Having a more critical POV : Introduction to Skepticism and Rhetoric Analysis

Hello Charlie, today we discuss Skepticism and rhetoric ; some old disciplines from ancient greeks who are suddenly becoming more and more useful and popular (especially in France under the name "Zététique") since the advent of free speech and the period of Enlightenment. This discipline is all the more useful because of its use in adequation with the internet and social media era we're living in : these giant popular courts where facts are distorted to opinions and information is passively consumed in bulk. We will also be deconstructing arguments that seems to be logical where they aren't. Indeed, it can also have a great role into decision taking (taking in count as much factors as possible) or convincing (using logic at your advantage of course).

The motto of Skepticism is : we are full of cognitive bias. Its methodic approach claims to be as logical as possible.


You've probably already learnt to identify whether a source is reliable or not and how to check the incoherences or what's concording between multiple reliable sources ; Skepticism adds a layer to that process and mostly focus on the rhetoric, the content and the reflexion behind any conclusion. It deconstructs and retrace it into causes, factors you're free to neglige or mark as important : premisses.

Behind a thesis you have conclusions and behind them you have premisses, Skepticism questions them : are they based on beliefs or facts ? Of course we're not gonna answer directly to the question risking a simplistic answer : our goal is to grasp the strongest evidences for all of our hypothesis which means we can be constantly changing our positions depending on simple precious details.

RELIABILITY OF EVIDENCES in general and starting from the least reliable to the most :

Of course you could encounter special situations when multiple witnesses are concording on small details between multiple individuals (without any affinity or any communication during their examination by preference) which can be qualified as more reliable than a simple witness though it cannot really balance when facing a well documented and methodic meta-analysis concerning dozen of thousands of subjects or a scientific consensus.

So you can roughly classify evidences based on their reliability : a simple witness isn't always as trustful as a meta-analysis spanning a hundred studies. 

Though if you were attentive you would have seen that I've put a condition as it depends on the data that we dispose of and the reflexion process behind the conclusions ; we're now going further into details. I'll be using numerous case studies to be sure you will be following.

Making difference between opinions and facts :

I think you all are already aware on how to make the difference inside a speech because of Literature lessons so I won't spend much time on it. 

I'm quickly going to take the example of the famous GIEC/IPCC Report and its numerous interpretations. The GIEC report will never claims an energy alternative is "bad" or "wrong" or even make recommendation but will only make a classification in front of specific criterias such as emissions, costs etc

What is exactly saying the IPCC/GIEC Report “The IPCC report highlights the proven qualities of nuclear energy as a highly effective method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as providing secure, reliable and scalable electricity supplies.  To maximise nuclear energy’s contribution electricity markets need to acknowledge these benefits. We also need more effective harmonized regulatory processes to facilitate significant growth in nuclear capacity and an effective safety paradigm where the health, environmental and safety benefits of nuclear are better understood and valued by society.”

Though for some activist websites it is clear that the IPCC highly advise to mitigate or not to nuclear plants based on this same report, they are all talking through the GIEC's body to express their own opinion (I’m sorry but I’ve only found french examples) : 

-https://www.greenpeace.fr/giec-considere-t-nucleaire-solution-climat/

-https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Comment-l-ONU-GIEC-fait-la#:~:text=2007%20%2F%20Le%20Temps-,Comment%20l'ONU%20(GIEC)%20fait%20la%20promotion%20du%20nucl%C3%A9aire,contre%20les%20rejets%20de%20CO2&text=Derri%C3%A8re%20ce%20titre%2C%20le%20Groupe,combat%20contre%20le%20r%C3%A9chauffement%20climatique

Raising the Debate

A lot of habits are also relative to its interlocutor and its environment ; you can’t have objective “bads” and “goods” on domains such as humor, arts (cinema, book etc) so you won’t be able to have a rational debate on it.

Being constructive and raise the discussion is essential when answering to someone on internet. 

