Here’s a story that sounds like something out of the television show House. It came from the Wired Science blog, but I’ll summarize:
An elderly man slips and falls on a child’s toy and can’t get up. The paramedics take him away, but his symptoms are not what they expect. He is disheveled, incoherent, and does not know what year it is. From slipping on a toy? Did he hit his head?
The doctors run tests, even a CT scan. All they can find is that the pH of his blood is off. He gets agitated. Tears off his electrodes and IV tube. They give him a tranquilizer and he stops breathing.
They interview the guy’s niece, who says she found several empty boxes of baking soda in his home. He was using the baking soda as a home remedy for an ulcer apparently because he is uninsured. The doctors all slap their foreheads, give the guy some fluids with potassium, get him breathing on his own again, give him a prescription for ulcer medication, and send him on his way.
Throw in some soap-operatic subplots about drug-addicted doctors and sordid secret love affairs and you have yourself an episode of House.
But once you get past the sheer niftiness of knowing that a show like House, despite all its glamor, really does correspond pretty well with medical reality, there are some things to think about there. If you’re on the liberal end of things, you might ask why an elderly man must resort to home remedies like baking soda to treat an ulcer. Why doesn’t he have sufficient health insurance? If you’re on the conservative end of things, you might point out—correctly—that nothing in the story linked above precludes the possibility that he was just too stubborn and too cheap to go to the doctor, preferred to spend his hard-earned money on other things. Maybe even noble things. Who knows?
There could be other issues at play, too. What if he really was just too stubborn and too cheap to see a doctor? What if he doesn’t trust doctors? Keeping with the political theme, you can start to work your way out to a couple different extremes on those questions: the extreme anti-establishment left and hardcore libertarianism. Or, presented as questions, why should people trust the medical priesthood? why shouldn’t people be free to destroy their own lives by ingesting chemicals, be they baking soda or methamphetamines?
Or maybe, why shouldn’t people be able to use home remedies? Why don’t people trust scientific medicine? Can’t they see all its amazing achievements? But isn’t this an example of how scientific, reductionist medicine almost failed, except for the holistic technique of interviewing a family member?
When you think carefully and cautiously, you can begin to see the world in these splintered, apparently contradictory ways, that much of politics is reducible to the biases of the observer or the speaker. What is the right answer?
Ultimately, I think the right answer can only be the best answer and that is limited by the weight of our ignorance. No decision, individual or political, comes without unforeseen consequences—although sometimes they are imperceptible or positive, so that people don’t notice. We can predict, but we cannot foresee. In a perfect world, people would recognize that disadvantage inherent to our existence and cool it with their ideology and their political rhetoric.
Since this is not a perfect world, and since people can generally only decide for themselves how to behave, I suggest that everyone try to think a little more carefully and a little more cautiously, especially with this being a presidential election year here in the United States. Cool your ideological jets and remember that the most important part about politics, indeed the reason for its existence, is that we have to live together. When you use politics as a weapon, to beat people over the head, to make them conform to behavioral standards they would not otherwise agree to, no matter how strongly you believe they are wrong, you are fundamentally missing the point.
That’s a very trusting thing for you to do.
Although, I’m sure you don’t mean that we should discontinue political discussion, but that it should be calm and logical and reasonable (you must be getting wearied by some of my blog posts =P). A tall order to be sure.
To be able to make an informed decision is a lot of work and there are many pitfalls along the road to political knowledge not least of which are media like television, radio, newsprint and blogs, all of them biased, some of them extremely so; many of them ignorant, or intentially dumbed down.
What would you suggest?
You might note that nowhere in my post did I say people should endeavor to be more informed, or to make more informed decisions. In fact, the penultimate paragraph specifically notes that, regardless of how informed a person is, there will always be more information that remains unknown.
Instead of addressing the information-gathering aspect of political thought, I am addressing the analytical aspect of political thought. That is, given the information a person has, regardless of how limited it may be, that person should still always [ask] whether his or her conclusion about the meaning of that information is the product of political or ideological bias. [Edit added Jan. 31, 2008.]
The penultimate paragraph is in the post to take the issue of education and empirical ignorance off the table. Otherwise, the door is open to the age-old, but spurious and arrogant, argument that, “If only my opponents knew what I know, if they had read the books I have read, if they were as smart as I am, then they would agree with me.”
Sure, there is something to be said about informational curiosity, but that is not what I am talking about. I think the last two sentences of the post say it pretty succinctly, but I’ll try to cut it down even more:
We have politics to live together, not to divide us. It is fine to disagree about how to do things; it is not fine to make the fact of disagreement itself into a point of contention.
It is one thing to condemn your neighbor’s idea for wanting to do things a certain way; it is quite another thing to condemn your neighbor for having that idea.
