John G. Messerly's Blog, page 41

Conspiracy Theories and Fallibilism

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© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)

Many philosophers of science since Charles S. Pierce have touted fallibilism as basic to the methodology of science. Writers on conspiracy theory also often note that the views of conspiracy theorists are not fallibilistic or falsifiable. But people can mean various things by these statements. Here I briefly describe a couple of the different ways that beliefs are described as unfalsifiable or non-fallibilistic.

In Pierce’s philosophy, fallibilism is a basic principle needed for science. Pierce, like Karl Popper, after him, thought that science did not progress so much by the formulation of theories that would be confirmed and then ever more accepted as true. Instead, science proceeds as we gather evidence and develop explanatory theories on the basis of that evidence that we maintain as fixed beliefs as long as no strong disconfirming evidence overturns the beliefs.

In “The Fixation of Belief” Pierce describes the route toward knowledge in this way. His view is not that we gain truths that we can know will once and for all will remain true. Instead, we need to embrace science as a method of inquiry and fix our beliefs using the scientific method until that method leads to evidence that shows the flaws of our accepted theory or until a new theory emerges that somehow better explains the existing evidence. He essentially affirms that we should give up Truth with a capital T and affirm truth with a small t. Knowledge progresses as we adopt a non-dogmatic stance toward evidence and revise beliefs in light of newly discovered evidence.

In this context, Pierce proposes the concept of abduction. This is the logical/scientific procedure whereby we come to affirm a theory not that we know is indubitably true but that is the best explanation of the available evidence. Scientific investigation may not bring us the apodeictic certainty Descartes had hoped for. But it offers us a guide that is useful for our given pragmatic concerns. In this, it is possible that we will come to some settled views, but we cannot be entirely sure which ones those are. Karl Popper works along these lines in his Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.

In his writing on science, he also proposes that all real scientific statements must in principle be constituted by falsifiable hypotheses. This is one of the main characteristics separating science and pseudo-science and metaphysics. Pseudoscience, like metaphysics, fails by proposing hypotheses that are not really amenable to counter-evidence. These sorts of statements are just untestable.

One example is the belief that God is infinite. What would be the evidence that God is or isn’t infinite? One might ask how we, with finite minds, could judge whether any other mind is infinite. That may seem to disconfirm the hypothesis. But in fact, this wouldn’t mean that God isn’t infinite. It would just mean we wouldn’t have the means to know even if he was. For Popper, such statements cannot be accepted as knowledge claims. Certain pseudo-sciences also are based on first principles that are not testable or falsifiable. Those too should be rejected.* This is basic background to an understanding of fallibilism.

But in fact, in many cases in which beliefs are said to be non-fallibilistic something different is meant from what Pierce or Popper tend to describe. The literature on conspiracy theories provides us with an example. When scholars maintain that conspiracy theorists have beliefs that are not falsifiable, they don’t mean that the statements themselves could not be falsified. They mean instead, one of two things: Either the conspiracy theorist will change the meaning of the terms so that despite all appearances the conspiracy theory still stands. Or the conspiracy theorist will not accept any reasonable standard of evidence as disconfirming his or her belief.

One example of the first strategy was offered by Sean Spicer in his earliest statements about the crowd sizes at the Trump inauguration. While this isn’t necessarily a conspiracy theory, it might be said to fit into a kind of “reputational conspiracy” of the Trump administration to convince America of its glory and grandeur despite all appearances. In any case, in the very first press conference of the Trump administration, Sean Spicer claimed “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” When pressed it was clear that he meant that the inauguration crowd at the Washington Mall was larger than the one at the Obama inauguration or any other in history. The Trump administration even doctored a photo to try to make the point, and they largely continued to insist on this.

But on one later occasion Spicer proposed that this statement about the inauguration crowd was meant to include TV viewers. The statement logically did entail this possibility. After all, he said they “in person and around the globe.” So although Trump and his administration largely simply continued to deny the evidence when faced with any that showed the smaller crowd size at the Trump inauguration, still when pushed into a corner, the administration and the Trump supporters could refer to the TV and even social media audiences. The statement then might be true. But the difficulty was in having any accurate data with which to evaluate the statement.

If we look more directly at the last of the Trump conspiracy theories-–that there was massive fraud in the 2020 election–we see something else going on though, namely the second type of rationalization process I mentioned. For many, their belief that the Democrats were involved in massive election fraud in 2020 is unfalsifiable. Here, however, the belief is maintained in the face of all counter-evidence not with sliding definitions of terms but by denying the legitimacy of any of the real evidence that might disconfirm the statement.

For these conspiracy theorists, any source provided to dispute the fraud allegation is challenged, regardless of how reliable. And by contrast, nearly any evidence supporting the claim is accepted, regardless of how dubious. Here, the statement that there was massive voter fraud is not unfalsifiable on the face of it. There is reliable evidence to show there was no such fraud. Nonetheless, because no reasonable evidence is accepted, a statement about fraud that is in principle falsifiable becomes a statement about fraud that de facto is not.

