Category: Critical Thinking

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig was brought before congress in July 2026. During the questioning, Nancy Mace asked the director “what is a woman?” For those not familiar with this rhetorical tool, the question might have seemed irrelevant and even bizarre. However, it is a well-established rhetorical tool used by the right that was popularized by Matt Walsh and Justin Folk in the propamentary What is a Woman?

The use of rhetorical tools is a rational approach. For those who accept the cognitive miser theory, using a rhetorical tool saves cognitive resources. Even without a theory, it makes sense not to waste time re-inventing the wheel.  It also allows one to borrow skills by “running” a rhetorical “program.”

 My fellow gamers will understand the analogy of using an optimized character build and rotation in a game like Diablo IV or World of Warcraft: this allows a person to play above their own skill level by using the work of someone else. There is also the analogy to how people in tech support and customer service use scripts. One can even look at expert systems and AI that use stolen processes to emulate skills.

I have no general issue with people borrowing skills and using templates as I do this myself when I, for example, use an argument by analogy or use a plumbing technique I learned from a book or YouTube video. I also have no issue with using rhetoric—as I tell my students, rhetoric is like flavoring for food. Rhetoric is logically neutral but there is no need to avoid making your arguments “taste good” by using some rhetoric. But I do have an issue with substituting rhetoric for logic and using it in bad faith.

While “what is a woman?” can be a good faith philosophical question, when someone like Mace asks it, they are asking in bad faith. They are not inviting someone along on a journey of discovery or a thoughtful inquiry. Instead, it is a bad faith set up for a trap, for they already have the answer they want, and their intent is to score rhetorical points as part of an ideological performance.

If the target of the question is not prepared, they will probably flounder and struggle with their answer. The questioner can allow them to flounder a while and then shut them down with their prepared answer: “A woman is an adult human female.” For many audiences, it will seem that the questioner won: they confidently offer a decisive, simple answer while their target floundered. But this is obviously just a rhetorical victory: they have proved nothing and have merely persuaded the audience. This is why people on the right prefer to engage with unprepared people, such as college freshmen and other non-experts.

When engaging with a prepared or expert target, folks on the right prefer to ask the question when the target has a limited time to answer, the context favors them or when they can edit the response. In the case of Mace questioning Hartig, Hartig had only a short time to respond and was speaking before congress and cameras as a director trying to do the best she could for the Smithsonian and not, for example, as an expert on gender in a risk free environment. Folks on the right try to avoid engaging experts in contexts in which the experts have the time to provide a detailed response without a metaphorical sword dangling over their head.  But this question can still be rhetorically effective against even an expert.

While the right professes to believe their simplistic, grade-school answer to the question “what is a woman?”, this answer does actually have many rhetorical advantages over the sort of complex answer an expert would give.

One is that people generally find complexity boring when it is outside their areas of interest. Obviously. As a philosopher, I notice this—which makes sense. Most people are not, for example, interested in the finer points of trope theory. But I also notice it in my role as the DIY guy who fixes things. I learned decades ago that most people just want the thing fixed and, at best, a simple explanation. They do not want to hear me talk about IRQ conflicts or the idiosyncrasies of 2-stroke engines. An expert explaining what a woman is will most likely bore people, especially since the time spent learning expertise cuts into the time one might spend learning showmanship and rhetorical skills.

The second is that people often find complex explanations about what they thought were simple things unsettling or even frightening, even if they do not have an ideological commitment to the simple conception. While this might seem odd, dealing with the complexities of reality is a matter not just of intellect but also a matter of virtue. Virtue is, as our good dead friend Aristotle said, hard.

Engaging with the complexities of reality requires moderating your pride because you will need to admit when you do not know and when you are wrong. In American culture, admitting ignorance or error is usually a blow to one’s pride and status. It is often equated with weakness, although it obviously requires more strength of character to admit ignorance or error than it does to lie. Admitting ignorance or error also requires courage because, as just noted, doing so puts your status and pride at risk. My students often seem disconcerted and worried when I tell them, somewhat jokingly, that I am wrong about everything.

Concern about status crosses the political divide in the United States but folks on the right seem somewhat more concerned about hierarchy and status than the left. So, if someone offers a complex account of what it is to be a woman that goes beyond what we are taught in grade school, this might cause discomfort and fear in the audience. As such, a simple answer that fits what we were taught in grade school will feel right.

Given that Socrates famously claimed that wisdom is knowing you know nothing, it is hardly surprising that philosophers are often willing to admit ignorance and error. At least within certain limits that, ironically, help preserve their status as philosophers. In my own case, studying philosophy did help me accept that my ignorance is infinite and that I am wrong about everything. But my DIY training also led me to this view.

I had the good fortune of being raised by a dad who taught me many useful skills of the sort that would be stereotypically considered manly. I learned to use tools ranging from saws to rifles. I also took shop in school, something that has apparently been abandoned. I was good at shop, as evidenced by the fact that I have all my fingers. During COVID I enhanced my DIY skills by learning much more about electrical repair, plumbing and automobile repair. I’m also good at electrical work, as evidenced by the fact that I have not been electrocuted or burned down my house.