I feel like this is an important sentence, but it looks like maybe some words got cut in editing [fixed on Jan. 31, 2008 --Peter]:
That is, given the information a person has, regardless of how limited it may be, that person should still always [ask] whether his or her conclusion about the meaning of that information is the product of political or ideological bias.
It was duly noted that that issue was specifically left out, which is why I brought it up. And not to make the spurious argument that I or anyone else knows better.
It seemed to me that your post was operating on a analytical level that was in itself abstract or ideological. I was trying to see how you might apply it specifically and you explained in your comment. Basically that ad hominem is a bad way to engage in debate, coupled with some anti-extremism kind of thoughts. At least, that’s how I’m interpreting it. I might still be missing the point.
And if we cannot forsee, then what is the point of predicting? Careful predictions (utilizing your admirable suggestion of analytical thought) are typically the result of tracking patterns of behavior, whether for oneself, other humans or even animals. However, even the best evidence of the best observations still cannot accurately predict individual human behavior.
That was one of those funky things I discovered in psychology – while we can sometimes, after long and careful observation, predict what a group of people will do, we still cannot accurately predict at all what any particular individual will do in any given situation.
This is a bit off topic of your original post but to try to wrap it back around to the poor man who almost died – who could predict that he would end up where he did?
The missing word in the comment is fixed.
The point is exactly what it says in the post: “think a little more carefully and a little more cautiously” and “remember that the most important part about politics, indeed the reason for its existence, is that we have to live together.”
I don’t understand how that is not clear. Nothing in the post is about “ad hominem . . . in debate” or “anti-extremism kind of thoughts.” It is about thinking more before you talk and remembering that the whole purpose of the conversation is that you have to live with the people you’re talking to.
As to foreseeing versus predicting, the whole insurance industry is based on predicting against imperfect or impossible foreseeability, because prediction allows us to categorize the unforeseeable possibilities and make decisions about our course of conduct in light of potential risks.
But the post is really about what happens after you have predicted something and there are unforeseeable indirect consequences— the “law of unintended consequences.” That is, I was referring to those things that are, by virtue of their not having been actually foreseen despite best efforts, by definition unforeseeable when looking backward in time. The fact that, despite the accuracy of any given predictions, we can nearly always look back and find unintended consequences ought to give people pause when they are zealously advocating any course of action.
I don’t understand how that is not clear. Nothing in the post is about “ad hominem . . . in debate” or “anti-extremism kind of thoughts.”
You are absolutely correct. But your first comment contains the sentence:
It is one thing to condemn your neighbor’s idea for wanting to do things a certain way; it is quite another thing to condemn your neighbor for having that idea.
Which is almost the very definition of ad hominem.
Pardon me for trying to understand your post better. I was merely trying to grasp what you’re saying.
When I read what you’ve written, it comes across to me as coming very close to being against impassioned debate and everyone behaving like Commander Data and/or Spock in their interactions. I think you disagree with that sentiment, but I’m just trying to get some clarification.
No, an ad hominem attack would be condemning an idea that your neighbor has because you don’t like your neighbor.
Condemning your neighbor because he had a particular idea is exactly the opposite.
Nothing in my post indicates people should behave like Commander Data or Mister Spock, who make decisions without emotion. I didn’t say people should be emotionless. Rather, I said people should take others into account before they engage in ideological posturing, specifically they should take into account that others may hold their opinions for reasons that are perfectly valid from their perspective. Yes, that may involve thinking more rationally than some people are accustomed to doing, but it does not involve stripping emotion out of life, as I expect you mean by your reference to the Star Trek icons.
I don’t get the impression you’re trying to grasp what I’m saying. I get the impression that you’re trying to read something else into what I said so you can argue with it.
Yeah, because I have to go around making arguments up where there are none so I can spar with people. Dude, I have the internet at my fingertips. I can go to any number of other places that have legitimate arguments going on that I can jump into and get all upset about.
You wrote a post. I wanted clarification. I wasn’t grasping it because words have different meanings and usages and you apparently were applying different ones than I.
If you’re going to get defensive about it, forget it.
And no, an ad hominem attack has nothing to do with how you feel about the person, it is merely attacking the person rather than the idea. One can use the fallacy against people they loathe or people they love. That’s got nothing to do with it.
Then you can rephrase the definition of ad hominem argument:
It is an invalid argument to evaluate an idea that your neighbor has based on your evaluation of your neighbor.
That is still exactly the opposite of what I wrote:
“It is one thing to condemn your neighbor’s idea for wanting to do things a certain way; it is quite another thing to condemn your neighbor for having that idea.”
That can be rephrased in the same general fashion:
It is an invalid argument to evaluate your neighbor based on your evaluation of an idea expressed by your neighbor.
In an “ad hominem argument,” what one thinks about an idea is defined and limited by what one thinks about the person expressing it. In the situation wrote about, what one thinks about a person is defined and limited by what one thinks about the person’s ideas.