When people tell you that the tax situation in your city is basically that the city government needs more money, you can bet that basically they haven’t taken the trouble to do a basically detailed analysis to see if basically that was basically the case. You can bet that because if they had done such a detailed study, they would have stated the conclusion directly without using the hedge word “basically.”
In his State of the Union message in February 1973, President Nixon said, “The basic state of our Union is sound, and full of promise.” The use of the defensive modifier basic may have reflected (just before the Watergate scandal took hold) that the apparent, or surface, state of the nation (that is, the side opposite the basic underlying condition) was not as sound or full of promise. There is an old song, “Call me at six on the dot. Little things mean a lot.” In this case, I believe that the president’s use of the qualifier basic meant a great deal. Subsequent events proved that supposition correct.
Principle: In the case of words, little words can mean a lot, especially little hedge words.
From which follows:
Lesson: Pay attention to the little words that tend to modify larger statements. Those little words can reveal the hidden meaning at the core.
Examine the following statements taken from the stockholders meeting of a prominent software company:
“Our new line will go a long way in getting back our competitive position vis-à-vis Dreamweaver.”
p. 123 “The lay offs have streamlined our staff and cut costs dramatically. We hope to retire another 600 employees by the end of the year, positioning ourselves again for profit.”
“When the economy turns around, particularly when it turns around in Japan, we fully anticipate getting back to our previous performance levels.”
“7.0 will replace our other products that are being discontinued.”
“The difficulty with the dot-coms will hopefully be over soon and they will once again become our foremost customers.”
Any of the above statements when taken alone means little. But when taken together at the same stockholders meeting in 2000, the hidden meanings are clear. The theme is trouble.
This company, Adobe, is struggling against Macromedia’s product Dreamweaver. The company has had so little demand for its software that it had to lay off workers. Adobe is not currently making a profit. Unless the general economic climate improves in Japan, things won’t get better. Version 7.0 is not a new product but merely an upgrade that will replace the existing Photoshop programs. Unless the general economic climate improves among the dot-coms, things won’t improve for the company.
See what I mean? These hidden meanings raise the question: What to do? What do you think? What would you do? I would sell. Wouldn’t you? In fact, I did sell. I sold all of my 20,000 shares at $93 a share. Last I checked, Adobe shares were selling for $16.
Here’s another practical example from a robbery that happened at my apartment in the East Village of New York City in 1969. See if you can detect from content analysis whether the criminal intends to return to my place: My wife, daughter, and son and I got into the elevator. Before the door shut, a man with a knife jumped in, grabbed my daughter, held the knife across her throat, and demanded money. I gave him my wallet. “Only eight dollars!” he shouted. “All I got,” I said. The robber made a disgusted face, threw my daughter down, and escaped.
Two days later, a telephone caller told me, “Don’t worry, Doc, I found your wallet in the trash in the subway. All your stuff, credit cards and your driver’s license, are [sic] here. Nothing is missing.”
I told the caller there was a twenty-dollar reward for the safe return of the stuff. He liked the idea of a reward. We made an appointment for him to deliver the next day at 6 PM.
Meanwhile, I went down to Centre Street (police headquarters) and p. 124 told the two detectives on my case that I was sure that the next day at about 6 PM the perpetrator of the crime would be at my apartment. At that point, dear reader, the detectives asked the same question that I ask you: Doc, how do you know the robber will return?
What part of the conversation tips you off about the identity of the caller? How does content analysis prove that the caller was the robber?
Answer: The caller said that all the credit cards were in his possession; nothing was missing. How would he know that for sure, if he had simply found the wallet? The only way he would know that all the cards and the driver’s license were intact would be if he himself were the criminal. Someone who had found the wallet could not reasonably know whether something was missing.
There is no other reasonable conclusion. Content analysis proves that the caller was connected closely to the crime. Content analysis proves that the caller was so closely connected to the crime that he himself was most likely to be the criminal. If that were true, then he himself would return to collect the reward.
I explained content analysis to the Dick Tracys.
Detective one scratched his head, leaned back in his swivel chair, took a long, deep drag on his Camel cigarette and announced, “Geezus, Doc, you’re too logical. They never come back. It’s just some kid that found the wallet.”
After much discussion, both detectives promised to be at my apartment at 5:30 PM so that they could capture the criminal.
Yes, they promised. But those of you who have dealt with New York City detectives know what that promise was worth. My hopes were not high that the detectives would show. But I was pretty sure the guy who held me up would show. I armed myself with a big kitchen knife and waited.
At 6:12 PM the bell rang. I opened to find a kid about thirteen years old. The kid handed me a small packet of credit cards wrapped with a rubber band. “Where’s the wallet?” I asked.
The kid shrugged his shoulders. “Search me. I’m just the messenger.”
“The wallet was cowhide—worth about twenty bucks. I want it back.”
