Critical Thinking/Logic

If you are starting a WOX (War On X), this entails that there is no significant and sustained attack on X.  For example, there is no significant and sustained attack on Christmas, so the War on Christmas has been built on fabrications, hyperbole, and intentionally bad logic. But what if there is something like X, Y, that is under significant and sustained attack? The obvious answer is that you would not need to start a WOY (War on Y), you could provide reasonable evidence that Y is under sustained and significant attack. But what if openly claiming that Y is under attack would have negative consequences? For example, while there is no significant and sustained attack on white Americans by “the left”, there is a sustained and significant attack on white supremacy in the United States. But if you openly defended white supremacy and lamented that it is under fire, you would face consequences.

Because of this, some people claim that “you can’t say anything anymore.” While obviously hyperbole, this assertion is often used to complain that people can face consequences for remarks they would have been able to make with impunity in the past. In some cases, this complaint has merit and free expression is being wrongly infringed upon. In other cases, people are merely facing consequences for violating the current social norms.

The United States has undergone various normative changes over the years. These changes include alterations in laws, etiquette, aesthetics, and moral values. The area of aesthetics is non-controversial: everyone gets that fashion, hair styles, music, and such change over time. Since I started teaching in 1993, I have witnessed these changes in my students: styles and music that were in vogue back in the 1990s are now hopelessly out of date (until they become retro cool). Another obvious area of change is American racism. While racism is still a serious problem, American norms have changed so that open racism is no longer acceptable. There are also many other things that are now unacceptable to say openly, so what can you do if what you want to say is something that would lead to consequences you are unwilling to face? Fortunately, there is a way to say such things without saying them. As would be expected, racism provides an excellent example and Lee Atwater ably explains how to do this:

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 

What Atwater is describing is the use of what is known as a dog whistle. One version of the dog whistle is to use coded language whose true (and usually controversial or problematic) meaning is understood by your intended audience but not understood by the general population. This is analogous to how slang terms and technical terms work; you need to know the special meanings of the terms to understand what is being said. Another version of the dog whistle is a form of innuendo. A word or phrase is used to suggest or imply something (usually negative). If you do not know the special meanings or the intended implication, you are excluded, often intentionally so.

The coded or suggestive words or phrases will also (usually) have neutral or even positive meanings to the general population. This feature allows you to say what you want to say to your intended audience without the general population knowing what you really mean. For example, “thug” and “urban” have neutral meanings to many but are also coded words used for racist dog whistles. “Bossy” is an example of a sexist dog whistle. While using one can raise moral concerns, the dog whistle has many advantages.

The advantages of the dog whistle include:

 

• Your fellows know what you mean, and they approve.
• Your foes know what you mean, and they are triggered.
• Critics can seem silly or crazy to “normies.”
• Plausible deniability that “normies” will accept.
• Can onramp “normies.”

As noted above, coded and suggestive words work like slang—those in the know will understand what you mean. These people tend to split into two groups. There are your fellows who will presumably approve of your dog whistle. There are also your foes who are likely to be triggered—they know what you mean, and it will probably outrage them, especially when you whistle loudly in public. Fortunately, if these foes try to criticize you or explain what you really mean, they are likely to seem silly or crazy to “normies” (people who do not know the codes). Over the years, I have tried to explain dog whistles to intelligent, educated “normies” and I usually fail—they tend to think that I am either just getting it wrong or that I have a nefarious motivation. As such, the dog whistle can provide a double victory: you send a clear message to your fellows while also “owning” the “libs” as they are frustrated by trying to explain your dog whistle to people who are oblivious. Even if your foes make some headway, a dog whistle provides plausible deniability. You can insist that you were using the words in the “normal” way and even that you had no idea that they are coded or suggestive. For example, a politician might warn voters not to “monkey this up” by electing their (black) opponent. When it is pointed out that this is a well-known racist dog whistle, the politician can plead ignorance and say they did not intend to use it that way. While their fellows and their foes get exactly what was meant, most normies will either be baffled or accept the explanation.  Finally, dog whistles can help on-ramp normies.

While normies would be appalled by, for example, openly bigoted language, they can be lured onto the path by dog whistles. This is usually done by appealing to legitimate or sensible fears hopes and concerns. For example, it is reasonable to be concerned that K-12 athletes are being treated fairly. But “fairness” can be used as a dog whistle that might lure people down the path of being anti-trans without them realizing how they ended up there.  But dog whistles do have a disadvantage.

