Baloney Detection Kit Reading Flashcards
What is the Baloney detection kit
Set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods
What are the 9 tools
- Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
- Encourage substantive debate on the evidence
- Arguments from authority carry little weight
4.Spin more than one hypothesis. I
5.Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. - Quantify.
7.If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work - Occam’s Razor.
9.Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.
20 most common and perilous examples, many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity
- Ad hominem
- Argument from authority
- Argument from adverse consequences
- appeal to ignorance
- special pleading
- begging the question, also called assuming the answer
7.observational selectional
8.statistics of small numbers - misunderstanding of the nature of statistics
- inconsistency
- non sequitur
- post hoc, ergo propter hoc
- meaningless question
- excluded middle, or false dichotomy
- short-term vs. long-term
- slippery slope, related to excluded middle
- confusion of correlation and causation
- straw man
- suppressed evidence, or half-truths
- weasel words
True or false: like all tools the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking”
True
True or False: Applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world-not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others
True
Ad hominem
Attacking the arguer and not the argument
Argument from authority
President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out)
Argument from adverse consequences
Ex God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if he didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous- or the defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives
Appeal to ignorance
the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true and vice versa (UFOS)- the impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Special Pleading
often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (a mother thinking all drunk drivers should go to prision- special plead: when its her son hes a good guy
Begging the question, also called assuming the answer
We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed?
Observational selection
also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers)
Statistics of small numbers
a close relative of observational selection (“They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.”)
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics
(e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics
(e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);
Inconsistency
Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they’re not “proved.”
- arguing 2 contradicting premises
Non sequitur
Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;
making an argument who’s conclusion does not follow from or receive support from its premises - ex. “Ari is very handsome. He must be very nice”
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc
Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.”
Meaningless questions
(e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa)
Excluded middle, or false dichotomy
considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)
Short-term vs. long-term
a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets)
Slippery slope, related to excluded middle
(If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant
Confusion or correlation and causation
(A survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay)
Straw man
caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t.
misrepresenting a claim or argument in order to make it easier to argue against
