Biased Sample and the Spotlight Fallacy

It’s been a while since I’ve highlighted a logic fallacy, but after the most recent non-fiction book I read, I felt compelled to start again.


The Spotlight Fallacy

I am highlighting this fallacy, as it really is being exemplified in the media right now (or always really, but I have a timely example right now).

This fallacy is a simple one. It is when a person assumes that all people of a type or group share the exact same characteristic(s)as those being spotlighted in the media or receiving the most attention.

Examples:

“All black men are violent; I see it on the news all the time.”

“Kids these days are so much more violent; I see all these stories about school violence."

Pretty poor logic to depend on rumors and the media to determine what a class of people are like--which can’t be done anyway, as people are chaotic systems and it is best to judge them on a individual level. In fact, racial profiling started and failed by this logic fallacy.

My most recent example, as it is really starting to agitate me, is with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. I honestly overheard a conversation a Seattle tea shop between two men that went like this:

Person A: “Hillary’s voting demographic is clearly women."

Person B: “Is that enough to win?”

Person A: “Well, it’s not all women, just women that hate their husbands or are divorced.”

Person B: “There can’t be that many feminists.”

The assumption is in this conversation is that all feminists hate men and are divorced, angry women. Why does this come up? Well, look at who the media tends to highlight as feminist and/or who people talk about when talking about feminism. For example, on a number of occasions when I have said that I identify with feminist thought, I get a lot of questions (almost none about the actual philosophy or reason). Here is a selection of my favorites:

1. Are you gay?

2. Are you and your husband having problems?

3. But you aren’t ugly, why would you want to hang out with those women?

Why do people jump to these conclusion? Spotlight fallacy. It is the same reason people assume that all Muslims are terrorists that blow people up (as per the news reels), and the same reason people see all Americans as loud, violent, and obnoxious.

Back to the tea shop. When these men imagined who would vote for Ms. Clinton, they immediately presumed that it would be her ilk, feminists. Is she a feminist? Well, that axiom was not established through any formal logic; it was assumed because these men saw her as angry and hating husband (circles, circles).

Think what you will about these topics, but please use good logic. Otherwise, it makes my brain smoke.

Tired but happy

January 17
Originally uploaded by Nicole.Kelly

On Writing:

I am about 800 words into a new short story. It is very Hemingway, but it's nice to switch up the voice.

On Photography:

I learned how to hand color photos with Photoshop! I am super excited about that (note the photo)!

On Reading:

I am reading the worst non-fiction book ever! I cannot believe the logic flaws with this thing. Go ahead an expect a logic rant in the next day or two (you'll like that Written).

Harry Potter Review

I know I am super late on this, but I really have to throw my two cents into the Deathly Hallows ring. I read the book about three weeks ago, but I wanted to think about it before I posted my thoughts on the matter.

First, I’d like to say that the series, as a whole, is good. Ms. Rowling did a good job of telling a very long and involved story. She clearly managed to reach out well beyond the believed market for such stories.

Now down to the nitty gritty …

I really didn’t like Deathly Hallows for many reasons. There, I said it! I know that lots of people are going to wildly disagree with me on this, but I really feel pretty strongly about it. There are several reasons for my not liking the book, and most of those reasons revolve around rule breaking and logic errors. I know, I am an uptight reader about things like this, but I really want the writer to make it work it out correctly, as in, in accordance with the rules of the world. In my writing group, this is the first thing any of us will point out in the each others’ stories. It is so important! So where did she fall down, in my opinion?

1. The elder wand. The rule was that the elder wand couldn’t be defeated in a duel, yet that is how Dumbledore won it from Grindelwald. Bad. Bad. Bad.

2. The final duel. What weird logic was that? Really? Harry can defeat Voldemort because he defeated Malfoy and took his wand, and Malfoy is the rightful owner of the elder wand? So, somehow the elder wand knows that its true owner (Malfoy) was defeated while using a different want and now must belong to Harry? I don’t buy it.

