Debate Based on Total Lack of Logic

Jim enough with your elitist pychobabble. You're just a nazi persecutin' anyone who doesn't want universal healthcare. Yee-haw (fires six shooter in the air).

I jest. I've always felt humanity was fundamentally insane. Perhaps that's why I think most of our societal norms are bizarre and irrational. It's disheartening to think we are born predisposed to irrationality. It's a genetic disorder and logic can only treat the symptons not provide a cure.

one of your most thought provoking pieces.

JE: My premise for a movie: One day everybody wakes up and wonders why they believe what they believe and has to start over from scratch, questioning every assumption from the ground up. (Particularly those bizarre societal norms we unquestioningly accept every day.) The reconstituted world is just as much of a mess as ever, but at least is based on solid, examined convictions rather than free-floating fantasies. That oughtta pack 'em in!

The general population might be able to get away claiming the excuse of "innate biological irrationality" (whatever that is)... but people elected to run the government, paid to report the news are expected to base their positions on facts and science. Let them do their job rationally. It's unthinkable that wackos talking about death panels, socialism or Nazis are given any air time at all, and make the government pause because these wackos are trusted with some kind of public opinion leverage...

In dark medieval ages, superstition played a major role in the lives of people... but children education and science fixed that a long ago. At least people with any kind of power are expected to pass a test of rationality and reality check. Otherwise they shouldn't be given that power/authority to speak. Let people who know what they are talking about debate the issue, they are trained and paid to sort things out and will make informed compromises. The others can keep quiet or learn.

Demagoguery (making people believe that even stupidity is welcome to the table of negotiation) is a loophole of democracy!

How ironic that this article about critical thinking contains its own syllogism: fear of flying is mostly due to irrational baseless phobia with subconscious causes. Like fear of height or agoraphobia. It's beyond thinking process. Arranging your belief according to superstition isn't visceral/biological, it is a conscious (fallacious) reasoning.

You can teach critical thinking to every brains. And some will use it against what you believe in. That's how lawyers make money. There is not always an easy right/wrong choice to make, sometimes both sides are right to defend their agenda.

JE: There's no "excuse." If only more of us put forth the effort to actually defend an idea, rather than responding autonomically, reflexively, illogically. (I think the article is, in fact, saying what you're saying: that our brains are wired such that even when we know something is logically true -- i.e., that air travel is statistically safe -- that doesn't stop our irrational fears from taking hold. You're unquestionably right, though, that phobias are not rooted in conscious reasoning.)

Jim I've been re-reading Tolstoy's works on Christianity lately, and it's a great example of this. Tolstoy approached THE topic about which no one ever will think critically, and just showed it no respect, but got right down to it, respecting only truth - and, doing a pretty good job of it, he concluded that Christianity entailed being nothing like what any Christians have been like, for (at that time) 1800 years - that the Old Testament was invalidated by Christ, explicitly, and that the non-Christ New Testament (ie, anything apart from what he actually said, what sayings were attributed to him that made sense in the context of his entire preaching) was invalidated by its obviously not matching up with what Christ explicitly said - showing that the post-Christ authors of the Gospels and the other NT books misunderstood him badly.

It's endlessly fascinating and overwhelmingly convincing. But the point is, it's so hard to think critically about things that in the 1800 years up to then, only a very few people had ever understood the truth about Christ's teaching prior to Tolstoy going off about it - the Quakers, William Lloyd Garrison, and a very brave writer here and there in the middle ages. People just accept so much accumulated nonsense, and are unable to even consider that the entire basis of something familiar may be bullshit. This is also the case with most every modern institution. It's why making positive, radical social change is so difficult, even for people in power.

Originally, we must have been logical creatures; nature would not long tolerate illogic: adapt to the logic of survival [the logic of biological evolution], or face extinction. But we lost our way; I imagine this occurred as we satisfied all the immediate requirements for survival: we no longer needed to adhere to nature's logic, as our immediate survival was ensured. And there, I think, is the genesis of our current ignorance: seemingly free from the constraints of natural logic [the logic of evolution], rudimentary cognition also abandoned logic--the logic determining the evolution of thought; and so, ignorance took seed. Simple questions with simple answers, asked eons ago, were "satisfied" with illogical responses, and these responses, being little more than placebos for the mind, bred further questions, now unnecessarily complex; and these questions were similarly answered--and so on, and so on. And so, we come to today. And so it goes.

