Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to tell the difference

by Bernard M. Patten

  Sharing common things is characteristic of most contemporary American families, a family value so to speak, though many Republicans would not admit it as such. Common ownership is a principle of domestic law in each state that has a common property statute related to marriage. Family ownership and community property are in a real sense communist ideas. Is that wrong? The early Christian Church shared all things in common, too, though some contemporary Christians, especially those on the right wing, would hardly admit the early Church was communist as such. Common property was the rule among most native American cultures. Thus communism, not capitalism, should be considered the original indigenous economic system.

  The mere fact that an American scientist expresses sympathy for one aspect of a foreign government’s policy does not make that scientist a spy. To treat him as if he were a spy commits the error in thinking called overgeneralization. The overgeneralization would go like this: He said he likes the Chinese, therefore, he is a commie. Because he is a commie, he might be a spy. If he is a spy, he can’t keep his security clearance and his job. Fortunately, the courts are more reasonable than the bureaucrats who were in charge of this scientist’s security clearance. The man got his job back.

  What’s the point?

  The point is that you should avoid seeing things as black and white. Avoid making a mountain out of a molehill. Avoid undue extrapolations and overgeneralizations.

  Reservations and respect for half measures and compromise are not all bad.

  Along these lines, we should also avoid despising half measures. p. 58 Have reservations. Always have reservations about such personal matters as love, marriage, having children, and so forth. If you need to have reservations about those issues, you certainly have to have reservations about big issues like going to war with Iraq, or changing the constitution, or electing the president, and such. Don’t demand and don’t expect a straight, simple answer to any complex question. Don’t follow the crowd—it might be jumping off a cliff. Simple answers, like the tooth fairy, just don’t exist.

  Principle: Black-and-white arguments are wrong. Black-and-white reasoning leads to the failure to consider all the possible solutions to a situation or problem.

  From which follows:

  Lesson: There are many solutions to complex problems, not just one or two.

  Try to think outside the conventional wisdom (box) to arrive at viable alternatives to the stock philosophy or rationale. The answer may or may not be there. But just thinking about it will clarify the nature of the problem and the work needed to get close to an adequate solution. Avoid easy solutions. Not many things are “no brainers.”

  Avoid extending your arguments or overgeneralizing them or believing in them too much yourself.

  Yes, our opponents are not the only ones who extend our arguments. Who else extends our arguments? We do. We extend our arguments, simplify them, and make them look better than they are in order to win the argument. This is wrong. Knowing the truth, the complex truth—or admitting your solution is not perfect—is much closer to reality and will serve you and humanity better.

  Yes, we may extend and simplify our own arguments—even we who are trying to be reasonable. In the heat of argument, we may exaggerate our case. Eventually our argument becomes so exaggerated that, like an overinflated balloon, whose rubber has been stretched to the limit, thinned excessively, it bursts. At the slightest touch.

  Principle: Extreme assertions are easily attacked. Moderate assertions are not.

  p. 59 From which follows:

  Lesson: Don’t get carried away with your own rhetoric.

  You want to remain reasonable as much as you want others to remain reasonable, perhaps more so because the consequences to yourself for your irrational thinking often will be more severe than they will be to others.

  Lesson: Don’t overgeneralize.

  Hitler’s murder of six million Jews was the gruesome consequence of an overgeneralization, for the principle behind this annihilation of a race was that all Jews were alike. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have prevented the Holocaust by clear thinking?

  President Johnson overgeneralized about the importance of Vietnam by expounding the domino theory of the spread of communism. His error may have been compounded by false information, bad advice, hidden agendas, any combination of multiple other factors, all supported by rhetoric that might seem plausible unless and until you think clearly about it. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have prevented the Vietnam War by clear thinking?

  Let’s work on two more historical examples and see if we could have done better than the people who were there trying to handle the problems at the time. After we consider the two historical examples, we’ll work on a case study and see if we could have done better than the police who were there at the time.

