Your Health Food Store and Expensive Urine

Snake oil sales are stronger than ever in 2009 and for the same reason they were successful on America’s frontier during the 19th century.  Fallacious logic is once again the culprit.  The financial success of the herbal remedy industry thrives on logic illiteracy.  People are duped, pills are bought, swallowed, passed then flushed.  The process could be made more efficient and equally effective by skipping the ‘swallowed’ and ‘passed’ steps and going right from purchase to flush.

The fallacies involved are,

• Anecdotal Fallacy
• Regression Fallacy
• Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc
• Appeal to Authority
• Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
• Appeal to Nature
• Cum Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc

Scenario 1

John visits his eccentric Aunt Lucy every other weekend.  On his last visit, within an hour of his arrival, his nose started to run, his throat felt scratchy and his head started to ache.  Aunt Lucy noticed his symptoms and told him that he needed to take Echinacea immediately.  Since Aunt Lucy had no Echinacea in the house, John said good bye and drove to the Natures Nurture health food store on his way home.  There were several alternatives to choose from.  Just to make sure he got the quality stuff, he consulted the earth woman behind the counter.  She said that Lilium was known for quality and recommended the 50 mg capsules.  John paid $17.99 for the 60 capsule bottle, bought a Fiji water so he could take two of the capsules in his car, took the pills and went home.  Within an hour, John felt much better.  All of his symptoms were gone, except for the headache, and he became an Echinacea evangelist.

What really happened

Aunt Lucy had taken in two stray cats three days before John’s visit.  The cats were normally allowed free reign of the house, but on the night that John came over, Aunt Lucy let them go outside.  John has terrible cat allergies.  Two of his cold-like symptoms were really allergy symptoms, the headache came from listening to Aunt Lucy’s Flock of Seagulls album.   The cold-like symptoms disappeared because John was no longer exposed to cat dander.  The headache had to be chased away by a couple of Queen songs.

Fallacies involved

John committed at least three logical fallacies: Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc, Hasty Generalization and Appeal to Authority.

Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc description: Event A happened immediately before event B, therefore event A caused event B to happen.  Here is an example from a West Wing episode.

In John’s case, his recovery occurred almost immediately after he took Echinacea.  His assumption that the Echinacea cured him is a Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc Fallacy.

Hasty Generalization description: Drawing a conclusion from a set of data points where the set is to small to be representative.  John made a conclusion from a single data point.

Appeal to Authority Description: Also called, Appeal to Misleading Authority, if John decided on the remedy because he trusted his aunt as a credible source, and it his aunt has no medical/chemical training, John has committed the Appeal to Authority Fallacy.  If his aunt’s credibility was not his reason for trying Echinacea, he did not commit the fallacy.

Echinacea

The science on Echinacea is that it has some medicinal properties none of which will shorten the length of a cold.  To learn more, check out the following link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea.

Scenario 2

Helen is a breast cancer survivor.  She was diagnosed in June of 2006 and was completely cancer free by February or 2007.  She wrote a book about her cure that became a best seller.  In her book, she is critical of the medical profession and says that their protocols did nothing to help and it was not until she followed the protocols of Herbologist Dr. Walter C, De Luchernini that she saw almost immediate improvement and a quick cure.  Helen’s book, The Natural Cancer Cure, argues that cancer was never an issue in the world until artificial elements were introduced into water and food, and that a return to the purity of nature will reignite the body’s ability to self-cure of almost anything.

Katrina was diagnosed with breast cancer and found Helen’s book on an internet search.  At the time of her diagnosis, Katrina was weighing treatment options with her oncologist.  Helen’s book, and her own evidence, convinced Katerina that the right method would be a diet transformation.  Her own evidence consisted of a single experience when she was at the peak of suffering from influenza.  At the time she was willing to try about anything to better.  She took an herbal concoction in the evening and started to improve by morning.  “The natural foods thing worked for me when I was really sick with the flu, why not for cancer too,” she told her frustrated oncologist.  Eight months later, Katrina’s family buried her healthier body, except for the cancer which grew progressively worse until it was too late to be treated by mainstream medicine.

Fallacies involved:

The influenza remedy

Hasty Generalization

Katrina used a single data point to conclude that the herbal remedy she used was responsible for her flu cure.  One data point is hardly representative the population of people who use herbal remedies as a possible cure.  Perhaps the greatest thing about the FDA is that it requires the use of statistics, logic and scientific method in drawing conclusions.