Laying aside the usual moral concerns, the sole disadvantage of the dog whistle is that “normies” can catch on and start to hear them. Once enough normies recognize a dog whistle, it is no longer useful since the point of a dog whistle is that you can present two different meanings to your two audiences (your fellows and the “normies”).  This problem can be addressed by switching to a similar dog whistle that the normies have yet to decode or by creating a new dog whistle word or phrase. The far right does this routinely and never seems to be at a loss for new dog whistles; such is the power of language. While it is unlikely that the normies will decode your whistle while you are in mid-sentence, a clever whistler checks their whistles and keeps up with what codes have been cracked.

As an example of how to use this method, imagine that you wanted to claim that there is a War on Girls and Women.  I do not, obviously, mean the sustained and systematic problems with sexism and misogyny. This is, after all, supposed to be a WOX and not address the real problems women and girls face. You can note that over the past decade trans athletes have been able to compete in accord with now well-established rules. While some people do come out as openly anti-trans, many normies see this as bigotry. So, if you want to say something anti-trans while not spooking the normies, you can use the dog whistle of fairness: you have nothing against trans people; you are just asking questions about fairness. Surely it would be “unfair” if a young girl had to compete in sports with a burly boy…or, rather, a trans person.  There must, then, be a War on Girls and Women! No, not systematic sexism. Again, this is a WOX.  This concludes my series on the WOX and is the WOX to end all WOXs.

 

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While a WOX can be created based entirely on lies, it can be useful to have some true claims as evidence for the WOX. Obviously, if adequate evidence existed to prove that X is under significant and sustained attack, then you would not need to create a WOX. Fortunately for starting a WOX, the United States has a population of 330 million, so you can almost certainly find someone who did or said something that would honestly constitute an attack on X. The odds are ever in your favor. You might wonder what you can do with but a few examples, since isolated incidents do not make a war. Fortunately, there are two time-honored fallacies you can use when you have evidence, yet not enough of it: the Hasty Generalization and Anecdotal Evidence.

A hasty generalization is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough to adequately support that conclusion.  It has the following general form:

 

Premise 1:  Sample S (which is not large enough) is taken from population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is made about Population P based on S.

 

That this is a fallacy is easy to show with a fishing example. If you catch a small yellow perch in a lake, you would not be justified in believing that all (or even most) of the fish in the lake are small yellow perch. For all you know, there could be dozens of species of fish in the lake.

In the case of a WOX, here is how you would make a type of hasty generalization from a few examples of attacks on X:

 

Premise 1: There are a small number of examples of attacks on X.

Conclusion: There is a significant and sustained war on X.

 

The “logic” here is that having a few examples of attacks “proves” that there are many examples of attacks and thus there is a WOX. This is obviously bad logic is on par with inferring that because you saw one fish in a lake it must be teaming with fish. Now, to the Fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence.

The Fallacy of Anecdotal evidence is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. Some consider this to just be a variation on hasty generalization.  It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise 1: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C about Population P based on Anecdote A is true.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2:  Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is false.

 

For a WOX, you would use the following form:

 

Premise 1: Anecdote A, about an attack on X, is told about Population P.

Conclusion: Attacks on X are widespread in Population P.

 

 

This fallacy is like hasty generalization and a similar sort of error is committed, namely drawing an inference based on a sample that is inadequate in size relative to the conclusion. The main difference between hasty generalization and anecdotal evidence is that the fallacy anecdotal evidence involves using a story (anecdote) as the sample.

People often fall victim to this fallacy because stories and anecdotes tend to have more psychological influence than statistical data. This leads people to infer that what is true in an anecdote must be true of the whole population or that an anecdote justifies rejecting statistical evidence in favor of said anecdote. Not surprisingly, people most commonly accept this fallacy because they would prefer that what is true in the anecdote is true for the whole population. For example, a person who smokes might try to convince herself that smoking will not hurt her because her Aunt Jane smoked a dozen cigars a day and lived until she was 104.

Fortunately, while the logic is bad, this method has advantages:

 

• When anyone checks your examples, they will be found to be true.
• It avoids the disadvantages of lying.
• Statistics are what they are, but you can share the anecdotes you want to tell.
• Statistics require that people think, stories make people feel.