  Historical example number one: Pretend you are in the sixteenth century. You have just been told that heavier-than-air flight is not possible. How would you prove this statement wrong?

  Analysis: The statement is a generalization. To prove a generalization wrong, one needs only one contrary example. What is that contrary example?

  Birds fly. Birds are heavier than air. Insects fly. Some mammals fly—bats, for example. Therefore, heavier-than-air flight is possible. Not only is it possible, it happens all the time. In fact, that was the reasoning behind the Wright brothers’ work. They reasoned that if it is possible for birds to fly, it might be possible for humans. The Wright brothers realized that what needs to be addressed is the mechanisms that make p. 60 heavier-than-air flight possible for birds. Hints about these mechanisms may be discovered by studying birds. Birds have two wings. Could that be important? Birds have a power supply, their flight muscles. Could that be important? Birds know how to control their flight by using their tail feathers. Could that be important?

  See what I mean?

  Way back in the sixteenth century, by simple analysis you could have known for sure that heavier than air flight was possible. By analysis, you could have known where to look to derive the principles of heavier-than-air flight.

  Historical example number two: Pretend you are in the nineteenth century. You have been appointed by the king of England to sit on the special admiralty committee to investigate the question of iron boats. The committee has just issued its official opinion in 1858 over the signature of Sir Francis Baring, first lord of the admiralty: “The Admiralty opposes iron boats because iron is heavier than wood and will sink.”

  Are you prepared to write a dissenting opinion? What will you say?

  Analysis: The statement is off the point. Iron is heavier than wood and will sink. So what? The king knows that. So do most people. Why state the obvious unless you are just looking for agreement? In effect, the admiralty statement is an extended and simplified argument. The committee was supposed to consider the pros and cons of iron boats versus wood boats. Instead of an intelligent discussion of the issues with reasons for their opposition to iron, they just gave us bullshit. How do we know this is bullshit? Consider the following:

  The statement starts off with “The Admiralty.” It does not start off with “We” or “The committee” or some other such phrase. See the difference? The admiralty hits us on the head with its prestige and authority. It says that it is the expert on this sea stuff, implying that we are the schmucks. The admiralty is trying to use its power, influence, and clout to persuade us to accept its opinion, using authority to convince us when it should be using knowledge, facts, evidence, and reasons.

  To accept opinions out of respect for rank, privilege, position, habits, cultural customs, traditions, previous experience, and so forth is unreasonable because it makes us dispense with the examination of the facts, evidence, clear thinking, and proofs. Most progress depends on skepticism and not submission. Blind adherence to authority has gotten mankind into trouble time and time again. How come? Why is thoughtless adherence to authority wrong?

  p. 61 It is wrong because authorities are often wrong. Autho
rities are often wrong because they misrepresent or misperceive reality. In that case, respect for authority becomes a disrespect for reality.

  Prestige achieved in one sphere gives no authority in another.

  Here, the admirals have achieved their positions through a combination of noble birth, hard work in seamanship, success in fighting at sea, and political connections. That they achieved their positions because of superiority in those spheres gives them little special authority in discussing the iron boat question, which is a scientific and engineering problem, not an admiralty problem.

  If you don’t get this idea, consider the following: Is a movie star an expert in advising you about where to go for financial advice?

  A well-known movie star is unlikely to have much of value to say about the regulation of commodity trading, stock or bond trading, or where to go for financial advice. Ditto a football player about investments. A Catholic priest would be an unlikely commentator on the Rig Vedas (unless he had separate credentials in ancient Hindu religions), the sacred Hindu texts that date from 1500 BCE. Barbara Boxer, senator from California, who doesn’t know the difference between a revolver and a semiautomatic pistol, is unlikely to shed intelligent light on the relative safety of either gun.