3. More Final Duel. Nor do I buy that a teenager (and not a well-studied one at that) defeats the most powerful wizard of all time, who is currently using the unbeatable wand, with a simple disarming spell. Sorry, it doesn’t fly with me. You know what I would have believed? I would have totally bought into the concept that the horcruxes held his power, as well as his soul. Thus, if the majority of the horcruxes were destroyed, so was the majority of his power. This would clear the way for Harry to defeat him easily, but this would also mean anyone else could have done the same, too.

4. The epilogue was horrid. I wish I hadn’t read it, truthfully.
I could go on, but I am afraid of the rabid Potter fans. On that note, until this book, I was a pretty rabid fan.

Was he really evil? Reification

This fallacy, one I hear so frequently in arguments—especially Lincoln-Douglass debate style—as to make me want to shake my head and throw in the towel. Let me offer you all a quick definition, and then I will move on to discuss its role in literature and the problem it presents in making a plot valid (does the plot makes logical sense?).

Reification is the logic fallacy where an abstraction is treated as a concrete, real, physical, and discrete entity. To rephrase, it is the error of treating something as a "real thing" that is not real. For example, let us look quickly at the concept of ultimate truth. Where is it? Who owns it? What about freedom, liberty, good, bad, right, wrong?

*Now let me quickly note before I get swooped down on for this, let me say that reification can be acceptable in literature when it is used as a metaphor. To use it in a logical argument, however, is a fallacy.*

So what the problem here? Well, let’s examine the concept of evil in speculative fiction. If you are going to say that evil exists in your writing, you have to prove it. Some of your characters could believe that, say, vampires are evil and say as much, but if you want me to really believe that as an axiom, tell me where the evil is in the body. The thing is, you could have a vampire story in which the vampires never kill anyone. It could be just a biological need to drink blood, but it doesn’t have to be human, and they don’t have to kill to get it; they could just “sip” on something for a bit. Thus, you’ll need to prove to me that they are evil if you going to use it as an axiom.

In the show, Buffy, for instance, vampires are demons in human suits. They prove demons are evil; they are totally bent on killing all humans and retaking this realm for their own. Ok, I buy it; they’re evil. To expand, if two life forms are wholly incompatible to the point of needing to destroy each other so the other may exist, fine. If a race of creatures landed on earth and needed to change the atmosphere so that their nitrogen-breathing race could live here, and well, that does away with us, and it’s an irreconcilable problem that easily lends itself to the concept of this race as “evil.”

I am not claiming that I need to know exactly what part of the brain is enlarged to make a man “evil” (although that would make an excellent story; the discovery of the homicide gene and how society would deal with it), but I want to know that this is backed up by something real.

When does it drive me crazy? When the author of a book has one of the characters explain that they cannot work with character X, because they are evil and everyone is just fine with that as a reason despite the fact that if character X were brought in, the heroes would then have the subject-matter expert they needed to solve the problem. As a reader, character x seems like a totally fine person, if a bit odd, and I mostly feel like the author didn’t want to have to come up with a good reason to omit that character from the situation.

“But sir, if we just talk to Igor, we can get that information,” said Walt, the loyal right-hand man.

“No, Walt, we won’t lower ourselves to work with people like him; he’s a mercenary,” responded Dick, the terribly heroic boss.

“If we don’t, it could take days to track down the information,” said Walt.

“Well, that’s the path we must tread then as honorable men,” said Dick.

Oh please! Give me a good reason like:

“If we go to Igor, he’ll know that we are looking into the theft of the Golden Almond, and he’ll try for it himself.”

or

“Igor buys and sells information. If we buy the information about who last had the map to the Golden Almond, then he’ll sell that information to the next sot who wants to know who’s looking into the map. That could include our thief!”

See, not so hard to justify why the characters were precluded from an activity without having to treat evil as a concrete thing. You know, show us why instead of just telling us why.

I beg your question?

Back to the logic, or my attempts to explain it to myself and possibly others.

How familiar does this sound (if you replace the necessary project and agency)?

