Tag: pseudorational argumentation

Arguing with Trump supporters IV: data isn’t necessarily evidence, let alone proof

Gohmert yelling
From https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-rep-louie-gohmert-screams-at-mueller-you-perpetuated-injustice-2019-7

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.

Arguing with Trump supporters III: tone isn’t rationality

Kavanaugh yelling
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/kavanaugh-opening-statement-angry/571564/

Just to recap: Trump supporters avoid taking on the responsibilities of rational argumentation by taking the position of a negative case even when they’re making an affirmative claim. They do so this through shifting the issue from Trump to various distractions: your emotionality (“Why are you so upset?”), your sense of humor (“You just can’t take a joke”), your supposed biases (“Snopes is a liberal site”), your identity (“Typical Social Justice Warrior bullshit”), whatever the latest fear-mongering distraction-of-the-moment whaddaboutism is that pro-Trump propaganda is promoting (her emails, Benghazeeeeee, abortion, socialism, immigration, a prayer blanket found in the desert, the caravan, ISIS, Biden will kick in your door and take your guns), and by what amounts to a version of sealioning (setting themselves as the arbiter of truth).

Sometimes, they make claims, but they rarely engage in argumentation—at this point, they even rarely engage in pseudo-rational argumentation. Since maybe they still are, and just not in places I hang out, I’ll go ahead and explain how it works and why it’s hard to argue with. Pseudo-rational argumentation is neither rational, nor argumentation, but it has surface features that people (fallaciously) associate with rational argumentation, so it can look like it’s rational.

We too often characterize rational argumentation by surface features and, paradoxically, our visceral response. As far as the surface features, we’re tempted to call something a rational argument if it has: a calm (or “matter of fact”) tone, what are sometimes called “rationality markers” (words like “because,” “therefore,” “it necessarily follows”), appeals to external knowledge (“everyone knows,” “everyone agrees,” “obviously,” “clearly”), data, appeals to expert opinion (citing reliable experts, or people with apparently expert information). Finally, a lot of people think (because they have been taught) that a “rational” argument will “make sense”—it resonates. That’s the visceral response part. Let’s call an argument that fulfills these criteria but not the criteria of rational argumentation pseudo-rational argumentation.

Such arguments appear to be rational, as long as we judge on the basis of superficial traits of the argument and the person making the argument (and how we’re cued to judge the argument and person).

Tone is not an indication of the ir/rationality of an argument
Pseudo-rationalism plays on the common misunderstanding of rationalism as not emotionalism (a relatively recent want to think about emotions v. reason). In this world, a person is rational if they are not emotional, and an emotional person is not rational. In fact, that someone appears unemotional might mean all sorts of things, such as that they’re just good at suppressing their expression of emotions, they’re not an empathetic person, they don’t understand the situation, the person judging whether someone is emotional is a bad judge of emotionality (this last is pretty common, I think).

Being emotional doesn’t necessarily mean that one has an irrational argument. One of the things Rando might do (especially if Chester is female) is first deliberately outrage Chester, and then accuse Chester of having an invalid argument (or being unable to argue) because they are emotional. (This is a classic strategy of abusers). What this does is shift the stasis (that is, the thing about which we’re arguing) from Chester’s argument to Chester’s emotional state.[1]

This is one instance of Rando’s (the nickname of Random Internetasshole, the hypothetical interlocutor of Chester’s) favorite strategy—throw the burden of proof onto Chester, and, ideally, to things Chester can’t prove. (How do you prove you’re not emotional? That’s proving a the presence of an absence, and it’s notoriously hard to do.) And it doesn’t matter. That Chester is now emotional doesn’t mean their argument is irrational. (The “you have no sense of humor” accusation is another instance of this strategy—trying to make the argument about your feelings).

We have a tendency to think about arguments in terms of identity—a good person makes a good argument; a rational person makes a rational argument; an expert makes an expert argument. Good people do not necessarily make good arguments. (By the way, I’m often misunderstood as rejecting the notion of identity politics—I’m not.) Identity politics is an acceptance that different policies have different impacts on various identities—that we are not the same. Good v. bad people is not a useful way to think about identity, especially since neither guarantees the ir/rationality of the argument a good or bad person makes.

A slight variation on this muddle about rationality is the notion that a rational person is in control (of their emotions, themselves). It was this sense of rationality and control being connected that meant that women and non-whites were prohibited from rationality—they (we) weren’t allowed to control anyone. Thus, for someone who believes in this pseudo-rationality, a woman or POC can’t argue because we’re too emotional; if we appear not to be emotional, we’re hiding it, or—worse yet—we’re trying to control them. Then, oddly enough, it’s okay for them to get angry.

Later, I’ll get back to how to respond to these moves in pseudo-rationality (all of which you can see in Trump supporters). Here the point is simply that a person appearing to argue calmly is not necessarily someone making a rational argument.

To judge the rationality of the argument, we have to look at the argument. Pseudo-rationality tries to pretend that we can infer the rationality of the argument from the tone of the arguer. We can’t.