  Yet, Boxer considers herself fully qualified to frame laws on subjects about which she obviously knows little. Boxer is the senator and we are not. Our position (and our ignorance) may force us to rely on her (phony) authority and to take much of what she does and says on trust. But we must always remember that she, like the other authorities operating outside their respective fields, may be wrong. If she is wrong, then we might be the ones who have to pay for her mistake.

  Principle: Biased authority is, to the extent of the bias, not reliable. Knowing the source of bias and its intensity gives clues as to its direction and magnitude.

  A biased authority is, to the extent of the bias, no authority. Take, for example, the case of Mary Meeker. In April 1999, Mary Meeker (dubbed by Barron’s “Queen of the Internet”) issued a “buy” rating on Priceline.com at $104 per share. In twenty-one months, the stock sold for $1.50, a loss of 98.5 percent. If you followed her advice, you would have turned a $10,000 mountain into a $144 molehill. Undaunted, p. 62 Meeker issued “buy” ratings on Yahoo!; Amazon.com; drugstore.com, inc.; and Homestore.com. Millions of investors followed her advice and lost their shirts. Yahoo! crashed 97 percent. Amazon cratered 95 percent. Drugstore headed south 98.9 percent. Homestore plummeted 95.5 percent. The rapidity and the magnitude of those declines raise the question of why Mary Meeker recommended those dogs in the first place. And why did she stick with her recommendations, even as the stocks declined 20, 40, 50, and 70 percent?

  Answer: I don’t know.

  But I have suspicions that Mary was biased. Each one of Meeker’s “strong buys” was paying Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, her employer, millions of dollars to promote their shares. And could it be that Morgan Stanley rewarded Meeker for helping them do it—rewarded her with a mind-blowing salary of fifteen million dollars a year?

  So, I figure, while millions of investors twisted in the wind, Mary Meeker and Morgan Stanley, and the lousy companies they were promoting, laughed all the way to the bank. An isolated example? I wish. And you wish.

  In 1999, Salomon Smith Barney wanted to sell AT&T on using its underwriting services to take its giant wireless division public. The problem was that Jack Grubman, Salomon’s chief stock analyst, had been for years giving AT&T low ratings. When Salomon made its pitch to AT&T, Grubman miraculously changed his low rating on AT&T to a “buy.”

  The rest of the story follows as the night the day: Salomon was named lead underwriter and made millions. AT&T got the super-successful initial public offering (IPO) it craved and made millions. Grubman got to keep a $25,000,000 salary. The public, when the stock crashed thirteen months later, lost 50 percent of its money.

  Individual Investor magazine named Jack Grubman to its “Hall of Shame.” In December 2002, Grubman pleaded guilty and was fined $15,000,000. And so it goes.

  These were not (in my opinion) honest mistakes. They were an attempt of Wall Street insiders to get rich at public expense. They ate your lunch—and with relish.

  Principle: Before taking expert advice at face value, always check for bias.

  p. 63 If the expert is biased, the information provided by that expert is, to the extent of the bias, unreliable. Jack Grubman was biased because he openly wore two hats—an investment banker at Salomon Smith Barney as well as a stock analyst for the brokers on the sales side. His specialty was hyping the telecom sector. His entire telecom group—WorldCom, Global Crossing, PSINet, Rogers Wireless, ICG Communications—eventually blew up, but he didn’t downgrade anything until it had fallen 70 percent or so.

  Principle: An authority may be wrong. Biased authority is often wrong.

  From which follows:

  Lesson: Don’t trust the authorities. Demand proof.

  Remember that not only can authorities be wrong in the fields in which they have no special knowledge or qualifications, but also they can be wrong when dealing with situations within their realm of competence.

  Principle: Experts may err even in their field of special competence.

  From which follows:

  Lesson: Don’t trust the experts. Demand proof.

  Back to the boat problem. Even if you felt the admiralty had special expertise in examining the iron boat question, the mere fact that the committee has a certain expertise does not guarantee that it will be correct in its appraisal. A better guarantee would come from the correct analysis of the reality situation. A better guarantee would come not from the authority of their position but from the long, hard, demanding, and difficult discovery of the truth. Analysis of all available evidence might have prevented the admiralty from making this gigantic stupid error, which set the British navy back several decades.