For more on an earlier related discussion see “The Election Recounts and the Backfire Effect on Trump’s Base.

Footnote:

*Popper, for his part, also strongly questioned Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism for being pseudo-scientific but for slightly different reasons. In his (I believe mistaken) view, first principles of both theories were just dogmatic assertions, not testable and not falsifiable.

10 Sublime Wonders of Science

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by Lawrence Rifkin MD

Science just gives facts. Our sense of meaning, in the big-picture, must derive from elsewhere. Right? Wrong. Below are 10 sublime wonders of science, to make your mind reel and your emotions swell.

Science just gives facts. Our sense of meaning, in the big-picture, must derive from elsewhere. Right? Wrong.

Below are 10 sublime wonders of science, to make your mind reel and your emotions swell. Scientific wonders about our world provide meaning in the same way that grand narratives and religious cosmologies have traditionally presented a big-picture vision of how the world came to be, our connection to what exists, and awe.

1. The universe contains physical laws and naturalistic processes that allow complexity to emerge. Without this feature, then nothing.

2.There are more stars in the universe than words ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.

3. As Elizabeth Johnson wrote, “Out of the Big Bang, the stars; out of the stardust, the Earth; out of the Earth, single-celled living creatures; out of evolutionary life and death of these creatures, human beings with a consciousness and freedom.” Seen in this way, science can help us feel connected to the world. We did not come into the world from the outside, we grew out of it.

4. Every individual bacterium, cockroach, and sparrow that ever existed—every person, frog, and cucumber — owes its existence to a completely unbroken stream of DNA stemming from the earliest replicators through every creature that lives today. When fully felt, the power and the wonder of evolution, with its extraordinary diversity and complexity, hits us profoundly.

5. Science, as Loyal Rue wrote, “documents our essential kinship as no other story can do—fashioned from the same stellar dust, energized by the same star, nourished by the same planet, endowed with the same genetic code, and threatened by the same evils.” We are not separate from nature or each other in some transcendent, essentialist sense. This can be a ground for a sense of belonging.

6. Conscious experience, along with existence itself, is the greatest scientific wonder of all. We are a part of nature that can know and experience truth, invent, love, be moral, feel indescribable emotion, and consciously plan for the future. Ideas and passion can now transform the world. As far as we know, this level of cosmic self-awareness is being realized in only one tiny fragment of the universe—in us.

7. The findings of modern science are mind-boggling: matter is energy, space itself can bend, time slows down at great speeds, great energies can be released from tiny nuclei, the universe is expanding and the rate of expansion is accelerating, we can communicate almost instantaneously across the planet, we travel through air and space in flying machines, and we can even turn the spotlight of discovery around towards our own minds and behavior.

8. The benefits of modern science to our well-being and comfort are extraordinary. Thanks to scientific medicine and public health human life expectancy has nearly doubled since our great-grandparents day.

9. Science in the future, if applied with wisdom, may be valued not just for its fantastic technological uses and discovery of facts, but also, as Rene Dubos put it “to understand as well as possible the nature of life and of man in order to give more meaning and value to human existence.”

10. And here is a scientific astonishment that should hit home deeply for every one of us: The odds of a “specific me” coming into existence are so statistically and incalculably improbable, it is, quite bluntly, a deep wonder and privilege just to be alive.

But wait, some critics may respond, these scientific wonders cannot fulfill personal spiritual meanings. What about an afterlife? What about a deity or power who loves and cares about me, for whom I have a specific purpose?

Well, no, science cannot directly provide for these specific longings, but then here is what matters. There are sources of genuine personal meaning. There is passionate engagement. There is human goodness. And there is love. From these, belonging and purpose and legacy spring. These come from us. And we are part of the universe. In that profound sense, then, there is meaning in the universe after all.

(The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.  This essay appeared in Scientific American on October 8, 2013. Reprinted with the author’s permission.)

Wonders, Not Miracles

[image error]Galileo Galilei, regarded as the father of modern science

by Lawrence Rifkin MD

As a pediatrician, I have a seemingly endless collection of hilarious stories. A toddler came in for a visit carrying along his security object—a spatula. Later that day, an otherwise perfectly well-adjusted mother admitted to me that she is terrified of cantaloupes. Then I treated a teenage patient who had been camping and made the fateful and unenviable decision to use poison ivy as toilet paper.

But there is another, darker side. Like all doctors, I also can relate experiences of heart-wrenching tragedy. When a mother left her apartment for five minutes to buy milk, she forgot to shut off her stove. The apartment caught fire, and three of her four young children died. I tried unsuccessfully for twenty minutes to revive one of the victims.

The unusual and the tragic make for compelling stories. But sometimes they overshadow the hidden wonders behind the seemingly ordinary.

