David:
The term false equivalency has appeared with increasing frequency during the past election, but continues to show up in news articles and on Face book, primarily from liberal sources. What does it mean to you, and why has it suddenly blossomed on the internet and social media scene?
Doug:
Liberal sources? Sounds scary. Is there official paperwork one has to fill out to be an official liberal source? Do you also have the category "conservative sources" in your mind, too? or would that be a false comparison? Are "liberal sources" some random person's website? NYTimes opinion page? Are these sources teenagers from the Balkins? Or is labeling something a "liberal source" a way of signaling people how to think about such sources? Is this coded language?
David:
If you do a quick Google search of the topic, several media outlets have actually done special opinion reports on the topic. Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Paul Krugman at the NYT, Slate, and my favorite, Wise Women for Clinton, have all done pieces. I don't seem to find any posts that represent conservative sites in the first few Google pages, however. I'm curious as to what you think on the topic.
Doug:
You are right that the term has appeared with increasing frequency. It didn't really appear until 1960 (an election year), and peaked again in 1980 and 2000 (both election years):
So, I guess it isn't surprising that it "suddenly blossomed" again this election cycle. But what is it?
"False equivalency" is when someone makes an analogy between two things as if they were the same, but are not. In a logical discussion, if two competing arguments that are not analogous but are considered the same then that is considered a logical mistake.
Of course, in regular discourse, people can make analogies between any two things. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on making analogies. People can be quite flexible in their ability to see the similarity between any two concepts. This flexibility is the hallmark of human intelligence. But it can be used against you if stretched too far.
It seems that the term "false equivalency" appears in election cycles by critics of the press when lazy reporters attempt a poorly "balanced" discussion. For example, when Trump didn't show his taxes, some would say "yes, but what about some emails that were deleted." These two things don't have anything to do with one another of course, but the attempt is made to make them equivalent. The information in Trump's tax filings are still important and can still be revealed, which indicates that this really was a false equivalency. If Clinton had been elected President, those emails would still be deleted. There is no reasonable demand that we should be able to see every email ever sent by a public employee, and no reasonable analogy between emails and tax information.
David:
Though a quick review of past blogs shows you continued to introduce Trump's taxes into Clinton's email discussions. I guess no one is immune to false equivalency.
Doug:
You mean like when I said this:
David:
No, I was actually talking about the many other times you added Trump's taxes into a discussion, like the blog we did on candidate's health. Health and taxes. They don't really seem to be the same thing, do they?
Doug:
Which is it? Did I "continued to introduce Trump's taxes into Clinton's email discussions" or did I "add Trump's taxes into a discussion ... on candidate's health"? Are you trying to make a false equivalency on false equivalency?
David:
You added his taxes into just about everything, because somehow you believe showing your taxes is a Constitutional requirement. You weighed it very heavily in your criticisms of Trump. By your argument, you make a false equivalency everytime you introduce it.
Doug:
No, you're making a false equivalency again. Trump's taxes are import (especially now) to show that there are not conflicts of interest of investments. You wouldn't want some national policy influenced by a Trump business deal.
David:
Or a foundation's bottom line.
Doug:
There are no laws about general conflicts of interest for regular citizens, of course. But there are for people making decisions in our government.
David:
And the e-mail/taxes issue really is equivalent if you consider they are really about producing documents for the public to review for fitness to be the president or conflicts of interest. You feel that Trump's taxes show he's hiding something. Hillary deleted emails, which she was required to turn over by law, because many feel she was hiding something. Same issue.
Doug:
That is a great example about making a false equivalency: they are both documents! Therefore the same. You realize that she does not have to turn over private emails. But I like the idea that we need to see Trump's taxes. And to follow your logic, we need to see his foundation records too, in order to "review fitness to be president." But I have a feeling that we'll never actually say that Trump needs to show either.
David:
Do you realize he did not have to turn over private tax returns? Several of her "private" emails that were recovered contained classified government documents. So much for that excuse. What I'm saying is on both sides, these were examples of candidates hiding something potentially damaging. That made these two issues equitable.