You should answers on the real problematic and not try to “win” at every costs discrediting your ideologic opponents by all the means, firstly because it’s inefficient if another person not discredited emits the same argument.

Moreover because even though you’re defending a cause in the first place because it's close to your heart : the desire of truth and the possibility to nuance your views and change your mind should always be also considered to overall have an overall profitable interaction.

It works also for you : if your opponent isn’t attacking you personally, then don’t take it personally.

Here’s a famous scheme which briefly resume how to contradict properly often called “Graham target of Disagreement” :

Be reasonable and rigorous, asserts your arguments with examples and don’t turn the lack of evidences/sources/examples into a need for your opponent to prove himself the inexistence of phenomenons you describe (which could be considered as an appeal to ignorance, we will review it later).

 

 

Now let’s directly starts with a list of basic famous Cognitive Flaws and sophisms illustrated with examples ;

Cognitive Flaws are brain irrational habits that you must think against, it may impact your judgement or prevent you from evolute or nuance your views when discussing :

Confirmation bias :

When you tend to accept and pay attention to a speech/proof only when it goes on your side. Minimizing or neglecting every other exemples or arguments.

Gambler's fallacy :

Because a rare independent event hasn't produced for a long time we assume that it will happen sooner.

Neglecting probability:

Reject an alternative for its supposed danger when it is indeed as secure as others. A famous example is that some people are much scared when taking airplanes than car though they have a lot more chance to die in a car crash. Media's inequal/sensational and proximity-centered coverage may be partially responsible for this phenomenon. The best way to compare alternatives in term of security is to make a ratio out of the incidents/mortality statistics.

Negativity/Out of ordinary Bias :

When something is negative or out of ordinary you tend to memorize it better. For example customers won't always put a good review on a Restaurant when they're satisfied though they tend to more frequently put a review when they encounter problems with the food or hygiene.

Status Quo :

Status quo is a latin locution describing a trend where people used to refers and prefers the current state of a system remains the same. They will do as few modifications as possible and will always privilege smaller solutions which could only affects the consequences of a problem and not the causes.

 

 

Sophisms/Fallacies :

Sophisms are reflexions that seems logical, founded where indeed they’re aren’t any causal link between the multiple propositions.

Attribution Bias :

“90% of people dying in car incidents were wearing their seatbelt ; you shouldn’t use it”

-> Indeed people aren’t dying because of their seatbelt, if we make a ratio we quickly understands that people not wearing seatbelts during car incidents are over-represented in mortality and that wearing it is an undeniable way to reduce this risk.

Guilt by Association / Ad Hominem :

Discrediting an idea or claim by associating it with an undesirable person or group.

“Pol Pot, the Cambodian Maoist revolutionary, was against religion, and he was a very bad man.  Frankie is against religion; therefore, Frankie also must be a very bad man.”

-> The fact that Pol Pot and Frankie share one particular view does not mean they are identical in other ways unrelated, specifically, being a very bad man.  Pol Pot was not a bad man because he was against religion, he was a bad man for his genocidal actions.

Arguing that someone has specific ties with someone is the same thing : it’s not always relevant if it doesn’t invalidate his premisses then it can’t refute its reflexion. We can also put things into perspective mentioning a very famous “Small-world experiment” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment) conducted by Stanley Milgram and numerous sociologists which argued in the sixties that we (all the more with internet) are around six persons chain network from every person of the planet.

Prosecutor’s Fallacy :

The Prosecutor consists into asserting someone is “rationally” guilt because “he has more chance to be guilt” belonging to very discutable statistics. “We know the suspect lied and that our lying detection machine is at an accuracy from 74% to 89% for guilty examinees, with 1% to 13% false-negatives, and 59% to 83% for innocent examinees, with a false-positive ratio varying from 10% to 23% ; so there is a chance of 89% he’s guilty”

Indeed to estimate a real plausibility you need to take in count the false positives/negatives facing the frequency of an event (Bayes’ Theorem) which tells us for this precise example that : the probability that you’re actually lying, given a positive test result, is only around 45.68%. (https://towardsdatascience.com/the-prosecutors-fallacy-cb0da4e9c039 ; I can’t spend much time on Bayes’ Theorem as it’s not the subject of this article so here are the detailed calculations if you’re interested)

This has been often used to justify “rationally” (indeed it’s not the case at all) the incarceration of an individual based on his appartenance within a specific group or against innocence presumption.

