By Julius Knapp

Modern society is tricky. Massive amounts of information are constantly streaming towards us. Processing that information, making sense of it, evaluating sources, and piecing it all together in real time is practically impossible. For this reason, most of us select just a few streams or only certain information from friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, cable news, or late-night comedy. With the benefit of only having to view the world from a few select perspectives, we can calmly and assuredly navigate society and go about our lives.

The unfortunate drawback to this is that this practice often introduces biases and conflicts can and often do arise between people with different information. How that conflict is handled is what this essay is about? How do we decide who is right? How do we know when to stick to our position or cede the argument?

To be clear, this essay is not about the relative value of Fox News and MSNBC or any other source where you might obtain your information. It’s also not about how we form or whether it’s right or wrong to be biased. At its core, this essay is about the one thing we as Americans need to find within ourselves again. The thing I spoke about in my first essay: bravery. This article is about how we exercise bravery in our public discourse. Do we bravely stand strong against opposing views? Or do we abandon our view and bravely accept another?

Maintaining some skepticism is the best way to answer these questions. Skepticism is a questioning attitude or doubt towards knowledge claims. Being a skeptic makes one suspicious of the beliefs, statements, or arguments put forth by others. Unfortunately, skepticism is often confused with cynicism. Cynicism is the belief that people are only interested in themselves and are not sincere. This attitude, while rooted in skepticism, introduces the idea that others cannot or should not be trusted. Many people who describe themselves as skeptics often fail to understand the distinction with cynicism.

True skeptics do not start from a position of distrust. Instead, they use Hanlon’s Razor to never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance. Another apt adage might be the Russian proverb, popularized by President Ronald Regan, “Trust, but verify”. Skepticism assumes that the person making a claim or statement is being honest, at least about their premise. The falsehood arises instead from an error in their reasoning.

Fallacious reasoning abounds in politics. To be fair, sound and logical reasoning is hard- it requires a degree of rigor that most of us don’t have the time or patience to apply appropriately. As a result, the label “liar” should be applied rarely- in my opinion, only when the speaker has deliberately made a false statement with the intention to deceive- and not so casually applied to the armchair politicians we normally encounter. You, however, since you have time to read this essay and, hopefully, listen to the associated discussion, should learn how to avoid some common fallacies.

The first I will discuss is the Middle Ground Fallacy. This fallacy, common among cynics, is that the truth between two opposing arguments must lie between them. Consider the following:

Gun Control Advocate: Guns have no place in modern society and should be banned

Second Amendment Advocate: Guns are inherently safe and protect the people from a despotic government

Middle Ground: We should ban assault rifles

Alternatively:

Science: Evolution is one of the most successful theories in all of science

Religion: For many thousands of years, religion has offered the most complete picture for the development and diversification of life

Middle Ground: Intelligent design provides a model of guided evolution

I will leave it to the reader to determine the weights of the arguments in the previous examples. The reader should recognize, however, how the Middle Ground Fallacy may be used to ignore nuanced evidence or halt further debate.

In some ways, the Middle Ground Fallacy is a manifestation of the False Analogy Fallacy. The latter fallacy draws a comparison between the topic of discourse and an analogous topic. As is the case with many analogies, however, careful attention to detail will reveal that the comparison is overly simplistic. Here are three such False Analogies:

Both political parties practice gerrymandering, engage in partisan profiteering, and suppress their political opponents.

Trans women are biologically male.

Massachusetts successfully implemented Romneycare, so the United States can successfully implement Obamacare.

There are many ways the subject of the discussion is not like their analog. Some of those differences are immaterial or unimportant. Others are both material and important and can lead to an invalid conclusion.

Indeed, there are many ways we can fail to reason correctly. Three other common ways the reader should familiarize themselves with are the Conjunction Fallacy, the Disjunction Fallacy, and the Burden of Proof Fallacy. The list could easily continue for many more pages. Humanity’s ability to deceive itself, intentionally or not, is boundless. And of course, none of this says anything about how to reason correctly. That subject could span volumes.

This is why brave skeptics everywhere are so critical to our democratic republic or republican democracy or however we want to label it. With bravery we can identify and expose those who would lead us astray and support and elevate those that would lead us forward.