then B) can only be false if B is false and A is true. F -> F, F -> T, and T -> T all evaluate to be true statements. This seems a little counterintuitive, but if you substitute English phrases it becomes a little clearer. You can't really argue with "if Jess owns a unicorn, then Laura is a skilled contortionist," because I don't own a unicorn -- sure, Laura's not a skilled contortionist, but that doesn't mean that if I own a unicorn she's not one. We don't know, because I don't own a unicorn! Likewise, "if Jess owns a unicorn, then Laura lives in Seattle" is true, because Laura would live in Seattle whether I owned a unicorn or not -- at least until she moves to Chicago, at which point the statement will still be true. The only thing that would be false is "if Jess has funny-colored hair, then Laura is a skilled contortionist." I do, and she isn't, so that's wrong.

What does that mean for the hyper-digested form of the Vatican position? "If God exists, then evolution is true." Well, evolution is true -- anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of science knows this. Thus, for this position to be true, it's logically unnecessary to speculate on whether or not God exists. If God exists, we have T -> T, which is true; if he doesn't, we have F -> T, which is also true. As long as we know the consequent is true (and all this requires is a cursory look at the overwhelming evidence), then we can feel however we like about the truth value of the antecedent. Voila: hard logical proof that faith and science need not be mutually exclusive.

Big Brother is watching "Will and Grace"

2006-05-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

From Tim Graham on the National Review blog, care of Dispatches from the Culture Wars: an amazingly concise and pithy logical absurdity.

On the occasion of the final episode of NBC's Will & Grace, Katie Couric insisted, "on a serious note," that it's one of her daughter's favorite shows, and it's so important to teach tolerance of "people who are different" at a "very early age." Anyone who expected a fair and balanced anchorwoman at CBS on the hot-button social issues, shred your illusions now.

So, tolerance is unfair. Unbiased acceptance is unbalanced. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Correct me if I'm just being a fogey here, but back when people read books, weren't the mouth-frothing extremists a little more careful to avoid getting their rhetoric right out of dystopian fiction novels?

Since we here at Truth Tables like putting names to fallacies, let me go on record as saying that the whole "fair and balanced" line is the biggest crock of tautology and special pleading since I don't know when. "We're Fair and Balanced, so we don't have to be fair or balanced." Tim Graham, I submit to you my favorite rebuttal, suitable for many situations: Words mean things. Consider looking up a few.

If you like our adorable puppy, you'll love our pack of rottweilers

2006-05-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

Via Wonkette, this awesomely disingenuous ad from Big Oil:

"They call it pollution. We call it life."

Jess and I were having a hard time pinning this one down, fallacy-wise, but we think it's the fallacy of composition: if some carbon dioxide is good, lots of carbon dioxide will be awesome!

I'd like to suggest some more ads for the Competitive Enterprise Institute to create:

They call it a bloodbath; we call it life

They call it a flood; we call it a warm bath

They call it ventricular tachycardia; we call it our hearts going pitter-pat

If Hitler loved kittens, then kittens are evil

2006-05-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

It's the reductio ad absurdum in Colbert's bit that really delighted me. Except that it's not really a reductio ad absurdum, because the original claims are so legitimately absurd. It is, in fact, what Colbert does best: taking truly absurd arguments and embracing them so thoroughly that their absurdity can't help but come to the fore.

It might seem reasonable, to Fox News fans, that finding similarities between the Iranian president's ideas and "Democratic talking points" would reflect badly on both. But when Colbert jumps into the fray by saying that "if someone is sufficiently evil, everything about them and what they believe is wrong, whether or not it's right" -- well, it's not a reductio, because it doesn't in any way misrepresent the original argument. But it certainly makes the absurdity hard to miss.

ad hominemejad

2006-05-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

Jess brought my attention to this excellent recent segment on The Colbert Report. Not only do the Republicans in question commit a classic ad hominem fallacy--thereby disobeying the rules of classical logic--but Colbert ties it to the primary tenet of internets logic: name-checking Hitler is a great way to destroy your argument.