Perhaps this theory is entirely illogical, or perhaps its correct. If the latter is the case, I imagine that there can only be one logical outcome of continued ignorance; and, I imagine that the now-forgotten logic of nature, buried under our collective ignorance, will reemerge--will we be able to readapt?

JE: And so it goes, Mr. Rosewater... er, Trout. We developed those pattern-seeking abilities, to our evolutionary advantage, long before we developed logic, so how about the idea that we are still in many respects ruled by (much faster) instinct -- like other animals -- despite the evolution of so-called "higher" brain functions?

I have very little to add to this, other than that the point the "Why Aren't People Smarter?" piece makes about the total failure of the educational system to develop these skills really hit home with me. I wrote a piece a few months back that underlined that point, and pointed out that the popularity of film and television would make it a natural vehicle to develop exactly these skills - http://railoftomorrow.blogspot.com/2009/07/criticize-this.html

I went to a college preparatory high school that only occasionally encouraged critical thinking, and never made clear its importance; it wasn't until the beginning my last year at college (I just graduated in May) that I really grasped its true value, a conclusion I came to on my own, not one that was insisted upon by any professor, unless it was as a way of getting a better grade ("You better come up with good points, or else" kind of thing). Since then, I've worked hard to develop this skill, but I feel as though I have so much catching up to do and can't help but wonder how different my world view would be if SOMEONE in the course of my education had made that clear.

JE: I know so many people who say they were never taught critical thinking principles in school. I wasn't -- except in debate when I was in junior high. (The documentary "Resolved" shows how logic has gone out the window in that discipline.) Anyway, it's more important to learn how to think than to simply memorize data -- otherwise the data may as well be meaningless and you won't know how to evaluate it. Fortunately, you figured that out on your own!

How do we define "illogical" and can we if we have different values?

If one person fears flying, yet flies, isn't that person thinking critically and ultimately being logical? In other words, I don't think it works to apply the labels logical or illogical to the emotion or fear of flying. Only on the decision. The level of fear may not be logical. But the decision to ignore it is logical.

If another persons so detests flying because of fear and doesn't fly, is that person illogical? I think for the most part, we would say yes. But this ultimately assumes that the measure of logic in this case will be based on statistics of safety. Couldn't a logical choice be based on what mode of travel involves the least amount of panic by the traveller. In other words, my measure of logic would be based on safety but yours could be based on reducing your own personal anxiety.

And thus two logical people can still talk past each other.

JE: Well said. What's causing the fear itself needs to be defined. Even though we understand something about aerodynamics, and that thousands of planes fly all over the world every day, there's probably something, somewhere in the back of our minds, where the idea that we're inside a huge, heavy metal container speeding through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles per hour just doesn't compute!

Perhaps this irrationality is the price of being creative beings. Yes, we do see faces in clouds and patterns that don't exist, and if we didn't, we wouldn't have music or paintings or.. basically any form of art. We'd be just like those purely logical aliens who come here to probe us. They exist, you know. And if you say they don't then you are part of the conspiracy.

JE: Bingo!

On a deeper level all this is rational. Emotions, sir, emoshunz! They've kept us alive for centuries. Solely following logic only leads to nihilism, and we need to be biased optimists to SURVIVE! We're allowed to touch up on objectivity only so much because it is not in our favor, besides its technology and still, no tech that significantly tests our morality. I don't think we're ready to be the "overman" yet, but the world has run out of space and we've developed the ability to annihilate ourselves nonetheless. Forced to grow up we are!

JE: We can't really separate emotions from reason (and sometimes that works to our advantage, as Malcolm Gladwell's "blink" documents). I don't know if logic necessarily leads to nihilism (though I suppose it can) -- but there are problems that can only be solved by reasoned analysis and other situations where emotion is valuable, no?

"but there are problems that can only be solved by reasoned analysis and other situations where emotion is valuable, no?"

and how do we determine which are those situations, by another emotionally-charged debate?

reality mandates reasoned analyses and that alone, it is simply waiting for us to catch up to its clear-of-subjectivity plain and throw emotion away altogether. I have a feeling we'll end up like the strangers from Dark City(1998): whither away in the universe once we've inevitably transcended all kinds of organic life. Oh how far do I stretch in my conversations!!!

Solely following logic only leads to nihilism

Not necessarily.

The main reason we are built to use so many logical shortcuts is that it's largely to our advantage in everyday circumstances. It's a common misapprehension that knowing the truth is valuable. It is, but it really depends on the cost. If it takes effort to be right, then perhaps only being right when it matters is what's important.