“Unnecessary projects like the space elevator should be abandoned by all super cool space agencies.” (great example, huh?)

The speaker will then go on to talk about all the money being spent on this frivolous project, which nobody wants. The problem is that the speaker never established that this was a project that no one wanted or thought frivolous. In order to start this argument, the speaker needed to first gain consensus that the project was unnecessary or implausible. This is “begging the question,” when an individual moves onto the safe zone of the argument while ignoring the actually problem.

In a book I read recently, I found this fallacy displayed this way. Character A started a discussion about another character by saying that Character B was worthless. Character A then went on to argue that whatever happened to Character B was justifiable because of the aforementioned worthlessness. The problem, of course, is Character B’s worth was never established.

I find that this is a major pitfall for me in my writing. I want to claim things to be a certain way, so I can move on to pushing my characters forward. For example, I just love to claim that Character X’s idea was so ridiculous, and who would waste their time doing such a stupid thing, without ever going through the extra step of providing the logic behind why the idea was wrong. Oh, I do nitpick.

For the logic nerds, here are the forms (from Wikipedia):

Formally speaking, the simplest form of begging the question follows the following structure. For some proposition p:

• p implies p
• suppose p
• therefore, p.

However, the following structure is more common:

• p implies q
• q implies r
• r implies p
• suppose p
• therefore, q
• therefore, r
• therefore, p.

How to Make No Sense While Sounding Smart

Man is sentient.

Man feels fear.

The aliens feel fear.

Therefore the aliens are sentient.

And that type logic fallacy is something that absolutely plagues writing. But, unlike the other fallacies that I’ve been looking at here, this one I feel is mostly accidental; the others always strike me as shortcuts gone wrong. I think most writers don’t strive to make no sense at all, or spin a story based on an obvious fallacy. Still this type of fallacy, called the Undistributed Middle Term, comes up over and over again. I most commonly see it in character stereotypes, and in the proof of intelligence arguments. I can think of several stories in which the basis of the reason the explorers went to talk to the aliens surrounded some similar to the above logic fallacy.

The Undistributed Middle Term a.k.a How to Make No Sense While Sounding Smart

Why does this form above imply logic to us? Well, if you studied logic you know immediately why: it is the form of a syllogism, or a logical argument in which the conclusion is supported by a major and minor premise. I am pretty sure, despite being four lines and not the usual three, that this counts as a syllogism at least. All the same, syllogisms are at the foundation for deductive reasoning. Some famous examples:

Major premise: All mortal things die.

Minor premise: All men are mortal things.

Conclusion: All men die.

Major premise: No reptiles have fur.

Minor premise: All snakes are reptiles.

Conclusion: No snakes have fur.

So what is an undistributed middle term? It is when minor premise and the major premise of a syllogism may or may not be relevant to each other. I think it is easiest expressed in examples.

1.

All dogs have fur

All cats have fur

All dogs are cats

So went wrong there? It’s obvious to all of us that it is wrong, but what is the logic problem. The middle term is “cats,” which does not fit into the category of “things that have fur” and “dogs.” One cannot base a conclusion on something that hasn't been clearly proven. We, in the case, have shown no correlation between cats and dogs, besides being warm blooded. Now, if I had said:

Only dogs have fur

Cats have fur

Therefor cats are dogs.

Can you see the difference?

2.

All mammals are warmed blooded.

All cats are mammals.

All cats are warmed blooded.

In this case, the middle term “cats” fits into both “warm blooded” and “mammals.”

So here is the fallacy in stripped down terms:

1.All As are Bs
2.C is a B
3.Therefore, C is an A

Not too hard in these cases, but I bet we can all think of examples where the logic went wrong in writings we’ve read, or perhaps in arguments we’ve heard.

Either you'll love this post, or you'll pick apples

I am all about giving characters choices. In fact, what is the point of having a character that doesn’t make his or her own choices (they’d just be drifting through the story that way and that’s no fun for anyone). What I don’t like is when the author creates an illusion of choice where none exists really—or is so limited as to not matter. This brings me to the third logic fallacy I want to highlight, the black-and-white fallacy, aka the either/or fallacy.

