The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

How was Anne Frank found?

A former FBI agent is using "cold-case" techniques to figure it out:

Gertjan Broek, a lead researcher with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, believes that the search for an informant might prevent researchers from discovering what really happened. “By asking ‘Who betrayed Anne Frank?’ you actually assume tunnel vision already. You leave out other options,” he says.

It’s possible, Broek says, the Franks weren’t betrayed at all—instead they might have been discovered by accident. There’s a chance that those in hiding were discovered during a search regarding fraudulent ration coupons, he says after a two-year research project.

Another group of more than 20 forensic, criminology, and data researchers hope to narrow the margins to a single culprit. The team, led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, is treating the investigation like a modern cold case. For years they’ve been combing through archives and interviewing sources around the world while also using 21st-century technology to crosscheck leads. The team has created a 3-D scan of Frank’s hiding place to see how sounds might have traveled to nearby buildings.

Regardless, it's fairly certain that Anne Frank was not a "Belieber."

Sunday afternoon link round-up

Including sitting with a lost dog for 45 minutes this morning, I've had a pretty lazy Sunday. Here are some of the articles I might read if I decide to do anything productive today:

Finally, in part because of the proportion of depressing things listed above, I want to post a photo of this dog:

Why? Because she's just that adorable. And not at all troubled by the newspapers.

It was 50 years ago today

That Sgt Pepper taught the band to block a street in London:

It was on August 8, 1969, that the band snapped the photo that would change Abbey Road’s future forever. The following month they would release an album named after the northwest London street where it had been recorded, and that album’s iconic cover would seal the street’s fate. A photo of the Fab Four crossing the street in tidily-arranged profile made Abbey Road the site of the most famous crosswalk in the world.

In terms of traffic management, it’s been downhill ever since.

Getting the pose right is not easy. When the original photo was taken, police were on hand to stop traffic while photographer Iain Macmillan scaled a step ladder to get the right angle. Visitors ever since, by contrast, have had to contend with the fact that this quietly opulent street is actually quite busy with traffic, ever complicated by the daily gauntlet of posing fans.

I confess, I visited the famed zebra crossing in 2012. The actual Abbey Road Studios building is just behind it:

Dying for lack of a cause

Continuing my series on logical fallacies, we come now to "non causa pro causa," or false cause.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"After this, therefore because of this." The argument attempts to attribute cause to the thing that happened before. (See, also, "correlation is not causation.") This is essentially where superstitions come from.

Example: "I've created a million jobs since I'm president," a politician claimed after six months in office. It turns out, that job growth was consistent with (but slightly lower than) job growth under the previous office holder going back six years, making it improbable that the politician had anything to do with the jobs.

Another example: "Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!" By that criterion, so were 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010. In fact, regulations governing air-transport flying were tightened in 2013.

Reductio ad absurdum

A "reduction to the absurd" tries to show that an assumption is false if a contradiction can be drawn from it. Usually, however, one or more of the premises of the argument is false.

The classic example uses a pair of syllogisms:

P1: A statesman acts in the public interest.
P2: Senator Jones is a statesman.
C1: Therefore, Senator Jones acts in the public interest. (Valid but possibly untrue.)

P3: Statesmen do not campaign for public office.
P4: Senator Jones campaigns for public office.
C2: Therefore, Senator Jones is not a statesman. (Valid but probably untrue given C1.)

The problem is probably premise #3. It's certainly the weakest link in the chain.

Another example: "America is the greatest country on earth, and we're making America great again." But...

Final example: "If your orders are always followed, then why was Private Santiago's life in danger?"

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to tease out the syllogisms of the last two examples.

Next time, a lot of questions, and squirrels.

Lunchtime reading

A diverse flock this afternoon:

Your coder will now resume coding his previously-coded code.

Scott Adams demonstrates bad-faith arguments

As I continue my series on logical fallacies, I'd like to note cartoonist Scott Adams' latest blog post.

For years, Adams has talked about how people see what they want to see in the president's speech and actions, but only he and other Trump supporters deal with reality. He claims that people who believe the president is a racist are hallucinating, and that the media perpetuate this hoax.

The post contains extensive demonstrations of many, perhaps all, of the fallacies the complete series will discuss. He also lies. I would actually call the post as a whole "gaslighting," from its main premise on down to the details he cites. (He concludes by saying, "Given the subjectivity of reality, [critics] won’t be able to read this blog post without being triggered into cognitive dissonance," which, if you has experience with abusive relationships, should make your skin crawl.)

Adams has a good command of English and propaganda. He knows what he's doing. So I'm going to use Adams' post from today as a final exam of sorts for the entire series on fallacies. Should be fun.

What goes around...

Continuing to look at material fallacies, we come to one of the most misunderstood and one of the most common.

Petitio principii

"Begging the question" does not mean that a question is hanging in the air, waiting for someone to ask it. (That's "raising the question.") It means that an argument rests on itself, as a foregone conclusion. As Aristotle defined it, "Begging or assuming the point at issue consists (to take the expression in its widest sense) [of] failing to demonstrate the required proposition."

A famous example is the notion that "gay marriage isn't marriage because marriage is a union between a man and a woman." Um...no, see, you're using your own argument to support your own argument. How you define marriage may not actually be the correct (or legal) definition of marriage.

Or take a noted politician, who in January 2017 said "the news is fake because so much of the news is fake." He didn't even bother to cover up the abuse of logic.

Circulus in probando

A "circular argument" is similar, but the argument comes back around to itself rather than resting on itself. Example: "Smart people vote for my party, because it's a wise choice. And you can tell they're smart people, because they vote for my party." Round and round it goes.

Circular arguments differ from begging the question because there are more steps involved. Usually someone begs the question by using different words that mean the same thing; in a circular argument, you go around the circle.

Next time won't follow, absurdly.

You're accidentally wrong

Last week I identified and demonstrated seven fallacies of irrelevant conclusion, by which a person tries to win an argument using language that has nothing to do with the point being argued. Those fallacies actually fall under the larger heading "material fallacies." A material fallacy makes an error of argument, in contrast to a formal fallacy which makes an error of logic.

Before I get into specific kinds of material fallacies, let me describe the basic principle of syllogism. A syllogism has a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Each of the premises has a common term; we call this "distribution" in that the common term is "distributed" between both premises. Without distribution, the syllogism is invalid.

Note that "invalid" means the logic is wrong; "untrue" means the conclusion is wrong.

Here's an example of a valid and true syllogism:

Major premise (MP): Men are mortal.
Minor premise (mp): David is a man.
Conclusion (C): Therefore, David is mortal.

The word "man" is distributed between the premises, making the conclusion valid. Since the major premise is true for all men, and the minor premise is true, then the conclusion is true.

So let's look at two kinds of fallacies where the logic is sound but the conclusions might be false.

Agrumentum per accidens (secundum quid)

An "argument by accident" suggests that because something applies in general, it applies in this specific case. Here, for example, is an argument you may have heard from a political leader in the past:

MP: People from Mexico have committed crimes. Generally true–but not in all cases.
mp: These people are from Mexico. Specifically true.
C: Therefore, these people have committed crimes. False.

This is a material fallacy, because it turns out while this syllogism is perfectly valid, it's just not true. That is, it's false (not to mention racist and offensive) because while there are some people from Mexico who have committed crimes, not all of them have; therefore, it overgeneralizes to say that any random group of Mexicans has committed crimes.

Another one:

MP: Prosecutors charge people with obstruction of justice when they find evidence of it. Generally true.
mp: The president has not been charged with obstruction of justice. True.
C: Therefore, there is no evidence that the president obstructed justice. False.

Again, arguing from a generality to a specific case is logically valid, but in this specific case, the president has not been charged with a crime despite the evidence, not because no one found any.

Converse accident (hasty generalization)

This fallacy comes from thinking a specific case represents the general case. This time the conclusion may be true, but probably isn't, and it may also be invalid:

MP: Health care is a complicated subject. True.
mp: I didn't know that health care was a complicated subject. True.
C: Therefore, "nobody knew health care was complicated." False.

In this case, the speaker takes a specific case of ignorance (his own) and incorrectly infers that everyone else has the same lack of basic policy competence.

Another example: "Another historic trade blunder was the catastrophe known as NAFTA. I have met the men and women of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Hampshire, and many other States whose dreams were shattered by NAFTA."

While NAFTA may have caused unfortunate consequences for the men and women with whom the president spoke, to say that it was generally bad for the country as a whole overgeneralizes from those few examples.

Next time: we'll go around in circles, because that's how I roll.

It's the future! Our flying cars are nigh!

French inventor Franky Zapata piloted a jet-powered hoverboard across the English Channel yesterday, covering 32 km in 22 minutes, including a refueling stop on a boat:

Mr. Zapata’s first attempt to cross the English Channel had been intended to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the first flight between continental Europe and Britain, made by the French pilot Louis Blériot.

“What I have done is a lot smaller, but I followed my dream, and that’s huge,” Mr. Zapata told the BFM TV channel.

His device, a gas turbine-powered contraption fueled by five small jets, can theoretically fly up to 175 km/h at an altitude of 15 m to 20 m for about 10 minutes.

Last year, the French Defense Ministry pledged nearly $1.5 million to his company, Zapata Industries, to develop the device, which was featured at a military-sponsored convention.

Oh, right. So I don't get a flying car, but the French Army gets a bunch of them...

Still, this is a very cool achievement. And civilians will get jet-powered hoverboards someday.

Red herring

No one really knows where the term "red herring" came from, though some speculate it came from the idea that drawing a fish across your path would confuse the dogs tracking you. In epistemology, a red herring is an:

Argumentum ignoratio elenchi

Literally, an "argument of ignorance of the grab," or an argument of irrelevant conclusion that doesn't fit into the other categories. A person using a red herring will attempt to draw the argument away from anything relevant with a distraction.

For examples, I will point to our country's greatest source of fallacies of irrelevant conclusion:

"Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?" Blaming the media ("fake news") is a red herring. Invoking Nazi Germany is offensive—and also a red herring. Both attempted to turn discussion away from the contents of the "leaks" on to a discussion of the media, and who knows what else.

"All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!" To deflect attention from the Republican Party's explicit opposition to mandating insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions, the third sentence drags an (equally false) red herring across your path. (Note that lies may take the form of fallacies of irrelevant conclusion, but they may also present a valid argument. We'll look deeper at the distinction between truth and validity later in this series.)

"Despite the negative press covfefe". Whatever this meant, it distracted people from an actual, substantive policy discussion policy for almost a week.

When someone uses a totally irrelevant statement to deflect from the argument you're actually having, call them on it, and don't get taken in.