Caitlyn in Room 5 has strep throat. I prescribe amoxicillin. Lucas in Room 2 is here for routine immunizations. Ho-hum. But here’s the hidden wonder. At the turn of the last century, rheumatic fever complications from strep throat were the number one cause of death in school-age children in this country. And during the first half of the twentieth century, polio killed tens of thousands of people in the United States alone, and crippled tens of thousands more. Now, because of the success of science, polio is close to being completely eliminated in the world, and we hardly see rheumatic fever in this country anymore. Just a few generations ago, Caitlyn and Lucas may have been victims.

Look around and the mind reels at the bounty of scientific wonders. Cell phones, the Internet, a hot morning shower, air conditioning, and of course those personal favorites—the snooze alarm and birth control. Many of us in developed countries think of such conveniences and comforts as entitlements, but our luxuries and freedoms go beyond those of sultans in years past and far surpass the lives of the disease-racked, underprivileged masses and persecuted laborers that constituted most of humanity throughout history.

Of course, science isn’t all rosy. Scientific knowledge produced nuclear weapons and environmental crises that threaten to end the whole party. But the choice is not one between some Pollyanna blinded by the dazzling triumphs of science and technology on one hand, and on the other, some zealot blindfolded by supernatural myths or a Luddite who thinks the world was a better place before science came along. (Well before our ancestors performed their first science experiment, there were at least five catastrophic extinction events on Earth where over 50 percent of all animals died.) The best approach is first to take off the blindfolds, but then get a good pair of shades and see that it is within humanity’s power to show judgment and make the world better and safer.

We so easily take for granted this extraordinary moment in history. The acceptance and success of science and public health has doubled the life expectancy in much of the world since the mid-1800s. But the hidden wonders in our world are not just scientific and they’re not just in medicine. We live in a world built by natural processes over time, with areas of extraordinary human innovation and life-changing social progress.

In much of the world, the success of reason and compassion over superstition and tradition has helped foster conditions for freedom and wonder to blossom. Fantasies are exciting—and have their place. In movies, in fiction, in the middle of a boring class. In moments of creative inspiration. Or in the bedroom. But private superstitions have no role in public policy. Our non-rational sides should inspire and inform reality, not dictate our perception of it. Rules from an ancient fairytale shouldn’t dictate what is or is not okay. Public policy and morality should be the domain of reason, evidence, freedom, experience, and compassion.

So when facing loss of innocent life in a house fire, cry openly. Allow yourself to hurt deeply. Comfort the bereaved. But don’t say “it was meant to be” or “they’re in a better place.” Go out and promote stoves with smoke-sensing, automatic shut-off valves. The fact that we have the ability, through conscious choice and action, to change the world and make it a better place is a fundamental wonder of being human. It’s what being good is. Not for the benefit of some other world, but for this, our one world; not for some supernatural being, but for our fellow beings.

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(Published in the July / August 2010 Humanist. Reprinted with the author’s permission.)


Editor’s note. I’m in complete agreement with the sentiments expressed here by Dr. Rifkin.

Why Non-Falsifiable Beliefs Are Vacuous

[image error]The observation of a black swan falsifies the hypothesis “All swans are white”.

In a recent post, Professor Darrell Arnold introduced the idea of a non-falsifiable belief or hypothesis. I would like to briefly and simply explain this important concept.

Here is a simple way to understand falsifiability. Suppose you say “It’s raining.” I then point out that cars aren’t using their wipers; people aren’t using their umbrellas; there are no puddles on the ground; nothing is wet; we see no rain; etc. You respond “Well it’s invisible rain that doesn’t create puddles or make things wet.” I then tell you that I have a special rain detector to detect invisible rain and it shows no invisible rain in the area. You respond by saying “well, my kind of rain can’t be detected even by such rain detectors.”

This is an example of a non-falsifiable hypothesis. No matter what the evidence I produce you claim that it’s still raining. Not only is this absurd and delusional but note something else. Your claim is essentially empty or vacuous.

You aren’t really saying anything when you say it’s raining. After all, what’s the difference between your idea of “it’s raining” and no rain at all? What we mean by the phrase “it’s raining” is that we see water falling from the sky, things get wet, puddles are created, etc. If you say it’s raining doesn’t mean any of these things then again, what’s the difference between your rain and no rain at all? Of course, there is none. What you are saying is totally empty.

So if a hypothesis is in principle incapable of being falsified—no matter what evidence I produce that it is—then the hypothesis or belief is just vacuous nonsense.

Let me give a different kind of example to make the same point. Suppose I believe bread rises in ovens because of the color of ovens. That may be a stupid hypothesis but it’s not empty; it can be falsified. All I have to do is put the bread in different color ovens and see if it rises or not. If it rises in different color ovens then I know the color of the oven has nothing to do with the bread rising. The “oven color” hypothesis is falsifiable.

On the other hand, if you say invisible gremlins cause bread to rise and no matter what evidence I produce you continue to insist on the “gremlin hypothesis” then your hypothesis is empty.

Now if I tell you its yeast that causes bread to rise and I put yeast in the bread and the bread rises and take it out and the bread doesn’t rise and I do this over and over a million times then I have given you lots of evidence to support my “yeast hypothesis.” Now, it’s always possible it’s not the yeast but I have provided overwhelming evidence for the yeast hypothesis that a rational person would accept even if we couldn’t be 100% certain. But if you still claim invisible gremlins cause bread to rise after all this evidence then what you are saying is just nonsense.