 

Anyone who checks on your examples will find they are true, which can deter them from looking beyond them. If you are criticized, you can “defend” yourself by focusing on the fact that your examples (or stories) are real—you are technically not lying. By being able to pick your examples and stories you can shape the narrative as you wish. Best of all, as a matter of general psychology people tend to be bored by statistics and moved by stories. You can probably find some very emotionally charged stories and take advantage of the Fallacy of Misleading Vividness. This is a fallacy in which a very small number of particularly dramatic events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence. It relies on the psychological force of the drama of the examples rather than on the logical weight of evidence. It can be considered a variation on Hasty Generalization/Anecdotal Evidence.

While useful, these fallacies do have their disadvantages:

 

• If someone checks, they will find you only have a few examples or stories.
• While you are not technically lying, you are being dishonest.

 

Fortunately, your target audience is unlikely to critically assess whether you have enough examples or not for your generalization. If the generalization matches their biases, fears, or expectations, they will tend to be moved by the psychological force of the fallacy and ignore that it is logically flawed. Those who are willing and able to engage your generalization critically are not your target audience and their criticisms will probably be ignored by your target audience or even taken as more “evidence” you are right. As was discussed with religious and moral concerns about lying, these concerns can easily be dismissed or worked around.

As an example of how to use this method, imagine that you wanted to claim that there is a War on White Men in America. With such a large population, you can easily find a few examples of people who explicitly attack (in word or in deed) white men simply for being white men. If you are lucky (which you probably will be) the examples will be especially dramatic, and the “perpetrators” will be members of groups your target audience already fears or hates (thus allowing you to cash in on stereotypes and demonizing). These few incidents can be generalized into a full-scale war, thus getting your WOX started. You can also make good (evil) use of dog whistles here, which will be the subject of the last essay in this series.

 

 

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In the previous essay in this series, I discussed how you could provide “examples” of a War on X by using hyperbole and making straw men. In this essay, we’ll look at how you can use the fallacy of incomplete evidence to “prove” there is a WOX.

The fallacy of incomplete evidence occurs when available evidence that would count against a claim is ignored or suppressed. Looked at another way, it occurs when only evidence in support of a claim is selected (“cherry-picked”). It has the following form:

 

Premise 1:  Evidence E is given for claim C.

Premise 2: There is no available evidence A that would significantly count against C (but A is available and is ignored or suppressed).

Conclusion: Therefore, C is true.

 

Unlike many other fallacies, this fallacy does not arise because the presented premises do not logically support the conclusion. Instead, the error is that the person making the argument fails (intentionally or accidentally) to consider available evidence would count against their conclusion.  The fallacy does its work by conveying the impression to the target that the premises are both true and complete (that salient evidence has not been ignored or suppressed).

There are two factors that must be considered when determining whether the fallacy has been committed. The first is whether the suppressed/ignored evidence is significant enough to outweigh the presented evidence. That some salient information has been left out is not enough to establish the fallacy has been committed. What is needed is that the suppressed/ignored evidence would make a significant difference in the strength of the argument. If not, the fallacy is not committed.  But in this context, you will want to commit the fallacy. You will need to determine which evidence would count against your claim and then ignore it. And hope your audience will do so as well.

The second is whether the (allegedly) suppressed/ignored evidence was reasonably available to the person committing the fallacy.  If someone “ignored” evidence that they could not reasonably be expected to know, then they would not be committing this fallacy.  Sorting out what a person can reasonably be expected to know can be challenging and thus there can be considerable dispute over whether the fallacy was committed. In this context, the evidence will obviously be available to you—you will be knowingly ignoring or suppressing the evidence.

When using this fallacy to start a WOX, one useful variant is to ignore inconvenient facts about the past. This version has the following form:

 

Premise 1:  Evidence E is given for the claim there is a WOX.

Premise 2: There is no available evidence that E occurred before the WOX and would thus significantly count against their being a WOX (but there is available evidence that E did occur well before the WOX).

Conclusion: Therefore, there is a WOX.

 

This method does have advantages:

 

• The available evidence is what it is but the evidence you use is up to you.
• The evidence used can be true and unmodified.

 

While reality is what it is, picking the evidence you wish to use and what you want to ignore makes it easier to make your argument. If you are starting a WOX, there is certainly available evidence against your claims, but you can ignore it. While lies, hyperbole and straw men have their advantages, the use of incomplete evidence allows you to use true claims. This can sometimes increase your credibility and using some truth makes it harder to debunk your claims about a WOX. But this method has some disadvantages:

 

• There will, by the nature of the fallacy, be significant evidence against your claim.
• This method is lying by omission and many moralities and religions condemn lying.

