Category Archives: Other problems

Problems other than specific logical fallacies–poor explanations, things that are false, and so forth.

Eugene Robinson, Unclassifiable

At least I tried

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Eugene Robinson, liberal columnist for the post, probably means this as friendly advice to democrats (but I’m not so sure, better ask Bob Somerby), but it comes across as instance of the “at least . . .” fallacy. This fallacy is a misbegotten child of the principle that “something is better than nothing.” How does it work? Robinson writes:

>And please, no hiding behind “I don’t do hypotheticals.” The Republican candidates’ view of Iraq, Iran and the Middle East is dangerously apocalyptic, but at least it’s a vision. What’s yours?

Why does he say this? Leading democratic candidates refused to say all of our troops would be out of Iraq by the end of their first term, i.e., 2013. Their view is that their waiting for reality to disclose itself:

>”It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” said Hillary Rodham Clinton.

>”I think it’s hard to project four years from now,” said Barack Obama.

>”I cannot make that commitment,” said John Edwards.

Robinson’s childish gripe reminds me of something I saw on local TV yesterday. Asked which party they support, a group of students at a local community college responded with answers one might expect (democrats–it is Chicago). One, however, responded that he supports the party with “big ideas”–i.e., Republicans. They have big ideas alright. But the size of ideas isn’t a point in their favor. On that score, some vision is not necessarily better than no “vision.”

category mistake, Michael Gerson, Straw Man, Weak Analogy

Strategic incite

Hard to believe people still say certain things with a straight face. But Michael Gerson’s previous job consisted in the nearly impossible task of putting words in President Bush’s mouth: the words that went in were abhorrent; the words that came out were nonsense.

>President Bush’s emphasis on democracy has been driven not by outside pressure but by a strategic insight. He is convinced that the status quo of tyranny, stagnation and extremism in the Middle East is not sustainable — that the rage and ideologies it produces will cause increasing carnage in the world. The eventual solution to this problem, in his view, is the proliferation of hopeful, representative societies in the Middle East.

Just for the record–“insight” is what you call an “achievement verb.” It indicates that the person has been successful at creative ideation. All signs point to no at this point. You can’t be insightful if you don’t see anything.

Of course, Gerson seems to know that, so he continues:

>This argument is debatable. But it is at least as likely as Walt and Mearsheimer’s naive belief that “the U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel” — the equivalent of arguing that Britain had a Nazi problem in the 1930s because it was so closely allied with Czechoslovakia.

Holy weak analogies!

David Broder, Inexplicable, Lack of Evidence

What’s the big idea?

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Sometimes op-eds can be entertaining for their emptiness. David Broder on Newt Gingrich:

>In the years since I first met him in 1974, I have learned that it’s wise to take Newt Gingrich seriously. He has many character flaws, and his language is often exaggerated and imprudent. But if there is any politician of the current generation who has earned the label “visionary,” it is probably the Georgia Republican and former speaker of the House.

No, I don’t mean to question here whether Gingrich is a visionary. I just wonder what Broder thinks he’s talking about. Here’s his evidence:

>but his presence in the field would raise the bar for everyone else, improve the content of the debates and change the dynamic of the race.

I wonder how. Broder continues:

>The fact that he is prepared to say plainly that Republicans, if they are to have a prayer of electing George Bush’s successor, must offer “a clean break” from Bush’s policies sets Gingrich apart.

Bush is at 29 percent. That’s not visionary, that’s obvious.

>His personal history and the scars he bears from leading the 1994 revolution that brought Republicans to power in Congress for a dozen years would make it hard for him to mobilize the money and support needed in an already crowded field.

Still waiting for the “visionary” evidence.

>he is right in saying that when “10 guys are lined up like penguins” for TV debates in which answers must be compressed to 60-second sound bites, the “big ideas” he wants to promote would probably be lost.

Right, the “big ideas.”

>So he is opting for American Solutions for Winning the Future, a policy and advocacy group for the Internet age that will be launched at the end of this month from the west front of the Capitol, where Gingrich staged his “Contract With America” signing at the start of the 1994 campaign.

>This effort, which is nominally nonpartisan, is aimed at developing fresh solutions to the public policy problems that challenge the nation, from health care to immigration to inner-city education.

>Gingrich is brimming with ideas on these subjects, but he is realistic enough to suggest that it may be five years before public opinion — and other politicians — are ready to embrace some of them.

Mind sharing, Newt?

>At the news breakfast where I saw him, he was as pumped-up about his new venture as he was when we first had coffee 33 years ago. Then he was a college professor, engaged in a losing House campaign but blessed or cursed with grandiose ideas about how the Republicans might — after more than 30 years — become the majority in Congress.

