Having confronted so many varieties of rationalization we wondered, almost whimsically, if we could construct a set of rules for rationals. While very few really want to be, anybody can be rational if he wants to.
The art of doubt can be fun, like having the only pin at a balloon party. But it is important to make a distinction between confronting an idea and confronting a person. It is one thing to show that an idea is wrong and quite another to show that a person is wrong. The object is never to win, only to learn. When you win, you lose.
For some unknown reason a lot of people have got it into their heads that they have to "be right" in order to be loveable, respectable, and happy. And yet who is more lovable and worthy of our respect than the person who says, "Say, you're absolutely right. Fancy that, all my life I have believed just the opposite, and I was completely wrong." This is a person with real self-confidence, with humility, with flexibility. For him it is more important to learn the truth of things than to appear to be right.
For a rational person, no idea is sacrosanct or above challenge, including his own ideas. For him, "being right" is a posturing game, and a serious source of human frustration and confusion. The rational person finds it equally amusing to discover that his opinions and views are right or wrong.
When two rational people sit down to talk, they have a wonderful freedom to play with ideas. One can offer a proposition, while the other can be the devil's advocate who tries to destroy it. In the middle, they can switch roles. Or they can jointly brainstorm an idea to see how far they can push it.
When a rational person meets a rationalizing person, he finds discussion to be a waste of time, because it is not a learning opportunity, except to learn how this person carries out his rationalizations. Having no interest in "being right" or in causing useless upset and distress, the rational person drops the discussion.
1. If-what-then-what. Many beliefs are stated in such vague terms that even the author doesn't know what they mean. They are judged on their esthetic merit, like a painting. To bring a belief down to earth you can ask what it predicts, what it means in terms of if-what-then-what. For example, a person offers the opinion that we have hardly begun to grasp the possibilities of cosmic consciousness. You ask what he means, and get another string of words you don't understand. So then you might say, if I have cosmic consciousness, how will my life be different?
2. Disprovability. This is another way of stating rule 1. Instead of repeating if-what-then-what, your may need to shift gears and ask, what piece of evidence would make your theory incorrect? For example, the believer says, lots of people have mental telepathy. You can startle his logic by asking, what kind of evidence would make him change his mind. Since he has only thought in terms of positive cases, this will add a new dimension to the discussion.
3. The Burden of Proof. The burden of proof is on the believer. A person asks, why are you so skeptical about UFOs. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to give reasons why UFOs are improbable. The best answer is, why do you _believe_ in UFOs?
4. Alternative Thinking. When evidence is presented, you may ask (or just wonder) if there is any explanation that could produce the same results. For example, the advocate says, modern medicine has increased our life expectancy from thirty-five years to seventy years. You could ask if anything else could have done it, even if you don't have a hypothesis, like diet, sanitation, housing, immunity, etc. Alternate thinking is your most creative tool.
5. Missing Negative Cases. A. Probability Matches. We demonstrated in chapter 11 that one needs to count all possible events including negative cases to see how often a result might occur by chance in the long run. B. Sometimes negative cases are ruled out by an escape clause. For example, the reason that UFOs are never photographed clearly is that they always run away from cameras. People may see them clearly, but bring out a camera and away they go. This is like the "negative vibes" clause in ESP theory. C. Sometimes the negative cases have been literally eliminated. An educator reports a survey showing that senior students all love high school, overlooking the fact that all the drop-outs were not interviewed. The story is told of a British officer who proposed to add armor plates to certain sections of Royal Air Force planes during World War II. He presented a diagram showing the regions with a high density of gunnery scars after combat missions. But Winston Churchill said maybe he should put the armor everywhere else because he had only studied the planes which came back.
6. Personal Observation. What a person has observed in his personal or clinical experience is no evidence for his belief. Unless he has at least kept a written tally of positive and negative cases, you can reasonably assume he is giving his subjective validations.
7. Testimonials. The worst kind of evidence for a belief about human nature comes from people's experience of themselves. We recently met a man who claimed that the key to giving up smoking was simple will power, which he had demonstrated himself. As the story went on, it turned out that he had developed a chronic chest complaint that got worse, and his doctor told him that if he didn't quit smoking he would soon die. Above all, remember the Forer effect--fortune tellers (even in plain clothes or white coats) always seem to be right.
8. Sources. It is always helpful to find out where a person got his ideas. This may turn out to be a completely frivolous source like a newspaper or a TV program. If the source sounds more credible than that, your may decide it's worth looking up. But you can always apply the short-cut rule--if the believer can't make a plausible case himself, forget his sources.
9. Emotional Commitment. If the person advocating an idea is committed to it emotionally, if he cannot consider being wrong in a matter-of-fact style, then your are wasting your time for two reasons. First, your questions are threatening his personal beliefs or no good purpose (unless he is doing public harm). Second, your can reasonably assume that his theory is false. Of course, this is not inevitably so. But it is unlikely that an emotionally committed person has weighed his evidence pro and con. He is advocating a belief that feels good to him.
10. The Ad Hominem Technique. This Latin phrase means "to the man." It has may variations. First, a believer may hold certain authorities to be infallible, and quote their opinions as evidence. Second, he may try to place contrary believers into a category of bad people and thus reject their arguments out of hand. Third, he may turn against you, accusing you of bad motives or stupidity. All of these arguments are fallacious, and it is not only important to recognize them, but also not to use them. The object is to learn, not to win.