Perfection Solution Fallacy :

Rejecting an alternative upon another just because it presents some conveniences forgetting minimizing/silencing the presence of more important conveniences on other alternatives.

Comparing possible option with idealized perfect ones to disqualify it automatically.

“During car crashes some people still die with a seatbelt, but without cars nobody will die of car crashes, y’know? So why the government still force us to wear seatbelts when he can simply forbid cars?”

Appeal to nature :

Claims something is healthier or less polluting because it is natural. Firstly the definition of natural is often vague : is it something naturally present in nature? At what scale? Can a human or an artificially-created catalyser interact during the process of creation of a natural product?

And even natural not necessarily mean good : Diseases such as Cholera/Pest, Climatarian events such as Droughts are natural.

Instead of instantly judging a product or technique on its considered “naturality” judge it facing several measurable criterias such as pollution, short-term and long-term sustainability, recycling, efficiency etc

Cherry Picking :

Taking in count a specific incomplete amount of data with the objective of bringing out with a precise conclusion. For example on this gif you can see a piece of data often chosen by studies defending an anti-global warming position versus the full data we can rely on testimonies us of a global tendency clearly increasing.

Some other studies or even meta-analysis have used this process, 9 years ago Kenneth A Myers published a study called “Cigarette smoking: an underused tool in high performance endurance training” hihglighthing the benefits of Nicotine for marathon runners using a clean scientific reasonning. He then publicly announces that his studies was an illustration of cherry picking and how by precisely selecting data you can guide the conclusion (https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6763)

More recently the “5G Appeal” report trying to highlight health effects of 5G ( https://www.5gappeal.eu/ ) has been highly criticized and accused by LeMonde fake news apparel and main network security authorities of Cherry Picking. A lot of studies presented in the report are from 20 years ago at a time where 5G didn’t even existed and the main conclusions are all based on simple extrapolated correlations definitely lacking of any causal links.

False Dilemma :

Presenting complex decisions in a simple manichean way, for example opposing two extreme options where they can be accommodations or purposely confronting one very extreme or unpopular or distorted option to another intactly brought.

Straw Man Fallacy :

A contradictor giving the impression to refute an argument where indeed he is answering to a caricatural form of it. Sometimes even by using out of context words or sentences : the responder can accentuate some parts or even replace some words. In this situation the contradictor is indeed refuting a fantasist Straw Man argument created on purpose and not the initial argument.

Slippery Slope :

When a relatively insignificant first event is suggested to lead to a more significant event and at the end could be even replaced with the significant event. Opting for the first event is pointed out exactly as accepting/establish the much significant event.

A slippery slope argument shifts attention from the issue at hand to a hypothetical outcome, offering little or no proof that outcome is likely. It is a fallacy that often appeals to people's emotions or fears.

Appeal to ignorance :

Asserting that a proposition is true because it hasn’t be proven false or that a proposition is false because it hasn’t be proved true whereas there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false.

“No one on the council objected to the idea that he proposed, so everyone must think it's a great idea.”

 

 Some few words before ending the article :

All examples picked (all the more for sophisms) are of course stretched for a better comprehension (that's why they can seem pretty obvious).

I’ve also tried to be as impartial and apolitical as possible for example in the case of nuclear by picking two interpretations of anti-nuclear activist websites that both totally contradict on GIEC role and interpretation : one calling them “pro-nuclear” and one showing the “undeniable” evidences that they are against it.

The results of this introduction is very theoretical and I could try in the future doing case studies/synthesis on popular society debate topics such as Energetic Transition, Agriculture etc

 You will find me at debate team sessions on thursdays :)

Aurélien