At this point, it should be more clear why I’m saying that Trump supporters have stopped trying to defend him through argumentation—they deflect away from defending their own claims in the attempt to get their critics to accept the burden of proof, mistake their own refusal to accept an affirmative case as proof of their affirmative case, and fallaciously assume that an argument is rational if it has certain surface features. In this post, I want to point out another common strategy: mistaking data for proof (which is closely associated with believing that believing is thinking).
One of the mistakes that people make when criticizing Trump supporters is to say that their position ignores facts and logic. That’s the wrong tack to take because, I think, they sincerely believe that their position is the one grounded in logic and facts. In a previous post, I talked about their thinking their position is logical because they think they are logical people. That is, they think that the logic of a position can be inferred from whether the person making the argument is a logical person. That’s illogical.
There are two other mistakes they make: they think that a rational argument has a lot of data to support it, and a rational argument is true. So, if they have evidence to support their position, it’s both rational and true. And that way of thinking about argumentation is neither rational nor true.
Data isn’t necessarily evidence, let alone proof
I want to talk about data and not “facts” because people use the term “fact” to mean “a claim I believe is true.” “Data” is a neutral term, and I think people understand that a datum might be true and yet not prove anything. Data don’t have necessary consequences.[1]
If you’re arguing with Rando, one thing you’ll notice is that he has a lot of data: claims about reality, many of which are true. But, even when true, they’re almost always unsourced (or their source doesn’t provide sources), frequently irrelevant, and aren’t logically connected to the main claim he’s making (“Bunnies are fluffy because they’re mammals”). The temptation is to argue with him about those claims. I’ve found that is hard to do (because the claims are unsourced or badly-sourced, it’s a lot of work to find the original source) and doesn’t change his mind.
To take an older example, in 2016 a lot of Trump supporters would say, “I’m voting for Trump because Benghazi.”
That’s an enthymeme: a compressed syllogism. They have given a claim supported by another one, and so it looks as though they’re saying “Benghazi” is the reason they have the position they do. Were it a reason, then if that claim (“Benghazi”) turned out to be false, they would change their mind. But it isn’t a reason; it’s an example of why they have the position they do. (We’ll come back to that—it’s what makes the Trump supporting arguments irrational—they don’t have reasons, but a lot of examples.)
I used to ask sometimes, “What do you think happened at Benghazi?” The most common response was “People died because of Clinton.” And I’d ask exactly how, and then things got vague—most didn’t know. Some said that she responded too slowly to the threat, and I’d point out the pages in the Republican-dominated committee that said that wasn’t true. They’d refuse to look. I’d ask if they could provide a source to support what they were saying. They’d stop arguing with me.[2]. (There was another answer I’d sometimes see that I’ll get to in a bit.)
Those are the two moves that generally end an argument with a Trump supporter—ask them to read counterarguments, and ask them to provide sources. And that’s why their position is irrational.
What I’ve found is that, if you ask them to look at counterarguments, they’ll most commonly refuse to look at anything on the grounds that those sources are “biased”—that is, as mentioned in an earlier post, they’re admitting that they refuse to consider counterarguments (so their position is irrational). Sometimes they’ll sealion. They want you to summarize a complicated argument in a sentence or two, and that’s fascinating. I’m not entirely sure why they make that move, and I’ve never seen any studies on it, but I have some crank theories.[3]
The most important of those crank theories is that they don’t really believe that it matters how an argument is made—all that matters is whether the argument is “true,” and they think they can assess the truth of an argument on the basis of a one- or two-sentence summary of it. They don’t see understanding an issue or coming to a position as a process. I think that’s connected to why they see data as exemplifying a point, rather than as reasons (that, if false, suggest we should be open to reconsider the claim we say we believe for that reason).[4]
In any case, if you do want to dispute their data, my advice is not to try to figure out where they got their information (unless they can tell you). Find in-group sources that show their claims are false or misleading (and it’s generally pretty easy). At this point, Trump supporters are wildly mis- and under-informed, so it’s often straightforward to find articles in Wall Street Journal, The Economist, or even primary documents that show they’re wrong or missing important information. The question, of course, is whether they’ll care that they’re mis- and under-informed, and my experience says they don’t. (This is something that has changed since 2016.)
The reason I think it’s generally not useful to dispute the data is that they don’t believe what they believe because of that data—as I said, it’s an example, not a reason—so showing them that data is wrong won’t get them to change their position. They’ll just find different data.
