In addition to my previous blog post on Four Steps To Sharpen Your Critical Thinking,
here’s some guidance on spotting the underlying mistake that most commentators
make when they get an argument bang wrong. It’s a form of reasoning, a category
of pseudoscience, where what is left out is just as important as what is
included – and if what is left out was included in the argument, the argument
would be undermined. This observation is as old as the hills; the Socratic
method of dialectical questioning focused on, among other things, exposing what
was not being considered in an argument, revealing hidden assumptions or
contradictions, and was developed further in many subsequent philosophers’
work, especially Mill and Popper. Mill argued that strong reasoning requires
considering all relevant causes and counterarguments, not just selective
evidence, and Popper famously highlighted how scientific reasoning depends on
looking for what might falsify a theory, not just what supports it.
But despite this understanding being as old as the hills, it remains one of the most common problems with arguments made in the mainstream ideological movements, where selective reasoning fuels misguided conclusions. Let me offer examples of what I mean when I identify where what is left out is just as important as what is included – and if what is left out is included in the argument, the argument would be undermined.
People will make an argument that says “If X believes Y, then Z must follow.” But clearly, X might actually believe something more nuanced than just Y leading to Z. There is a misrepresentation of X’s position. Therefore, if we accurately included what X truly believes, the argument would show that the conclusion Z doesn't necessarily follow from Y, as X might support a different conclusion or qualification. Here’s another one; people will make an observation of a small sample (X and Y), leading to a conclusion about the whole set (Z). What’s omitted is that the sample is too small or unrepresentative of the entire set of Z. Clearly, if we included a larger, more representative sample of Z, the conclusion drawn from X and Y would likely be invalidated because the generalisation would not hold for all of Z. Another common mistake; "X happened before Y, so X must have caused Y." What’s omitted in that case is the consideration that Z (another cause) might be influencing Y. If Z (another factor) were included, it would show that the correlation between X and Y does not imply causation.
If you’re partial to a game of bulls**t bingo, you can spot these all day long; some more examples would be; either X or Y must be true; X is true because of Y; Y is true because of X; since we cannot demonstrate X, we must conclude Y, etc - the list goes on. It’s painfully easy to see how this plays out in the real life nonsense spoken by – to take my frequent standard examples – creationists, socialists and climate alarmists.
Climate alarmists often argue, “If carbon emissions continue to rise, then global catastrophe must follow.” But this ignores the possibility that technological advancements (Z), such as carbon capture, nuclear energy, and climate adaptation strategies, will mitigate the effects of emissions. If these factors were included, the argument would be less fatalistic, and a more nuanced discussion about solutions would emerge. Similarly, socialists may claim, “Capitalism causes inequality, so socialism must be the solution.” This argument fails to consider other variables (Z), such as natural power laws, revealed preferences, political corruption, regulatory inefficiencies, and socio-cultural factors, which contribute to inequality. If these additional factors were acknowledged, it would become clear that socialism would not justifiably resolve disparities. Creationists frequently argue, “There are gaps in the fossil record, so evolution must be false.” This omits the fact that an incomplete fossil record is expected due to geological processes (Z), and that many transitional fossils do exist but are selectively ignored. If this missing evidence were included, the argument against transitional fossils would collapse.
These patterns of selective reasoning appear repeatedly, where what is left out is just as revealing as what is included, and we could go on and on naming more of them. It’s also amusing to me how extreme erroneous beliefs in one category feed into the acceptance or rejection of extreme erroneous beliefs in another category – like how most climate alarmists are socialist because it’s many of the same errors repeated, how most creationists often won’t accept climate alarmism because of their fundamentalist religious conservatism, and how many liberal socialists reject the rigidly conversative nature of creationism, that sort of thing – you can observe how clusters of beliefs converge in a kind of ideological package deal, but that’s material in past blogs, so I won’t elaborate on that any further here.
We’ve seen that when the doyens of pseudoscience try to sell their snake oil, you can spot their deception or blatant mistakes by looking at the content of their propositions and the omissions, as I did in the above examples. But you can also observe it in how they conduct themselves in speech or writing. For example, scratch the surface of what they say or write, and you’ll see attempts at argumentation when they are little more than sparsely educated in the full complexities of the subject under discussion. You’ll see they’ve frequently made no attempt to comprehend if what they are citing is offering the full suite of material that would change the very argument they are making. You’ll see them accepting literally any proposition that aligns with what they want to be true, and either rejecting it or being unaware of propositions that undermine their position. You’ll see entire arguments based on not knowing the very basic things about science, economics, epistemology, logic or human history, where cherry picked data is pliably absorbed into their extant tribalistic confirmation biases. You’ll see fabricated and distorted propositions being passed off as science, economics or morality that actually gets these disciplines blatantly wrong. You’ll see them attacking straw men and in their place building an ideological fiction tailored to how they merely think the reality presents or how they want it to. You’ll see propositions that are devoid of even the basic consultation with experts in the field, or that consist of material that has skewed the material of the experts to fit their own narrative.
For them, reality is whatever they think it is without informed justification, or what they want it to be without critical accountability. And, as we’ve seen, a large part of this deception or ignorance is underwritten by this key error in critical thinking; not merely in what is included in an argument or purported evidence but in what is left out or omitted. The essence of critical thinking involves looking at what is missing in an argument, as the omission of relevant data or alternative explanations can be just as misleading as presenting false information. The reason this tactic is so widespread is because it’s harder to deceive people with outright, blatant lies than it is with half-truths or substandard selective viewpoints. If the truth is north, many of the successful deceptions that gain widespread traction are north-west or north-east, not south.
Politicians probably do this most of all – and with such readiness that politics has really become the world’s greatest performance scam. Politicians don’t get everything wrong, of course, but even what they get right is absent key evidence, arguments or explanations that would alter the argument being made. It’s usually what they don’t say that matters most – most politicians are either masters of selective reasoning, carefully curating information to craft narratives that serve their interests, or they say things that are evidently substandard but align with what the majority of their party voters want to believe – so get away with it in either case.
All that is to say, if my Four Steps To Sharpen Your Critical Thinking was offered to help individuals who wish to… er….sharpen their critical thinking, this blog post invites readers to be alert to when others are misleading by ignoring that which is not being addressed or explained, and where crucial evidence or perspective is being left out that would invariably change the conclusion.
