So I’m a bit frustrated at the moment. I have something queued up, waiting only for a data update to tie things up in a bow and ship out. Started looking at Wisconsin’s breakthrough data1 a couple weeks ago. They update their monthly numbers at the middle of the month:
The previous update was on April 14, so I’ve been sitting in a holding pattern all week waiting for the May update. Today is May 21 and I’m still waiting…. I’m wondering if anything like what I was seeing in the data up to March has anything to do with the delay:
But probably not. I’m sure everything is fine and we’re all just busy.
So instead of sitting here hitting reload, I thought I’d try something else. I was over at Sage Hana’s Bar & Grill2 a couple days ago sparring with Sage about what tactics make sense for bringing zombies into the light. Head over to the fridge for a Spotted Cow and wander over there for a read, knowing its all friendly sparring.
And buy Sage Coffee while you’re at it.
Debate where both sides end up disagreeing but acknowledging “I probably missed something, you could be right.” is important. We need more of that. We need to be ABLE to do more of that.
So while bar crawling back and forth between the threads Thursday, I was trying to argue that hypothetically embracing and arguing within the framework of a fallacy can be a legitimate path to understanding. I think Sage’s point (a good one, and not wrong) was along the lines (my interpretation): ‘should you be playing at that when people are showing up dead after shooting up with poison everywhere? We need to tell them its poison.’ And I guess my take is when all those people can see are chartreuse spotted bubble farting unicorns, working inside that universe could be all you got.
“But THATS a bubble farting unicorn — don’t you think thats strange?!?!”
“Dude. yeah… <shoots up> this one is like fxcking named Bob. Isn’t she pretty? She’s like… so safe and effective.”
So OK, now that the bar crawl hangover’s mostly worn off, I remembered what I think is a good example of mock-embracing the fallacy to educate out of the fallacy. And it’s not something that works into a comment thread well.
I’ve volunteered working with kids in STEM education3 for well over a decade now. Its one of the ways I get my teaching fix, having deviated from that career-wise. Every once in a while with the Jr high kids we get ourselves into an outbreak of 1=2 disease. I suspect there’s a particular local algebra teacher involved in the initial spread of this, but have not pinned down who patient zero is yet. Don’t get me wrong — this is one of those “good” childhood diseases you get the kids together to catch.
Usually it shows up with one of the brighter kids in particular, and with the rest of the population naive to the pathogen. He (and so far it’s always started with a “he”) proceeds to baffle and amaze his peers with the following “proof”:
Now this can be “stopped” right away, by informing them that in going from line 4 to line 5, they’ve divided both sides by zero, broken the universe and can make anything be anything.
But.
I don’t like to do that.
I let this brew a bit, watch the the other kids pull their hair out trying to figure out how we seem to get there with what looks like completely legitimate algebra. Eventually I step in:
“You know this is wrong here don’t you?”
And the kid who started it thinks he knows whats coming.
“We’ve known for a long time 1 is actually 3”
“Wait Whaat?”
And so it goes:
Employing the same fallacy they used to show 1=2 and instead made it worse (in fact this time there’s zeros all over the place, and the universe here just becomes a monkeypocalyptic mess).
I leave them with that until next time we meet. Now at this point they’re seeing there has to be a trick here, this is clearly nonsense, and usually these are kids who are actually interested in figuring things out. The kid who started it is now confused, usually having just memorized the steps to get 1=2. Next time we meet back up though, they’re all pretty much in on it, having either figured it out or looked it up. I’ve had one show me they can make other numbers equal other numbers. “I taught a kid to make 2 equal 4” is one of my greatest achievements.
But now they know a couple important things — one is how to spot the algebraic fallacy that got us into the mess, and having used it, they understand it deeper than if I had just told them. Another, more important lesson, is that this authority figure here shouldn’t necessarily be believed. He will trick you. Though usually they already know that one in my case. Sanity check authority is the main thing I need them to take forward.
It is fair game to use the fallacies of authority against them to demonstrate inconsistencies in the faulty narratives we’re handed. It is not the only tool, but often a good one. I think most of what I’m doing here is essentially that, taking the data handed to us by captured officials4, rolling it around and trying either to make sense of it or point out where it can’t — you can’t have efficacy AND a low death rate with this data, etc. Most of what we have to work with to determine if the stories we’re told hold truth has been mucked around with in some way. Which reminds me.
<reload’s Wisconsin page> Nope.
https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/vaccine-status.htm
Because the comments sections always seem like a trip to the neighborhood bar — especially Thursday:
Because I sure as hell ain’t teaching them poetry:
Though I wonder how many are honest and “sneak out codes”. I think I’ve seen signs of honesty struggling to get out in Oregon for example.
Great article! Great writing!
It may work amongst bright junior high school kids. It will not work with mass formation socially pressured sheep following authority.
Sage's Bar and Grill