A meta diary on logic probably isn't everyone's cup of tea, but a few recent arguments have piqued my interest, since the cause for disagreement was a common and difficult-to-notice logical fallacy.
The "official" name for the fallacy is bifurcation: only A or B is presented as alternatives, when in fact a whole range of alternatives exist. We already know the most infamous example of this:
You're either for us or against us.
That one's easily demolished, but they aren't always. Join me below the fold for more:
Take the following:
Either the President was lying about WMD's, or we'll find them eventually.
The latter seems to be the mantra of a increasingly desperate administration: if we find them, then the president was right, right?
Wrong. When we separate the parts of the discussion, we notice that the two are not necessarily related:
- The President was/wasn't lying.
- We will/won't find WMD's.
It is entirely possible that the President was lying, but we will still find WMD's. How so? A guess is still a guess, and the President said he had proof. He didn't. Even if we do find some, they have nothing to do with his claims proving their existence.
The problem with bifurcation is that it's often very subtle: the relationships between the constituent parts can appear more intertwined than they really are. Many times, a whole range of possibilities are obscured because everything gets reduced into a binary opposition that is false but tempting.
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Example 1: the William Jefferson debacle
I want to start with this one, because it caused no end of grief in the past few weeks: the investigation into Jefferson's alleged wrongdoing.
Either Jefferson is guilty of the crimes, or the motivations for investigating him were racial/the raid on his office was a breach of power.
As far as I could see, no one actually worded the discussion this way, but the dichotomy became noticeable when people's arguments about one half were arbitrary linked to the other half: if someone felt that targeting Jefferson had racial overtones, that someone was accused of defending Jefferson. If someone felt Jefferson was guilty, that someone was accused of denying the separation of powers that made the raid possibly illegal.
Let's separate out the distinct parts of this discussion:
- Jefferson is/is not guilty.
- The motivations for investigating him were/weren't racial.
- Searching his Congressional office was/wasn't a breach of power.
These points are not linked, and any combination of them is possible. But we kill ourselves when refuse to look past these distinctions and attack each other over disagreements that aren't really disagreements:
"They're only looking into Jefferson because he's black."
"How can you defend a crook?"
Again, no such relationship. It is possible - I'd say likely at this point - that Jefferson is guilty of his alleged crimes (already two of his associates have pled guilty), and the investigation had a tinge of racial politics, and the raid was a breach of power. You may disagree with any or all of those points, but at least we have them separated for analysis.
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Example 2: Jason Leopold
I'm a little behind writing on this, since the story's reached its more-or-less sad conclusion, but I still want to parse out what happened in some of the angry fighting over the Leopold/Rove story
Either Rove gets indicted this week, or Leopold is making it all up.
This is devilishly subtle, but again a false dichotomy is obscuring the possibilities - does an eventual Rove indictment clear Leopold's name?. We have to pull apart each individual argument:
- Leopold is/isn't making it up (and if he isn't, his sources are/aren't lying)
- Rove will/won't get indicted (and if he will, it will/won't be this week)
Look at some of the possible scenarios we get when we follow these through:
1. Leopold was making it up, but Rove will get indicted (a lucky guess, but not so lucky considering how much Rove's been on the chopping block lately)
2. Leopold wasn't making it up, but Rove will not get indicted (the sources were inaccurate, or another procedural move blocked delivery of the indictment).
The fact of Rove's indictment - even his possibly eventual indictment - is not necessarily justification of Leopold's article. The two may not be related at all.
In retrospect, there's one thing we can all possibly agree on: it's unwise to gamble one's entire career on a potential future event.
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Example 3: How dare you defend them?
The immediate impetus for writing this diary was one-too-many of the "if you're not against them, you're for them" responses. This looks like the very first example I pointed out, but because it's flipped and usually appeals to the negative, it's somehow considered a favorite of people who want to lay a guilt trip on their opposition.
The specific example in question involved a Florida man who killed both his children before taking his own life. The diarist reserved a special place in hell for the man, but the commenters were more skeptical: did the man have a history of mental illness? Was there something more to the story that we haven't seen?
Based on the diarist's responses, we can derive another false dichotomy:
Either you condemn the man, or you're defending him.
This one's much harder to parse because the individual parts are so complicated. But I think most of us can agree that condemn/defend are not the only options in a much wider spectrum of responses.
But we see this one all the time. Please don't use it, please don't fall for it, and please don't accept it when you see someone else using it. It muddles our ability to discuss issues.
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Conclusion
I wish this were an easier fallacy to notice, but bifurcation can sometimes catch you by surprise. Hopefully (myself included) we can get a little savvier about noticing the fallacy when it appears, and we can immediately separate out its terms for discussion, rather than getting swamped.
And be careful: these suckers are all over the place. Don't even get me started on the immigrant issue.