I enjoy watching my grandchildren.
It is even more fun than watching my children was.
I’ve learned a lot more about myself and about how the brain develops. I’ve also learned a lot from philosophy - especially informal fallacies. In addition, I’ve had spiritual experiences that help me see the world differently.
One of the things I see is how we are programmed from an early age.
When we are little, we have no experience. We have no filters. Our brains take in information and form synapses that create programs or patterns. For example, that is a dog. Can you say dog? What is that? No, that is a cat. That is a dog over there. Soon you have the pattern recognition and know a dog from a cat.
Pattern recognition is a primary way the brain works. We don’t question it. We just accept what we are learning and use the patterns. We also don’t question our teachers.
The key point I want you to consider is taking something in without thinking. We are all guilty of it. We read or hear something, and we really don’t take time to consider it. We don’t think about evidence. Or perhaps we see a little bit of evidence and that convinces us. Then we don’t think about it again. That becomes who we are.
A great example is a conversation I had with a professor in business school. We were just chatting after class. He made a comment that houses were a poor investment. He said that even if a house goes up in price, when you sell it, you have to buy another house. That house has also gone up in price. So, you are never ahead. Although I was in my 20’s, I accepted that just like a two-year-old. It was the worst financial advice I was ever given. Imagine! The worst financial advice of my life came from a professor in business school.
Which leads to a logical fallacy - appeal to authority. The fallacy is most easily detected using the example of an actor making political commentary. Why should we believe an actor about politics? We shouldn’t. However, shouldn’t I have been able to believe a professor in business school about finance? No!! He might have been more likely to be right about finance than someone with no business training, but he was still wrong. Appeal to authority is most convincing when a doctor or some expert gives their opinion on their field of expertise. It is still a fallacy to accept the opinion without evidence.
I was just reading an article about persuasion. One way to persuade someone is to give them information that is true but leave out the parts that don’t fit what you want them to believe. This is especially true if we are just reinforcing what people already want to believe.
An interesting example is the New York Times trying to convince us that the Iran war is bad. I don’t read the New York Times. You can find Bill Maher’s criticism here. Maher gave an example of selective information. Imagine an editor of the New York Times, “‘I’ve got a great picture of people dancing in the streets’… ‘Yeah. we’re going to go with the 10% who are sorry the Ayatollah is dead because that’s going to funnel the thought of our readers toward ‘oh this is a bad war to get into’.” Can we believe the New York Times? Is the New York Times an authority? Many people think so. Notice I have just given you selective information.
Once we are aware of the fallacy of the appeal to authority, we might still fall victim to the fallacy of genetics. That is when we believe or fail to believe anything coming from a certain person or group. It is a fallacy because we fail to look at the argument and evaluate it with evidence. This has become very popular in politics. People accept whatever one side or one person says and reject whatever the other side says.
Another fallacy is the ad hominem attack. It goes along with what I’ve already discussed. The person making the argument is attacked rather than the argument itself. Trump is terrible about attacking individuals rather than the merits of the arguments. His detractors are no better. A problem is that many people fall for the ad hominem attack. I have seen people calling Trump names and their friends all pile on. I’m sure all of them feel an exciting hormone rush and think they’ve actually done something. I doubt that they realize that the people who follow Trump are getting the same hormone rush. The problem is that issues are not being discussed. It is stupidity vs. stupidity. It is dumbing down our nation.
To rise above the level of a two-year-old, we must use evidence and actually think about issues. We must question our programming. Why do we believe what we do?
I have placed this article in the spiritual category. I believe it is our spirit that allows us to question what we believe. Many people never do. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:24. Many Christians take that to mean that we must give up wealth. However, the kingdom of God is within you. The peace that exists in that kingdom is beyond your programming. People can be extremely poor financially, yet be rich with many ideas, opinions and judgements that they cannot give up. Ironically, many of those were installed by well-meaning pastors.
If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to read the Bible looking at the passages where Jesus talked about forgiveness and judgement. Stop judging and forgive - not for the sake of anyone else. So that you can experience the kingdom for yourself. You will be happier and healthier. You can also help lead the world intellectually by questioning fallacies.