I’ll leave it to the reader to consider the implications of all this for beliefs in gods, devils, angels, miracles, the power of prayer, etc. If you believe in such things, are your beliefs falsifiable? Would you allow anything (gratuitous evil for example) to falsify your beliefs? If not, then your beliefs in such things are empty or vacuous. Believing in invisible gods, devils or angels may be just like believing in invisible rain or invisible gremlins. Such beliefs are not just false but essentially meaningless.

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Here is a link to a more detailed and technical explanation of falsifiable and non-falsifiable beliefs or hypotheses.

The Backfire Effect

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I first heard about the “backfire effect” in a work by Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time[image error]. (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (the authors of the New York Times bestseller, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness[image error]) have also referred to it in various contexts.) The effect, in short, maintains that in certain contexts when people are confronted with evidence that disconfirms their beliefs they reject that evidence and double down on their mistaken beliefs. Various research has supported this. But considerable research appears to find it hard to duplicate. So over time, it has become questionable that the effect is as widespread as was earlier thought. And some would question whether it exists at all.

One reason that those of us in the business of reasoning find the idea of the backfire effect disconcerting is that it seems to render a lot of our reasoning and information gathering superfluous. If people are not convinced to change their false beliefs when confronted with better information and better reasoning, then we might wonder why we should bother trying to convince people of anything to begin with. Why appeal to facts and reason if facts and reason aren’t convincing, but are in fact counter-productive. I do not see, though, that those who discuss the “backfire effect” maintain that it exists in all cases. Rather, it is more generally thought to be something that affects certain people in certain specific contexts.

It may be that it’s not even best to frame my observations of what is happening with some Trump voters in reference to this backfire effect. But I do indeed believe that for some of that base, the evidence presented against their views is largely taken and contorted into evidence that confirms some ideas that they already believe. So the efforts to convince that part of the Trump base with its mistakes through evidence-based reasoning are not having the desired effect.

In the last part of the blog post, I note what in part is going on. Some of the members of that Trump base take the incoming information about the failed court cases, for example, and use it to confirm the view that they already have — namely that the courts are corrupt. Or they take the statements from governors and lieutenant governors about the integrity of the election not as evidence that the election has integrity, but as evidence the confirms what they already believe — namely that the governors and lieutenant governors have no integrity. Like Trump says, these career politicians need to be replaced unless of course, they agree with Trump.

This plays out for a particularly ideologically entrenched part of the Trump base. They do hold their beliefs as something akin to religious dogmas. Indeed, the belief in Trump’s integrity, for some, has become a hard and fast part of their identities. So for these members, reasoning and facts have little or no effect, or the opposite of the desired effect. As I note, their views are not falsifiable. I’m not sure what percentage of the 70% of Republicans who think the 2020 election has had considerable fraud (from the Left) fall into this intractable camp.

Other things are going on in any case to re-affirm their beliefs for the short term. For many, the framing of the election through Fox News pundits is having an effect. For many, they are, in line with confirmation bias, seeking out sources of information that confirm their beliefs, and ignoring information sources that challenge those beliefs. So for now they remain in a bubble that reiterates much of what they believe and downplays the types of information mentioned in my piece that challenges their beliefs.

In those social media bubbles, they are more apt to see videos (which in many cases have been demonstrated not to show the fraud that is alleged). Over the long run, I assume a number of these individuals may change their minds. But that depends to some extent on whether there are media sites and social media platforms that continue the massive disinformation that makes it possible for people to shield themselves from better sources of information.

One of the benefits over the long run that may help to decrease the prevalence of false beliefs about the election is that Trump will be removed from office and not have his present platform to spread disinformation. If he is not the standard-bearer for the Republican Party going forward, then his voice will become one of many, more like that of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, important but not important for all of the party.

Here I’ll mention one other “effect” that will then diminish — the “halo effect” surrounding Trump. I know this is an odd-sounding effect to name in reference to someone as out of sync with culturally widespread views of sanctity as Trump. But that effect is described simply as the tendency that individuals have to assign good qualities to those standard-bearers (say of a Party) who they already think are good and to assign bad qualities to those they already view as bad. Any party leader, as the standard has enormous power.

Partisans want to believe their standard-bearers. They are very strongly predisposed to give him or her the benefit of the doubt and to place blame on the other party. In the case of Trump, the standard-bearer has been a pathological liar. But he still has benefited enormously from this goodwill that people have toward the standard-bearers. Assuming Trump recedes in significance in the Party, his influence over the views of those in the Party will also recede. And there is some chance that a considerable number of Republicans will return to a position of suspicion about Russia (one of the more surprising twists in Republican ideology under Trump)) and that belief in voter fraud may too recede.

But I am not able to read the tea leaves (and I don’t understand the science around decision making) well enough to be sure of how much these views will shift.

