Fallacies and Cognitive Biases ~ by Ransom

Being men of a certain disposition with access to the internet, each of us has encountered discussions which included the assertion that such-and-such was a logical fallacy.  The implication being of course that it therefore had no merit or bearing on the discussion & probably indicated the fallacier to be of the no-good sort with which we can do without thank you and goodbye.

False.

The idea that logical fallacies provide no or negative value is not always true.  Many fallacies provide great value in their proper domains.

By the end of this article you will understand some of the important roles fallacies play in human affairs & why they are unjustly denigrated.

Fallacies -- The Origin Story

Fallacies originate in the academic world of logic where the goal is to determine whether a conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

A fallacy is an argument that appears to justify its conclusion but fails to do so.

Cognitive bias is the fallacy's sloppy twin; informal and more open-ended, but covering much of the same territory.  Cognitive biases are mental tricks and shortcuts that are internally illogical.

Both fallacies and cognitive biases are abhorred by those who know better.

Logic vs. The Real World

In the pure world of logic the only value is in perfect proofs, the only cost is time spent, and the only risk is in having to try again.

The academy operates under the conceits of perfect knowledge of both initial conditions & results and assurance that failure is trivial.

The real world is different.  In the real world "good enough" is often far short of perfection, cost includes time, lost opportunity, and human lives, and risk includes monstrous unknowns that may fundamentally reshape the terrain of our lives.

In the real world we know little of what is happening and cannot even trust that our mental model correctly represents what we do know.  Outcomes are uncertain and failure rarely permits exact repetition.

The academy claims to deal with the back-end of the universe, the server-side functions that really reflect the underlying reality.  Dirty real-lifers are banging around on the client side and what we dimly grasp of the underlying principles is the result of conjecture and experimentation.

Note: Both groups are banging around on the client side; the difference is that the academy is delusional while everyone else is either overawed by the academy's self-ascribed authority or too busy plunging the toilet in the teachers' lounge to do anything about it.

Problems ensue when we naively translate from the artificial world of the academy to the messy world of real life.

The Goals are Different

The concerns of the academy are not the concerns of real life.

The purpose of a logical proof is to demonstrate that the conclusion MUST. NECESSARILY. FOLLOW. from the premises.  Everything else is failure; clear the chalkboard and try again.

Real life has no analogue.  The best we can do is demonstrate that, /so far/, doing X leads to Y.  We may fabricate a model for the academy to play god with but we cannot be certain of the premises.

The goals of real life are varied and generally user-dependent but cluster around self-preservation and repeatability (distant outcomes tend to be coincidental and shall we say self-pruning).

While the logical proof must 'win' to succeed, real life needs merely not lose.

The Costs are Different

The calculations for attempting a logical proof are based on two possible outcomes: 'success' and 'try again'.

The calculations for action are based on three approximate outcomes: 'awesome,' 'I can live with that,' and 'here lies Bob'.  These outcomes are imperfectly visible from the starting line; we can't be sure what's going to happen.

'Try again' is trivial.  'I can live with that' may be trivial.  'Here lies Bob' is not trivial.

The Translation is Bogus

The academy does not know nontrivial costs.  Real life does.

Because real-life costs may be serious and terrain-changing we have developed rules of thumb ('heuristics') to reduce costs and contain unexplored changes.

The academy knows not these things.  Because pure logic and real life have different goals & costs the academy incorrectly maps from logic to reality.

The goal of pure logic is to determine necessary 'truth.'  The cost of being wrong is trivial.

The goal of real life is survival and repeatability.  The cost of failure is high.  'Truth' is incidental to success; caution and reliability are not.

'Awesome' does not always map to 'truth'.  'I can live with that' and 'here lies Bob' are not as trivial as 'try again'.

The academy looks at these rules of thumb and sees dishonesty because the conclusion does not NECESSARILY follow from the premises.

We're not playing that game.  We're playing ours.

Risk Management

Risk may be roughly divided into two categories:

1. Environmental risk, where we do not know what is out there.
2. Outcome risk, where we do not know the consequences of an action.

The more we know about our situation the better outcomes we can select.  But knowledge can be expensive and time-consuming to gather.  What do we do when we need to make a quick decision based on the information we have right now?

We use rules of thumb to manage risk.

Rules of thumb have been developed both culturally and genetically to promote success and survival in dangerous, low-information situations.  They do not exist to expose truth but to manage risk.

Pure logic deals with the stated, not the unknown.  It doesn't deal with risk.  It therefore looks at our risk-management rules of thumb and finds them lacking.

Logic is properly used to determine what we can know.  Rules of thumb help us live long enough to do something about it.  Each is strong in its proper domain and weak outside of it.

The human mind is optimised for survival in austere conditions.  Pure truth is an expensive and marginal condition with limited survival value.  Like polarized sunglasses, cognitive biases filter out low value information so we can better focus on what matters.

This isn't to say that illogic and cognitive biases are better than the truth.  Rather, an appreciation for their proper roles will help us use them correctly and know when they are being misused.

In subsequent articles we will cover specific fallacies & cognitive biases and explore the value they provide.

P.S. Which of you dirty real-lifers posted a link to the list of 50 cognative biases?  I want to attribute it correctly in the future.