Refusing to acknowledge ignorance or error is an obstacle in fixing or building things, so part of learning to be good at these skills is learning how to moderate pride and develop courage. While one can get away with lying in business and politics, lying is not going to get your ice maker working again or solve the problem with your PC crashing when you try to play Darktide. Sure, you can lie to someone about fixing their icemaker or PC but that is a business skill. Lying about fixing, for example affordability, is a political skill. As is lying about what it is to be a woman.

The simple answer, that a woman is an adult human female, is obviously appealing to people who accept that ideology. Obviously, any conflicting answer will be looked upon negatively, especially if it is complex. Ironically, while the right seems smugly content with what they think is a simple answer that “proves” their gender ideology correct, they do not seem to understand that it invites more questions. Obviously enough, someone with any curiosity would realize that the concepts of adult, human and female raise questions that demand complex answers.

For example, while the concept of adult might seem simple and obvious, in the United States even the legal concept is complicated. For voting, contracts, jury duty, military service and consensual sex, a person is an adult at 18. For drinking, 21. If we get into the biology of adulthood, then we get different answers that vary between individuals. If we consider adulthood from a normative standpoint, such as in terms of moral accountability, then we also get different answers that vary with time and culture.

Sorting out what it is to be human is also a complex matter. There is the biological question in which we might wonder, for example, if neanderthals were human. There is also the normative question. For example, Kirk claimed that Spock was the most human, despite being only half biologically human. Outside of sci-fi, we make the moral claims that someone is human or inhuman, although they are obviously homo sapiens. There is also the metaphysical question of what it is to be human. For example, was Plato right when he claimed there was a form of Man? Probably not.

And although the right thinks (or pretends) they perfectly understand what it is to be female, this is also complicated even if we just stick to genetics and biology. For example, we are told in grade school that females are XX and males are XY. But 1 in 1,000 females are XXX. Human genital physiology is also complicated. But how can one respond to the “what is a woman?” question effectively and honestly?

From a rhetorical standpoint, the ideal would be to have a concise, snappy answer that is true. So, when the Nancy Maces of the world ask, “what is a woman?” one could just say (insert concise snappy truth). Unfortunately, the truth is complicated.

 As others have noted, there is no lower limit to simplicity if you lie, while reality imposes a simplicity floor on truth. This is one of the many reasons politicians and advertisers lie in varying degrees; they know that they need to keep it simple while also understanding simplifying leads to untruth. As such, beyond saying “it is complicated” there is no short, simple true answer to the question, which gives the right a huge rhetorical advantage. As would be suspected, they use the advantage of untrue simplicity broadly and this is augmented by decades of the right training Americans to distrust expertise. They also use the rhetorical technique of repetition as the question “what is a woman?” and the response “an adult human female” are talking points used across the world by the right.

To be honest, there is probably no way to counter this rhetorical question in a way that would change the minds of people already committed to the “an adult human female” gender ideology. Fortunately, most people are not committed to this ideology and their minds can change. After all, people have changed their minds about many things in America, with a recent change being the public view of same sex couples. It was not long ago that people just said “it’s Adame and Eve and not Adam and Steve” to “refute” same sex marriage. So, “a woman is an adult human female” might become another rhetorical relic of the right and they will need to find a new vulnerable group to demonize. Or rely on the classics, as misogyny, racism and antisemitism have served the right well.

 

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As a kid who started playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1979, I remember watching Tom Hanks play a character who goes insane from playing a TTRPG in Mazes and Monsters. This movie was broadcast in 1982, the same year that Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop warned America about the danger of video games. Which I also played. Thanks to the show and the surgeon general, I remember having to convince people I would not go insane from playing D&D or suffer some other mental breakdown from playing Temple of Apshai on a computer. Mazes and Monsters and the surgeon general’s view provide two excellent examples of the panic and culture war over gaming in the 1980s. It was claimed that these games would cause psychological harm.

The TV movie Mazes and Monsters was based on a book of the same name by R. Jaffe. The book was based on factually incorrect newspaper stories about James Dallas Egbert III which speculated about the role of D&D in his disappearance. William Dear, a private investigator who worked on the case, published the Dungeon Master in 1984. This book presented the facts, debunking the claims that D&D was to blame.

Unfortunately, as I found out in the 1980s, many people thought Mazes and Monsters was an accurate account of TTRPGs—even though it was fiction based on inaccurate news stories about a single person. As such, there was a lot going wrong there. While appeals to intuition arguments are often used in philosophy, an argument from fiction is always weak—for the obvious fact that it is fiction. Also, an inference from one example is anecdotal evidence.

As now has become something of a common practice in moral panics and culture war fights, fictional content was presented as proof of danger. As Hicks (1991) noted, psychiatrist and anti-television violence activist Thomas Radecki of the National Coalition on Television Violence used a fictional letter from Mazes and Monsters as “evidence” D&D had killed gamers.

To be fair, when people were concerned about the dangers of D&D (and similar games), sincere worry about potential harm should not be condemned. After all, if it can be shown that something (such as social media usage or pollution) is harmful, then it would be reasonable and good to try to protect people from this harm. The problem was, obviously enough, that this was a moral panic based on unfounded fears about alleged harm. This same tactic is still employed today and relies on fear rather than evidence.