By the way, an excellent somewhat skeptical piece on the backfire effect is found in Slate: https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/weve-been-told-were-living-in-a-post-truth-age-dont-believe-it.html

 

Backfire

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I first heard about the “backfire effect” in a work by Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time[image error]. (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (the authors of the New York Times bestseller, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness[image error]) have also referred to it in various contexts.) The effect, in short, maintains that in certain contexts when people are confronted with evidence that disconfirms their beliefs they reject that evidence and double down on their mistaken beliefs. Various research has supported this. But considerable research appears to find it hard to duplicate. So over time, it has become questionable that the effect is as widespread as was earlier thought. And some would question whether it exists at all.

One reason that those of us in the business of reasoning find the idea of the backfire effect disconcerting is that it seems to render a lot of our reasoning and information gathering superfluous. If people are not convinced to change their false beliefs when confronted with better information and better reasoning, then we might wonder why we should bother trying to convince people of anything to begin with. Why appeal to facts and reason if facts and reason aren’t convincing, but are in fact counter-productive. I do not see, though, that those who discuss the “backfire effect” maintain that it exists in all cases. Rather, it is more generally thought to be something that affects certain people in certain specific contexts.

It may be that it’s not even best to frame my observations of what is happening with some Trump voters in reference to this backfire effect. But I do indeed believe that for some of that base, the evidence presented against their views is largely taken and contorted into evidence that confirms some ideas that they already believe. So the efforts to convince that part of the Trump base with its mistakes through evidence-based reasoning are not having the desired effect.

In the last part of the blog post, I note what in part is going on. Some of the members of that Trump base take the incoming information about the failed court cases, for example, and use it to confirm the view that they already have — namely that the courts are corrupt. Or they take the statements from governors and lieutenant governors about the integrity of the election not as evidence that the election has integrity, but as evidence the confirms what they already believe — namely that the governors and lieutenant governors have no integrity. Like Trump says, these career politicians need to be replaced unless of course, they agree with Trump.

This plays out for a particularly ideologically entrenched part of the Trump base. They do hold their beliefs as something akin to religious dogmas. Indeed, the belief in Trump’s integrity, for some, has become a hard and fast part of their identities. So for these members, reasoning and facts have little or no effect, or the opposite of the desired effect. As I note, their views are not falsifiable. I’m not sure what percentage of the 70% of Republicans who think the 2020 election has had considerable fraud (from the Left) fall into this intractable camp.

Other things are going on in any case to re-affirm their beliefs for the short term. For many, the framing of the election through Fox News pundits is having an effect. For many, they are, in line with confirmation bias, seeking out sources of information that confirm their beliefs, and ignoring information sources that challenge those beliefs. So for now they remain in a bubble that reiterates much of what they believe and downplays the types of information mentioned in my piece that challenges their beliefs.

In those social media bubbles, they are more apt to see videos (which in many cases have been demonstrated not to show the fraud that is alleged). Over the long run, I assume a number of these individuals may change their minds. But that depends to some extent on whether there are media sites and social media platforms that continue the massive disinformation that makes it possible for people to shield themselves from better sources of information.

One of the benefits over the long run that may help to decrease the prevalence of false beliefs about the election is that Trump will be removed from office and not have his present platform to spread disinformation. If he is not the standard-bearer for the Republican Party going forward, then his voice will become one of many, more like that of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, important but not important for all of the party.

Here I’ll mention one other “effect” that will then diminish — the “halo effect” surrounding Trump. I know this is an odd-sounding effect to name in reference to someone as out of sync with culturally widespread views of sanctity as Trump. But that effect is described simply as the tendency that individuals have to assign good qualities to those standard-bearers (say of a Party) who they already think are good and to assign bad qualities to those they already view as bad. Any party leader, as the standard has enormous power.

Partisans want to believe their standard-bearers. They are very strongly predisposed to give him or her the benefit of the doubt and to place blame on the other party. In the case of Trump, the standard-bearer has been a pathological liar. But he still has benefited enormously from this goodwill that people have toward the standard-bearers. Assuming Trump recedes in significance in the Party, his influence over the views of those in the Party will also recede. And there is some chance that a considerable number of Republicans will return to a position of suspicion about Russia (one of the more surprising twists in Republican ideology under Trump)) and that belief in voter fraud may too recede.

But I am not able to read the tea leaves (and I don’t understand the science around decision making) well enough to be sure of how much these views will shift.

By the way, an excellent somewhat skeptical piece on the backfire effect is found in Slate: https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/weve-been-told-were-living-in-a-post-truth-age-dont-believe-it.html

 

Election Recounts and the Backfire Effect

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Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief, in anything else. On the contrary, we cling tenaciously, not merely to believing, but to believing just what we do believe.

~Charles Sanders Pierce “The Fixation of Belief“1

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)

Trump’s failed court actions after the 2020 election underline that he lost the election. His claims of fraud have now been examined by the courts and rejected. Election officials have had a chance to more deeply scrutinize the election. Recounts have shown, once again, that Biden won. It’s common to expect that faced with this evidence the Trump supporters would acquiesce and accept the legitimacy of the election. Some would think that even Donald Trump would. Trump’s supporters should be able to grasp that the allegations are empty — or at the very least have been shown to be wrong.

