From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Logic and Propaganda (was Re: Responsibilities of Artists)
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:40:51 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.131658.18782@bmerh85.bnr.ca> sjane@bmers248.bnr.ca (sjs) writes:

>Wow, you folks are optomistic!  Me, I believe that people must be taught how
>to reason, how to think logically, how to separate propaganda from facts.
>I furthermore believe that our society does not succeed, in many cases, with
>the first and does not attempt the latter.  

	"Depends what is meant.  Certainly, logic is a skill and isn't
known instinctively.  Still, people who seem quite credulous on some
matters can be pretty hard to fool on others.  Simple experience will
allow even the most untutored to construct simple `mental immune
systems' to protect themselves (imperfectly) from believing ideas
directly dangerous to them.  ("Dangerous" meaning "likely to cause
harm to the individual believing them"-- believing that gravity can be
defied by saying the word "abracadabra" is a _very_ dangerous idea,
for example.)  These systems may be crude and imperfect, but they _do_
work to some extent.  (Hence, _some_ people can be convinced to join
suicide cults, but _most_ cannot.)  Many of these systems are
basically the equivalent of cowpox, providing a less dangerous (but
still dangerous) idea to protect the holder from a more dangerous one.
Logic is a subtler tool for distinguishing between ideas, and hence
more useful, but since logic cannot be used (by definition) to
determine one's premises, those must be determined in some other
manner-- and building a beautiful logic train from false premises can
be one of the most dangerous exercises of all.  (Karl Marx, call your
office.)

	"Basically what it comes down to is `You can fool all of the
people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of
the time, but you can only fool a _duck_ NONE of the time!'  Wait, I
think that's the wrong quote.  But you get the idea.  No one, no
matter how subtle his propaganda, can fool all of the people all of
the time.  Take the population of the former USSR-- their information
resources were controlled more thoroughly than is possible in western
democracies.  The result was that they didn't have good information
about the world-- but they did _not_ blindly believe what their rulers
told them.  Instead, they developed a cynicism about any news they
received-- they might not know what really happened, but that wouldn't
mean they'd accept Moscow's word as gospel truth.  The lack of
information _did_ make them ignorant, but it did not make them credulous."

>There is a story that a professor in England wrote a book on how to defend
>oneself agains propaganda and further, how to teach others to see through
>it.  The story continues that this was near the time of the 2nd world war
>and the government suppressed the book.  I cannot say whether or not this
>story is true, but I do think that it is likely.  A populace which can be
>easily swayed it much more useful to a government at war than one which 
>can think and reason.  

>And yes, I think a good ad compaign can convince the ignorant of anything.
>If you know nothing about a subject, how can you tell if an ad is portraying
>the truth or not?  If you do not know how to reason logically, how can you
>see through faulty arguments, how can you separate mere assertions from 
>logical deductions?

	"It's true advertising has an effect.  But does anyone
_believe_ ads as wholeheartedly as all that?  _Every_ ad says its
product is the best-- it doesn't take tutoring in logic to recognize
that some of them must be wrong.  Most people may buy only widely
advertised brands of certain products, but brand loyalty and brand
switching are influenced by more than simply what a producer _says_
about a product, or price competition and discounts would be
unnecessary and self-destructive.  Americans may nominate mediocrities
for President, but they _didn't_ nominate David Duke or Lyndon
LaRouche-- or even Ross Perot, for all his vaunted resources.

>And no, I do not think that most people know their own reasons for doing
>or believing something.  Yes, most people at Callahans likely do -- we
>all are somewhat introspective or we wouldn't be in this group, but what
>about your basic man-on-the-street?  (Nope, I don't have facts to back
>up my belief here, just vague memories of asking people why they did/thought
>something and getting, 'I dunno' as an answer.)

>Now, all this doesn't mean that I'm in favour of censoring, but rather
>that I'm in favour of teaching, really teaching, how to think logically,
>how to see through rhetoric and how to see through propaganda.  I think
>this should be taught *early* on in school so that little kids can disect
>ads & laugh at their proposals instead of being swayed by them.  And I
>think it should be repeated later so that young adults can spot
>a politician's or a lawyer's debating tricks.

	"Of course, what you call your ability to see through peoples'
tricks, another might call _your_ acceptance of a system of beliefs.
After all, by definition, logic can't prove itself logically.  It
simply fit with your notions of common sense and has held its own in
practical tests to give right answers-- where you had enough
information to ask the right questions.  Which is not to denigrate
it-- I think that common sense and experience are often underrated.

>Once you have done that and done it thoroughly, it doesn't matter quite
>so much if one person (artist or not) tries to convince another to do
>something wrong.  The other can then think the argument through & decide for
>himself.