A common example that's offered is an animal that lives in an environment where a food source like mushrooms are plentiful, but some are deadly poisonous. If it's very difficult to discriminate the good mushrooms from the bad ones, then it's probably not going to be advantageous to be 100% correct in detecting the poison ones. It's far better to think that any mushroom that appears slightly poisonous is poisonous, thereby avoiding all the poison ones and quite a few non-poison ones. This allows the animal to reach quick judgments and still not be poisoned. When food is plentiful, avoiding a lot of good mushrooms is not a bad cost to pay.

Humans work kind of like this. We have a lot of heuristics that let us reach judgments without expending the energy required to be right 100% of the time.

But note: Changing circumstances can cause the defects in these mechanisms to come out. Suppose the animal we considered now finds himself in an environment where food is not plentiful. His originally advantageous detection mechanism can now cause him to starve. We can find ourselves, and do find ourselves, in similar situations. Confronted with situations where being 100% right IS important, we can find it difficult to overcome our brain's propensity to take shortcuts.

Reminds me of a piece I read a few years ago where they took MRIs of brains making decisions. Most of the brain activity took place after the decision had been made.

Man is the rationalizing animal. We really are just big hairless apes with the Darwinian advantage of picking the best antelope femurs for our atlatls.

"Not necessarily."

I guess on a much deeper level logic cares for the laws of physics at least, but even then it obeys those laws and not out morality. GOD am I out of my element...

Paul: Critical thinking also leads one to question the very existence of Jesus in the first place.

Eric: You're confusing logic with rationality; i.e. you actually mean "rationality," not "logic." Logic is perfect and absolute when applied correctly, and no two critically-thinking individuals would ever disagree on the logic of something. Logic is no more a matter of opinion than math (which is the abstraction of logic) is. An argument is "unsound" when its premises are false or problematic, and it's "invalid" when the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. An argument can be both unsound AND valid when the logic applied is perfect.

Rationality is a more complicated issue. What one considers "rational" is based on one's unique perspective, which is informed by personality, life experiences, emotions, and available information, among other things. Two perfectly logical and rational persons can disagree, simply because their perspectives (i.e. their premises) are different.

What I'd like to add to the discussion is something that I heard or read months ago: Emotions are perfectly logical. Somebody hurts your, and you get angry. Perfectly logical. There is always a reason for the emotion, and it usually it can be identified. However, emotions are fundamentally irrational. The reason for the emotion could be bad, e.g. road rage.

I think the debate between people advocating logic at the expense of emotion and people advocating emotion at the expense of logic that has sprung up a little here is misguided. Emotion and logic don't need to compete--you just need to realize what each one is good for. Emotion is content, logic is method. Without emotions, there is no point to making any decision--how can any decision be worth making if there will be no appreciation or enjoyment to be gained or pain and unhappiness to be avoided? But emotions are a very bad *method* for making decisions.

Let's take a very simple problem I face every day: Should I get up and go to work, or should I stay in bed with my wife?

If I look at this logically, with no emotion, the question is meaningless. Without emotion, I don't care about my job, nor do I care about my wife, nor do I care about my own survival, because I don't care at all. Without emotion is a motivator--without emotion providing specific goals for my decision to accomplish--the decision simply won't be made. I'll lie inert until I starve to death.

However, if I look at this emotionally, with no logic, the question is easy to resolve--easy to resolve incorrectly. I love my wife. I don't like work. Without logic, I'm incapable of grasping that actions have consequences, that one event leads to another. So I do whatever I enjoy on a stimulus-response level. I stay in bed with my wife, and eventually lose my job.

Please note how *distinct* the functions of these two are. Don't interpret this as me saying "a little bit of logic and a little bit of emotion is what we all need!" What we need is for logic and emotion to both stay *in their proper place*. A car can't run without gasoline, but gasoline is just fuel. You can't make a steering-wheel out of it.

But this is what people try to do with emotion. Instead of using their emotions to define the goals and motivate their actions and decisions, they rely on emotions and gut-instincts to do their thinking for them. That's no good. It's probably unavoidable to one degree or another, but that's where the problem lies--in confusion over the proper functions of emotion and logic, not in the presence of either.

