Thought Trap

 

(Editor's note:  The following is another submission from my old friend and "guest blogger," Bob Randall.  In this piece Ranger Bob takes a deep dive into the under-used skill of critical thinking.  It is informative, evocative, and certainly timely.)

Thought Trap

by Bob Randall

There’s a bumper sticker out there that says, “If you voted for Biden, you owe me gas money.”

How does one reach that conclusion? The “clever” author of that meme and the “clever” bumper owner probably would answer that gasoline was cheaper under the previous administration because Trump was pro-fossil fuel and Biden is on a fool’s quest to convert to green energy. Trump good, Biden bad. No more thought needs to be given. To be fair, the mirror image on the left puts no more thought into memes like, “Biden good, Trump bad.”

That’s a thought trap that we should all work to avoid. It starts with a logical fallacy. In this case, it’s a bias. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the bumper owner is biased against Biden/for Trump and subconsciously sought out a meme that would confirm that bias. A confirmation bias is the tendency to search for and recall information that confirms one's prior beliefs. The bumper owner only needs to compare fuel prices in the two administrations to reach a conclusion that satisfies him or her. It is not necessary for them to search for more information about the world petroleum market pricing, the boycott of Russian oil and gas, or any other relevant information. Those ideas don’t confirm the bias so they can be discounted and discarded. 

The bumper sticker also uses a strawman argument, another type of fallacy. It implies something else that is easier to argue. In this case, it presents Biden as being irresponsible, wrong headed, or incompetent and then he is easy to denigrate. It makes an assumption, and then proceeds with criticism.

We can’t say the same about the meme’s author without more information. If you jumped to a conclusion that the author was of the same mind as the owner, you used your own logical fallacy. It happens to be the same one. It was your confirmation bias. You also took a mental shortcut. Mental shortcuts, or heuristics, can have advantages. If you’re in the woods at night and something big jumps at you, it might be sasquatch. You should take that mental shortcut and run. If it turns out that your friends played a trick on you, you can all laugh about it later. Mental shortcuts don’t necessarily lead you to the correct conclusion, just a fast conclusion. The motivation for the meme’s author could simply be profit. Maybe they have made other bumper stickers marketed to the political left. Maybe they made a killing from selling COEXIST bumper stickers. I don’t know and unless you’re the one who printed the sticker and marketed it, you don’t know either. 

I posted once before asserting some things as being Trump’s fault. Did I take a mental shortcut to reach that conclusion? Well, I gave some general examples of things he has done and there has been plenty of previous thought given to the subject that wasn’t discussed in the post. Was my argument using a confirmation bias fallacy? How sure am I of my assertion that he gave rioters permission and encouragement to storm the Capitol on January 6? A counter argument might be that he was just speaking metaphorically. If there is good evidence of that, then I should retract my statement. Maybe I shouldn’t have even made that statement without better evidence. I think there’s some pretty good evidence, so I’ll stand by it for now. However, if convincing exculpatory evidence is ever presented, I will change my mind.

So, am I being unfair to the bumper owner? He has a limited canvas on which to place his argument and can hardly place 20 other stickers on his car to support his meme. Now that would be something to see. Still, let him make his arguments with substance rather than memes. 

If you read the first sentence in this post and eagerly read on because you expected me to argue for or against the sentiment of the bumper sticker, you’re probably disappointed. That is not the point of this writing. It’s about poor thinking skills. If you have gotten this far, and you’re still disappointed, you’re just the person I am writing to. I could go on but I’m tired of writing and Pa Rock is tired proofreading for spelling errors. There are plenty of books about critical thinking. I recommend The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake by Steven Novella, Et al.