Those more optimistic might even think that when we see that Trump has fired Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of Homeland Security, apparently for circulating the multi-agency document that emphasized that this election was “the safest in history,” Trump supporters might also suspect that Trump is attempting some kind of cover-up. Or they might conclude that the whole post-election protest by the Trump team is some kind of charade. While these would be reasonable expectations, this in fact is not what is happening.

What’s happening instead is that Trump’s base is doubling down on their false beliefs. Philosophers and behavioral psychologists call the phenomenon that we’re witnessing the “backfire effect.”2 This is the phenomenon that arguments and disproofs of a person’s beliefs often lead to the person becoming even more convinced of the false beliefs than they were before seeing the evidence. This is sometimes chalked up to mental laziness, combined with a widespread desire that individuals have to view themselves as consistent and to have consistent views over time (sometimes known as the consistency bias).

In light of all this, once we have a belief (or at least once a certain mentally lazy or insecure person has a belief), it appears to take less effort or to be less daunting to the ego to find rationalizations for why it is true rather than to re-evaluate it. This causes less cognitive dissonance. Not rarely a belief is also tied into a network or system of other beliefs against which it makes sense. It is consistent with those other beliefs. Were an individual to pull that one link out of the belief system, the entire system might appear to weaken.

In the case of the Trump supporters, we find that many are already suspicious of the “deep state.” Many voted for Trump because he tells a different narrative than the traditional career politician. Against this backdrop, the recent court rejection of the allegations of fraud thus doesn’t show that there was no fraud but that the suspicion of the courts by Trump’s base is justified.

The fact that “lifelong politicians” like governors and lieutenant governors or election officials, after review, still don’t acknowledge that Trump is president doesn’t show that Trump is wrong about the election. It simply shows that Trump is correct that career politicians and bureaucrats are what’s wrong with this country. And the fact that Trump fires Krebs, which the Left views as a nefarious cover-up of the election, isn’t nefarious at all. It’s a sign that Trump alone is the one who will actually take action against this deep state.

Contrary to expectations, then, Trump’s second failure — his failure with the courts and the state legislators — doesn’t have the effect on his base that it would have on people who were open to the honest evaluation of evidence. Instead, the antics work. He repeats the false claims and has a forum to do so for a longer period of time. The further scrutiny that should convince people that there really is no doubt that Trump has lost the election actually leads to the opposite result. His base believes more firmly than ever that he won.

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1. “The Fixation of Belief” is one of the great, short pieces in the history of philosophy. It comes highly recommended.

2. The existence of a specific “backfire effect” is controversial and the effect may be better understood as a kind of confirmation bias. For more see Wikipedia’s entry on confirmation bias.

From Democracy to Demagoguery

[image error]Senator Joseph McCarthy (R), an American demagogue

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)

In American politics today an extraordinarily large percentage of the population believe not only ideas that disagree with mainstream science but also conspiracy theories.

• 55% of Republicans reject evolution.

• 45% of Republicans reject the view that humans play a major role in climate change.

• 60% of Republicans (as of July) thought the coronavirus outbreak was exaggerated.

• 70% of Republicans believe there was election fraud in the 2020 election despite a lack of any good evidence.

What this shows is that large segments of the US simply reject evidence-based reasoning. Their views thus are increasingly untethered from reality. And this is a serious threat for our democracy, as a democratic political order in which large segments of the population reject evidence-based reasoning establishes defacto the conditions for demagoguery. In this context, we must begin to consider how we will effectively confront the coronavirus, deal with climate issues, and even preserve our democracy.

One basic characteristic of the hard-core conspiracy theorists that are on the ascendency is that they accept no evidence that would show they are wrong. In the language of philosophy of science, their views are not falsifiable.1

Trump is a conspiracy theorist, and he has been key in helping convince millions of Americans to buy into spurious conspiracy theories. He launched his career in politics with the birtherism conspiracy. In 2017, 1/3 of Americans still believed it was possible that Barack Obama was born outside of the United States. This is despite that in 2008 Obama acquiesced to the pressure and decided to show his birth certificate, hoping it would end what had by then become a political distraction. As the persistence of the spurious views nine years later shows, this didn’t work.

Trump’s most recent conspiracy is of course that there was massive voter fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, over two weeks after he lost the election by more than 5 million votes, he tweeted “I WON THE ELECTION” (his caps not mine). The reporting from earlier in the week of this quote is that 70% of Republicans believe there was serious voter fraud in the 2020 election. They believe this with no viable evidence And a good many of them are likely to continue to believe it.

In this, the Trump administration has not found evidence of voter fraud and on the basis of evidence maintained that the fraud exists. Instead, it has maintained the fraud exists and then set out to manufacture the evidence. The results are the kinds of farces that are to be expected. In fact, this week team Trump has upped the ante and transferred responsibilities of entire information security squads to evidence creation. So far they have proven as unsuccessful as the initial attempts of the Trump campaign.