“I don’t know nothing, mister. Like I said, I’m just the messenger.”
“You didn’t find the wallet. Who did?”
The kid said nothing, but he did glance down the hall toward the elevator, where what to my wondering eyes should appear but the guy who held me up.
“Call the cops,” I shouted to Ethel, my wife. And I chased the guy p. 125 down the hall. The robber had put a wedge in the elevator door and was easily able to get in and close the door before I got there.
By the time I had run down twenty-three flights of stairs, the robber was dashing into the adjacent housing project. The cops arrived soon thereafter and commiserated, but they refused to pursue the guy into that housing project. “Too dangerous,” they said.
Here is another example of the benefits of content analysis. Consider the following quotations from the State of the Union messages of presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. How does content analysis reveal differences in the management style and inner psychic state of each of these fine men?
Harry Truman: “I am happy to report to the 81st Congress, the one after that 80th Republican do-nothing Congress, that the State of the Union is good.” The following year Truman said that the state of the union “continued to be good.”
Dwight Eisenhower: “The State of the Union continues to vindicate the wisdom of the principles on which the Republic is founded.”
Answer: Truman’s statement is simple and direct. It is peppered with a slur against the previous Republican Congress that Truman feels did nothing. Indirectly, Truman is asking for action to improve the state of the union even though he has told us that the state of the union is “good.” You may not agree with what Truman said, but at least you know where he stands.
Eisenhower’s statement is abstract, so abstract that we have trouble determining from it whether the state of the union is good, bad, ugly, or none of the above. The use of words like wisdom and vindicate suggests that Eisenhower (or more likely his speechwriter) does not form clear, concrete thoughts and has difficulty communicating simply and directly. Vin
dicate also has a connotation that suggests the union had been accused of something or was on the defensive. Also, if clear thinking is a part of wisdom, then the statement, since it is not clear, implies its opposite. The Eisenhower statement suggests there is room in the state of the union for clear thinking and by extrapolation, more wisdom. It’s hard to agree or disagree with what Eisenhower said because we don’t know where he stands or what he means.
Every statement has overt and covert meanings. Learn to decode the overt and covert meanings to learn the truth and the reality underlying the puff, misrepresentation, lies, publicity, distortion, slant and spin, perversion, dishonesty, tricks, pretense, cheating, fraud, duplicity, p. 126 and deceit so common in modern everyday life. Convert this knowledge to your advantage and, when possible, to the advantage of those around you. In the process, enjoy your newfound power brought to you by clear thinking.
Review
Time spent in review is never wasted. Review cements the memory and augments understanding. D. O. Hebb, the great neurophysiologist, said, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”[8] So let’s get to it. Let’s do some firing and some wiring:
Exercises
1. Reread all the main points in this chapter. When you have done so, give yourself a check here __.
2. Reread all the main points in this chapter aloud. When done, give yourself a check here __. Rereading aloud fixes the memory better than silent rereading. Rereading on separate days fixes the memory better than rereading twice the same day. The more you reread, the more you will fix the memory. But don’t overdo it. Four times should be quite enough. You don’t want to acquire the reputation of being a harmless drudge.
3. Consider the following advertisement: “Put a tiger in your tank.” Can you define the idea? What is the overt message? Is there a covert message? Give yourself two checks if you think you know. Give yourself one check if you don’t know but did think about the question for more than a minute __. Explain the message behind slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded items and the endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. (Hint: The message is about something the advertisers want you to do so that they can get something you have. What do you have that they want? Another hint: What you have and what they want starts with an M and rhymes with honey.)
4. Explain why the media overflow with sacred formulas and stupid ideas. Explain how we can remember to respond innocently and get past our irritation, wariness and disgust. Give p. 127 yourself up to five checks in proportion to your understanding _______.
5. Explain in your own words why words are important. Give yourself a check if your answer sounds intelligent __. Explain why little words can have big meanings. Give an example of a little word that has a big impact.
Check your answers to the questions above by rereading the appropriate sections of the text. If you got most of them correct, stop here and reward yourself in some way with a simple pleasure that will also serve to fix the memories. Rewards for work well done help the brain function effectively. Then relax and have some fun as you coast through chapter 3, which covers the common error in thinking called post hoc.
Notes
1. Aristotle, Politics 3.15-16.
2. Anthony S. Fauci et al., eds., Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 14th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Health Professions Divisions, 1998).
3. Ibid., p. 1874.
4. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (New York: New American Library, 1961 ), p. 323.
5. Houston Chronicle, July 1, 2002.
6. The quotation is from the New York Times report of the testimony before Congress and is obtainable from the National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/.
7. New York Times, April 8, 2002, p. C5.
8. Quoted in Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell, eds., Principles of Neural Science, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Health Professions Division, 2000), p. 1260.