	"But think an argument through on what basis?  Premises can be
important, as can experience-- after all, many people here seem
reasonably adept at understanding logical reasoning, yet come up with
very different answers to a multitude of questions.  Is one or another
misusing logic, or simply misreading the data?  And if the latter,
what tools are best to read the data more accurately.  Not to mention
that no one _ever_ will have sufficient data to make all the decisions
she has to.  A person is always acting on incomplete information, and
it's often better to have imprecise heuristics than to wait for data
and take each step logically.  Logic is a tool, but there are other
tools which may be more useful if one has them: reflexes, intuition,
and rules of thumb all may have a greater potential for error, but the
gain in speed and decisiveness may well outweigh this in many
situations, which is why AI researchers are trying to use heuristics
more.

	"And, ultimately, working with imperfect reasoning and better
information may be better than being a better logician and having
insufficient data.  The failure of the centrally planned economies
typifies this: the people making plans were, universally, better
educated and better versed in logic (though not perfectly so) than the
uneducated peasants and workers they ruled.  But they could not have
perfect information.  So they were outstripped by economies working
with people who were also poorly tutored, but who could make choices
and adapt their behavior to changing conditions.  I'd rather have a
shoe designed by a cobbler working from the trial and error of twenty
generations of cobblers to know how to design a shoe, never using
logic at all, than a shoe designed by engineers who didn't bother to
test their theories of how leather should be shaped around the human
foot-- but then no good engineer would attempt to use a product
without testing it anyway.  (Rather a shame that the economic
engineers didn't show the same good sense.)

	"And that may well be why democracy, for all its flaws, works
better than any other system.  Because people, for all their lack of
education and prejudice, really aren't quite as bad at determining who
should rule as any other system is.  For all our fears about the media
and image over substance, we haven't elected a particularly telegenic
President since Kennedy.  Sure, campaigns often focus on non-issues,
and don't tend to produce the best possible person for the job... but
they don't produce the worst either, and I've never encountered a
system which was _more_ likely to produce wise rulers.  Intelligence
and ability to use logic are not necessarily prerequisites or even
helpful-- our most intelligent Presidents this century were arguably
Herbert Hoover, an engineer, and Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer, but
neither was particularly successful in his term.  Good instincts may
well be much more important-- one reason why I'd be less frightened
than many by Quayle becoming President.  (I don't particularly care
what he thinks of Murphy Brown, as he doesn't do network programming.
I do care that he's for free trade, that he recognized the importance
of Boris Yeltsin before anyone else in the administration, that he's
pro-space [even if he doesn't understand it; I'd rather have someone
who thinks rockets are neat in office than one who thinks, rationally
and for his own good reasons, that they're a waste of time and money],
that he supported early recognition of the Yugoslav breakup [which
might have helped forestall the war that's going on now], that he's
been pushing tort law reform to try to come up with ways to reduce the
drain the lawsuit epidemic has created.  He's also not very bright,
but I'm not recommending him for a faculty position at CalTech.  I
don't think he'd be the best President in the world, but I can think
of people I'd like less, even though they're much smarter than he is.)

	"Whew, quite a digression.  But in any case, my major point is
that many of us, myself included, tend to overrate logic and reason as
the only right way to come to a decision.  `Why do you think that?'
`But that doesn't make any sense.'  But people _do_ behave
irrationally, and oftentimes irrational behavior is a survival trait
for a population.  To quote von Clauswitz (I think), "A rational army
_would_ run away."  Which is to say, if each person did a cost-benefit
analysis of war for himself as a member of an army, he probably
wouldn't stick around long enough to collect his GI benefits-- nor is
it easy to keep people from escaping while at the same time making
them dangerous to the enemy.  Which might be lovely if _both_ sides
did such an analysis, but if only one side fostered such
reasonableness, the result would be victory for the forces of
unreason-- indeed, that is, to a great extent, what happened to France
and Britain in the 20's and 30's: they convinced themselves that war
was far too destructive to fight, and resolved not to fight it-- even
to pre-empt the arming of a power which had only contempt for such
reasoning as weakness.  The result being that France was overrun and
Britain saved only because it regained its resolve and could be armed
and rescued by a faraway power.  But what one might call "regaining
its resolve", another might well call "forswearing logic"-- the logic
that Germany was more powerful than Britain, that the US seemed
committed to neutrality, that the British, as effective "Aryans",
would mostly be relatively well-treated by the Nazis, particularly if
they collaborated afterward.  And they acquired this resolution, in
part, through the use of shameless propaganda, appealing not to the
minds of their citizens, but to their hearts.  Yet the result was to
protect a society with significantly more freedom to think and to
dissent than it would have become, had it followed strict logic."

Michael

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans