http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBDQX5DcG68&feature=watch_response
Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Mao Zedong. Pol Pot. What did these men have in common? Well let’s see here.
All of them were brutal tyrants. None of them accepted the existence of fairies, dragons, unicorns, or leprechauns. Each of them was utterly, totally, intractably convinced of the existence of gravity. None of them had a penchant for collecting stamps. Each of them were convinced that the world is round. None of them had, in their wardrobes, a single plaid garment.
Therefore, if we wish to avoid slipping into tyranny, we must accept the existence of fairies, dragons, unicorns and leprechauns, reject the existence of gravity, take up stamp-collecting, reject the notion of a round world, and pack our wardrobes with plaid. So get crackin’.
What’s wrong with this argument? Well, in logical terms, it’s a non sequitur; but a form of non sequitur perhaps best explained in scientific terms. In scientific terms, this is causation argued on grossly inadequate grounds.
The simple fact that two variables happen to go together in one case does not establish that one must be responsible for the other. This is only the first step in this process. I have blond hair. I also work odd hours. But clearly having blond hair is not what causes me to work odd hours and clearly working odd hours does not give me blond hair. Surely, we can all see how absurd it is to attribute the one to the other on this basis.
This is a favorite among bigots and political opportunists. Indeed, one of the frailties of being human is having biases and part of the appeal of logical fallacies is that they give us a comfortable means to hide from them instead of confronting them.
Picture this:
You’re sitting in a seminar of some sort and the individual up on stage is hosting a slide show. He brings up a picture of someone who just happens to be black and happens to have a history of violent crime. He goes on for twenty minutes, going into detail about all the gruesome things this one particular individual has done. Then he brings up a picture of someone else who happens to be black and happens to have a history of violent crime, and talks about him or her for twenty minutes. This pattern continues for three hours.
Come the end of the night, what has this fellow suggested? That ethnic Africans are intrinsically more violent than people from other ethnic groups. That’s what he has suggested.
But what has he actually established? Much much less than that. Assuming that all of the information he has shared with you is fact, which could be a pretty big assumption to make, at the end of these three hours, all he has really shown is that there are at least nine people in the world who happen to be black and happen to have a history of violent crime.
In a world with a population of 6.6 billion, proving that there are nine people somewhere in the world about whom both of these facts hold true is easy. Of comparable difficulty, or perhaps I should say comparable lack of difficulty, is proving that there are nine people from virtually any other ethnic group with this same history. Is it difficult to find nine people who are white and have this history? No. Nine who are Hispanic? No. Asian? Arab? Native American? Hindi? Australian Aborigine? No. Apparently, to accuse a particular ethnic group of a predilection for violence is to call that group human.
This is the very same fallacy Pat Robertson commits when he says, “Many members of the Third Reich were homosexual. There appears to be a correlation.”
Hmm. I have my doubts about his premise, but putting those aside for the moment, the rest of the Third Reich were undeniably heterosexual. Is there a correlation there? Many prisoners in the concentration camps were homosexual. Is there a correlation there?
Unfortunately, it happens over and over again that parents make this mistake and are duped by unscrupulous attorneys. The age at which a child is old enough to begin receiving regular inoculations and boosters is about the same age at which autism begins to manifest. It happens over and over again that parents observe this and mistakenly come under the impression that the child developed autism as a result of the inoculations. Thus, unaware of this recurrent trend, these parents pay huge sums to an attorney to take to court the company which made the inoculations, and because of this problem in their argument, their case is thrown out and the attorney has made off with their money, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Autism is an epigenetic disorder. But that’s a different subject which I may get into in another video.
Now I can’t seem to avoid reaching the conclusion that the average attorney must be educated enough to know about this fallacy and therefore must know about this phenomenon. I therefore figure that this happens because the attorney in question seeks to profit from the ignorance of the parents in question. Now I’m not advising anyone to hesitate about seeking legal council when needed. All I’m saying is don’t make this particular mistake. Don’t be taken in. Don’t be duped.
So after one has observed that two variables go together in one case, or a couple of cases, and has subsequently begun to suspect some manner of connection between the two variables, the next question is, “Do these two variables have a tendency to change in unison?” If increases and decreases in one variable tend to coincide with the same in the other, that is, if the variables tend to move in the same direction at the same time, then what we have is a positive correlation. If increases in one tend to coincide with decreases in the other or vice-versa, that is, if the variables tend to move in opposite directions at the same time, then we have a negative correlation.
Even this, though, does not establish that one is responsible for the other. The vast majority of people in the world for whom rice is their staple food happen to have black hair, but clearly this does not establish that rice turns someone’s hair black.
(Warning: Politics ahead)
Another good example I came across once at the gym while I was on the elliptical machine. On one of the TV monitors hanging from the ceiling was playing, of all things, Fox News. I didn’t happen to have my radio with me so I couldn’t listen in, but there were captions, and I read along as Sean Hannity presented us with a couple interesting figures.
Apparently, for the last several months, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shown a steady increase. President Obama’s popularity has shown a steady decrease. Hannity suggested (he was very careful to avoid actually saying it) a connection of some kind.