Regression Fallacy

From www.fallacyfiles.org,

One of the most common occasions for the Regression Fallacy is illness. People are most likely to seek treatment for an illness—especially experimental treatment—when they are at their sickest, that is, their condition is an extreme one. They take a remedy, and then get better due to regression to the mean, but they attribute their regained health to the effect of the remedy. This is one reason why some people will swear by such bizarre treatments as drinking urine, or psychic surgery.

“It worked for me”, they say, when all they really know is that they took the remedy and they got better. Due to regression to the mean, many people will get better no matter what treatment they take, even none at all. Some will die, luckily for the snake oil salesmen, since the dead won’t be around to badmouth the snake oil that they took before dying.

Regression to the mean is one reason why it is difficult to determine whether a potential remedy is really effective; one cannot tell simply by taking it when ill.

Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc

Katrina concluded that the cure for the flu immediately followed the herbal remedy, therefore, the herbal remedy must have cured the flu.

Cancer Cure

Anecdotal Fallacy

For a full description and application of this fallacy, please refer to my blog, “Abused Women and the Anecdotal Fallacy.”  The fallacy is committed when the highest quantity and quality of evidence in favor of one conclusion is ignored in favor of the lower quality evidence that is more emotional or immediate.  Katrina understood the options, issues and evidence and would have opted in favor of the mainstream medical route if not for the immediate and emotional evidence of Helen’s book.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

What was not revealed in the story is that Helen, in her book, had referenced a community in Sweden that had breast cancer rates that were 10% of world averages and that they also ate organic foods and got all of there water from crystal springs.  The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is committed when someone incorrectly assumes that because a cluster of data points occurs around some other pattern, that the other pattern must have in some way cased the clustering.  It is a fallacy because 1) it may be that the data points (fewer instances of breast cancer in a population) may be random, 2) the data points may be caused by something other than what is assumed (diet).  The false correlation may also be a Cum Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc argument.  For an interesting discussion of cause and effect and cancer (among other things), read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc

Helen’s conclusion that her cancer was cured by the new diet is also a Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc argument.  The diet preceded that cure, therefore, the diet must be the cause of the cure.

Appeal to Nature

One of the most common fallacies among alternative medicine advocates today is the Appeal to Nature fallacy.  Follow the link to www.fallacyfiles.org for a complete discussion

I frequent my local health food store.  Health food stores are a treasure trove of exotic cooking possibilities.  My shopping list there includes, Agave Nectar, Steel-cut Oats, Yerba Mate, Ground Flax Seed Meal, Electrolyte Concentrate, Quinoa, and Carrot Juice (if you want a KILLER healthy muffin recipe, place a comment below).  For the logically inept, a health food store sells what amounts to expensive urine.  Do the research and don’t get duped!

Fame Shame

Fame is the adult version of Sponge-bob Square-pants in that I am dumber for having sat through it.  If not for the hottie sitting next to me, the evening would have been a complete loss. I have not seen such a sophomoric cinematic effort since Smoky and the Bandit I, II or III, take your pick.  The 4th grade plot lines, predictable dialogue and poor acting made for an unforgettable experience, but in the bad way.  If you are thinking about seeing it, you have been warned.

Treating the Symptom and not the Disease

The following video was submitted in response to my last blog.  Watch it, and see my commentary below.

I love NyQuil.  If there were a silver lining to having a cold or the flu, it would be that nightly two ounce shot of green ambrosia.  I like the flavor, the mild burn as I swallow, the feeling of heat and then the blessed drowsiness.  When I am over the flu, I try to conger up a residual cough just to have an excuse to take it one more night.   It does nothing to shorten my illness.  I really don’t care if it prolongs it, because it makes the flu bearable. As much as I like NyQuil, if I had a flu cure and did did not take it just so that I could take NyQuil, I would be foolish.

The video above is Conservative NyQuil.  It does nothing to cure your existential flu.  President Obama is a symptom.  Senator McCain is a symptom.  It is almost certain that your rep is also a symptom.  They were elected as a matter of socioeconomic necessity.  They were elected for the same reason that so many children of the ultra rich turn out to be insufferable, selfish brats.  Like you and I, these brats were handed treasure beyond measure which they did nothing to build.  All of this has led them and us to a nearly inevitable sense of invincibility and entitlement followed by opiates, opulence and orgies.

Prevailing Political Thought

Leroy

“Yea, I leave politics to the experts.  I have enough to worry about without getting involved in all that mumbo jumbo.  I have one of them mortgages from Countrywide, so I owe way more than the house is worth.  I have to pay child support, credit card payments, car payments and taxes, so I have to work two jobs just to pay for it all.  Then when I get home, I watch Wheel of Fortune and a White Sox game if there’s one on.  At about 8:00 PM, my girlfriend drops off her six year old kid on her way to work.  I let him watch Spongebob until he falls asleep.”