 

This method entails that there is significant evidence against your claim which means that debunkers are likely to find it. Fortunately, the usual target audience for a WOX is unlikely to engage the matter critically and some of them will be happy to be in on the fallacy. While you will not be fabricating evidence, you will be lying by omission and many moralities and religions consider this unacceptable. Fortunately, as with lying in general, it is easy to work around this.

As an example of how to use incomplete evidence to start a WOX, consider how those pushing the War on Christmas use it. They point out, correctly, that people now use “Happy Holidays.” Making use of a straw man attack, they “infer” that the “real reason” this is occurring is because Christmas is under attack. They will also tend to lie and claim that no one can say “Merry Christmas” anymore without fear of some sort of reprisal. But a key part of this is the use of incomplete evidence: they do not mention that “Happy Holidays” has been in use for a long time. This can easily be confirmed by the 1942 film Holiday Inn in which Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds sing the song Happy Holiday. It was later released by Jo Stafford as a Christmas song in 1955. With a bit more effort, you can find that the term was used in 1863 and was used in advertising from at least 1937. This serves to undercut the idea that the use of “Happy Holidays” is evidence of a War on Christmas. The fact that the idea of the War on Christmas still has considerable power on the right shows how effective this fallacy can be. Despite the ease with which the “Happy Holiday” claims can be disproven, we still hear about the War on Christmas every year. As such, when using incomplete evidence for a WOX you will generally not need to worry about all that evidence you are ignoring—your audience will most likely just do the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This essay continues my guide on how to start a War on X. In the previous essay, I looked at the advantages and disadvantages of lying and this essay will focus on using hyperbole and the Straw Man fallacy. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device involving exaggeration, typically to make something appear far worse or much better than it really is. While hyperbole is a form of lying, it is an exaggeration rather than a complete fabrication. For example, if a person does not catch any fish and say they “caught a whopper”, then they are just lying. If they caught a small fish and called it a whopper, they are using hyperbole.  While there can be debate about the boundary between hyperbole and other forms of lying, this distinction is not as important as the distinction between the truth and a lie.  Hyperbole can be used for benign purposes, such as in comedy. But it can also be weaponized to help start a war. Hyperbole is often used in creating a straw man fallacy.

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when one ignores a claim or argument and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of that claim or argument. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes claim or argument X.

Premise 2: Person B presents Y (which is a distorted version of X).

Premise 3: Person B attacks Y.

Conclusion:  Therefore, X is false/incorrect/flawed.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a claim or argument does not constitute a criticism of the position itself. A Straw Man can be effective because people often do not know the real claim or argument being attacked. The fallacy is especially effective when the straw person matches the audience’s biases or stereotypes—they will feel that the distorted version is the real version and accept it.

While this fallacy is generally aimed at an audience, it can be self-inflicted: a person can unwittingly make a Straw Man out of a claim or argument. This can be done entirely in error (perhaps due to ignorance) or due to the influence of prejudices and biases.

Straw man attacks often make use of an appeal to an unknown fact. This usually involves claiming to know the “real reason” a person or group believes the straw claim or argument. This “reason” is usually presented as a wicked motivation.

The defense against a Straw Man, self-inflicted or not, is to take care to get a person’s claim or argument right. This involves applying the principle of charity and the principle of plausibility.

Following the principle of charity requires interpreting claims in the best possible light and reconstructing arguments to make them as strong as possible. There are three reasons to follow the principle. The first is that doing so is ethical. The second is that doing so avoids committing the straw man fallacy. The third is that the criticism of the best and strongest versions of a claim or argument also addressed the lesser versions.

The principle of charity must be tempered by the principle of plausibility: claims must be interpreted, and arguments reconstructed in a way that matches what is known about the source and in accord with the context. Obviously, if you are using a Straw Man in your war, you will want to ignore these principles. Instead, you will want to be uncharitable and present the worst possible interpretation of your target. This should be tempered by a distorted version of the principle of plausibility: your distortion should be plausible (or at least appealing) to your target audience.

Hyperbole and the Straw Man fallacy have the following advantages:

 

• The truth is what it is, but hyperbole/straw man allows you to “modify” the truth.
• Engaging an actual claim or argument can be difficult, exaggeration and distortion are easy.
• Hyperbole/straw man allows you to have a grain of truth.
• People tend to be more forgiving of hyperbole/strawman compared to utter fabrications.
• Even if someone does not believe the hype, they can be influenced by it.