Nonetheless, the sad fact is, like the views of so many Americans about birtherism, on this issue too there is no evidence that could shake many of its adherents from their views. Their views are held dogmatically and they are not falsifiable. They of course would and will vehemently deny this and present loads of discredited “evidence” to support their position.

But let’s consider what evidence might possibly dissuade them. How about a proclamation from the government’s own election security team that this election was “the most secure in history”? That document exists but hasn’t dissuaded the conspiracy theorists. How about statements from the governing boards of elections in the states in question and from the governors in the states where there have been allegations of voter fraud? What if those in the positions who made these statements were even Republicans? Hmmm, we have many such statements already and these haven’t moved the hearts and minds of that 70 percent.

What if the courts rejected all of the lawsuits filed by the administration about fraud because of lacking any evidence of widespread fraud? What if Trump’s own lawyers in various court depositions indicated that in fact, they weren’t maintaining there was fraud at all but that there just may have been some honest mistakes in the counting of ballots? Well, those things apparently have not dissuaded the conspiracy theorists either. All these things have happened.

Yet right now about 49 million Americans believe with no viable evidence that there was serious voter fraud in the 2020 election. The fact is, millions of them will continue to believe this regardless of the evidence just as millions of them believe that Obama may have been born outside the country. The Party of the President has become fertile ground for conspiracy theories. And that is one and the same as fertile ground for demagoguery. In Trump, they have found their conspiracy theorist and demagogue. The reality we face is that a Party comprised of millions of these conspiracy theorists has lost an election. But tens of millions of them are still convinced that this just can’t be true—the evidence be damned.

This unfortunately leaves us in a dangerous place. A good portion of the Republican Party who subscribe to the voter fraud conspiracy theory appears in fact to be OK with overthrowing a legitimate election based on their evidence-free beliefs. Some are indeed calling for arms. They won’t succeed. But what about the next election? And what about ruling in the meantime and addressing this issue over the long term?

For now, it means that Joe Biden and the Democrats can put aside any plans that they had of reaching across the aisle to work with reasonable Republicans on issues of mutual interest. Trump will be deposed from office, but he will remain a social force with at least influence on the level of Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh that he will use to continue to propagate the types of conspiracy theories he has spread as president and to leverage his power.

It’s not unlikely that many Republicans will for a time thus continue to tow the Trumpian line, as they see their own political fates as tied to a certain kind of obedience to the Trumpian base. And though Trump will eventually fade from social dominance, this doesn’t mean that the base that is so susceptible to conspiracy theories will go away. In this context, there will be no easy fixes. But over the long run, something must give way — for democracy and demagoguery of this magnitude will not long co-exist.

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For more see “Our politics isn’t about left vs. right anymore — it’s about reality vs. dreadful fantasy.”

If your view is non-falsifiable it is essentially empty or vacuous.

Frankl: Tragic Optimism

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Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. He was the founder of logotherapy, a form of Existential Analysis, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, which has sold over 12 million copies. According to a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club, it is one of “the ten most influential books in America.” (I have taught out of it in many university classes, and it is one of my favorite books. I have summarized it here.)

The postscript to that book was titled, “Tragic Optimism.” It was added in 1984 and is based on a lecture Frankl presented at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University, West Germany, June 1983. Here are its main ideas.

Frankl begins like this:

“Let us first ask ourselves what should be understood by “a tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” … a triad which consists of … (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This … raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that?  How … can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything,” …presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. … hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism … an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

Of course, you can’t force someone to be optimistic, any more than you can force them to be happy. Rather, you need a reason to be happy, just like you need a reason to laugh or smile. Give someone a reason to be happy or laugh or smile and they will. Try to force them to and they will show fake happiness or forced laughter or an unnatural smile.

Real happiness comes when we find meaning in our lives—meaning provides the reason to be happy despite the tragic triad. Without meaning, we give up. And this meaninglessness often lies behind our experiences of: 1) depression; 2) aggression; and 3) addiction. Now we can trace many neuroses to biochemical conditions, but Frankl believed that often their origins derive from a sense of meaninglessness.

As a therapist, Frankl was “concerned with the potential meaning inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life,” rather than trying to understand the meaning of a life as a whole. He was not suggesting there is no meaning to an entire human life, but that this final meaning depends “on whether or not the potential meaning of every single situation has been actualized …” In other words: “the perception of meaning … boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or … becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.”

But how do we find meaning in our lives? Frankl reiterates that there are three main sources of meaning in life: 1) creating a work or doing a deed;  2) experiencing something or encountering someone (as in love);  and 3) transcending, learning, and finding meaning from the inevitable suffering which we will experience. Thus, Frankl argues, we can find meaning despite the tragic triad of suffering, guilt, and death.