Since the 1980s the effects of TTRPGs has been extensively studied and as Yuliawati, L., Wardhani, P. A. P., & Ng, J. H. (2024) have noted, “From existing literature, TTRPG provides benefits to promote cognitive and psychosocial skills, to prevent negative effects and stress, as well as to intervene in psychological problems such as social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and autism spectrum disorders.” Thus, far from causing psychological harm, TTRPGs are good for people. Anecdotally, this matches my experiences with TTRPGs and the hundreds of gamers I have interreacted with over the years. And that is how gamers eventually won that culture war battle. For now. But what about video games?

As noted above, United States Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop claimed young people were becoming addicted to video games ”body and soul.” In an excellent example of the “everyone knows” rhetorical tactic, Koop tried to persuade people of the danger of video games by asserting that ”more and more people are beginning to understand” the mental and physical harms of video games. To be fair and balanced, as a former pediatrician, Koop did have credibility as an expert on the health of children. Oddly enough, while he admitted he had no scientific evidence for his claims, he predicted evidence would soon be available. This can be seen as a version of the proof surrogate rhetorical device in that it promises proof will be forthcoming but does not provide it.

To his credit, Dr. Koop later admitted that his view was just his opinion and not based on evidence. The promised evidence never arrived and as noted in my previous essay, it turned out that the video games of the 1980s did us no harm. Although we gamers won that moral panic and culture war, the pattern is repeated: someone will claim, without evidence, that some technology is harmful and then some people will panic. The rational approach is, of course, to consider the evidence. In some cases, the danger will be real, as has been shown with social media in general and the infinite feed in particular. Unfortunately, social media companies have the money and influence to keep harming people as long as doing so is profitable. This does show a basic problem in our society: politicians exploiting moral panics and culture wars over what is harmless or beneficial while they protect those doing real harm. As always, culture war never changes and never ends.

 

 

References

Dear, W. (1984). The dungeon master: The disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III. Houghton Mifflin.

Hicks, Robert D. In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991; p. 288

 

Jaffe, R. (1981). Mazes and monsters. Delacorte Press.

Kroplewski, Z. (2025). Impact of participation in role-playing game (RPG) sessions on the perceived level of social anxiety and received social support. Brain Sciences, 15(11), 1158.

Rosenblad, S. R. (2025). Mastering your dragons: Using tabletop role-playing games in therapy. Behavioral Sciences, 15(4), 441.

Surgeon general sees danger in video games. (1982, November 10). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/10/us/around-the-nation-surgeon-general-sees-danger-in-video-games.html.

 

Yuliawati, L., Wardhani, P. A. P., & Ng, J. H. (2024). A scoping review of tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) as psychological intervention: Potential benefits and future directions. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 17, 2885–2903

Misrepresenting facts and lying have long been a part of politics. However, it was claimed facts died  on April 18, 2012. On this day Representative Allen West of my adopted state of Florida claimed that about 80 congressional democrats were members of the Communist Party. This was not true, but West decided to stand by his remarks. If facts died that die, one must wonder what has happened since then. Can facts become more dead?

As a gamer, this situation reminds me of the death rules in D&D. While in some versions characters die when they are beaten down to zero hit points, in other versions a character could keep taking damage beyond zero and end up with negative hit points (usually dying at -10). Facts seem to be like that—although they seem to have died in 2012, they kept taking damage and are now very dead. One might even say that Trump and his ilk have turned facts into the undead: horribly distorted versions of once living things. But some people retain hope for facts.

While this might come as something of a shock, people are often not very rational—especially when it comes to politics. When people get information that corrects a false claim they believe, they are even more likely to believe the false claim.  For example, if Republicans and Democrats read an article that claims that a Democrat did something bad and then learn that the article was mistaken, the Republics would now be more inclined to believe the original article even though it had been shown to be in error. The Democrats would be more inclined to reject the original article. In short, it seems that corrective information is generally only accepted when it corrects in a way that matches a person’s ideology.  This has unfortunate effect that correcting an error in an ideological context will only correct the error in the minds of those who already want to believe it is an error and will probably not change the mind of those who want to believe.

In addition to the obvious problem, this tendency also means that people who are wrong (intentionally or unintentionally) usually will not suffer any damage to their credibility among their own faction, provided that their errors match the faction’s ideology. As such, the consequences of saying things that are not true seem to be generally positive, at least from a pragmatic standpoint. After all, if the claim is properly ideological and is not called out, then it will be accepted. If it is called out and shown to be in error, the criticism will generally serve to incline those who agree with the claim to still believe it. As such, presenting an ideologically “correct” falsehood (which need not be a lie) seems to be a win-win situation.

Since I teach critical thinking, this worries me. After all, a large part of my job as a philosophy professor is trying to teach people that they should base at least some of their beliefs on evidence and rational argumentation.  One stock response to my concern is that people are this way “by nature” and there is little point in trying to teach people to be critical thinkers. Trying to overcome this tendency and solve the problem of ideological irrationality would be as futile as trying to solve the problem of teen pregnancy by trying to teach abstinence (after all, people have sex by nature).