If you can’t see the parallel, look a little closer.  The feelings of invincibility and entitlement rose up in high school and grew out of parental indulgence and a school curriculum that validated every action and emotion that Leroy cared to express.  He left high school believing that it was his right as an American to consume that which he did not earn and do so without consequences.  He was the center of his own universe.  These flamboyant feelings led to opiates (alcohol, drugs, porn, video games), opulence (credit) and orgies. Leroy was handed one of the greatest, richest and freest societies that the planet has ever seen, and precisely because it was handed to him, he has squander his inherited fortune.

For Leroy, a politician’s message does not have to logically cohesive.  Details can be vague or non-existent, and as long as the politician can tickle Leroy’s fancy, he will get Leroy’s vote.  Enter the charismatic, professional politician.  These politicos rose up out of socioeconomic necessity.  The Leroy’s of the country demanded it as surely as hungry people demand restaurants.  Countrywide, Chase, promiscuity and television gave Leroy just enough rope to hang himself.  As he and millions of other Leroys swing, several figures emerge and tell Leroy that it was the damned banker’s fault and that he is actually the victim.  “I knew it!” concludes, Leroy.  And with that, he aligns himself with the party and its puppet.

Back to NyQuil

Go ahead and take it.  Go ahead and watch Limbaugh, Hannity, Combs and whoever else makes you sleep better.  Just understand that, like the rhetoric of your rep, the men behind the mic only satiate symptoms.  It’s a lot like walking into an Irish bar and bitching about the English.  It sure feels good while you are there, but in the end, the only result is a hangover.

Someone pass the Tamiflu!

Tamiflu doesn’t taste good.  It’s not warm going down and it won’t give you a buzz, but it will cure you.  Here it is:

Cancel your cable

Unplug the Playstation

Read to your kids

Put your kids to work, hard

Expect them to excel

Read the Constitution

Write your rep and tell them you expect humility, service and integrity

Help people

Sacrifice

Read the link below

The link below is a a document written by the center for social leadership.  It’s a Tamiflu prescription.

The Rise of Hitler and the American Seedbed

In an attempt to learn from history, scholars have deconstructed pre-Hitler Germany to discover the requisite conditions that enabled his rise to power.  We, modern Americans, point accusing fingers backward in time and across an ocean at the ignorant and arrogant Germans who were duped by a diabolical madman.  We admit that there are some who are equally ignorant and evil among us but that these only exist in secluded conclaves in back country Idaho and in various penitentiaries. But it was not German skinhead equivalents that gave power to Hitler.  It was a populace nearly identical to the majority of adult Americans in the year 2010.

Of the five or so most critical conditions that allowed for the rise of Hitler, only one is not applicable to America in 2010.  Two of the applicable conditions are never mentioned by historians and are the subject of this post.  Before getting to those, I will make brief mention of the others.

Economic Upheaval

In 1913 the German mark was worth $2.38 US dollars.  By 1918 the mark was worth seven US cents, and by the summer of 1922, one cent could buy 100 German marks.  Blame was erroneously placed on Versailles clauses.  Paul Johnson says,

German public finance had been unsound since Bismark’s day, when he had paid for his wars by borrowing [that should have a familiar smell for Americans in 2009], afterwards liquidating the debt with loot.  The same technique was tried in 1914 – 1918 but this time there was no loot, and Germany emerged with a mountain of public debt in government bonds and a stupendous amount of paper money in circulation…The crisis was due entirely to the reckless manner in which the Ministry of Finance, abetted by the Reichbank, allowed the credit and money supply to expand [there's that familiar smell again].  No one in the financial and business establishment cared a damn for the ‘Republican mark’.  They speculated and hedged against it, shipped capital abroad and, in the case of industrialists, invested in fixed capital as fast as they could by borrowing paper money [if the last sentence sounds nasally, it's because I finally had to plug my nose].

Things got so bad that a meal at a restaurant would cost $1.5 billion marks with a $400 million tip.  Banks charged 35% interest per day on loans.  Johnson also points out that the big gainers through all of this were land owners and industrialists.  It became one of the biggest wealth transfers in history.  In spite of fault clarity, the German middle class blamed the Versailles clauses and Jewish speculators.  The false conclusions and abject misery caused by economic ignorance is a worthy topic for another blog.  The bottom line is that economic upheaval opens new possibilities for political opportunists.  Germany was no exception and America in 2010 is not either.  In America we have also seen a recent vast wealth transfer away from the middle class.