JE: "Emotion and logic don't need to compete--you just need to realize what each one is good for." That's it in a nutshell! One is always coloring the other, and both affect our perceptions and our judgements. Trying to be aware of that helps you use the best tools at your disposal to do the right thing, and to make decisions that are in your own best interests. We see people again and again making choices that hurt themselves and the people they care about, without even realizing it, because they're not analyzing the basis for their own actions.

"Trying to be aware of that helps you use the best tools at your disposal to do the right thing, and to make decisions that are in your own best interests"

Oh the hilarity! tools!... interests! ...disposal!
And if EMOTIONS instigate your "interests", like Stephen points out, then how in the devil does one govern where and where not emotions are welcome? They can't. You can't be aware that they're are 2 options and at the same time be able to sincerely follow the dictates of emotion.

JE: Again, see Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller, "blink." Emotion and reason are inextricably linked in humans, so it's not like you can always, clearly, consciously choose just ONE. But if you don't know the difference between an emotional response ("My child just fell into that lake!") and a reasoned one ("What is actually in this legislation?") then you're going to make bad decisions. Jonah Lehrer writes about how emotions may help, as well as hinder, wise decision-making, depending on the situation.

From a review of Jonah Lehrer's book "How We Decide" that explains it better than I have. It begins with a quarterback trying to explain how he decides where and when to throw the ball:

http://bit.ly/PVr2t

For those with deep experience or expertise, too much rationality inhibits success.

The same holds true for issues of morality, notes Lehrer, a regular contributor to the Globe's Ideas section. Humans don't use their rational brains to decide what is the right thing to do in any situation. Feelings come first and rationality later. After describing a number of experiments supporting this view, Lehrer summarizes that "the emotional brain generates the verdict. It determines what is wrong or right . . . the rational brain, on the other hand, explains the verdict."

Yet emotion can be dangerous too, can close our eyes to alternatives. We need to use our rational brains to avoid the "certainty trap," which results in closed-mindedness and blind self-justifications after a decision has been made. "[W]hen making decisions," writes Lehrer, "actively resist the urge to suppress the argument. Instead, take the time to listen to what all the different brain areas have to say." Emotion is certainly an important piece of information, Lehrer believes, but it cannot be the only factor in making a decision. Open-mindedness is difficult, but critical.

Lehrer's final, and best, chapter looks at the game of poker, as he describes how poker pro and mathematical genius Michael Binger uses a blend of rationality and intuition to reach the final table at the World Series of Poker. As Lehrer makes clear, Binger's unique power to calculate the odds of a poker hand were important to his success, but Binger's poker career really took off only after he'd developed his intuition, the ability to "read" his opponents. "Binger came to understand that different situations required different modes of thought. Sometimes he had to play the odds. And sometimes he had to trust his gut" and play the opponent.

And yet, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, flying on a commercial jetliner has a fatality rate of 0.04 per one hundred million passenger miles. In contrast, driving has a fatality rate of 0.86.

It should be noted that the following conclusion:

This means that the most dangerous part of traveling on a commercial flight is the drive to the airport.

is incorrect for any flight over 21.5 times the distance of the drive to the airport. I don't say that people should have a logical fear of flying any more than a fear of driving (the fatality rates for both are low), but the statistical evidence does not necessarily support the conclusion. Sorry, couldn't help but exercise my critical thinking abilities.

JE: I'm not sure I follow you, since the length of a flight has no bearing on the rate of accidents or fatalities. Nearly all flight accidents occur in the first or last few minutes of the flight, during takeoff/climb (25 percent) or approach/landing (58 percent). Only 9 percent occur during cruise or initial descent, no matter how long the plane has been in the air. So, for example, though landings may make up only 1 percent of "exposure time" of all flights, that 1 percent of flight time is when 45 percent of accidents occur.

Nice post Jim. This could be (and has been) the subject of a whole shelf full of excellent books, and it's always been an keen interest of mine. So much so that it ended up as my vocation - I analyze, troubleshoot, and design complex systems (IT networks and business processes) for a living.

In my life as a professional geek, I deal with these isssues all day, every day, and it still never ceases to amaze me how little capacity for basic critical analysis and problem solving there seems most people exhibit. I'm not talking about dullards here - these are seemingly bright, functional adults who manage to successfully execute a variety of intricate and complicated tasks as a matter of course. When something arises that goes beyond their usual programming, they're almost completely helpless. From a job security standpoint this works out very well for me, but these are the same people who drive things like public policy debates (or movie box office...)

Ugh.