On my bad days, I almost agree. After all, I often see people who are rational in non-ideological areas lose this capacity when it comes to their ideology. However, this is not true of everyone. After all, there are clearly and obviously people who can do a reasonably good job of objective analysis. While some of this might be disposition, much of it is due to training. While everyone might not be trainable, most people can learn. To use an analogy, just as natural tendencies can be overcome by other forms of training (such as military training), this allegedly natural tendency to just go with one’s ideology could be overcome. I know this because I have seen it happen. Albeit rarely.

Of course, there is also an artificial barrier. Some bad people benefit from being able to (consciously or not) manipulate people. As such, they have a vested interest in learning how to do this while also ensuring their targets are left as defenseless as possible. While critical thinking skills are in demand, our education system is largely designed to not create such skills. One example is that very basic critical thinking classes are not taught until college. While some educators wonder why students do so badly at critical thinking, this is an obvious part of the answer. Imagine the math skills of students if they took their first actual math class as a college freshman. While it might be countered that critical thinking is too hard for kids, this is not true—the basics could be taught as soon as kids were being taught the basics of math and probably even earlier. In short, I would say that much of what is attributed to human nature is the result of education—or the lack thereof.

 

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Teenagers are stereotyped as poor decision makers who engage in risky behavior. These stereotypes are often explained in terms of the teenage brain (or mind) being immature and lacking the reasoning abilities of adults. Obviously, adults often engage in poor decision-making and risky behavior.

But research shows that teenagers use basically the same reasoning as adults and they even overestimate risks. So, if the youth use the same reasoning as adults and overestimate risk, then what needs to be determined is the way teenage thinking differs from that of adults.

A plausible hypothesis is that teenagers differ from adults in terms of how they evaluate the value of a reward. The difference is that teenagers place higher value on certain rewards than adults. If this is correct, it makes sense that teenagers are more willing than adults to engage in risk taking. After all, the rationality of taking a risk can be seen as a matter of weighing the (perceived) risk against the (perceived) value of the potential reward. So, a teenager who places higher value on a reward than an adult would be acting rationally (to a degree) if they were willing to take more risks to achieve that reward.

Obviously, adults also vary in their willingness to take risks and some of this is, presumably, a matter of the value adults place on the rewards relative to the risks. So, for example, if Sam values sex more than Sally does, then Sam will (somewhat) rationally accept more risks than Sally. If teenagers generally value rewards more than adults do, then the greater risk-taking behavior of teens relative to adults makes considerable sense.

It might be wondered why teenagers place more value on rewards relative to adults. One theory is based in the workings of the brain. On this view, the sensitivity of the human brain to dopamine and oxytocin peaks during the teenage years. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is supposed to trigger the “reward” mechanisms of the brain. Oxytocin is another neurotransmitter, one that is also linked with the “reward” mechanisms as well as social activity. If the teenage brain is more sensitive to these chemicals, then it makes sense that teenagers would place more value on rewards. This is because they do, in fact, get a greater reward than adults.  Or, more accurately, they feel more rewarded. This, of course, might be one and the same thing as perhaps the value of a reward is a matter of how rewarded a person feels. This does raise an interesting subject, namely whether the value of a reward is subjective or objective.

Adults are often critical of what they see as irrationally risky behavior by teens. While my teen years are well behind me, I have looked back on some of my decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time, yet my adult assessment is that they were not. However, I am weighing these decisions in terms of my adult perspective and in terms of the consequences of these actions (or potential consequences I could have faced). I also must consider that the rewards that I felt in the past are now nothing but faded memories. It is a bit like eating a lot of cake. At the time, that sugar rush and taste are rewarding, and it might seem like a good idea at the time. But once the sugar rush gives way to the sugar crash and the cake, as my mother would say, “went right to the hips”, then the assessment might be different. The food analogy is especially apt: as you might well recall from your own youth, candy and other junk food tasted so good then. Now it imostly just tastes like junk. This also raises an interesting subject worthy of additional exploration, namely the assessment of value over time.

Going back to the cake, eating the whole thing was enjoyable and seemed like a great idea at the time. Yes, I have eaten an entire cake. With ice cream.  But, in my defense, I used to run 95-100 miles per week. Looking back from the perspective of my older self, that seems to have been a bad idea, and I certainly would not do that (or enjoy it) today. But does this change of perspective show that it was a poor choice at the time? I am tempted to think that, at the time, it was a good choice for the kid I was. But my adult self now judges my kid self harshly and perhaps unfairly. After all, there does seem to be relativity to value and it seems mere prejudice to say that my current evaluation should be taken as being better than the evaluations of my past self. That is, what would be a bad decision today might have been a good one then. Using the cake example, cake tasted so good back in the day. Now, thanks to the cruel hand of time, cake does not taste nearly as good.

 

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In general, humans often join factions and then see their own factions as right, good and truthful while viewing opposing factions as wrong, evil and deceitful. While the best-known factions tend to be political or religious, people can form factions around almost anything, ranging from sports teams to video game consoles.

