Tuesday, August 17, 2010
We need more post hoc
In the textbooks, post hoc ergo propter hoc is listed as a fallacy.
To be sure, there are situations where you can falsely conclude causation from afterness. If you say a bad word (event A) and your mother dies several days later (event B), you might conclude that cussing kills relatives. Superstitious fallacy, because the afterness happened only once and because there is no plausible connection between event A and event B.
But most of the time, afterness is a good source of theories. If you observe that B follows A with some consistency, and if there's an apparent or plausible connection between A and B, you've got a pretty good hypothesis meriting further study.
We are currently plagued with murderous theories and ideologies that are transparently false because they specifically violate afterness.
Global warming is the most dramatic example. Long-term records of temperature and CO2 have been around for several decades, and they always show a weak correlation between the two phenomena, with CO2 rising AFTER temperature in all the periods where you can see any correlation at all. There is NO BASIS in the actual data for a hypothesis that CO2 controls temperature. The facts cannot suggest such a theory. Yet the "scientists" have erected a vast structure of falsified data and falsified computer models to "prove" the nonsensical relationship. And the politicians, businessmen, educators, communicators and preachers have followed blindly along, never stopping to examine the data, never questioning the Professors With Advanced Degrees.
This week we see a violation of post hoc in the utterances of Pasha Hussein Obama and Grand Mufti al-Bloomberg. Both of these leaders tell us that we can defeat the jihadis by tolerance. We can win this war by "being better than them."
Wild violation of all the facts of history. Every single time, without exception, niceness and tolerance lead to defeat, not victory.
NOT ONCE IN ALL OF HISTORY HAS A WAR BEEN WON BY DEMONSTRATING TOLERANCE. WARS ARE WON BY INTOLERANCE, HATRED AND MURDER.
EVENT A = KILL ENEMY.
EVENT B = ENEMY SURRENDERS.
EVENT A = ALLOW ENEMY TO BUILD MONUMENT TO HIS VICTORY.
EVENT B = ENEMY WINS.
(Or more precisely, enemy has already won.)
WARS ARE WON BY DESTROYING THE ENEMY, NOT BY KISSING HIS FILTHY ARAB ASS. ¶ 4:03 AM
To be sure, there are situations where you can falsely conclude causation from afterness. If you say a bad word (event A) and your mother dies several days later (event B), you might conclude that cussing kills relatives. Superstitious fallacy, because the afterness happened only once and because there is no plausible connection between event A and event B.
But most of the time, afterness is a good source of theories. If you observe that B follows A with some consistency, and if there's an apparent or plausible connection between A and B, you've got a pretty good hypothesis meriting further study.
We are currently plagued with murderous theories and ideologies that are transparently false because they specifically violate afterness.
Global warming is the most dramatic example. Long-term records of temperature and CO2 have been around for several decades, and they always show a weak correlation between the two phenomena, with CO2 rising AFTER temperature in all the periods where you can see any correlation at all. There is NO BASIS in the actual data for a hypothesis that CO2 controls temperature. The facts cannot suggest such a theory. Yet the "scientists" have erected a vast structure of falsified data and falsified computer models to "prove" the nonsensical relationship. And the politicians, businessmen, educators, communicators and preachers have followed blindly along, never stopping to examine the data, never questioning the Professors With Advanced Degrees.
This week we see a violation of post hoc in the utterances of Pasha Hussein Obama and Grand Mufti al-Bloomberg. Both of these leaders tell us that we can defeat the jihadis by tolerance. We can win this war by "being better than them."
Wild violation of all the facts of history. Every single time, without exception, niceness and tolerance lead to defeat, not victory.
NOT ONCE IN ALL OF HISTORY HAS A WAR BEEN WON BY DEMONSTRATING TOLERANCE. WARS ARE WON BY INTOLERANCE, HATRED AND MURDER.
EVENT A = KILL ENEMY.
EVENT B = ENEMY SURRENDERS.
EVENT A = ALLOW ENEMY TO BUILD MONUMENT TO HIS VICTORY.
EVENT B = ENEMY WINS.
(Or more precisely, enemy has already won.)
WARS ARE WON BY DESTROYING THE ENEMY, NOT BY KISSING HIS FILTHY ARAB ASS. ¶ 4:03 AM
