Bad thoughts 2

Jamie Whyte continues to guide our tour of bad thinking.

3. Keep quiet. The third chapter focuses on strategies to make the other party in an argument shut up, without actually refuting his or her argument. The first type he reveals is when one party makes a point and the other says: "you can hardly talk" or "you couldn't have done better". On the surface this seems to contradict chapter 1's point on Authority - i.e., if someone is not an expert, the statement should be questioned at the very least. But the point here is that if one party stated a truth (whether an expert or not), trying to get him or her to shut up does not constitute a refutation. Whyte submits two more varieties of the genre - first there is the true statement T, uttered by politician X so many times to support policy P, that opposing politician Y says in the media: "Aren't we already sick of hearing X talking about T all the time?" As if the fact that it is consistently repeated is a vice, or somehow takes away its truth value. A good point. The true statement has not been refuted. The third variety is the type of statement that is associated with, say, Hitler - and thus refuted. "Oh dear, you are sounding like Hitler now!" As if Hitler knew no factually true information, nor ever uttered any. All these strategies are aimed at getting the speaker to keep quiet, not at refuting the truth of what he or she said.

4. Empty words. Several different types are exposed. Jargon that serves no purpose other than to sound technical and important get the nod. Whyte uses an example from management consultancy: "Benchmarked against best-in-class peers, intellectual capital leverage reveals significant upward potential moving forward." This turns out to mean no more than: "Companies like yours makes better use of their employees' knowledge." Don't be fooled. I've heard variations on this theme in corporate meetings. But considering that someone just paid an enormous sum to hear that little sentence, I guess there is so much more to gain by obscuring the meaning. Like, you could be hired again! Next is weasel words, because they allow the speaker to weasel out of any claims to truth. Phrases like "possible", "believed to be", "could be" - especially when used in combination. Useful when you need to speak cautiously about something - spineless when you are making assertions based on evidence, science, or research statistics. Hooray words are also discussed. Let a politician state his or her commitment to justice or peace, with a little charisma and a few nice anecdotes - who would disagree? Aye, who does not want peace or justice? But leave the details for later - i.e., after the election ... And so on. Hooray words are those that everyone applauds - but are so abstract that by themselves they are meaningless, all things to all people. Whyte leaves the last word for inverted commas. Or rather their overuse. Often used to indicate when the speaker (or writer) means to imply the word is only allegedly its normal meaning ("Mr. Boddington 'proved' that there are people living on Mars"). But when used too much the writing becomes incomprehensible.

While I find these examples insightful - and they are just what I hoped to find when I bought the book - I miss the flipside. Everything is not rationally explainable (a weasel premise to start my commentary off with? ;-) Nor is the nature of politics such that bad arguments can be avoided. Interests will be protected - those of the kids in power, in particular. No, I don't condone it - but corruption happens because when people are allowed to play and know the rules - or better, can make a few new ones - they tend to maneuver around. They do what they can get away with. As a result arguments are just tools - their absolute truthfulness are seldom the issue. There's often more to be gained from framing an opponent than from uttering (only) true statements. Regretful as that may be.

But perhaps a more enlightened populace will expect higher standards from the media and their politicians. And with that thought in mind, I pour some water and say: "Cheers!"

Time to get a late dinner going.