While there are rational reasons to form and support a faction, factionalism tends to be fed by cognitive biases and fallacies. A core cognitive bias of factionalism is in group bias. This is the psychology tendency to easily form negative views of those outside of their group. For example, Democrats often see Republicans negatively, casting them as uncaring, sexist, racist and fixated on money. In turn, Republicans typically look back at Democrats negatively and see them as woke, obsessed with race and gender, and wanting to punish success. This occurs outside of politics, with competing religious groups seeing each other as heretics or infidels. It even extends to games and sports, as the battles of #gamergate illustrated.

The other side of this bias is that members of a faction see themselves in a positive light and are inclined to attribute positive qualities. For example, Democrats see themselves as caring about the environment and being concerned about social good. As another example, MAGA folks cast themselves as true Americans who just want to make America great again.

This bias is often expressed in terms of and fueled by stereotypes. For example, critics of the sexist aspects of gaming might the worst stereotypes of male gamers (dateless, pale misogynists who spew their rage with a mouth full of Cheetos). As another example, Democrats will sometimes cast the rich as being uncaring and out of touch plutocrats. These stereotypes are sometimes taken the extreme of demonizing: presenting the other faction members as not merely wrong but as evil.

Such stereotypes are easy to accept and many are based on another bias, the fundamental attribution error. This is a psychological tendency to fail to realize that the behavior of other people is as much limited by circumstances as our behavior would be if we were in their circumstances. For example, a person who was born into a wealthy family and enjoyed many advantages might not understand the challenges faced by people who were not so lucky in choosing their parents. Because of this, she might demonize those who are unsuccessful and attribute their failure to laziness and other defects without considering their circumstances.

Factionalism is also strengthened by various fallacies. The most obvious is the appeal to group identity. This fallacy occurs when a person accepts her pride in being in a group as evidence that a claim is true. Roughly put, a person believes a claim because her faction accepts it as true. The claim might even be true, but the mistake is that the basis of the belief is not rational. For example, a devoted environmentalist might believe in climate change because of her membership in that faction rather than because of evidence (which shows climate change is occurring). This method of belief “protects” group members from evidence and arguments because such beliefs are based on group identity and not proof. While a person can overcome this fallacy, faction-based beliefs tend to only change when the faction changes or if the person leaves the faction.

The above-mentioned biases also tend to incline people towards fallacious reasoning. The negative biases tend to motivate people to accept straw man reasoning, which is when someone ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version. Politicians routinely make straw men out of the views they oppose, and their faction members typically embrace these. The negative biases also make ad hominem fallacies common. An ad hominem is a category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected based on some irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack is made against the character of the person making the claim or her circumstances, or her actions. Second, this attack is taken as evidence against the claim. For example, opponents of a feminist critic of sexism in gaming might reject her view by claiming that she is only trying to become famous and make money. While it might be true that she is doing that, this would not disprove her claims. The guilt by association fallacy, in which a person rejects a claim simply because it is pointed out that people she dislikes accept the claim, both arises from and contributes to factionalism.

The negative views and stereotypes are also often fed by fallacies that involve poor generalizations. One is misleading vividness, a fallacy in which a very small number of dramatic events are taken to outweigh statistical evidence. For example, a person in a faction holding that migrants are violent criminals would focus on the few examples they can find. Misleading vividness is closely related to hasty generalization, a fallacy in which a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough to justify that conclusion. For example, a Democrat might believe that all corporations are bad based just on the behavior of Amazon. Biased generalizations also occur, which is a fallacy committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is biased or prejudiced in some manner. This is often fed by the confirmation bias—the tendency people have to seek and accept evidence for their view while avoiding or ignoring evidence against their view. For example, a person might form their views from watching biased media such as Fox News.

The positive biases also contribute to fallacious reasoning, often taking the form of a positive ad hominem. A positive ad hominem occurs when a claim is accepted based on irrelevant facts about a person making a claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, something positive (but irrelevant) about the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is presented. Second, this is taken as evidence for their claim. For example, a MAGA Republican might accept what Trump says as true, just because he likes Trump.

Nor surprisingly, factionalism is also supported by variations of appeals to belief (it is true/right because my faction believes it is so), appeal to common practice (it is right because my faction does it), and appeal to tradition (it is right because my faction has “always done this”).

Factionalism is both fed by and contributes to such biases and poor reasoning. This is not to say that group membership is a bad thing, just that it is wise to be on guard against the corrupting influence of factionalism.

 

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As a philosopher, I became familiar with the notion of the modern political concept of privilege as a graduate student. This occurred sometimes in classes and sometimes when I was lectured by other students about my privileges as a white man. Lest anyone think I was exploiting my privileges, the lectures were always about my being a man and my general appearance of whiteness (I am only mostly white) as opposed to any misdeed I had committed. I was generally sympathetic to most criticisms of privilege, but I recognized that it is a fallacy to use a person’s membership in a privileged class as grounds for rejecting their claims. Back then, there was no handy phrase to check a member of a privileged class. Fortunately (or unfortunately) such a phrase emerged: “check your privilege!” Thanks to the victory of the right, this phrase is used less often these days. But as the right has been adept at adopting the tools of the left, I would expect them to have a variation on this to use against those who, in fact, lack privilege.