Constitutional Crisis

The US Constitution is on far greater footing than the German Constitution was in 1930.  Although, under Max Weber’s guidance, the German Constitution attempted to emulate the points of the US Constitution, it had one critical flaw,  the President, elected for a seven year term, was not the head of the government.  The head was the Chancellor, a party figure, who was responsible to parliament.  However, Constitutional Article 48 gave the President emergency powers when Parliament was not in session.  As Paul Johnson points out in Modern Times, from 1923 onward, Article 48 was perversely interpreted to apply also to parliamentary deadlock.  This extraordinary and usurped presidential power allowed Hitler to lay the foundation for his eventual dictatorship.

Inferior or non-existent logic training

Only Greeks are in a position to claim as robust a philosophical tradition as Germans.  Philosophical giants such as Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Marx, Kant, Shopenhauer all hail from Germany or at least wrote their works in German.  Given that Logic is a branch of philosophy, with such a powerful philosophical tradition, you would expect the average German to have a working knowledge of logic.  The flaw in this reasoning is that the works of Kant, Nietzsche and others, were as inaccessible to the average German citizen in 1930 as they are to the average American today.  They understood the words that these philosophers wrote; they could not decipher the meaning of what was written.  Here is an example of a Heideggerian offering:

Therefore fundamental ontology, from which all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein.

What?  Did you get that?  You can look up and define every word in Heidegger’s statement.  The meaning, however, will be inaccessible without effort.  The statement is both profound and important, but it is also encrypted.  It is written to and for the intellectual elite.  The average German citizen in 1930 and the average American citizen in 2010, if asked to read and interpret what Heidegger meant by the phrase would likely respond the same way, “I have no idea.”  Philosophers have done the world a great disservice by encrypting their works.

The average German citizen in 1930, like the average American citizen in 2009, was ill equipped to detect logical flaws.  Jonah Goldberg, in Liberal Fascism, writes of Hitler that, “Hitler’s ideological coherence left a great deal to be desired.  His Opportunism, pragmatism and megalomania often overpowered any desire on his part to formulate a fixed ideological approach.”  Hitler was the consummate politician.  He was horribly weak on logic and big on hype.  Below are some of Hitler’s fallacious arguments that received a pass by the average German citizen.

False Dilemma Fallacy

“Either the German youth will one day create a new State founded on the radical idea or they will be the last witnesses of the complete breakdown and death of the bourgeois world” (Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg 406).

Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc

Germany was once a great society

The Jews infiltrated German Society

Germany has since declined

The infiltration of the Jews caused the decline

(Ironically) Reductio ad Hitlerum, The Hitler Card Fallacy

Hitler hated communism, but not for the typical reasons.  He hated communism because he considered it a plot by the Jews to weaken Germany.  Over and over again in Mein Kampf, Hitler says that, “He studied the names of communists and socialists, and it they sounded Jewish, that’s all he needed to know” (Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, Broadway Books, pg 75).

Appeal to nature, Question-begging analogy

Just as little as Nature desires a mating between weaker individuals and stronger ones, far less she desires the mixing of higher races with a lower one, as in this case her entire work of breeding, which has perhaps taken hundreds of thousands of years, would tumble at one blow.  (Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg 392)

Straw man argument

Of course, now comes the typical, Jewish, impudent, but just as stupid, objection by the modern pacifist: ‘Man conquers Nature!’ (Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg 393)

Not a fallacy, but ridiculous

All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died off through blood-poisoning (ibid pg 396)

Red Herring

He who wants to live should fight, therefore, and he who does not want to battle in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to be alive (ibid pg. 397)

Circular reasoning

Hardly in any people of the world is the instinct of self-preservation more strongly developed than in the so called ‘chosen people.’  The fact of the existence of this race alone may be looked upon as the best proof of this (ibid, pg 412).

There were detractors who saw Hitler for who he was, but the majority of Germans were duped.  Mein Kampf should have been laughed to scorn, but it was widely accepted as a valid philosophical treatise.  There is certainly a parallel in America.  If committing logical fallacies and appealing to emotion over reason had a Pinocchio effect, both the Republican and Democrat national conventions would look like a pole vaulter’s conference.

What happens when reason becomes the slave of emotion

If you watched the video, I have two rhetorical questions.

1.  Does it sound as though Hitler is making rational or emotional appeals?

2.  Are the people responding rationally or emotionally?

As with so many other phenomena in the human condition, Shakespeare captured the problem.  In this case, in Sonnet 147

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly express’d;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Hitler was a media technologist with considerable marketing savvy.  He used radio, TV, airplanes, films and most of all oratory to sway the masses.  He observed, “Without the loudspeaker, we would have never conquered Germany”  (Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 2003), pg 18).