Something else that I’ve noticed tricks people into thinking an associative argument is rational argumentation is the use of what linguists call “metadiscourse” (especially “rationality markers” and “appeals to external knowledge”). “Metadiscourse” is the term used for the language that tells the reader about what you’re telling them. That’s a weird sentence, but it’s a useful concept. Imagine the claim, “Bunnies are fluffy.”

I might say, “Unfortunately, bunnies are fluffy,” “Thankfully, bunnies are fluffy,” “Obviously, bunnies are fluffy,” “It’s well known that bunnies are fluffy,” “Bunnies are generally fluffy,” or “I think bunnies are fluffy”—those are all sentences with that same predicate (“bunnies are fluffy”), but with metadiscourse that tell you how I want you to consider the claim.The first two tell you how I feel about bunnies being fluffy. The third and fourth are “appeals to external knowledge”—they’re saying that this claim about bunnies isn’t just my opinion, (and the “obviously” is what is called a “booster” in that it boosts the strength of the claim). The fifth and sixth have “hedging” in which I’m restricting the claim (the opposite of boosting). “Rationality markers” are words we use to signal that it’s a rational argument—often words like: because, therefore, thus, in conclusion.

The tendency to infer that the presence of a lot of those sorts of words and phrases means the argument is rational is connected to our tendency to think associatively. As I’ll explain when I get to the issue of data, “Bunnies are fluffy because 1 + 1 =2” is not a rational argument. It doesn’t matter how much metadiscourse I add, or how calmly I say it. It’s a sentence that has two logically disconnected claims. “Bunnies are fluffy because bunnies are mammals” has two claims that are more associated (they’re both about bunnies) but they’re still logically disconnected. People are likely to read them as logically connected simply because of the word “because.” We’re particularly likely to make this mistake if we believe both claims to be true.

Boosters and appeals to external knowledge are likely to persuade some people of the truth of the claims (even though they aren’t evidence, let alone proof) because we too often conflate certainty and credibility. That is, a lot of people assume that decisiveness, rhetorical clarity, and certainty are signs that someone has a perfect and complete understanding of a situation. They aren’t.

The calm tone, rationality markers, and signs of certainty are all surface qualities of a text that persuade people who mistakenly believe that those surface features are indications about the rhetor being a reliable person—rational and knowledgeable. Instead, we have to look at the argument they’re making.






[1] Since this is my blog, I get to put forward some of my crank theories. One of them is that a lot of people who say they are opposed to valuing rational argumentation have been traumatized by people in their lives who use pseudo-rational argumentation as a weapon to abuse and often gaslight them (particularly the move of deliberately upsetting someone and then condemning that person for being “emotional”). I think their experience of pseudo-rational argumentation as a kind of abuse is important to keep in mind.

Arguing with Trump supporters: when Machiavellianism tries to pretend it’s grounded in principles

gaetz shouting
Image from: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/10/politics/donald-trump-impeachment/index.html

I mentioned elsewhere that it’s hard to argue with Trump supporters[1] because many of them have openly embraced having a political position that is rationally indefensible, and they are proud of it. Supporting Trump was rarely the consequence of rational argumentation (as far as I can tell they stopped trying to support him through rational argumentation over a year ago) but it now seems that openly admitting their commitment to blinkered loyalty is considered a virtue. I said, for those reasons, it’s a reasonable strategy to refuse to argue with them at all. But, someone asked me, what if you want to?

I think it’s useful to start with explaining why it’s so hard to argue with them. In my experience, at least for the last two years, Trump supporters have simply been repeating talking points they’re hearing in various places (which is why they sound so much alike). There are two different kinds: the “haha we’re winning” response (which is more or less an admission that they have no rational argument for supporting him); talking points that look like rational argumentation but are neither rational nor argumentation. I think a lot of those talking points have been created by people who are consciously designing talking points that feel good to repeat, and that confound the libs. And it’s true that a lot of the arguments are hard to refute, but that’s just because they don’t actually make any sense.

It’s as though we are playing chess at your house, and I beat all the pieces into little bits with a hammer, set your house on fire, and then declare myself the winner. While it’s sort of true that you can’t respond to what I’ve done with a chess move, that doesn’t mean I won the chess match.

And what does it mean to “win” a political argument by refusing to engage in argumentation? Perhaps a more apt analogy would be if we were disagreeing about whether a building was fire safe, and I denied there was such a thing as fires, said you’re responsible for all the fires anyway so the solution is to ignore you, and insisted that fire hoses just transport water and so do straws and therefore we can prevent fires by throwing straws all over the place. You would have a very difficult time proving me “wrong” (especially about whether you’re really responsible for fires), not because my arguments are so good, but because they’re so bad.

I think they’re deliberately bad because it’s actually harder to refute really bad arguments–you end up having to explain how argument is supposed to work.