The original intent of the phrase was to remind someone making a claim on a political (or moral) issue that they are speaking from a position of privilege, such as being a male or straight. While it is most used against members of the traditional privileged classes (males, whites, the wealthy, etc.) it can also be employed against people of classes that are either privileged relative to the classes they are commenting on or in a different non-privileged class. For example, a Latina might be told to “check her privilege” for making a remark about black women. In this case, the idea is to remind the transgressors that different oppressed groups experience their oppression differently.

As might be imagined, some take issue with being told to “check their privilege.” In some cases, this can be mere annoyance with the phrase. This annoyance can have some foundation, given that the phrase can have a hostile connotation, and it can seem like a dismissive reply. But to be fair and balanced, it is no doubt exhausting arguing with the privileged and having a quick reply can save time and effort.

In other cases, the use of the phrase can be taken as an attempt to silence. Roughly put, “check your privilege” can be interpreted as “stop talking” or even as “you are wrong because you belong to a privileged class.” In some cases, people are interpreting the use incorrectly; the privileged are often very defensive and can, oddly, see themselves as the “real victims.”

Thus, the phrase can be seen as having two main functions (in addition to its dramatic and rhetorical use). One is as a reminder, the other is as an attack. I will consider each of these in the context of critical thinking.

The reminder function of the phrase is grounded in a real need to remind people of two common cognitive biases, namely in group bias and attribution error. In group bias is the tendency people have to easily form negative opinions of people who are not in their group. This bias leads people to see members of their own group more positively while seeing members of other groups more negatively. For example, a rich person might think that other rich people are hardworking while thinking poor people are lazy, thieving and inclined to use drugs. As another example, a woman might regard her fellow women as kind and altruistic while regarding men as violent, sex-crazed and selfish.

Given the power of this bias, it is worth reminding people about it, especially when their remarks show signs that this bias is likely to be in effect. Of course, telling someone to “check their privilege” might not be the nicest way to engage in the discussion and it is less specific than “consider that you might be influenced by in group bias.” But an insistence on “niceness” or “civility” is often a tool used to silence critics, so I understand why people would not be inclined to be “civil.” After all, “civil” can often be intended to mean “know your place” or “shut up.”

Attribution error is a bias that leads people to not appreciate that other people are as constrained by events and circumstances as they would be if they were in their situation. For example, consider a discussion about requiring voters to have a photo ID, reducing the number of polling stations and reducing their hours of operation. A person who is somewhat well off might claim that getting an ID and driving across town to a polling station on his lunch break is no problem—because it is no problem for him. However, for someone who does not have a car and is poor, these can be serious obstacles. As another example, someone who is rich might express the view that the poor should not be helped because they are obviously poor because they are lazy (and not because of the circumstances they face, such as being born into poverty).

Given the power of this bias, a person who seems to make this error should be reminded of this. But telling them to “check their privilege” might not be the most diplomatic way to engage and it is certainly less specific than pointing out the likely error. But, given the limits of social media, it might be a viable option when used in this context.

But using it to silence a person or to reject the person’s claim would not be justified. While it is reasonable to consider the effects of biases, to reject a person’s claim because of their membership in a class would be an ad hominen.  An ad hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected based on some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions are made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). But such attacks are irrelevant to the person’s claim, whether it is a traditional ad hominem or a “check your privilege” attack.

 

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The rise of social media created a new world for social researchers. One focus has been on determining how quickly and broadly emotions spread online. Over a decade ago, researchers at Beijing University found that rage spread the fastest and farthest online. Researchers in the United States found that anger was a speed leader, but not the fastest in the study: awe was even faster than rage. But rage was quite fast. As might be expected, sadness was a slow spreader and had a limited expansion.

This research helped explain how social media made the world worse. Rage tends to be a strong motivator and sadness tends to be a de-motivator. The power of awe was an interesting finding, but some reflection shows this does make sense—it tends to move people to want to share. IRL, think of people eagerly drawing the attention of strangers to things like beautiful sunsets, impressive feats or majestic animals.

In general, awe is a positive emotion, and it seems to be a good thing that it travels far and wide on the internet. Rage can be a mixed bag but has largely proven to be a negative influence.

When people share their rage via social media, they are sharing with an intent to express (“I am angry!”) and to infect others with this rage (“you should be angry, too!”). Rage, like many infectious agents, also has the effect of weakening the host’s “immune system.” In the case of anger, the immune system is reason and emotional control. Anger tends to suppress reason and lower emotional control. This makes people even more vulnerable to rage and susceptible to the classic fallacy of appeal to anger. This is the fallacy in which a person accepts anger as proof that a claim is true. Roughly put, the person “reasons” like this: “this makes me angry, so it is true.” This infection also renders people susceptible to related emotions (and fallacies), such as fear (and appeal to force).

Because of these qualities of anger, it is easy for untrue claims to be accepted far and wide via the internet. This is, obviously enough, the negative side of anger.  Anger can also be positive—to use an analogy, it can be like a cleansing fire that sweeps away brambles.

For anger to be a positive factor, it would need to be a virtuous anger (to follow Aristotle). Put a bit simply, it would need to be the right degree of anger, felt for the right reasons and directed at the right target. This sort of anger can mobilize people to do good. As a recent example, people were outraged by the actions of Trump’s ICE. In response, people protested and ICE started murdering citizens. This caused more protests and the Trump regime changed its tactics.