(Logic Fail!)
At that point, I had to stop watching. It’s not easy to do vigorous or semi-vigorous aerobic exercise and laugh at the same time.
What can this mean? Is it that we disapprove of the President because the Dow is up? (Hmm) Surely not. It must be that this particular economic indicator is up because we disapprove of the President. Apparently, the act of disapproving of the President helps the economy.
(Logic Fail!)
Interesting. It didn’t work with Bush or Bush Sr., though it did work with Clinton
(Logic Fail!)
I guess we should continue electing Democratic Presidents so we can disapprove of them and help the economy.
(Logic Fail!)
Of course, a few months into any presidency, after the period commonly referred to as the honeymoon ends, every president’s popularity begins to decline, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it.
(Logic Fail!)
So thank you very much, Mr. Hannity, for bringing these figures to our attention.
It may sound far fetched in some settings, but once in a while, when two variables change in unison or approximate unison, that is, when a correlation happens, it is indeed a coincidence. There are also times when the changes in two variables are due to an extraneous variable; that is, a variable you just don’t know about or that a certain study just didn’t happen to account for.
The next step here which science takes is to set up a controlled experiment in which every other variable either is removed or its influence is minimized or mitigated, one variable, known as the independent variable is able to be manipulated, and the other, known as the dependent variable, is able to be observed.
Imagine for a moment that you have a radio made in a different country where the main language is something you don’t know how to read, so you can’t identify any of the markings on the radio. You find a button and press it, and the radio turns on. You press it again and the radio turns off. Each time you press it, the radio turns on if it’s off, and turns off if it’s on. You therefore conclude that this must be the power button.
The button itself is the independent variable you are able to manipulate. Whether the radio is on or off is the dependent variable you are able to observe. By the same token, the tuner and the volume control are both independent variables you can manipulate and the station indicator and the volume level are the corresponding dependent variables you can observe and this enables you to figure out which knob or dial changes the station and which one adjusts the volume. This is accomplished by the simple act of manipulating the one variable and observing the other. Here we have causation.
Of course, all this depends on whether the radio is functioning properly. If not, then other variables come into play and this is not a properly designed experiment.
Unfortunately, sometimes, properly designed, controlled experiments are prevented by limitations of ethics and/or practicality. Sometimes this can happen in a very important context. Therefore, sometimes, we have to content ourselves with probable causation.
The streets of New York City
Well for one thing, they tend to have fewer educational opportunities, and the ones they have tend not to be as promising. For another, as a result, they tend to have fewer promising career prospects. For yet another, they tend to live in worse conditions. All these are either the manifestation or the result of the one underlying difference; they are more likely to be the victims of discrimination. There are any number of differences, any combination of which could be responsible for this.
Before I continue, I am well aware that there are a few who have done quite well for themselves. They’ve become doctors, scientists, teachers, engineers and political figures. But I’m not being categorical here. I’m talking about the general tendency.
Now consider, the streets of New York City U.S.
But this is not how it is for the Irish today. Irish living in the U.S.
So how are Irish today different from Irish back then aside from living in a different century? Well, they tend to have all-around better educational prospects and they tend to take advantage of them. As a result, they tend to be more and better educated. As a result of this, they tend to have more in-demand job skills, and as a result, better employment prospects. As further result, they tend to be able to do a great deal more to amend unsatisfactory living conditions which makes them much more likely than they were before to live in conditions which are satisfactory. Also being better educated, they tend to be more able to understand complex political and legal concepts which makes them more able to defend their rights and combat injustice with the force of law, which means that they are much less likely to feel the need to resort to violence to accomplish this end.
This suggests to me pretty strongly that, if we improve the educational prospects of African Americans, it should have much the same result.
Related to this is something on which I disagree with Sam Harris and other atheists. There are those who argue that proliferating education in the Muslim world probably will not affect the rate of Islamic violence, since it is the more educated Muslims who are calling for and planning these attacks. I agree with the observation. The more educated ones are calling for them and planning them, but they’re not usually the ones carrying them out. For that, they can always find less educated, more “noble” Muslims. To me this suggests that, if education and educational prospects are proliferated in this part of the world, it will leave this relative handful of demagogues with fewer foot soldiers, thereby requiring them to be more sparing about risking the ones they have.
For the most part, people turn to violence when they get tired of feeling helpless about injustice. At such a time, the alternative is despondency. This is where the need comes from and when there is a need for justification of that violence, religion comes in quite handy. Those with something to gain from the violence in question are usually very quick to take advantage of these feelings of helplessness to offer these people hope; hope they’re much more inclined to simply accept and much less inclined to scrutinize in case it’s not true. So if we really want to cut down on the violence, we have to take steps to give these people other, more effective means to do something about these injustices.
I’ve kind of gotten off topic, but you see how this all ties in, right? There’s coincidence, correlation, and then causation; three distinctly different steps requiring three fundamentally different bases in order to be concluded. Therefore, when one points to a basis which establishes only coincidence or correlation and claims causation, one runs afoul of logic and reason.
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