That will take me several posts to explain, and it’s easier to explain if I give examples, so let’s imagine Random Internetasshole (call him Rando) and Chester are arguing about something. In general, Rando’s strategy is to make a bunch of absurd and unsourced assertions and then, when pushed to defend them (or even make them coherent), he deflects. Rando’s whole strategy is to keep the disagreement away from his argument—to try to make Chester support claims, provide sources, and generally behave like the adult in the room. Rando has to keep attention away from his argument because he’s trying to pretend it’s a good one, and it’s actually a big hot stinking pile of shit. Rando has to keep attention off of how bad his argument is by shifting to Chester the burden of showing it’s a bad argument rather than Rando’s taking on the responsibility of showing it’s a good argument. That’s how Trump supporters argue.

So, if you want the short version of these many posts, the best strategy is to keep the burden of proof on Rando. Insist he show he has a good argument. He’ll resist like a cat being put into a bath because he doesn’t have a good argument, and he doesn’t know how to defend the claims he’s loyally repeating—his talking points didn’t include that page. He’ll deflect.

I’ve often wondered (when arguing with some people) why they’re trying to engage in argument at all, since they’re just making themselves look stupid to people who understand how argument works. I think the argument about replacing RBG is going to bring out the worst aspects of their already bad ways of arguing because it’s pure Machiavellianism (any and all means are good if they lead to the success of the Trump Administration). Machiavellianism is, by its nature, never rational argumentation. Rational argumentation says that there are standards that apply equally to all interlocutors. Machiavellianism says that no standards apply to us.

The rhetorical problem for Trump supporters is that a lot of them don’t like thinking of themselves as irrationally supporting a Machiavellian Administration. So, they talk as though their political agenda is grounded in consistent principles and can be defended through rational argumentation, but neither is true. That contradiction (an unprincipled policy agenda indefensible through rational argumentation) is the handful of steaming shit from which the talking points are supposed to distract us.

Briefly, here’s how the current pro-Trump talking points work (or don’t):

• they claim that each political action is driven by a principle that would appear to transcend faction, but they appeal to contradictory principles (for instance, elections that the GOP wins are mandates from the people about how Congress should behave, but elections they lose aren’t—so there isn’t really a principle about elections being mandates).
• they justify this Machiavellianism by saying that they are committed to a higher principle, but it gets weird when they try to articulate that “higher principle”—they aren’t committed to small government, anti-corruption, law and order on principle (they’re fine with big government if it’s surveillance of Trump critics, Trump’s grifting the government, police forces above the law). So, they like to think of themselves as “principled” but what they mean by that is inflexible loyalty to the group.
• because, I think, even they feel some cognitive dissonance (many of them claim to follow someone who said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” after all), they have invented the hobgoblin of abortion in the hopes of making it the principle to which they are committed. Criminalizing abortion is not a rational strategy for ending abortions (oddly enough, many of these same people believe that criminalizing activity doesn’t reduce it when it comes to gun violence—they advocate praying away gun violence, but they want to ban abortion), and they refuse to do the things that would reduce abortion. It doesn’t end abortion—it just ends safe ones —and it isn’t the most effective strategy for reducing them. [2]
• they believe that criminalizing abortion makes them good people, and therefore anything they do is justified. In other words, they’re Machiavellian. (Thus, every argument, if it goes on, will have them say at some point, “Well, Dems are pro-abortion” when Dems have a better plan for reducing abortion than they do).
• except they aren’t principled (see the first).
• in other words, they are proud that they will make any argument or use any tactic to get their way because they are rigidly committed to what they think of as a principle (they want to criminalize abortion), and yet they want the legitimacy of making a rational argument in support. (And just to be clear, they don’t even have a rational argument when it comes to abortion—it’s all ethical theatre.)
• or they reject argumentation entirely and just want to win, and they think they are.

The final point I’ll make is that this is all profoundly anti-democratic. Many of his supporters openly want a democracy of the believers—that is, a “democracy” in name only, in which only people who agree with them get to hold power, influence decisions, or vote.[3]

Again, since none of this adds up to a rational argument, and Trump supporters have abandoned rational argumentation, a lot of people choose not to argue with them, and that’s fine. But someone asked, and so I wanted to write something about what to do if you do choose to argue with them. It’s turned into a long analysis of pseudo-rational argumentation (which is far from unique to Trump supporters), so that will be a series of posts much of which will repeat things lots of people have said (including me on this blog).

[1] I’m saying Trump supporters, and not Republicans or conservatives, because I think there is an odd (and even disturbing) conformity in Trump supporters’ arguments specifically—in my experience, they’re largely repeating the same arguments. I don’t see the same level of conformity among people who self-identify as conservative or Republican and aren’t especially supportive of Trump. (I don’t just mean Lincoln Project–some of whose arguments are non-rational at best–but a kind of person who isn’t in the Trump cult. What I haven’t watched enough is whether people in the Trump cult can make good arguments when they’re on topics other than Trump–that would be interesting to see.

[2] I think many political strategists don’t want to solve abortion because, if they did, they wouldn’t have it as a political rallying point. If they overturn Roe v Wade, they’ll have to find something else—a war on illegal abortions or attacks on birth control. Either of those will have unfortunate political consequences, since a lot of people do want access to birth control, and do want abortions for them and people like them.

[3] You find people like this all over the political spectrum—people who are eliminationist in their politics. I think it’s interesting that so many of these people are obsessed with sharia law–it’s clearly projection.