Of course, Colbert brilliantly sees their ad hominem and raises them reductio ad absurdum. And this is what we love about Colbert: he fights absurdity with absurdity. I aspire to do the same.

Taking Cohen at his word

2006-05-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a copy of a letter Laura and I sent to the Washington Post, regarding everyone's favorite "liberal" columnist.

Dear editors:

As people who paid attention not only in our algebra classes, but in our logic classes as well, we believe we have figured out Richard Cohen's argument from his recent column ("So Not Funny," May 4). First, Cohen defines "rudeness" as "taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving." Thus, a statement is "rude" only when there is no threat of retaliation from its object. Second, the phrase "speaking truth to power" is defined to require "repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office." Ergo, a "true" statement is one against which there is some retaliation. The contrapositive of this premise -- "if there is no retaliation, the statement is not true" -- follows logically, and indeed Cohen affirms this when he claims that Colbert was not "speaking truth to power" because "he will not suffer any consequence at all."

Cohen states that "The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity." By applying the premises above, we can see that this "stuff" is not rude when it gets you punched in a bar, since retaliation implies a non-rude statement. It's also possible, though not necessary, for the "stuff" to be true when said in a bar. However, when said on a dais, the same thing cannot be true, since there will presumably be no retaliation. It is, however, rude. In fact, anything rude cannot be true, and anything true cannot be rude.

One interesting consequence of Cohen's logic is that if something is not rude, it must necessarily have negative repercussions. (The identity between "rude" and "no retaliation" means that the statement "if there is no retaliation, then the statement is rude" is true, as is its contrapositive "if the statement is not rude, then there is retaliation"). In other words, politeness has to be punished. This perhaps explains Cohen's shrill denunciation of the readers who responded to his Colbert column ("Digital Lynch Mob," May 9). Cohen complains of his interlocutors' across-the-board "ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation," but admits that he "peeked into only a few of the e-mails." He is, therefore, punishing the hundreds of calm, rational letter-writers whose emails he did not see fit to peruse, which is of course the correct response to politeness. Interestingly, however, his angry response rendered all of the letters not rude – the identity between "rude" and "no retaliation" also means that the statements "if something is rude then there is no retaliation," and therefore "if something is retaliated against then it is not rude," are necessarily true. Had Cohen not whined about the letters' rudeness, they would all have been false (if something is true, there are negative consequences, so if there are no negative consequences, it is not true). However, since he did complain, they were all polite.

We must admit to a certain pride in navigating Cohen's logic, which -- being uninformed by algebra classes, and perhaps by rhetorical writing classes too -- is frankly rather obscure. Perhaps Mr. Cohen would like to meet to discuss our findings... in a bar, of course. We wouldn't want to be rude.

What are we doing here?

2006-05-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here's what we figure: Anyone can call "ad hominem" or "straw man." Even a right-wing pundit can do it -- you can tell because they do it all the time, whether or not the fallacies are being committed. But who has the guts and the keen logical know-how to apply the tenets of formal logic to mass-media rhetoric?

Not us. But we're doing it anyway.

Here's a little background: We met in logic class at nerd camp, twelve years ago, when we were 14 and 15. We did sorites and syllogisms and got drilled on the Aristotelian square of oppositions and were delighted by the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. Neither of us became philosophers, though we have formal logic and rhetoric and symbolic logic and Boolean logic and philosophy of science under our collective belt. But we're still the kind of people who call each other up to say "oh my god, have you seen Wikipedia's list of fallacies? It's fantastic!" Laura has a book of sorites; she does 'em for fun, now that she's no longer training to teach LSAT courses. Jess reads logic texts on purpose, and does puzzles. We are, in other words, logical hobbyists. Dilettantes.

But that's all you need to be to feel oppressed by the irrational effluvium spewed forth by certain pundits, politicians, and talking heads. So we thought we'd bring our constant hair-tearing over these problems into the public eye. Why? Because we're good writers, because we're funny, because we enjoy checking Technorati obsessively. Because we want to join a larger conversation about how words mean things, sophistry doesn't trump reasoning, and logic exists whether you like it or not.