Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Three substitutes for logic

Since logic is no longer taught as a required subject in schools, the door is open to all sorts of bizarre reactions to the presence of information.
Here are three favorites:
One: grab the headline or the title of an article, make up your mind about how you “feel,” and ignore everything else.
Two: Actually read the article until you find a piece of information that appeals to you for any reason; latch on to it, and run with it in any direction. In all cases, the direction will have nothing to do with the intent of the article.
Three: From the moment you begin to read the headline of the article, be in a state of “free association.” Take any word or sentence and connect it to an arbitrary thought or feeling, associate that thought with yet another arbitrary thought…and keep going until you become tired or bored.
You might be surprised at how many people use these three “methods of analysis.”
The very idea that the author of the article is making a central point doesn’t really register. And certainly, the notion that the author is providing evidence for the central point and reasoning his way from A to B to C is alien.

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