While throwing up our hands and bemoaning the idiocy of our fellow travelers is an easy (and often justifiable), I think theres a lot more than just stupidity going on here:

First off, I think it's not so much that rational analysis isn't part of our processes at all, it's simply that it enters the processes much later in the game. Lets face it, we want what we want and no matter how impeccably rational we may fancy ourselves to be in the pursuit of those wants, it's rarely the results of detailed critical analysis that get us wound up about things on the front end. It's almost always something visceral - lust, fear, greed, love, hate, familiarity, social convention/peer pressure, aesthetic taste, etc., that is "the decider", and it's only AFTER the decision has been made that the heavy analytical lifting begins. It's the sort of the inverse of the Dan Dennett quote at the top of the blog (he's one of my faves as well): We're often very good at making very cogent and well-thought-out arguments for rationally suspect positions and propositions.

I know I'm coming off rather perjorative here, but in essence what I'm saying here is that all of us tend to have our "artistic visions" first, then we work out the engineering details later. I don't think this is neccessarily a bad thing. As much as the current world frustrates me, I don't know if I'd feel any better about a world where this wasn't the case. Think of how dreadful the movies would be.

My second point is that as much as I love and live by critical thinking, it's often critical thinking that gets us into these messes in the first place. There are a lot of ways in which this is true, many of which involve good processes applied bad data (the old "Garbage In, Garbage Out"), but one that I encounter a lot is the difference between "Transactional Analysis" and "Relationship Analysis":

Lets say that you and I want to exchange goods or services. Obviously logic dictates that it's in my best interest to get as much as possible from you, while giving up as little as possible. "Transactional Analysis" quite rationally tells me that worse I can screw you over, the more beneficial this will be for me. Logic dictates that should I lie to you, cheat you, beat you over the head, take the money and run, if I can.

Of course, the critical anylysis changes completely when we pull the camera back from the close up to the wide shot: An aimiable and mutually beneficial transaction could lead to additional business dealings in the future, both with you, and with others you deal with. Although I may not profit as much from this individual transaction as I might have if I'd been a crook, the long term relationship(s) that would result from fair dealing would ultimately be much more profitable for me.

So what we have here is perfectly sound logic giving leading us to contradictory courses of action - the "Transactional Analysis" tells me to do one thing, while the "Relationship Analysis" tells me to do the opposite.

This may sound like an esoteric philosopher's exercise, but it lies at the heart of a large percentage of our public policy issues - everything from universal health care, to governance of commercial and financial markets, to (especially) environmental issues. When you ask people if they'd like to pay less taxes, they're not being irrational when they say "YES!!!" - within the limted context of the question the math is incontrovertable. IMany conservatives may actually be stupid and/or selfish and/or mean, but I know and love a lot of them who are none of those things. It's not that they're composition is bad, it's just that they like those close-ups and two-shots and don't choose to pan or pull back all that much.

JE: Thanks for the thoughtful post, George. What you mention about reason kicking in after emotion is indeed what Jonah Lehrer talks about in "How We Decide" (a review of which I quoted from above). It reminds me of what they say about advertising, that it's not so much about trying to get you to make a rational purchasing decision as to reinforce your positive feelings about a decision you've already made. As for morality, it too is a combination of reason and emotion. But I can't say I recognize your characterization of "Transactional Analysis" from my high school days, and I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "Logic dictates that should I lie to you, cheat you, beat you over the head, take the money and run, if I can." Obviously, there are many perfectly logical (as well as legal, moral, ethical, even practical) arguments against this -- assuming it's something you even felt like doing in the first place. (I can't say that I have, but clearly some people do.) Sounds to me like you're describing a sociopath or a violent criminal rather than logical behavior.

Fei,

If you reread my email, I think you should see that you misinterpreted it. I did not say that an opinion is logical. I think I said well, ahem, the complete opposite. Two people in the same situation can logically reach conclusions on how to maximize their respective well beings but reach opposite logical conclusions because they are in fact trying to maximize different things. If they valued everything the same way, yes, I agree - they would reach the same conclusion if following logic.

Eric

"Critical thinking is a skill, and like any skill it can be taught, practiced, and improved upon."

If there's any one take-away from all this, this is it. It's something that needs to be practiced -- which means it also needs to be reinforced as early as possible. I always felt critical thinking should be taught as an adjunct to reading and writing -- from the very beginning on up, not just as some adjunct to a math or philosophy course.

