The Daily Parker

...I might have time to read all of these:

• President Trump's new rule, announced by acting USCIS chief Ken Cuccinelli, could radically change who gets to become an American.
• This week is the 10th anniversary of Kanye West's unpardonable dick move against Taylor Swift.
• The UK banned a Philadelphia cream cheese advert because it portrayed a gender stereotype.
• David Dudley argues that the bad mayor in Stephen Spielberg's 1975 movie Jaws explains "all I really needed to know about cities."
• Blogger Charles Phipps provides 50 bits of evidence that we're now living in a Cyberpunk future.
• Ross Douthat argues that sometimes—albeit rarely—you need to take conspiracy theories seriously.
• Peter Brannen points out that, at some point our entire history will be a few millimeters of rock under an ocean, so debating the "anthropocene" is kind of silly.
• Apparently, Ayn Rand has a recruiting problem.
• Fox and Friends doesn't really understand how tariffs work, even though the network they work for seems to get it.
• Rob Sylvan has some great tips for using Adobe Lightroom.

And now, back to work.

Just a few for my commute home:

• New York Times reporter James Stewart interviewed Jeffrey Epstein on background a year ago, and it was weird.
• The Post analyzes temperature records to find which parts of the US have warmed faster than others.
• Chemist Caitlin Cornell may have discovered an important clue about the origin of life on Earth.
• The site of the city's first Treasure Island store, just two blocks from where I lived in Lakeview from 1994-1996, might become an ugly apartment tower unless residents can block it.
• Seva Safris digs into the differences (for good and ill) between JSON and XML.
• Timothy Kreider delivers a stinging rant against gun-rights advocates: "The dead in El Paso and Dayton, whether they were shopping for back-to-school backpacks or just out having beers and hoping to get laid on a Saturday night, gave their lives so that you might continue to enjoy those freedoms."

I will now return to my crash-course in matrix maths.

A former FBI agent is using "cold-case" techniques to figure it out:

Gertjan Broek, a lead researcher with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, believes that the search for an informant might prevent researchers from discovering what really happened. “By asking ‘Who betrayed Anne Frank?’ you actually assume tunnel vision already. You leave out other options,” he says.

It’s possible, Broek says, the Franks weren’t betrayed at all—instead they might have been discovered by accident. There’s a chance that those in hiding were discovered during a search regarding fraudulent ration coupons, he says after a two-year research project.

Another group of more than 20 forensic, criminology, and data researchers hope to narrow the margins to a single culprit. The team, led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, is treating the investigation like a modern cold case. For years they’ve been combing through archives and interviewing sources around the world while also using 21st-century technology to crosscheck leads. The team has created a 3-D scan of Frank’s hiding place to see how sounds might have traveled to nearby buildings.

Regardless, it's fairly certain that Anne Frank was not a "Belieber."

Including sitting with a lost dog for 45 minutes this morning, I've had a pretty lazy Sunday. Here are some of the articles I might read if I decide to do anything productive today:

• Astronomers in Hawaii have mapped the structure of the entire universe.
• Closer to home, what's up with Jupiter's great red spot?
• A book published in 1968 attempted to predict the world in 2018, and got some things right.
• Graeme Wood calls President Trump's El Paso photo "obscene."
• Andrew Sullivan says, of the Democratic candidates for president, only Joe Biden has made the moral case against the current president.
• And then today in the Times Uncle Joe says assault weapons must be banned.
• Greg Hinz, plus just about all of the Republican elected officials in Illinois and many of the Democratic ones as well (along with the Daily Parker), says granting Rod Blagojevich clemency would "turn the rule of law on its head."
• Some idiot child walked into a Walmart in Missouri wearing body armor and carrying an assault weapon. Josh Marshall points out that in previous cases, the idiot children who did that went on to shoot people.

Finally, in part because of the proportion of depressing things listed above, I want to post a photo of this dog:

Why? Because she's just that adorable. And not at all troubled by the newspapers.

That Sgt Pepper taught the band to block a street in London:

Continuing my series on logical fallacies, we come now to "non causa pro causa," or false cause.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"After this, therefore because of this." The argument attempts to attribute cause to the thing that happened before. (See, also, "correlation is not causation.") This is essentially where superstitions come from.

Example: "I've created a million jobs since I'm president," a politician claimed after six months in office. It turns out, that job growth was consistent with (but slightly lower than) job growth under the previous office holder going back six years, making it improbable that the politician had anything to do with the jobs.

Another example: "Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!" By that criterion, so were 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010. In fact, regulations governing air-transport flying were tightened in 2013.

Reductio ad absurdum

A "reduction to the absurd" tries to show that an assumption is false if a contradiction can be drawn from it. Usually, however, one or more of the premises of the argument is false.

The classic example uses a pair of syllogisms:

P1: A statesman acts in the public interest.
P2: Senator Jones is a statesman.
C1: Therefore, Senator Jones acts in the public interest. (Valid but possibly untrue.)

P3: Statesmen do not campaign for public office.
P4: Senator Jones campaigns for public office.
C2: Therefore, Senator Jones is not a statesman. (Valid but probably untrue given C1.)

The problem is probably premise #3. It's certainly the weakest link in the chain.

Another example: "America is the greatest country on earth, and we're making America great again." But...

Final example: "If your orders are always followed, then why was Private Santiago's life in danger?"

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to tease out the syllogisms of the last two examples.

Next time, a lot of questions, and squirrels.