>He works and travels at a frenetic pace, drawing fresh ideas from visits last week to a Michigan hospital, a Microsoft plant and a health-care complex in Spokane, Wash.

>If big ideas and big ambitions can bring Republicans back to life, Gingrich is ready to supply them. And I have learned not to underestimate him.

Gingrich’s big idea seems to consists in having big ideas, his plan is to have a plan, and he will win by victory.

Inexplicable, John Tierney

Science guy

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John Tierney was a terrible columnist. Now he’s a terrible science writer:

>After looking at one too many projections of global-warming disasters — computer graphics of coasts swamped by rising seas, mounting death tolls from heat waves — I was ready for a reality check. Instead of imagining a warmer planet, I traveled to a place that has already felt the heat, accompanied by Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and scourge of environmentalist orthodoxy.

Let’s reinterpret this. “After not doing any serious research on global warming, I went to talk to a famous and obviously unqualified skeptic, who, oddly, doesn’t really even doubt the reality of global warming.”

Inexplicable, Thomas Friedman

Unsurprising

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Tom Friedman, Middle East Expert, today:

One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between � no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.

Not surprising? Tom Friedman on the possibility of a democracy in Iraq:

Right, exactly. And I don�t apologize for that. I�m not going to apologize for thinking that if we could find a way to collaborate with people there to build a different future in the heart of that world, which is afflicted by so many pathologies, that that wouldn�t be a really good thing. Tom Friedman on why we invaded Iraq:

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, �Which part of this sentence don�t you understand?�

You don�t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we�re just gonna to let it grow?

Well, Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That Charlie was what this war was about. We could�ve hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

category mistake, Equivocation, Stanley Fish

Values

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The most facile critique of Rawlsian liberalism consists in claiming that liberalism espouses values just like any other system, so it’s really no different from them. This is a favorite tactic of Stanley Fish:

>But right there, in the invocation of “free development” and “mutual forbearance,” Starr gives the lie to liberal neutrality. Free development (the right of individuals to frame and follow their own life plans) and mutual forbearance (a live-and-let-live attitude toward the beliefs of others as long as they do you no harm) are not values everyone endorses.

So one cannot claim that one is for religious liberty, and be religious, without contradicting himself. If one is, say, Catholic, and one endorses a political system based on government neutrality toward any non-human sacrificing religion, then one is, on Fish’s ever more childish analysis, espousing yet another system of value, as intolerant of intolerance as intolerance is intolerant of tolerance. It’s just crap.

John Holbo at Crooked Timber makes a related point about Fish:

>I would also like to request a moratorium on critiques of liberalism that consist entirely of a flourish for effect – with accompanying air of discovery – of the familiar consideration that liberalism is inconsistent with blanket, categorical tolerance of absolutely every possible act and attitude. That is, liberalism is incompatible, in practice, with any form of illiberalism that destroys liberalism. If something is inconsistent with liberalism, it is inconsistent with liberalism. Yes. Quite. We noticed.

And this points out the silly category problem of Fish’s analysis. Every mental attitude (political, eschatological, metaphorical, emotional, ethical, and so on) is exactly the same. So if I endorse religious liberty, I value it; if I belong to a religion, I value it; if I like Vernaccia, I value it; if I like the Detroit Lions, I value them. All values, all the same. But maybe, just maybe, the problem is the use of values. Maybe they’re not all the same.

General discussion, Inexplicable, Michael Gerson, Things that are false

Anything’s possible

According to well documented accounts, what Michael Gerson, prose warrior, says in today’s Post op-ed is flatly wrong. Later in the day the blogosphere will be alive with links to documents which will establish that is the case (start here for factual rebuttal). If I find time today I’ll post an update. I was more intrigued by the following claim:

>Four months ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could confidently declare: “This war is lost.” Now that is an open question. A recent Zogby poll found that a majority of Americans do not believe the war is lost. And this makes Democratic policies based on the assumption of hopelessness — rigid timetables and funding cuts — strategically irresponsible and politically risky. If defeat is inevitable, it makes sense to cut our losses. If defeat is only possible, preemptively ensuring it would confirm a long-standing Democratic image of weakness.

I’m going to break that down.

>1. Harry Reid said the “war is lost.”

>2. But a Zogby poll found that Americans–a majority of them–disagree.

>3. Therefore, “funding cuts and timetables” are (a) strategically irresponsible and (b) politically risky.

Out of curiosity, both victory and defeat ought to issue in “funding cuts and timetables.” If we win, we leave; if we lose we leave. But it’s odd that 3b finds its way into Gerson’s argument. As far as I know, Americans don’t have a vote in day to day military affairs. Even if true, in other words, whether Americans think the war is lost is irrelevant.