  Ad verecundiam arguments are irrational.

  Arguments that relate to citing authority as the reason that they should be believed are known as argumentum ad verecundiam, which is p. 64 Latin literally meaning “proof based on respect for.” In this case, the respect is for authority—that of the admiralty. The argumentum ad verecundiam is based (irrationally) on respect for authority (verecundiam).

  “I’m not just a college professor. I’m the head of a department. I don’t see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That’s for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are.”[5] Yep, there’s the rub: Arguments based on respect for authority are often not based on respect for reality. That chairman suffered from the airborne toxic event just as everyone else in the area did. There is no special reason that an authority should or would get special treatment from reality. There is no special reason that an airborne toxic event should or would spare a college professor or the head of a department. In fact, when you think about it, the argumentum ad verecundiam is a diversionary technique to take us away from the consideration of the facts in evidence and toward potential error. In fact, in the harsh retrospective glare of history we know that the admiralty was wrong, dead wrong about iron boats. The truth is that iron makes a much better boat than wood. That is the reason that most modern boats are made of steel.

  Principle: Arguments citing authority ignore the point and divert us from full consideration of the evidence. Such arguments tend to overgeneralize and prevent rational thinking and are therefore unreasonable.

  From which follows:

  Lesson: When people put on the cloak of authority, treat them with suspicion, if not distain. Experts can be wrong. Of course, they can be right, too. Whether they are right or wrong depends not on their authority as such but on analysis of the facts and their reasons. Whether such facts or conclusions or whatnot apply to us or can be otherwise generalized must be demonstrated by evidence, not from the mere assertion of authority.

  The admiralty’s statement appears simple and simplistic. We
know the engineering problems of boat construction must be highly complex. Therefore, we can strike down the statement as unlikely to be true p. 65 in all instances because usually there are no simple answers to complex questions. That point aside, let’s consider the reason that the admiralty rejected iron boats.

  “Iron is heavier than wood and will sink.” The statement is off the point, a non sequitur. But we know what the admiralty meant. It didn’t mean to tell us that iron sinks and wood floats. We knew that already. Instead, the committee implied a generalization about iron boats versus wood boats—that iron boats sink and wood boats do not. Iron boats do sink. No question about it. But wood boats sink, too. No question about that. In fact, the admiralty knew wooden boats sink quite often. The king knew that, too. That is why the king was trying to get a better boat. That is why the king commissioned the admiralty study.

  To prove a generalization wrong requires only one contrary example. By showing that just one wood boat sank, we can prove the admiralty’s reasoning defective. Furthermore, we could show that an iron pot, under certain conditions of balance and proportion, will float. If an iron pot will float, so will an iron boat. Therefore, one of the questions that should have been examined was which type of boat sinks less often: iron or wood? The admiralty was incapable of considering that question because of its bias against iron. The admiralty also by its statement demonstrated a vast ignorance of the laws of displacement.

  Boats do not float because the material from which they are constructed is heavier or lighter than water but because of the displacement of water by the hull. The buoyant force exerted on the hull is exactly equal to the weight of the water displaced. Archimedes (287?-212 BCE), Greek mathematician and inventor, discovered the principle, now known as Archimedes’ principle, that a body immersed in a fluid loses weight by an amount equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. Because of this principle, not only will iron boats float, but under the proper conditions, cement boats will float, too. Any type of boat will float as long as the weight of the water displaced by the boat’s hull is more than the weight of the boat itself. In issuing its statement, the admiralty demonstrated its profound ignorance of the reason that boats, be they made of wood, iron, cement, fiberglass, or whatnot, float. The admiralty teaches us a lesson that we should not forget: that ignorance can play a major role in the mismanagement of government and in the decisions and opinions handed down by committees, even committees of experts.