A diverse flock this afternoon:

• FedEx will sever ties with Amazon as the latter builds its own logistics operation.
• Jennifer Rubin complains about the inanity of intra-party debates that miss larger issues.
• The #MeToo movement has changed the way film studios direct sex scenes.
• Alex Pareene expresses frustration with Washington reporters not talking about the blatantly obvious reason the president has gone after politicians of color.
• CityLab has a primer on the history and language of municipal zoning laws.
• How do websites keep you coming back, and keep you from leaving? They manipulate you.
• From last November, Topic discusses "hostile architecture" designed to keep you moving along, especially when "you" means "homeless."
• Finally, TNR reminds us that the Second Amendment is no more settled than any other bit of common law, so have hope.

Your coder will now resume coding his previously-coded code.

As I continue my series on logical fallacies, I'd like to note cartoonist Scott Adams' latest blog post.

For years, Adams has talked about how people see what they want to see in the president's speech and actions, but only he and other Trump supporters deal with reality. He claims that people who believe the president is a racist are hallucinating, and that the media perpetuate this hoax.

The post contains extensive demonstrations of many, perhaps all, of the fallacies the complete series will discuss. He also lies. I would actually call the post as a whole "gaslighting," from its main premise on down to the details he cites. (He concludes by saying, "Given the subjectivity of reality, [critics] won’t be able to read this blog post without being triggered into cognitive dissonance," which, if you has experience with abusive relationships, should make your skin crawl.)

Adams has a good command of English and propaganda. He knows what he's doing. So I'm going to use Adams' post from today as a final exam of sorts for the entire series on fallacies. Should be fun.

Continuing to look at material fallacies, we come to one of the most misunderstood and one of the most common.

Petitio principii

"Begging the question" does not mean that a question is hanging in the air, waiting for someone to ask it. (That's "raising the question.") It means that an argument rests on itself, as a foregone conclusion. As Aristotle defined it, "Begging or assuming the point at issue consists (to take the expression in its widest sense) [of] failing to demonstrate the required proposition."

A famous example is the notion that "gay marriage isn't marriage because marriage is a union between a man and a woman." Um...no, see, you're using your own argument to support your own argument. How you define marriage may not actually be the correct (or legal) definition of marriage.

Or take a noted politician, who in January 2017 said "the news is fake because so much of the news is fake." He didn't even bother to cover up the abuse of logic.

Circulus in probando

A "circular argument" is similar, but the argument comes back around to itself rather than resting on itself. Example: "Smart people vote for my party, because it's a wise choice. And you can tell they're smart people, because they vote for my party." Round and round it goes.

Circular arguments differ from begging the question because there are more steps involved. Usually someone begs the question by using different words that mean the same thing; in a circular argument, you go around the circle.

Next time won't follow, absurdly.

Last week I identified and demonstrated seven fallacies of irrelevant conclusion, by which a person tries to win an argument using language that has nothing to do with the point being argued. Those fallacies actually fall under the larger heading "material fallacies." A material fallacy makes an error of argument, in contrast to a formal fallacy which makes an error of logic.

Before I get into specific kinds of material fallacies, let me describe the basic principle of syllogism. A syllogism has a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Each of the premises has a common term; we call this "distribution" in that the common term is "distributed" between both premises. Without distribution, the syllogism is invalid.

Note that "invalid" means the logic is wrong; "untrue" means the conclusion is wrong.

Here's an example of a valid and true syllogism:

Major premise (MP): Men are mortal.
Minor premise (mp): David is a man.
Conclusion (C): Therefore, David is mortal.

The word "man" is distributed between the premises, making the conclusion valid. Since the major premise is true for all men, and the minor premise is true, then the conclusion is true.

So let's look at two kinds of fallacies where the logic is sound but the conclusions might be false.

Agrumentum per accidens (secundum quid)

An "argument by accident" suggests that because something applies in general, it applies in this specific case. Here, for example, is an argument you may have heard from a political leader in the past:

MP: People from Mexico have committed crimes. Generally true–but not in all cases.
mp: These people are from Mexico. Specifically true.
C: Therefore, these people have committed crimes. False.

This is a material fallacy, because it turns out while this syllogism is perfectly valid, it's just not true. That is, it's false (not to mention racist and offensive) because while there are some people from Mexico who have committed crimes, not all of them have; therefore, it overgeneralizes to say that any random group of Mexicans has committed crimes.

Another one:

MP: Prosecutors charge people with obstruction of justice when they find evidence of it. Generally true.
mp: The president has not been charged with obstruction of justice. True.
C: Therefore, there is no evidence that the president obstructed justice. False.

Again, arguing from a generality to a specific case is logically valid, but in this specific case, the president has not been charged with a crime despite the evidence, not because no one found any.

Converse accident (hasty generalization)

This fallacy comes from thinking a specific case represents the general case. This time the conclusion may be true, but probably isn't, and it may also be invalid:

MP: Health care is a complicated subject. True.
mp: I didn't know that health care was a complicated subject. True.
C: Therefore, "nobody knew health care was complicated." False.

In this case, the speaker takes a specific case of ignorance (his own) and incorrectly infers that everyone else has the same lack of basic policy competence.

Another example: "Another historic trade blunder was the catastrophe known as NAFTA. I have met the men and women of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Hampshire, and many other States whose dreams were shattered by NAFTA."

While NAFTA may have caused unfortunate consequences for the men and women with whom the president spoke, to say that it was generally bad for the country as a whole overgeneralizes from those few examples.

Next time: we'll go around in circles, because that's how I roll.