Perhaps more important, the data—even for them—has no logical relationship to their main claim, or, at least, they don’t think so. The other argument I sometimes heard was, “Clinton was Secretary of State, and therefore she had ultimate responsibility for security at the embassy.” Okay, that’s an argument. But is it one the person believed? Sort of, but not really. They only agree with the logic of that argument if it’s useful for whacking the Dems, not if it applies to Republicans. Do they hold Trump responsible for everything that happens under him? (Only the good stuff.) Do they hold Republican Secretaries of State responsible for attacks on embassies? Nope.
So, the logic of their argument appeals to something they don’t believe. It looks as though they’re appealing to a principle–people in charge are responsible for what happens under them–but their application of that principle is purely partisan. And that is why it’s so frustrating to argue with them—because they aren’t engaged in rational argumentation.
They aren’t being hypocrites—I don’t think that’s the right term. They really believe that Clinton is bad, and they really believe that Benghazi exemplifies what’s wrong with her. Attacks on embassies under Republicans don’t prove anything, though. The principle that a Secretary of State is responsible for the safety of all embassy employees only applies in support of an argument they believe is true—that Democrats are bad.
In other words, Trump supporters begin with certain beliefs that are beyond question: Trump is great, Democrats are evil, any data that confirms those beliefs is true, any that doesn’t is false (or biased). They didn’t get to those beliefs through rational argumentation, and therefore those beliefs can’t be weakened through rational argumentation.
We don’t disagree about Trump because of Trump; we disagree about what it means to think. We disagree about whether believing is a substitute for thinking.
I began this set of posts by saying that Trump supporters make three mistakes about rational argumentation (a rational argument has a calm tone, lots of data, and it rings true). Now I’m saying it’s that third one that drives everything. A rational argument, they believe, is one that they believe, and for which they can find support. That isn’t a rational argument.
That’s why I keep saying that it’s perfectly fine, and perhaps even healthy, to begin a conversation with someone who wants to argue about Trump by asking if they’re open to persuasion on it, if they’re willing to read things that criticize him, and if they’re willing to cite their sources. And if they say they aren’t (or, as usually happens, they’ll try to deflect on you, and insist that you first identify what you’d need and so on), then say you only argue with people whose positions are grounded in rational argumentation, so you aren’t having this argument.
Trump will come and go, but if he goes and people still believe that belief is all you need, another Trump will come along. And then democracy will go.
[1] Were I Queen of the Universe, one of the things that people would have to learn to graduate from high school (in addition to understanding the distinction between correlation and causation) would be what it means for something to have necessary consequences (that would also help people understand what it means for something to be “necessary but not sufficient”). I think we could begin to get away from monocausal narratives, and that would be nice.
[2] I’d sometimes see the argument that she was Secretary of State, and there was inadequate protection for the embassy workers in Benghazi. Both of those claims are true, but the logical connection is wobbly.
[2] Here are a few of my crank theories. First, they prefer arguing with people. The whole point of arguing, for them, is to dominate someone else, and they feel confident about being able to do that with interpersonal moves, but they don’t think they can do it with a text—it’s no fun to argue with a text. Second, in my experience, the kind of people who are still supporting Trump are epistemological populists—they think the truth can always be stated simply and clearly in a sentence of two and reasonable people will instantly understand and recognize the truth. That crank theory is supported by research, although most of it is about “conservatives” and not Trump supporters specifically. They’re drawn to certainty, dislike complexity and nuance, and believe in a world in which everything we need to know is on the surface. In other words, they think they don’t need to read a complicated argument with lots of data because, if what that document says is true, they’ll recognize it instantly. Third, they’re afraid they’d lose and have to reconsider their belief—that is, they’re afraid of well-sourced counter arguments. Fourth (and connected to the epistemological populism), I’ve noticed that some of them have strong preferences for oral/visual arguments. That is, they themselves don’t read very much, but get their information from TV, youtube, or radio. So, if they do offer sources, it’ll be a two-hour youtube video. Those media—TV, youtube, radio—are all unsourced sources. They provide a lot of data that it’s almost impossible (or extremely time-consuming) to check.
[4] Obviously, I’m not saying that we have to abandon a position every single time we turn out to have bad data. But we should be able name what the data is that would make us change our minds. And, equally important, if we keep finding ourselves turning out to be wrong in our data, we need new sources of information.