Dangerous Thinking

Michael D. Shaw Nov 20, 2022 

 

It has long been observed that Americans have been losing critical thinking skills. Classically, “critical thinking” involves…

• Respecting evidence and reasoning 
• Being able to consider different perspectives and points of view: in other words, having cognitive flexibility 
• Skepticism 
• Clarity and precision 

But under the weight of cancel culture, none of these precepts can exist. Of course, a kind of evil twin of critical thinking can be taught, whereby a radical concept such as mutilation surgery to relieve gender dysphoria might be promoted and “critically analyzed” against a faux backdrop of civil rights, love, or even Christianity.

Cancel culture operates under an Inquisition-like atmosphere of the standard “appeal to authority,” in which the mere invocation of the authority is presumed to be an argument in itself. These days, though, such authority is based far more on social pressure, than actual demonstrated knowledge.

Indeed, in the matter of COVID and vaccines, formerly renowned figures including Peter McCullough and Robert Malone lose all authority, while repeatedly failed institutions such as the CDC, FDA, and NIH, are held to be unimpeachable, no matter what.

Which brings us to the curious matter of the suppression of inductive reasoning, the far less well-known cousin of deductive reasoning. Most of us are familiar with the typical deductive syllogism:

Police officers wear blue uniforms. Joe Jones is a police officer. Joe Jones wears a blue uniform.

Thus, deduction starts with a general premise, and ends in a specific conclusion. You might say that the end result of the deduction is a “smaller” or more granular point.

Inductive reasoning starts with a series of specific observations, leading to a more general conclusion:

I observe for many days or years that the sun rises in the morning every single day. I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, and every successive morning.

You have now arrived at a fairly “large” general conclusion. Likewise, the same reasoning is used by children who burn themselves ONCE by touching a stove, and then conclude that they must never touch a hot stove again, lest they get burned.

In a sense, inductive reasoning is learning from experience. And, as long as it applies only to your personal situation, it is vastly helpful. But, when you expand it to the way you view things in a global sense, it can become quite dangerous—to those in charge.

In the case of of COVID, we were bombarded with official information from the get-go, nonstop. For those conditioned by the education system and peer pressure to always trust authority, their patterns of behavior would become predictable. They would keep a six-foot distance from others even though the virus is carried as an aerosol and is suspended in the air for some time before dispersing, no matter how far away you stand from others.

They would mask up, even after getting contradictory information from the same authorities. And, they would get vaccinated repeatedly, even though the ADMITTED initial side effects of the vaccine were worse than anything they had previously experienced.

The CDC would first say that the vaccines prevent infection and transmission, only to later say that they don’t. When the infection/transmission mantra disappeared, it was replaced with the never-proven notion that at least the vaccines would prevent serious illness. (None of the touted studies corrected for anything other than the age of the patients involved, There was no consideration of health histories.)

Dangerous inductive reasoning would eventually conclude that the authorities were repeatedly lying to us. Thus, why should we believe a single thing they say?

Finally, some will object that you can’t PROVE anything with inductive reasoning. In the sunrise example, I certainly can NOT prove that the sun will rise tomorrow; I can only predict this. However, it is also true that nothing can be proved, absent some assumptions, including the meaning of words and the Law of Identity.

Bear in mind that nothing can be proved with deduction, either, unless the premises can be independently demonstrated to be true, and the application of the deductive logic is shown to be sound. At any rate, since deductive conclusions are very specific, they will almost always be less profound or dangerous than inductive conclusions.