Jim, if you're interested in some further reading on the topic of rational versus irrational thought, I highly recommend Gerd Gigerenzer's book "Gut Feelings". Dr. Gigerenzer has dedicated his career to the study of heuristics (i.e., mental short cuts) and his most recent (and exciting) work deals with a counter-intuitive premise: less information sometimes leads to better decisions.

A good example, which I recall from my university days (and it's covered in the book, too), is how Dr. Gigerenzer's team compared their stock picks against those of industry experts and analysts. As you might imagine, the industry experts relied on complicated formulas, algorithms and intensive analysis to make their picks. Their approach was a rational one: collect as much information as possible and use a regressive approach that applies higher or lower weights to various pieces of predictive information. On the other hand, Gigerenzer and his team were not industry experts and relied on their own judgements, picking stocks that were probably familiar and definitely based on very limited information. The outcome of this study, which has been replicated several times in various settings and countries, is that Gigerenzer and his team were equally good, if not better, at picking successful stocks compared to industry experts.

I don't think this undermines the usefulness of rational thought, but it does complicate how we should be approaching the topic of rational versus irrational. I can attest that, as a researcher, I am often tempted to try and explain the full extent of a given phenomena. Rational thought is very good at explaining past events - a regression model can help explain the nooks and crannies of an event but it tends to fail miserably at predicting future events. Oftentimes, the best predictions are based on just a single piece of information.

I know this is a little bit different from your discussion on critical thinking but I hope it was an interesting tangent for you.

Jim,
The subject here is political partisanship, right? Why people believe in a certain agenda (against another). This is a cultural reasoning, opinions based on preferences, lifestyle choices, moral standards. All this is based on acquired cultural knowledge, maybe influenced by a certain cultural environment, to share peer values, to think alike a referential model/mentor. Even if this could lead to excessive reactions and irrational behaviour, none of this subconscious, innate, biological.

So to compare this kind of thinking process (belief and opinions) to something that escapes conscious reasoning (like phobia) is a straw man fallacy. The reasons why someone is afraid to fly (life threatening) are of a different kind than the reasons to believe a political pundit and buy into an agenda. Their state of conscience is on a different level too.

I see why the statistics example (rational facts disproving an assumption) is meant to explain the mentality disregarding rationality intentionally. But the non sequitur, in the particular case of fear of death, makes the analogy invalid.
People refusing socialized medicine, and people refusing to fly might both be called "irrational", but that doesn't mean this irrationality operates on the same level. And since the point of this quote was to link cultural behaviours (superstition, political alignment) to "neurological wiring", I disagreed.

When you ask a logical question, the expected answer will be logical. But when the question doesn't require logic, there is no reason to apply logic to it. Like Fei says, logic has its own protocol, its own limitation. If you apply logic to the wrong premise, you fail logic. Like George's example of the salesman-thief : it is obviously a flawed logic, a very narrow mindset indeed, and short term reasoning ignoring the most basic rules of commerce, which should be applied if logic was conform.
What people call logic is sometimes a fallacy. People usually don't hold a belief knowing that they are wrong... they think they are right. they just ignore (intentionally or not) the context that doesn't reinforce their assumptions, or take mere superstition as hard evidence.

"People on both sides of the political aisle often work backward from a firm conclusion to find supporting facts, rather than letting evidence inform their views."

You may have provided a concise explanation for that in your very first paragraph:

"We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

The obvious doesn't need explaining. "Two plus two equals four! Do I really need to explain why?" Such an explanation can only be achieved through backwards reasoning for all but the most radical of thinkers. Backwards reasoning is thus legitimate.

The problem with the healthcare debate is not that both sides are emotionally attached to their beliefs. It's that both sides are legitimately restating the obvious.

For some, healthcare is a choice. Two plus two.

For others, healthcare is a right. Two plus two.