The challenge is, of course, to distinguish between warranted and unwarranted anger. This is a serious challenge—as noted above, people tend to feel that they are right because they are angry rather than inquiring as to whether their rage is justified or not.

It is wise to follow the advice of Aristotle and consider whether the anger is at the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. But anger, ironically, makes it hard to engage in such assessment.

 

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The assuming an authority of dictating to others, and a forwardness to prescribe to their opinions, is a constant concomitant of this bias and corruption of our judgments. For how almost can it be otherwise, but that he should be ready to impose on another’s belief, who has already imposed on his own? Who can reasonably expect arguments and conviction from him in dealing with others, whose understanding is not accustomed to them in his dealing with himself? Who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannizes over his own mind, and usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command assent by only its own authority, i.e. by and in proportion to that evidence which it carries with it.

-John Locke

 

As a philosophy professor who focuses on the practical value of philosophical thinking, one of my objectives is teaching students to be critical thinkers. As I see it, critical thinking is the rational process of determining whether a claim should be accepted as true, rejected or false or subject to the suspension of judgment. A critical thinker operates on the principle that belief in a claim should be proportional to the evidence for it, rather than in proportion to  interests or feelings. In this I follow John Locke’s view: “Whatsoever credit or authority we give to any proposition more than it receives from the principles and proofs it supports itself upon, is owing to our inclinations that way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such: which, as it can receive no evidence from our passions or interests, so it should receive no tincture from them.”

Unfortunately, people often fail to follow this principle in important matters such as climate change and vaccinations. They reject proofs and evidence in favor of interests and passions.

Even though the scientific evidence for climate change is overwhelming, there are those who deny it. These people are typically conservatives—although there is nothing about conservatism itself that requires denying climate change.

While rejecting scientific evidence for climate change can be seen as irrational, it is easy to attribute a rational motive to this view. After all, there are people who have an economic interest in denying it or preventing action from being taken that is contrary to their interests. This interest provides a motive to make claims that one knows are not true as well as a psychological impetus to sincerely hold a false belief. As such, climate change denial can make sense even in the face of overwhelming evidence: money is stake. However, denial is less rational for most climate change deniers—they are not profiting greatly from the fossil fuel business. However, they could be motivated by financial concerns because addressing climate change could raise their energy bills. Of course, not addressing climate change will cost them much more.

I understand climate change denial in that I have a sensible narrative as to why people reject science because of their interests. However, I was much more confused by the vaccine skeptics.

While vaccines are not risk free, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that they are safe and effective. Scientists understand how they work and there is extensive empirical evidence of their positive impact—such as the massive reduction in cases of diseases such as polio and measles. Oddly, there is significant number of Americans who willfully deny the science of vaccination. What struck me as most unusual is that some of these people are college educated. While MAHA has embraced vaccine skepticism, political liberals are also vaccine skeptics, thus showing that science denial can be bi-partisan. It is fascinating, but also horrifying, to see someone walk through the process of denial—as shown in an old segment on the Daily Show. This process is complex: evidence is rejected, experts are dismissed and so on—it is as if the person’s mind switched into a Bizzaro version of critical thinking (“kritikal tincing” perhaps). This is in marked contrast with the process of rational disagreement using  critical thinking  to support an opposing viewpoint. Being a philosopher, I value rational disagreement and I am careful to give opposing views their due. However, the use of fallacious methods and outright rejection of rational methods of reasoning is not an acceptable method.

As noted above, climate change denial makes sense—behind the denial is a clear economic interest. However, vaccine science denial seems to lack that motive for most people (although not everyone). As such, an alternative explanation is needed for those who aren’t vaccine skeptics for the purposes of grifting.

Some research provides insight into the matter and it is consistent with Locke’s view that people are influenced by both interests and passions. In this case, the motivating passion seems to be a person’s commitment to their concept of self. When a person’s self-concept or self-identity is threatened by facts, they will reject facts in favor of identity.  In the case of the vaccine skeptics, the belief that vaccines are harmful has become part of their self-identity. Or so goes the theory as to why these deniers reject the evidence.

To be effective, this rejection must be more than asserting the facts are wrong. After all, the person is aiming at self-deception to maintain self-identity. As such, the person must create a narrative which makes their rejection seem sensible and believable to them. A denier must, as Pascal said about his famous wager, make themselves believe their denial. In the case of science, a person needs to reject not just claims made by scientists but also the scientific method. The narrative of denial must be a complete story that protects itself from criticism. This is, obviously enough, different from a person who denies a claim based on evidence—since there is rational support for the denial, there is no need to create a narrative tale.

This is a major danger of this sort of denial—not the denial of established facts, but the explicit rejection of the methodology  used to assess facts. While people often excel at compartmentalization, this strategy runs the risk of corrupting the person’s thinking across the board.

As noted above, as a philosopher one of my main tasks is to train people to think critically and rationally. While I would like to believe that everyone can be taught to be an effective and rational thinker, I know that people are far more swayed by rhetoric and fallacious reasoning then by good logic. As such, there might be little hope that people can be “cured” of their rejection of science and reasoning. Aristotle took this view—while noting that some people can be convinced by “arguments and fine ideals” most people cannot. He advocated the use of coercive habituation to get them to behave properly and this could (and has) been employed to correct incorrect beliefs. However, such a method is agnostic in regard to the truth—people can be coerced into accepting the false as well as the true.

