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Dec. 10th, 2008
Doodlings on logic
Dec. 10th, 2008 06:26 pmSo why get into pointless arguments online - as I have been doing for the last 15 years? Habit, ego, indignation... and in the face of the craziness, the inability to shake the delusion that people are basically rational. All I have to do is explain something the right way, and they'll get it.
Alas, our brains did not evolve to think rationally - to use facts and logic - any more than they evolved to understand probability or physics, which is why we think heavy objects fall faster and that we might win the Lotto. Debate (in fandom, in politics, everywhere) is almost never about seeking the truth by testing out different ideas. It's about (a) which side you're on and (b) your self-esteem. People on my team, the Blues, are good and right, and the other team, the Greens, are unfair and mean. By extension, I am good and right.
This leads to many of the most familiar logical fallacies. Everybody knows argumentum ad hominem, the personal attack, an attempt to discredit the argument by slagging off the speaker. Unfortunately, someone can act like a complete asshole and still have a good point (Richard Dawkins, me, etc). They can also be a total hypocrite and still be right: "You're a fine one to talk" is the fallacy called tu quoque, which is Latin for NO U. (Watch out: abuse can rebound on the attacker.)
The "straw man" is also familiar - distorting an opponent's argument and then attacking the distortion. Beware retorts which start, "Right, because..." This isn't always malicious; online debate is swift and shallow and few participants really give much of a damn, driving the small proportion who do care about it out of our tiny minds.
Another familiar fallacy is argumentum ad populum: lots of people believe this, so it must be true. Online, this often appears as the result of groupthink: all my mates say this, so everyone says this (so it must be true). When RTD dismisses fandom's complaints as a couple of hundred loudmouths, he's pulling the rug out from under this fallacy. You'd think the shipwar involved a thousand fans; in reality, it's only about a dozen people making a lot of noise.
Maddeningly, the exact opposite is also common: the fallacy called "hasty generalisation". A single posting can become "what everyone thinks" or "what the Blues say". (And of course, if you're a Blue, you obviously hold that opinion too.)
A fun one which Jon's always encountering in OG is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, which goes something like this:
A: The new show is a failure.
J: Actually, it's a success - look at the high ratings.
A: The public will watch any old rubbish. It's a failure with the fans.
J: Erm, actually, it's very popular with the fans, too.
A: Not with real fans.
We are not born knowing these things are fallacies, any more than we're born knowing that if a coin comes up heads ten times, the chance it will come up heads on the eleventh toss is still just one in two. It's not a matter of intelligence or virtue, but learning to use the tools that will give us the right answers.
And, crucially, allowing ourselves to be wrong. This is one of the hardest and most useful things anyone can do in an argument. I bloody hate to be wrong. Being wrong has, on occasion, freaked me out so badly that I could barely function. But if your goal is to test ideas to find the truth, what choice do you have? Disconnect being right from your self-esteem; attach honesty instead. (If nothing else, it will confuse the hell out of your opponent.)
Alas, our brains did not evolve to think rationally - to use facts and logic - any more than they evolved to understand probability or physics, which is why we think heavy objects fall faster and that we might win the Lotto. Debate (in fandom, in politics, everywhere) is almost never about seeking the truth by testing out different ideas. It's about (a) which side you're on and (b) your self-esteem. People on my team, the Blues, are good and right, and the other team, the Greens, are unfair and mean. By extension, I am good and right.
This leads to many of the most familiar logical fallacies. Everybody knows argumentum ad hominem, the personal attack, an attempt to discredit the argument by slagging off the speaker. Unfortunately, someone can act like a complete asshole and still have a good point (Richard Dawkins, me, etc). They can also be a total hypocrite and still be right: "You're a fine one to talk" is the fallacy called tu quoque, which is Latin for NO U. (Watch out: abuse can rebound on the attacker.)
The "straw man" is also familiar - distorting an opponent's argument and then attacking the distortion. Beware retorts which start, "Right, because..." This isn't always malicious; online debate is swift and shallow and few participants really give much of a damn, driving the small proportion who do care about it out of our tiny minds.
Another familiar fallacy is argumentum ad populum: lots of people believe this, so it must be true. Online, this often appears as the result of groupthink: all my mates say this, so everyone says this (so it must be true). When RTD dismisses fandom's complaints as a couple of hundred loudmouths, he's pulling the rug out from under this fallacy. You'd think the shipwar involved a thousand fans; in reality, it's only about a dozen people making a lot of noise.