The emotions that eventually come into play arise out of frustration. For both sides, the debate feels something like this:

"Two plus two equals four."
"No it doesn't, it equals five."
"No, it equals four."
"Why?"
"If you take this bottle and place it next to that other bottle we've got two bottles, am I right?"
"Yes."
"Now let's place these two bottles by those two bottles and how many are we left with?"
"5."
"No, they're four!"
"YOU'RE WRONG, THEY'RE 5!"
"LISTEN, THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY FOUR! ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS TWO, IT'S ONLY OBVIOUS THAT 2 PLUS 2 EQUALS FOUR!"
"BUT YOU DON'T FACTOR INTO THE EQUATION THE DUCKS!"
"WHAT HAVE DUCKS GOT TO DO WITH IT?!"
"DUCKS HAVE EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT!"
"YOU IDIOT, WE'RE COUNTING BOTTLES!"
"FOUR BOTTLES PLUS ONE DUCK EQUALS 5!"
"NO! FOUR BOTTLES PLUS ONE DUCK EQUALS 4 PLUS ONE!"
"DOES THAT NOT EQUAL 5?"
"NO! YES! WHAT? Listen, TWO plus TWO equals FOUR, that's just OBVIOUS!"
"THAT'S IDIOTIC!"
"NO, YOU ARE IDIOTIC!"
"NO, YOU ARE!"
"NO, YOU ARE!"
...

And so it goes.

I think the REAL UNDERLYING PROBLEM is that it shouldn't even be a political debate. Government shouldn't be concerned with morality.

I recently read something along these lines:

"Those who are not democrats at 20 have no heart. Those who are not republicans at 30 have no head."

That was written at a time when the republican party had mostly libertarian leanings so it still rings true for me.

It's immoral to take money away from people at gunpoint and give it to other people but it's also immoral to deny dying people treatment.

The only correct thing for the government to do is to take the libertarian stance, which is to do nothing, because fixing the healthcare system should be a societal effort, not a governmental one. No definite truth can ever be arrived at through political argument.

Jim: Sounds to me like you're describing a sociopath or a violent criminal rather than logical behavior.

Most sociopaths do act in a very logical manner, they simply don't share the same priorities as the rest of us. It is important to understand that logic is simply a means to reach conclusions from assumptions, not a way to reach the assumptions. Most of us assume that humans are obligated to act in such a manner that does not harm other humans, but there is no way to logically reach that assumption. Therefore if a person's goal in life is simply to advance their own interests, it is perfectly logical for them to use whatever method best maximizes the chance for doing so.

JE: I guess I'd re-phrase that, then. Didn't mean to apply that a sociopath couldn't act according to logic (some are actually quite skillful at it; makes 'em good at being sociopaths). It's like what we know about unfettered capitalism: If a person's sole goal in life is to advance their own interests at any cost, they are sociopaths (by definition).

"Emotion and reason are inextricably linked in humans"

I understand that. I also know(kinda know) that emotion basically wh0res your intelligence. There was a study done on jealousy(can't seem to find it anymore). Your emotion uses your intelligence to determine what is considered possessions of power(a cow or a yacht) in your region in order to make you yearn for it.

"What is actually in this legislation?"

how can we EVER see what's in this legislation if we're unable for the life of us mitigate how we look at it? Even if we could choose, we'd HAVE to choose rationality 'cause emotions would only cause us to implode on ourselves at this moment. And then all we'll see is "oh, some homo sapiens trying to stay alive by trying to predict the furthest after-effects of certain imposed rules, which they'll never be able to fully predict....HAHAHAHA!". A government is an attempt by humans to preserve our continuity. Why do i even want to do so? MY EMOTIONS TOLD ME TO DO IT, JUDGE!

""actively resist the urge to suppress the argument. Instead, take the time to listen to what all the different brain areas have to say.""

Suppress emotion by suppressing it with emotion!

Does it not take emotion to suppress something? You need to have a conflicting emotion in place, I don't believe a conflicting thought is enough. Take for instance reservedness, for me it took a strong fear in order to subdue needs. Although I think an overarching thought should be able to work. A thought that encompasses the emotion, and so able to nullify it. But to me the ability to consciously suppress something is an illusion, and trust me when I say I have alot of experience in suppression of my feelings. I don't think to the level that the gays do, but still up there.

Here's something for your movie, Jim (described after the first comment).

How many people throw their own trash away when they go to McDonald's, or any other fast food restaurant? Close to 100%, I'd guess.

Why? Is there a sign anywhere that requests that people do this? Nope, only friendly little "Thank You" signs on the trash cans (although I've noticed that even these are starting to disappear). McDonald's and their ilk are running one of the biggest scams in the world. Who ever heard of paying to go out to eat, and then cleaning up after yourself...and not only that, but the restaurant EXPECTS you to do it?

My mother, God bless her, would never have described herself as a critical thinker, but she turned me on to this one. "The whole reason you pay to go out to eat is to have others fix your food and clean up after you," she'd say, leaving ketchup packets and burger wrappers behind her on the table.

