Sloppy Logic Gone Viral

My friend John sent me this video, which has gone viral on YouTube (6 million hits), knowing I’d enjoy analyzing it.

It’s awash in sloppy logic and fallacies, and gives the illusion of being a sound line of reasoning when it is anything but. Watch it, then contemplate the following:

• He discounts the the enormous human toll that would be imposed by AGW mitigation via carbon caps. ÊIt will not only reduce the living standards of billions (and, no that’s not just fewer lattes and designer clothes, but real harm, real misery and shorter lifespans) and prematurely kill millions by displacing scarce resources and imposing a long-term damper on economic growth. And, those effects would be compounded over decades before the “worst-case” effects of AGW might begin to be felt. Time-value-of-money doesn’t enter into his thinking either, and he shrugs off the cost of acting now as relatively minor.

• He dismisses probability (he even justifies doing so). ÊRisk = probability x outcome, yet he grasps onto the absolute worst-case prediction (and ignores the fact that we’d have a century to respond) while ignoring the probability of that outcome. By creating a quadrant chart, he falsely gives the impression that the four choices he’s comparing all have some parity in the probability of occurrence, even though he says otherwise. He also plays the “reasonable” gag by first getting people to admit that there isn’t a zero probability of his worst case scenario. Yet if we apply that notion uniformly, we’d be spending trillions to prepare the planet for a dinosaur-killer asteroid strike, for the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, for a solar storm big enough to wipe out global electronics, for the possibility that Russia or China will go berserk and launch all their nukes randomly, or for a series of monster earthquakes on the Pacific rim. All of these are non-zero-probability events.

  Spending to prepare for these and more will impoverish the human race, cause countless deaths and put billions in misery. We obviously don’t do so because we recognize, implicitly or explicitly, that probability matters, that resources are scarce, that life is all about trade-offs and choices, and that every action we take, every breath, every step, every movement, carries some amount of risk.

  The likely counterargument for the asteroid strike is that there’s nothing we can do about it. Yet imagine an asteroid not quite that large – one that’s big enough to cause a lot of damage, but whose damage COULD be countered with sufficient preparation. Call it a “just-right” asteroid. Of course, now we’re reducing the probability even more, but it’s still not zero, and according to his logic, if it’s not zero it’s worth addressing.

There’s more to deconstruct, but that should be enough.

He also ignores the real world. As I’ve written before, there is no way the BRIC nations will agree to carbon caps. None. They place their economic growth (and in Russia’s case, economic survival – real, hard carbon caps would flat-line their economy) above a threat that has yet to be validated and that, even if real, will take decades to manifest. They’d LOVE, however, if the USA and Europe embraced carbon caps, while the rest of the world marched on. If your economic competitor imposes a giant list of extra burdens on himself, wouldn’t that make your prospects that much better?

Still, the vid is a good lesson in propaganda, and even smart people can be taken in by the sloppy logic.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

If you'd like to help keep the site ad-free, please support us on Patreon.