Doug:
Not showing personal emails is not "hiding." Not showing your personal investments (like all modern presidents have done) is not equivalent in any way shape or form. Especially now! The election is over. Trump absolutely needs to come clean now, right?
David:
The election is over, so he needs to make sure there is no appearance of conflicts with his business. That won't be entirely or completely possible, but as President, he needs to make every effort to do so.
Doug:
So this is something that we really could agree on. But it isn't the appearance that bothers me...it is the actual conflicts of interest. Trump has said that he has no intention of divesting anything. He intends to make money on this Presidency thing. Regardless of any other bad decisions he (or his staff that he has been announcing), this could end up being a terrible outcome for our country. To me, this is protest-worthy.
David:
Then we're back to the emails indicating Clinton made personal cash as SOS, and had conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and foreign governments. Perhaps we should continue the investigations. You've convinced me.
Doug:
Ok, as long as we treat the Clinton Foundation in exactly the same manner as the Trump Foundation. Let's do it. Something we can agree on!
David:
But why do you think that all of these articles appear in liberal or left-leaning sites, but not conservative? As I read through the a few of the articles, they all seem to believe that Hillary Clinton's foibles were mere mistakes, like misspelling a word, while Trump's issues were atrocities that the press glossed over. It appears to me that there really was no false equivalency if you were comparing the potential wrong-doings of two candidates competing for the same office.
Doug:
I think I see why conservative sites don't have articles on "false equivalency": they don't understand what it is. If you still don't understand why it was important to see Trump's taxes, then there is nothing that will make you understand why such a comparison is a logical error.
David:
It would have been important to be able to see his tax returns. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it appears that Clinton deleted emails she was required to save, and some that have been recovered had classified information on them. It would have been just as important to see those emails, or to have had them examined by an independent reviewer before deletion.
If you can't see that voluntarily producing private documents is not as bad as deliberately destroying government documents (which is against the law), then nothing I can say will show you those things are related issues. Both cases were failures to produce documents, and in both cases, those documents may have contained damaging information. Focusing only on one aspect of the subject limits your ability to see the equivalence. Of course it goes without saying that only liberals are smart enough to understand analogies and complicated ideas. Conservatives are too busy patching our overalls, meeting at our racist, sexist, homophobic clubs, and polishing our guns to go get educations. We're lucky to have such smart overlords to keep us in line and tell us how to think correctly.
Doug:
You certainly have some inferiority complex. If I am an overlord, I am not doing a very good job.
David:
Which is why you lost the election. You were focused so much on Trump's taxes, you failed to realize the middle-class didn't care about his taxes. They did care about the emails, for the reasons I listed above. While you claim the emails don't equate to anything at all, many Americans felt they illustrated her secrecy and dishonesty.
Doug:
The minority of people (who voted for Trump) may always believe that Clinton's emails contained conversations with the Devil and that they were "government documents" that they deserved to see. No one can control what they choose to believe. They can choose to believe false equivalencies. That is too bad. Perhaps there will be ways for people to see that things aren't always equivalent.
Did you ever stop and think about why the past elections always seem so close? Like you could split the votes in 2, and you get a near tie between Republicans and Democrats? Could it be that the creating false equivalencies on everything creates an uncanny split down the middle?
David:
I had assumed it was because half of the voting public believes differently than you, and half believes differently than me. This is not because of false equivalency, but because of true beliefs. If you just write off the other side, believing they just don't understand, then you'll never reach any middle ground. Sometimes, when you look through a different paradigm, things that you see as unrelated, become equal in weight.
Doug:
There are lots of "sides." Why would just about exactly half believe the opposite? I think it is because false equivalency tries to even everything out, even when they are not even.
David:
So you're saying that the media presents false equivalencies, to make superior Democrats appear to be equal to the lowly Republicans, and that causes the voting populace to be split down the middle? That sounds like false equivalency.