As for suffering, Frankl doesn’t claim that we must suffer to discover meaning, but that meaning can be found despite, or even because of, suffering. Here he reminds me of the Stoics: “If it [suffering] is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.” We might not have chosen to break our necks, but we can choose, as far as is possible, to not let that experience break us. As for guilt, we overcome it primarily by taking responsibility for our actions, rising above guilt, and transforming ourselves for the better.

As for death, the ephemeral nature of life should remind that we are dying every moment, and therefore we should make good use of our time. This leads to Frankl’s imperative: “Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.” In other words, live your life as if you were getting a second chance to correct all the mistakes you made in your first life:

… as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

Surprisingly these considerations lead him to a profound thought which provides a great tonic to those worried about time’s passing:

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

Frankl further argues that society mistakenly adores achievement, success, happiness, and youth. However, the quest for meaning is the most worthwhile pursuit and the only way to true happiness. Life’s tragedies—pain, guilt, and death—may lead to meaninglessness, but they don’t have to. We can be optimistic. We can find meaning through our work, our relationships, and by nobly bearing our suffering.

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(Note. This post originally appeared on this blog on March, 3, 2017.)

Understanding Politics in America After the 2020 Election

The above 5-minute video clearly explains the essence of what’s happening in American politics today. Biden won, but almost certainly won’t be able to govern with a McConnell opposition Senate. In addition, a large majority of Americans support the Democrats’ policies and Democrats get a majority of the vote, but because of the makeup of the political system Republicans stay in power. As a result, Republicans have turned against democracy itself. They are willing to impose their minority rule even if that entails a coup.

Will they be successful? Not this time.

But think about what it means to say that Republicans support a coup, which is exactly what Trump is proposing. What does that mean for the future? Ezra Klein, the cofounder of Vox and one of the very smartest and most informed persons about politics today, explains the danger we face in “Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight.” Consider the implication of Trump and his sycophants saying he was cheated out of an election he lost.

This is, “an autocratic attempt.” That’s the stage in the transition toward autocracy in which the would-be autocrat is trying to sever his power from electoral check. If he’s successful, autocratic breakthrough follows, and then autocratic consolidation occurs. In this case, the would-be autocrat stands little chance of being successful. But he will not entirely fail, either. What Trump is trying to form is something akin to an autocracy-in-exile, an alternative America in which he is the rightful leader, and he — and the public he claims to represent — has been robbed of power by corrupt elites.

 But democracy works only when losers accept defeat and a peaceful transition of power follows. Without that norm, violence awaits.

Moreover, as Klein points out “the corruption of the GOP will outlive Trump’s presidency.” Consider that

Members of the Trump family are explicitly, repeatedly, trying to make the acceptance of their conspiracies a litmus test for ambitious Republicans  … To read elected Republicans today — with a few notable exceptions … is to read a careful, cowardly double-speak. Politician after politician is signaling, as Vice President Mike Pence did, solidarity with the president, while not quite endorsing his conspiracies. Of course every legal vote should be counted. Of course allegations of fraud should be addressed. But that is not what the president is demanding — he is demanding the votes against him be ruled illegal — and they know it.

Furthermore, even if Trump is rejected “the Republican Party that protected and enabled him” remains, as does “their geographic advantage in the Senate insulates them from anything but massive, consecutive landslide defeats, and their dominance over the decennial redistricting process has given them a handicap in the House, too.”

All of these built-in advantages helped Trump. Though the popular vote won’t end up even close “the margins in the key Electoral College states were narrow, and the would-be autocrat was almost returned to office. How much more damage could he have done to American institutions and elections with another four years? It could have happened here, and it truly almost did.”

Thankfully, Trump is extraordinarily incompetent unlike political siblings such as Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey.

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Even more frightening,

The conditions that made Trump and this Republican Party possible are set to worsen. Republicans retained control of enough statehouses to drive the next redistricting effort, too, and their 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court will unleash their map-drawers more fully. The elections analyst G. Elliott Morris estimates that the gap between the popular vote margin and the tipping point state in the Electoral College will be 4 to 5 percentage points, and that the GOP’s control of the redistricting process could push it to 6 to 7 points next time.

So while our institutions did not wholly fail they didn’t succeed either. In particular,

the Republican Party … has made [it] clear that would-be autocrats have a path to power in the United States, and if they can walk far enough down that path, an entire political party will support them, and protect them. And it has been insulated from public fury by a political system …that lets partisan actors set election rules and draw district lines — and despite losing the presidency, the GOP still holds the power to tilt that system further in its direction in the coming years.

What happens when the next would-be autocrat tries this strategy — and what if they are smoother, more strategic, more capable than this one?

This is the story of what is happening right here, right now.

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For other excellent pieces about what’s happening see:

“The election can’t be ‘stolen.’ But something worse is happening”

“What Is Trump Playing At?”

“America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent”

“By humoring Trump, the GOP is enabling authoritarianism”

“The Real Threat of Trump’s Ridiculous Coup Attempt”

“Trump’s Post-Election Tactics Put Him in Unsavory Company”

(It’s too bad that low information voters don’t understand or don’t care about what’s happening. Authoritarian, fascist rule is so close.