To this day, though, my partner cleans up after me when we go to a fast food restaurant. However, when we get carry out, those bags and wrappers stay on the sofa or kitchen counter for days. Go figure.

Hi Again Jim -

The "lie, cheat, rob and beat" bit was some dramatic overstatement on my part, but Brian K. and Harry Tuttle already clarified my point pretty well: Like any tool reason can serve selfish or nasty ends just as effectively as it can serve pursuits we find more pleasant or socially valuable. Sure we can't very well build anything without reason's hammer, but we can smash things up with it just as well.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned "unfettered capitalism". In my day job (when I'm not tormenting bloggers) I do IT for a bank so I had a front row seat as the financial services industry got too clever by half and exploded the economy. This is a great example of how "transactional" thinking, as perfectly logical as it may be, can get us in really big trouble in a hurry.

Being in the industry I got to see "how the sausage got made" when it came to the creation of all these exotic but toxic financial instruments like "sub-prime collateralized debt obligations and "credit default swaps". I can assure you it was all VERY rational - based on fiendishly complex mathematics like "Gaussian Differential Cupolas", worked out by the best and the brightest Nobel-caliber brains, using copious amounts of computer processing power.

This "New Math" allowed everyone in the chain to believe that you could make as many bad loans as you like, provided you sliced each loan up in to a thousand pieces, shuffled the pieces in a big vat with the pieces of a thousand other bad loans, then scooped out spoonfulls of this mixture and packaged it as a "sub-prime mortgage bond". If Joe Homeowner defaulted on the loan for that McMansion he couldn't really afford, it was no sweat - since Joe's loan was chopped up and spread around, no one investor owned the whole thing and Joe's mess would never be more than a tiny fraction of the value of any one investor's bond. Plus, with housing values soaring (on the inflationary wings of all the extra investment money these bonds were dumping into the housing market - can you say "perpetual motion maching"), repo-ing Joe's house would net the bank an asset worth more than the inital loan value anyway.

How could anyone go wrong? Makes perfect sense, Right?

Of course, you have to keep your eye on the "new math". Ignore that base and primative part of you that says "If you slice a thousand turds into a thousand peices, mix all the pieces together, and scoop them into nice clean bowls, is that enough to make me want to eat them?" Those are just irrational gut responses of fear and revulsion. They don't have any place in this elegant mathematical model. If you look at the whole chain of events in the pristine light of infallible logic, it's easy to see that everyone in the chain was acting in a perfectly reasonable fashion:

- The couple who wanted a nicer house we're happy to take on that huge interest-only loan with the adjustable payments that would jump like crazy in a few years. Home values were going up like rockets, they'd soon have a lot of equity, so they'd be able to refi before then anyway. Perfectly reasonable.

- Of course the realtor they worked with would love to sell them something more expensive - she's getting paid on commission. Perfectly rational.

- The mortgage broker gets paid by collecting a fee for every loan he does. If he's got a lot of wacky loan programs that let him sell to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to qualify, he closes more loans. Perfectly rational.

- Ditto the lending bank - they get their cut when they fund the loan (wacky or otherwise) and they don't have to sweat the risk because they're just going to sell the loan on the secondary market to an investment bank anyway. Perfectly rational.

- Because the wacky loans are made at higher interest rates, the bonds that get made from those sifted turds are going to have a higher rate of return than regular bonds. Investors flock to products that offer a higher return so those babies are going to sell like hotcakes. Of course the investment bank is going to snap up as many as they can, put them in a pretty wrapper, and pimp them as hard as they can. Perfectly rational.

- It's the job of the bond ratings agencies to let investors know how risky a particular bond might be, and just look at the beautiful gaussian mathematical model these bonds are based on. It's a work of genius. It spreads the risk of each bad loan around so thin that it virtually disappears. Of course, the model was cooked up by the banking industry, but they're good guys - they're always generous when they pay us to rate their bonds for them... A+ Rating. Perfectly rational.

- Hmmm, these sub-prime bonds are rated at the same risk as other bonds, but with much higher rates of return. Of course these are the ones every investor is going to want - that's just ebing smart with your money. Of course professional mutual fund and pension fund managers are going to invest heavily in these bonds - they have a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to minimize risk and maximize return. Perfectly rational.

It was all so perfectly rational that we just kept eating the delicious turd soup and sending our compliments to the chef, right up until the vomiting started. How delightfuly intelligent we all are...