3 – Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
p. 129 The aim of this chapter is to give you a much-deserved rest by covering a simpler and easier to understand common error in thinking known by its Latin title as post hoc, ergo propter hoc, called here henceforth post hoc, propter hoc.
Post hoc, propter hoc means “after this, on account of this.” The Latin phrase exactly describes the error in thinking that assigns cause on the basis of association in time. Because one event follows another, the two events are not necessarily connected as cause and effect. To assume that they are leads us away from the understanding of reality and toward error and is therefore unreasonable, an error in thinking.
Post hoc, propter hoc is the first of many fallacies that we will encounter in our pursuit of truth. A fallacy is a mistaken idea or opinion, an error in reasoning or defect in argument, especially one that appears to be reasonable. For economy of expression, and because some people have trouble remembering the word propter, the post hoc, propter hoc error is often abbreviated as simply “post hoc.”
A common error in thinking is the assumption that because one thing follows another the second thing must relate to the first as a consequence. That is, the first event caused the second. Whether the first event caused the second cannot be determined from mere association in time. The cause-and-effect association must, instead, be proven by other evidence.
The rooster crows and the sun rises. The crow of the rooster did not cause the sun to rise. Yet both events were associated in time. A primitive mind might assume the two were connected as cause and effect. A p. 130 really primitive mind might assume that the rooster made the sun rise. How do we know that the rooster doesn’t cause the sun to rise?
When I was a boy, we had a chicken coop in our backyard. Every day the rooster crowed and the sun rose. That happened every day until we killed the rooster. Despite the rooster’s terminal absence, the sun continued to rise. Because event two, the sunrise, now occurred without event one, the rooster crow, we know for sure that the effect (the sunrise) does not need a rooster. Something else must be playing a role in the sunrise. The rooster was not necessary for the sun to rise.
When two conditions occur side by side, especially when they occur side by side repeatedly, it is tempting to conclude that the one explains the other. Don’t believe it. There may, of course, be a necessary connection between the two things, but before the relation of cause and effect is established, it must be shown that if the effect did not follow the cause, some accepted general principle would be violated. An even more powerful proof would be to find the effect occurring independently of the supposed cause, as shown in the case of the rooster.
It turns out that the rooster crows not because the sun is about to rise but because in the morning, the rooster wants to mate. His desire to mate makes him call the hens to action. His crow only indirectly relates to the sun rising as a simultaneous but noncausal event. When the rooster is eliminated from the loop, the sun continues to rise as it always has and always will until 2.5 billion years from now, when scientists tell us that the sun will become a red giant and burn out the Earth.
George Bernard Shaw was a vegetarian. He was also a great playwright. Will abstaining from meat make you a great playwright?
No way!
The two things are independent and not codependent variables. Don’t believe me? Try eating vegetables for a year. See if it makes any difference in your playwriting ability.
Principle: Two things connected in time may not be connected as cause and effect.
From which follows:
Lesson: Because one event followed another, or events are associated with each other in time, never assume that the two are causally connected.
p. 131 It rains, and the streets get wet. Then it stops raining, and the streets get dry. And when the streets are dry, it rains again. Do dry streets cause it to rain? Do wet streets stop the rain? Primitive thinking might conclude that dry streets cause it to rain because, dang it, every time the streets are dry, sooner or later, it will rain.
&
nbsp; Those two examples, the rooster and the dry streets, were selected because they show simply how two events can be linked in the mind but not associated as cause and effect. To connect them as cause and effect would lead us away from an understanding of more complex truths : how the Earth rotates or what changes in temperature and dew point produce rain, and so forth. Anything that dulls our understanding of the true nature of reality is an error in thinking and, to the extent that it is an error, may hurt us in some way.
When Ethel and I were coming back from Delos to the Greek island of Mykonos, our ship ran into a great storm. The Greek sea captain assured us that we would be OK. He knew he would arrive safe and sound because he had prayed to the Virgin Mary.
“How do we know for sure that she will help us?” I asked.
“Didn’t you see all those little churches on Mykonos? Whenever there is a serious storm at sea, the captains promise the Virgin that they will build a church to her.”
“But where are the churches built by the sea captains who prayed but didn’t make it back alive?” I asked.
The captain could not answer. He understood that his reasoning was defective. The captain’s reasoning was seriously defective. Why?
Because someone prayed and then survived doesn’t mean that he survived because he prayed. The mere fact that one event follows another does not mean the two are connected as cause and effect. To assume that praying and safe arrival are related is to commit the error of post hoc, propter hoc. Furthermore, because those who prayed and did not survive wouldn’t construct churches, only those who survived would construct churches. Therefore, there would be a partial selection of evidence so that the number of churches on Mykonos would multiply, proving that people had prayed and survived. But that would not prove that they had survived because they had prayed.
Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to tell the difference Page 15