Maddeningly, the exact opposite is also common: the fallacy called "hasty generalisation". A single posting can become "what everyone thinks" or "what the Blues say". (And of course, if you're a Blue, you obviously hold that opinion too.)
A fun one which Jon's always encountering in OG is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, which goes something like this:
A: The new show is a failure.
J: Actually, it's a success - look at the high ratings.
A: The public will watch any old rubbish. It's a failure with the fans.
J: Erm, actually, it's very popular with the fans, too.
A: Not with real fans.
We are not born knowing these things are fallacies, any more than we're born knowing that if a coin comes up heads ten times, the chance it will come up heads on the eleventh toss is still just one in two. It's not a matter of intelligence or virtue, but learning to use the tools that will give us the right answers.
And, crucially, allowing ourselves to be wrong. This is one of the hardest and most useful things anyone can do in an argument. I bloody hate to be wrong. Being wrong has, on occasion, freaked me out so badly that I could barely function. But if your goal is to test ideas to find the truth, what choice do you have? Disconnect being right from your self-esteem; attach honesty instead. (If nothing else, it will confuse the hell out of your opponent.)
Doodling about facts
Dec. 10th, 2008 07:31 pmHaving said all that, I think the biggest single problem with online debate, including fannish debate, isn't logic; it's bullshit.
Here I mean the Henri Frankfort definition of bullshit: a claim made by someone who doesn't know or care if it's true. It doesn't matter how exacting your reasoning is, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Rose's dimensional cannon broke down the walls of reality, she abandoned Mickey at the end of Boomtown, the Sixth Doctor pushed two guards into an acid bath, etc. Fans rarely bother to pull out the DVD or pick up the book or even Google the bloody thing. (And this is without getting into cherrypicking the facts which fit our views while ignoring anything which awkwardly contradicts them.)
Well, these debates aren't really that important, so it doesn't matter if we talk a lot of crap out of sheer bloody laziness. Does it? It's not as though anyone ever ends up seething or in tears, or that friendships get wrecked. Is it?
I picked up a book today about the attack on research into violence against women by conservative, anti-feminist women's organisations, which took me back to the fun I had in the nineties on Usenet. My feminism began as debunking; I wrote essays on the research into date rape and domestic violence, specifically to counter the online lies. These were lies, too, not just bullshit - deliberate distortions of the truth, sometimes clumsy, sometimes subtle. I called other people on their facts, and they called me on mine, and I learned very quickly not to post something unless I'd verified it for myself - even if that information had come from someone on my side.
Those debates were actually important - well, more important than whether Gwen is an evil slut, anyway - and what they taught me about facts and logic has been invaluable. (What they taught me about how to intereact with other human beings, rather less so.) I fret a little that fans lack a basic, healthy scepticism which is crucial in analysing what politicians and the press feed us every day. We just believe any old thing. And we're suppose to be the ones with the ridiculously detailed knowledge of the show, the ones who nitpick!
Here I mean the Henri Frankfort definition of bullshit: a claim made by someone who doesn't know or care if it's true. It doesn't matter how exacting your reasoning is, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Rose's dimensional cannon broke down the walls of reality, she abandoned Mickey at the end of Boomtown, the Sixth Doctor pushed two guards into an acid bath, etc. Fans rarely bother to pull out the DVD or pick up the book or even Google the bloody thing. (And this is without getting into cherrypicking the facts which fit our views while ignoring anything which awkwardly contradicts them.)
Well, these debates aren't really that important, so it doesn't matter if we talk a lot of crap out of sheer bloody laziness. Does it? It's not as though anyone ever ends up seething or in tears, or that friendships get wrecked. Is it?
I picked up a book today about the attack on research into violence against women by conservative, anti-feminist women's organisations, which took me back to the fun I had in the nineties on Usenet. My feminism began as debunking; I wrote essays on the research into date rape and domestic violence, specifically to counter the online lies. These were lies, too, not just bullshit - deliberate distortions of the truth, sometimes clumsy, sometimes subtle. I called other people on their facts, and they called me on mine, and I learned very quickly not to post something unless I'd verified it for myself - even if that information had come from someone on my side.
Those debates were actually important - well, more important than whether Gwen is an evil slut, anyway - and what they taught me about facts and logic has been invaluable. (What they taught me about how to intereact with other human beings, rather less so.) I fret a little that fans lack a basic, healthy scepticism which is crucial in analysing what politicians and the press feed us every day. We just believe any old thing. And we're suppose to be the ones with the ridiculously detailed knowledge of the show, the ones who nitpick!