This fallacy is pretty straight forward, but I am shocked by how often I run into it in writing, published or not. The basic issue is that the writer sets out choices based on the false assumption that there are only two choices or outcomes that exist when there are clearly several. Outcomes and choices are rarely so simple. I can’t count how many times in romantic dramas it comes down to the protagonist can either stay with the partner or leave and never look back, and those are the only choices. The reason changes for why the protagonist feels this way (adultery, betrayal, better offer, protecting the partner, etc.), but I can usually think of at least five ideas for what other choices are still on the table. Really, when you force a false binary such as this, you are not actually offering choice at all.

Then why do it? My best guess is that the writer only wants the character to have to choices, the one the advances the story and the one that is such a bad idea that no one in their right mind would take it. So, this is my frustration with this fallacy in particular; this is the golden opportunity to really deepen a character. Let them realize all the choices, debate, decide, and move forward. We, the readers, get to know the characters through theirs actions, not through the universe forcing them to decide between to false dichotomies. Don’t get me wrong, I do it sometimes, too, but it really robs the reader of those precious times in which they get to look into the character’s mind.

In short, it’s either all or it’s nothing with character development. ;-)

Non sequitur and the domino theory

The second most common reason that I will roll my eyes while reading a book is the slippery slope fallacy. In short, it is a non sequitur argument that relies on the theory that if the first thing happens, then the second thing will happen, and surely then the third will, too. It’s the kind of logic that will stop me dead in my tracks while reading.

Think about it, you’re reading along and really involved with a character. You think he/she is smart, reasonable, believable, the whole shebang. Then they are presented with a situation, such as whether or not to tell another character, say a subject expert, about an important bit of information that would bring the story line to a quick conclusion. The author, wanting to extend the story line, has the character come to the conclusion that if he/she tells the subject expert, said expert would get upset and would to tell his/her mother. If that happens, the mother would have to tell her friend and then that person … and so on until the antagonist would have all the information needed to foil our hero’s plot. *sigh* In the middle of this, I always think the same thing, “why not just explain to the subject expert that if he/she tells said mother, and the situation does spiral out as it was predicted, said mother would probably be (insert consequence).” It's not a slippery slope because most people can be reasoned with and thus stop the slip.

Do you have a favorite slippery slope fallacy?

The adventures of the straw man

Every writer has their own set of pet peeves when reading other people’s writing. For me, it’s logic fallacies. You can do a lot of things wrong in a book, but to me, you cannot violate basic laws of logic. I’m sure I will be lambasted for being snotty for this, but it is annoying. And now that I’ve posted this, I’m sure my logic flaws will be pointed out, which I think is a good thing (it will only make me a better writer).

Anyways, I am planning on writing all week on my favorite fallacies this week. Today, I will start with the straw man.

The straw man argument is a subset of the Ignoratio Elenchi fallacies. The whole point of the argument, or character creation in this case, is to create a misrepresentation of an opposing argument as to make it easy to refute and then attribute it to the opposition’s inability to reason, etc.

From Wiki:
“An example of a straw man fallacy:

Person A: I don't think children should run into the busy streets.
Person B: I think that it would be foolish to lock up children all day with no fresh air.

By insinuating that Person A's argument is far more draconian than it is, Person B has side-stepped the issue. Here the "straw man" that person B has set up is the premise that ‘The only way to stop children running into the busy streets is to keep them inside all day’.”

So how does this all apply to writing? I find that authors create characters that are a vast misrepresentation of the opposite side of the argument, and then tear that character apart. Look at any major motion pictures for the portrayal of the “bad” guy. It’s riduculus. The readers or viewer never gets the chance to understand really why there is an opposing side, what might drive someone to acts against society, etc. Most antagonists are portrayed as mindless, uneducated villains. I’m sure you have many characters that jump to mind at this point; I know I do.