Naturally it’s not irrelevant politically. Democrats can appear weak, but that discussion should be meaningless to anyone but political hacks. Having been right about the prospects for success in military conflict has nothing to do with actual strength and weakness.

Finally, there’s a wide gulf between the inevitable defeat and the possible victory. In addition to the confused notions of victory and defeat for whatever is going on in Iraq (what’s defeated? Us? A strategy? A goal–what was the goal, and so on and so on), some on the right (SOR) hold fast to the “one-percent doctrine.” This involves treating as inevitable that which is merely barely possible. The whole thing, of course, is a raging sophistry (if sophistries can “rage”). “Victory” may still be possible in Iraq, but that depends on the meaning of possible. The irrelevant meaning is whether victory is possible all things considered.

The relevant question is given what whether victory is likely (if so, how likely), given what we are willing to commit to attaining it.

category mistake

“words”

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The following sentence struck me as odd. I can’t tell whether it is meant to be a criticism or not:

>Long before then, the words “global war on terror” will likely fade away — the sooner, the better, hopefully to be replaced by a more focused, realistic and sustainable strategy.

It would be nice indeed if the words were replaced by a strategy.

General discussion, George Will, Things that are false

Unquote

Today a minor point. One I often complain about. Op-eds are often too short for one to deal with someone’s views fairly. Quoting selectively is especially pernicious, in that it gives the impression of research, while in reality it may distort someone’s original meaning (we’re not the only ones to have noticed this strategy for what it is). George Will, a frequent practitioner of this strategy, gives us another example today. Even though Will thinks Bush has gotten us into horrible mess in Iraq, he can’t bring himself to say that a Democrat was right. His overall take is that democrats and republicans cannot face reality. Odd that he would say this, because his view seems to accord with the democrats.

But back to the quote-picking. Here’s his take on the comments of Nancy Boyda (curiously similar in editing to many war blogger pages):

>Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, House majority whip, recently said that it would be “a real big problem for us” — Democrats — if Petraeus reports substantial progress. Rep. Nancy Boyda, a Kansas Democrat, recently found reports of progress unendurable. She left a hearing of the Armed Services Committee because retired Gen. Jack Keane was saying things Boyda thinks might “further divide this country,” such as that Iraq’s “schools are open. The markets are teeming with people.” Boyda explained: “There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while . . . after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.”

The implication is that the democrats are so intolerant of reality they walk out on actual reports from the field. The impression is rather different from the full quotation:

>I was certainly hoping that General Keane would be able to be here as well. Let me say thank you very much for your testimony so much, Mr. Korb, and I just will make some statements more for the record based on what I heard mainly General Keane. As many of us, there was only so much that you could take until we, in fact, had to leave the room for a while, and so I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things that after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.

>But let me just first say that the description of Iraq as if some way or another that it’s a place that I might take the family for a vacation, things are going so well, those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying here’s the reality of the problem and people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue.

It turns out that Boyda means to criticize the delusional metrics of war supporters–it’s just like a Market in Indiana–which is, after all, Will’s point.

Academics, Inexplicable

He or she blinded me with science

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The New York Times reports on another crazy academic feud driven by politically correct orthodoxy.

>In academic feuds, as in war, there is no telling how far people will go once the shooting starts.

>Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.

Note the phrase “social science controversies.” Here’s the story, more or less, in outline. J.Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology up the road here at Northwestern University, writes a book,The Man Who Would Be Queen, that challenges the way scientists think about the “biology of sexual orientation.” As the Times tells it, there began his troubles, because he dared to challenge some kind of p.c. orthodoxy:

>To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues. They point to several recent cases, like that of Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish researcher who was fired in 2006 after he caused a furor in the press by reporting a slight difference in average I.Q. test scores between the sexes.

>“What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.”

Odd that Dr.Dreger would claim that Dr. Bailey is blameless:

>Moreover, based on her own reading of federal regulations, Dr. Dreger, whose report can be viewed at www.bioethics.northwestern.edu, argued that the book did not qualify as scientific research. The federal definition describes “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation.”

>Dr. Bailey used the people in his book as anecdotes, not as the subjects of a systematic investigation, she reported.

>“The bottom line is that they tried to ruin this guy, and they almost succeeded,” Dr. Dreger said.

Dr.Dreger seems deeply confused about the nature of the controversy. The controversy concerns (in part) whether what Dr.Bailey said was supported by the evidence. But on Dr.Dreger’s account, it doesn’t even qualify as scientific research. And she’s defending him. It’s hard to see, therefore, what sense it makes to call this a dispute about scientific research and political correctness. There’s no scientific research.