Interestingly, a past study by Brendan Nyhan shows that reason and persuasion both fail when employed in attempts to change false beliefs that are critical to a person’s self-identity. In the case of Nyhan’s study, there were various attempts to change the beliefs of vaccine science deniers using reason (facts and science) and various methods of persuasion (appeals to emotions and anecdotes). Since reason and persuasion are the two main ways to convince people, this is a problem.

That study and other research did indicate an avenue that might work. Assuming that it is the threat to a person’s self-concept that triggers the rejection mechanism, the solution is to approach a person in a way that does not trigger this response. It is like trying to conduct a transplant without triggering the body’s immune system to reject the transplanted organ.

One obvious problem is that once a person has taken a false belief as part of their self-concept, it is difficult to get them to see any attempt to change their mind as anything other than a threat. Addressing this might require changing the person’s self-concept or finding a specific strategy that is not seen as a threat. Once that is done, the second stage, that of addressing the false belief, can begin.

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 People want to gain as much as they can for as little effort as possible. For example, people seem to buy exercise equipment thinking it will make exercise easier. They usually find out that is not the case—thus the trade in barely used exercise equipment that spent its time buried under clothes. Years ago, brain training games were all the rage. The appeal was, of course, that the games were supposed to fun rather than burdensome, unliked education. The question was whether such games worked.

The idea that playing brain games can have positive effects makes sense. After all, exercising the body improves it. By analogy, the same should hold for the brain. The obvious concern is that not everything that people think is exercise improves the body. Likewise, some brain games might be like useless exercises for the body: you are doing something, but it is having no significant effect. To address this matter, the thing to do is to turn to science.

As it stands, the research showed that the commercial brain training games had no meaningful impact. While people do get better at the games, this is most likely due to familiarity. For example, I used to play World of Warcraft and I “got good” at boss fights by doing them repeatedly until I was familiar with the mechanisms. While there is some skill transference between fights, I found I had to learn each boss to “get good.” The same generally holds for brain games and getting better at such a game does not entail that one is smarter or more mentally capable.

Fortunately for me, video games of the more “traditional” sort can improve memory and mental skills. This is not surprising as they typically present challenges analogous to those in the real world. As such, rather than simply focusing on a simple game that is narrowly focused, the gamer is forced to fully engage the general challenge and develop a broader set of capabilities. As such, video games of this sort probably help improve mental abilities in a way analogous to how reality does: you improve skills that have a general application. In the case of video games, the challenges will tend to be more challenging and more frequent than what a person would generally encounter in the real world. For example, participating in a World of Warcraft dungeon or raid involves tracking abilities, maintaining situational awareness, following (or giving) orders, using strategy and so on. That is, it provides a mental workout. So, a person looking for games to make her smarter would be better off getting a gaming console or PC and selecting challenging games. They will probably be much more fun than most brain games and apparently more effective.

That said, there are certain brain games that do seem to have a positive benefit. One promising example is a speed training game that seems to help reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.

I would also like to put in a plug for traditional tabletop games as well—be they games like Risk or role-playing games like D&D. They can provide enjoyable challenges that seem to have a positive impact on cognitive abilities. Plus, they are social activities—and that is better for a person than playing solo brain games.

One cognitive bias is the tendency of a person to regard themself as better than average—even when there is no evidence for that belief. Surveys illustrate this bias: most Americans rank themselves as above average in everything ranging from leadership ability to accuracy in self-assessment.

Obviously, most people cannot be better than average—that is just how averages work. As to why people think the way they do, the disparity between what is claimed and what is the case can be explained in two ways. One is another cognitive bias, which is the tendency people have to believe their performance is better than it is. Teachers see this often—students generally believe that they did better on a test or paper than they really did. I have lost count of the number of students who have told me their papers “felt like an A.” I never doubted this; having felt the same thing about various C and D papers I wrote as a student. Given that people regard their own performance as better than it is, it certainly makes sense that they would see their abilities as better than average.

Another reason is yet another bias: people tend to give more weight to the negative over the positive. As such, when assessing other people, we tend to consider negative things about them as more significant than the positive. So, for example, when Sally is assessing the honesty of Bill, she will give more weight to incidents in which Bill was dishonest relative to those in which he was honest. So, Sally will probably see herself as being more honest than Bill. After enough comparisons, she will probably see herself as above average.

This self-delusion probably has some positive effects. It no doubt allows people to maintain a sense of worth. But there are downsides—after all, a person who does not do a good job assessing himself and others will be operating based on inaccurate information and this rarely leads to good decision making.

The better-than-average delusion holds up well even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. For example, the British Journal of Social Psychology did a survey of British prisoners asking them to compare themselves to other prisoners and the general population in terms of such traits as honesty, compassion, and trustworthiness. Not surprisingly, the prisoners ranked themselves as above average. They did, however, only rank themselves as average when it came to the trait of law-abidingness. This suggests that reality has some slight impact on people, but not as much as one might hope.