Unchecked emotion can easily lead to support and backing of horrible people.  In 1960 a wildly successful effort began in American society and in the public school system to supplant reason as the standard and judge of achievement and excellence and replace it with emotion.  Neither McCain nor Obama had to tickle logical ears.  To win, they had to insight passion, feeling and emotion.  The goal was to either anger you against their opponent then offer themselves as the only alternative or to sell you on the hope a bright future that only they could deliver.

Mission accomplished!

Conclusion

The conditions are ripe for us to produce an American Hitler.  Few things really stand in the way.  We have been suffering moral decline for decades.  When this happens, law and police become the last line of defense before societal collapse.  As new laws are enacted to stop what morality used to, but no longer holds in check, freedom is lost.  There is still at least one stop that remains securely in place.  It’s the US Constitution which makes the Supreme Court the most important body in the land.

Musings on Barbie Dolls

I have a new idea for Mattel. Logic Barbie! Although, they would have to create a new injection mold that would shorten legs, shrink breast size, and allow for occasional acne. The good news for Mattel is that they could save on paint (no makeup required). The bad news is that sales would be non-existent.

Cartoons have reinforced the “smart girl” stereotype. Daphne was slender, had long hair and was pretty but dumb, whereas Velma was short, stocky and homely but logical. The great thing about cartoons and dolls is that they never grow older, so nothing needs to be spent on botox, implants, lifts, hair coloring and other anti-aging potions. In the real world, beauty fades like a sunset as it yields to unrelenting nightfall. That which banally enticed, demanded jealousy and was the most essential feature of Hooters employment now sags, spots, shifts and wrinkles like a taxi driver’s boxer shorts.

It takes 20 years for Logic Barbie to overtake Malibu Barbie (25 with lifts, tucks and implants). But when Logic Barbie takes over, she is a force. She leads, inspires, teaches, chastens and consoles. She lifts tired hands, tucks in her brood and implants faith and confidence within all who know her. At the same time, Malibu has to take magic Barbie pills to get through the day.

Stay tuned for next week’s Cabbage Patch musings ;).

My Scathing Letter to All Who Voted for the Current Congress

Dear Voter:

It would be one thing for you to stupidly give all of your own money to the current political elite in exchange for social snake oil.  It’s quite another to strap the debt onto the backs of your children and grand children.  Future historians will look back on this generation and this body politic as the most selfish, self-aggrandizing, and laziest of all prior generations.  The founders, because they were well educated historians, understood that no nation could survive, especially in a representative democracy, if the body of the people could be persuaded to pursue cheats and charlatans.  In case you don’t know, you have voted in reps that have burdened every man, woman and child in the United States with a $35,000 debt that you will likely never have to pay.  Which means that your children and grand children will have to pay your portion as well.  It should be a civil rights violation or a crime against humanity for the current voting populous to tacitly and parasitically agree to living large off of a group that cannot vote for itself.  You may say, “Hey, I’ve had a hard life.  I deserve it.”  Ironically, that is the identical mantra of common thugs when they steal old ladies purses.

But chances are, you are not aware of what you have done with your vote.  You have been duped by these evangelists of enslavement.  The beads they gave you as tokens of intent were obtained at Mardi Gras in exchange for backroom concessions.  You may say, “I didn’t vote for the guy.  It’s not my fault,” as if to shamelessly abdicate all obligation.  You may say, “My guy is not like that.”  When was the last time time you checked his voting record?  When was the last time you looked at any sponsored legislation from your rep?  Their opiate is to give you a warm blanket, tuck you in and say, “I’m fighting for you and it’s a good thing.  There is a flood of evil on the way, but don’t worry, I have my finger in the dike.”

You can’t rely on contaminated commentary.   You can confer with Combs, bond with Beck, listen to Limbaugh and shout with Sharpton, but in the end, you will have to do original research.  Reps fear nothing more than a loss of power and you can take it from them.  If you start now, by the time you have an impact, your children will only be laden with $140,000 in debt they did nothing to owe.  If you wait, there is no end to what could happen.

I chose debt as the issue for this letter.  It applies to all issues.  There has never been a more critical time to put down the kool-aid, get your bamboozled backside off the bandwagon and tell the emperor to get dressed or go back to Mardi Gras.

All my love,

Dr. Logic

PS A friend points out that 95% or more of you think that it is a stupid idea to increase the national debt to current levels. Yet you voted for the people who did it.