 

 

If you limit yourself to the truth or what your target really said, you are stuck with what is. If you are trying to create a WOX, reality will probably be of little or no use to you. But you can tailor your hyperbole or straw man to have maximum impact on your audience. You can, for example, make it fit perfectly with what they fear. If your target makes reasonable claims and has a good argument, engaging these would be hard. Exaggeration and distortion make the fight easier. To use the obvious analogy, it is the difference between fighting the person and punching a dummy dressed up like the person. While useful, hyperbole and straw man do have some disadvantages. Since hyperbole/straw man is not a complete fabrication, you have a grain of truth to work with. This allows you a degree of plausible deniability and there is also the fact that people seem more tolerant of exaggeration and distortion compared to complete fabrications. Interestingly, even if people do not “buy the hype” they can be influenced by it—this is something advertisers make use of. You just need to be careful to not over-hype or distort to the point that even your target audience will not buy it at all.

As with lies, there are some disadvantages to hyperbole/straw man:

 

• As with lying, hyperbole/strawman can be debunked.
• Most religions and moralities condemn lying, even hyperbole.
• Requires a grain of truth.

 

The general points I made about lying in the previous essay also apply here to hyperbole/straw man. It is worth noting that hyperbole/straw man does give you a degree of plausible deniability—if you are debunked, you can claim you just got things wrong by accident or were being dramatic. Hyperbole/straw man also decreases the chances that your targets will doubt you. If they do make a cursory check of your distortion, they might think that it is confirmed by the grain of truth it is built on. As such, hyperbole/straw man can be better than outright fabrication, at least in some contexts. It does, after all, require at least a fragment of truth.

As an example, consider the change from “Christmas Break” to “Winter Break” or “Holiday Break” by many schools. This was done for the obvious reason that not all students, faculty and staff are Christians who celebrate Christmas. There is also the fact that the break includes holidays other than Christmas, such as New Year’s and that it includes days before and after Christmas. While this change was obviously not an attack on Christmas, it can easily be made into a straw man. A good way to do this is to claim that the “real reason” that the name was changed was because “they” are attacking Christmas and want to cancel it. You can also throw in some claims about “the libs” attacking Christianity. If you feel up for doing a hate crime, you can claim that “the Jews”, perhaps armed with space lasers, were involved with this as well. If you are not ready to go full anti-Semitic in public, there is also the option of using a dog whistle (the subject of the final essay in this series).  In the next essay we will look at how to use Incomplete Evidence to start the war.

 

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Bill O’Reilly deserves the credit for creating the modern American conception of the War on Christmas. While O’Reilly is no longer a major player, the right has persisted in its insistence that Christmas is under attack. That this war has been debunked does not seem to matter. While I will discuss some aspects of this war, my interest is with the general methods used to craft and propagate a fictional narrative of a war on X (whatever X might be). I will call this WOX.

If you want to start a WOX, you begin by selecting the X for your new war. You will want to select something your target audience values and it will ideally be something they already fear might be threatened by people they fear and dislike. But you can generate the fear on your own if you need to. Given the patent absurdity of claiming there is a war on Christmas, you might suspect that you could start a culture war around almost anything. Interestingly, there are clearly limits to what people will accept; even Trump and Fox News failed at getting their base to believe that there was a war on Thanksgiving. That proved a war too far. But perhaps some pundit or politician will make it stick next time.

While a WOX will, obviously, tend to use “war on” as its defining phrase, this is optional. All you need to do is say “X is under attack” to use the methods I will be discussing. For example, you might prefer to speak of the attacks of the woke mobs on manliness without claiming there is a WWOM (Woke War on Manliness). Given that there are so many Wars on This and Wars on That these days, people might be suffering from battle fatigue when it comes to that phrase. But give it a try and see how your audience reacts. Now let us look at the time-honored tradition of starting a war with lies.

A common way to use lies to argue that there is a War on X is to make up “examples” of acts of war. These “examples” are then used in an Argument by Example to “prove” that the war is occurring. Not surprisingly, an argument by example is an argument in which a claim is supported by providing examples. Although people generally present arguments by example in an informal manner, they have the following logical form:

 

Premise 1: Example 1 is an example that supports claim P.

Premise n: Example n is an example that supports claim P.

Conclusion: Claim P is true.

 

The form used to argue for a WOX would look like this:

 Premise 1: Example 1 is an example of a War on X.

Premise n: Example n is an example of a War on X.

Conclusion: There is a War on X.

 

The strength of the argument depends on four factors. First, the more examples, the stronger the argument. Second, the more relevant the examples, the stronger the argument. Third, the examples must be specific and clearly identified.

Fourth, counterexamples must be considered. A counterexample is an example that counts against the claim. One way to look at a counterexample is that it is an example that supports the denial of the conclusion being argued for. The more counterexamples and the more relevant they are, the weaker the argument.

When lying to “prove” a WOX is occurring, you will want to mimic a strong Argument by Example. You will want to have many made-up examples that are crafted to appear relevant. While using specific made-up examples might seem risky because vague lies are harder to disprove, this can create the illusion of credibility and, as we will see, you can probably get away with it. You might want to use counter-examples to create the illusion of reasonability but be careful to refute them. Now, on to lying.

Lying has many advantages:

 

• The truth is what it is, a lie is whatever you want it to be.
• Determining the truth can require effort, lying is usually easy.

 

If you limit yourself to the truth, you are stuck with what is. If you are trying to create a WOX, the truth will probably be of little or no use. But you can craft whatever lie you need, and you can tailor it to have maximum impact on your audience. You can, for example, make it fit perfectly with what they fear. Sorting out what is true can be difficult, but simply making things up can be easy. Lying is, however, not without disadvantages:

 

• Lies can be debunked.
• Most religions and moralities condemn lying.

 

From a practical standpoint, one worry is that your lies can be debunked and exposed. There are fact-checkers that expose lies and an army of leftists on YouTube who spend countless hours creating videos to debunk and expose lies. As such, if your lies gain any attention, they will be exposed in short order. Fortunately, this is usually not a problem. First, your target audience is unlikely to critically engage your claims. Even if they do have some doubt, there has been a systematic effort over the years to undermine expertise and to sow distrust of the mainstream media, academics, and others who are likely to expose your lies. As such, they are unlikely to trust these sources. Conveniently enough, if experts and the media put pressure on you, your audience is likely to double down.

Second, some in your audience will be on board with your lies. This might be because they want to get in on the WOX for their own reasons or because they believe they hear a dog whistle (more on this in a future essay). Or they might believe that your lies serve a higher purpose, which takes us to the matter of religious and moral condemnation.

As noted above, most religions and moralities condemn lies. Christianity, for example, often casts the devil as the Prince of Lies and has a commandment against bearing false witness. Everyday ethics and moral theories alike usually present lying as wrong or at least as problematic. For example, Kant takes lying to always be wrong. As such, you might have concerns about lying. Fortunately, there are ways around this. One way is simply to reject these aspects of religion and morality. Another way is to avail yourself of established loopholes and workarounds. With some exceptions, religions and moral theories do allow for justified lying. One could appeal to the popular view that the end justifies the means, or you could assuage any vestiges of a conscience by a sophisticated utilitarian analysis of your lies and the good they will do (you). The truth might set you free but lies are easy. Good luck with your WOX.

 

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The American right is now largely defined by various debunked conspiracy theories such as the big lie about the 2020 election and, of course, those involving all things COVID. While some conspiracy theories are intentionally manufactured by those who know they are untrue (such as the 2020 election conspiracy theories) it does seem possible that other theories get their start by people simply being bad at reading things correctly. For example, consider the claim that there are microchips in the COVID vaccines because of Bill Gates.

The Verge does a step-by-step analysis of how this conspiracy theory evolved, which is an excellent example of how such conspiracy claims can arise, mutate, and propagate. The simple version is this: in a chat on Reddit, Gates predicted that people would have a digital “passport” of their health records. Some Americans who attended K-12 public schools have already used a paper version of this; my old report card envelope from my elementary school has my relevant health records in it. The idea of tattoos to mark people who had been vaccinated has also been suggested—as a solution to the problem of medical records in places where record keeping is spotty or non-existent.

Bill Gate’s prediction was picked up by a Swedish website focused on biohacking and they put forth the idea of using an implanted chip to store this information. This is not a new idea for biohackers or science fiction, but it was not Gate’s idea. However, the site used the untrue headline, “Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus.” As should surprise no one, this led to my adopted state of Florida.

Pastor Adam Fannin of Jacksonville read the post and uploaded a video to YouTube. The title is “Bill Gates – Microchip Vaccine Implants to fight Coronavirus,” which is an additional untruth on top of the untrue headline from the Swedish site. This idea spread quickly until it reached Roger Stone. The New York Post ran the headline “Roger Stone: Bill Gates may have created coronavirus to microchip people.”

Those familiar with telephone might see this as a dangerous version of that game as each person changes the claim slightly until it has almost no resemblance to the original. Just as with games of telephone, it is worth considering that people intentionally made changes to achieve their desired effect. In the case of a game of telephone, the intent of intentional changes is to make the final version as funny as possible. In the case of conspiracy theories, the goal is to distort the original into the desired straw man—one that will get the most attention and make the target look as bad as possible. In the case of Bill Gates, it started out with the innocuous idea that people would have a digital copy of their health records and ended up with the claim that Bill Gates might have created the virus to put chips in people. In addition to showing how conspiracy claims can devolve from innocuous claims, this also provides an excellent example of how conspiracy theories sometimes do get it right that we should be angry at someone or something but get the reasons why we should be angry wrong.

While there is no good evidence for the conspiracy theories about Gates and microchips, it is true that we should be angry at Bill Gate’s COVID wrongdoings. Specifically, Gates used his foundation to impede access to COVID vaccines. This was not a crazy supervillain plan; it was simply the old method of “monopoly medicine.” As such, you should certainly loath Bill Gates for his immoral actions; but not because of the false conspiracy theories. As an aside, it always strikes me as a bit absurd that when there are so many real problems and real misdeeds to get fired up about, conspiracy theorists spend so much energy generating and propagating imaginary problems and misdeeds. Obviously, these often serve some people very well by distracting attention from these problems. But back to the origin of conspiracy theories.

While, as noted above, people do intentionally make false claims to give birth to conspiracy theories, it also makes sense that unintentional misreading can be a factor. Having been a professor for decades, I know that people often unintentionally misread or misinterpret content.

For the most part, when professors are teaching basic and noncontroversial content, they endeavor to prove the students with a clear and correct reading or interpretation. Naturally, there can be competing interpretations and murky content in academics, but I am focusing on the clear, simple stuff where there is general agreement and little or no opposition. And, of course, no one with anything to gain from advancing another interpretation. Even in such cases, students can misinterpret things quite significantly. To illustrate, consider this passage from the Apology:

 

Socrates: And now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by Zeus I will:  Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or among good ones?  Answer, friend, I say; the question is one which may be easily answered.  Do not the good do their neighbors good, and the bad do them evil?

Meletus: Certainly.

Socrates: And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefited by those who live with him?  Answer, my good friend, the law requires you to answer— does any one like to be injured?

Meletus: Certainly not.

Socrates: And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them intentionally or unintentionally?

Meletus: Intentionally, I say.

Socrates: But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbors good, and the evil do them evil.  Now, is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him; and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you say, although neither I nor any other human being is ever likely to be convinced by you.  But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally; and on either view of the case you lie.  If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should; but you would have nothing to say to me and refused to teach me.  And now you bring me up in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment.

 

Socrates’ argument is quite clear and, of course, I go through it carefully because this argument is part of the paper for my Introduction to Philosophy class. Despite this, every class has a few students who read Socrates’ argument as him asserting that he did not corrupt the youth intentionally because they did not harm him. But Socrates does not make that claim; central to his argument is the claim that if he corrupted them, then they would probably harm him. Since he does not want to be harmed, then he either did not corrupt them or did so unintentionally. This is, of course, an easy misinterpretation to make by reading into the argument something that is not there but seems like it perhaps should or at least could be.

My point is that even when the text is clear, even when someone is actively providing the facts, even when there is no controversy, and even when there is nothing to gain by misinterpreting the text, it still occurs. And if this can occur in ideal conditions (a basic, clear, uncontroversial text in a class), then it should be clear how easy it is for misinterpretations to arise in “the wild.” As such, a person can easily misinterpret text or content and sincerely believe they have it right—thus leading to a false claim that can give rise to a conspiracy theory. Things are much worse when a person intends to deceive. Fortunately, there is an easy defense against such mistakes: read more carefully and take the time to confirm that your interpretation is the most plausible. Unfortunately, this requires some effort and the willingness to consider that one might be wrong—which is why misinterpretations occur so often. It is much easier to go with the first reading (or skimming) and more pleasant to simply assume one is right.

 

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