There are people who believe in big government, and people who believe very limited government is best. It seems there are an equal number of people in both camps.
Doug:
If reasonable people always tries to show "balance" when there is none, then it seems that a reasonable outcome would be artificial balance. That seems to make more sense than your argument: there just happen to be an equal number of people that believe exactly the opposite of each other.
David:
You and I both disagree. That means we balance each other. There is only a false equivalency in that statement if you believe your arguments weigh more than mine. Your last statement seems to illustrate the problem you face: Half of the country believes differently than you do. It's easier to believe that they do because the media, or social media, or something else has convinced them their ideas are worthy or equal to your beliefs, which they aren't. The reality is that the people who voted for Trump have beliefs that are equal to yours, and a paradigm of the world that is equal to yours. It's easier for you to believe that they are racist, sexist, and xenophobes, or some other label that you can disavow. They aren't any of those things. They are other, thoughtful Americans.
Doug:
But then why aren't there more Republican voters? Why does it equal almost exactly the number of Democratic voters? There seems to be something at working balancing into two equal parts.
David:
You and I disagree. There are siblings all over the country that also disagree. We mirror America.
Doug:
Another possibility (discussed in this video on a Mathematicians Perspective on the Election) is that the equal halves are caused by having about the same amount of money on each side, and spending it in places that are seen as threatened, and not put resources where the candidate is seen as being "safe". Perhaps. But I still think that always seeing an issue as an equal balance of pros and cons (even when there is no rational reason to do so) is a contributing factor. Could be an hypothesis to explore.
David:
Except in the 2016 election they did not spend the same amounts. Not even close.
Doug:
That doesn't count Trump's free airtime in the media. But you are correct, and I think misstated the video's hypothesis. I think what she claims is that money is only spent where needed, and need is only made when one is seen as behind in the polls in that particular area. If you dynamically spend money/energy only to get ahead, then the 50/50 split makes sense. This does indeed appear to be a viable hypothesis. But I still contend that things are even remotely close because of a general and pervasive belief in false equivalencies.
David:
Money in politics is an influential issue. On that, we can both agree. Perhaps we'll explore that more, and see if the Blanks can come up with a solution in a future installment of Blank Versus Blank. Join us next week!
The term false equivalency has appeared with increasing frequency during the past election, but continues to show up in news articles and on Face book, primarily from liberal sources. What does it mean to you, and why has it suddenly blossomed on the internet and social media scene?
Doug:
Liberal sources? Sounds scary. Is there official paperwork one has to fill out to be an official liberal source? Do you also have the category "conservative sources" in your mind, too? or would that be a false comparison? Are "liberal sources" some random person's website? NYTimes opinion page? Are these sources teenagers from the Balkins? Or is labeling something a "liberal source" a way of signaling people how to think about such sources? Is this coded language?
David:
If you do a quick Google search of the topic, several media outlets have actually done special opinion reports on the topic. Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Paul Krugman at the NYT, Slate, and my favorite, Wise Women for Clinton, have all done pieces. I don't seem to find any posts that represent conservative sites in the first few Google pages, however. I'm curious as to what you think on the topic.
Doug:
You are right that the term has appeared with increasing frequency. It didn't really appear until 1960 (an election year), and peaked again in 1980 and 2000 (both election years):
So, I guess it isn't surprising that it "suddenly blossomed" again this election cycle. But what is it?
"False equivalency" is when someone makes an analogy between two things as if they were the same, but are not. In a logical discussion, if two competing arguments that are not analogous but are considered the same then that is considered a logical mistake.
Of course, in regular discourse, people can make analogies between any two things. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on making analogies. People can be quite flexible in their ability to see the similarity between any two concepts. This flexibility is the hallmark of human intelligence. But it can be used against you if stretched too far.
It seems that the term "false equivalency" appears in election cycles by critics of the press when lazy reporters attempt a poorly "balanced" discussion. For example, when Trump didn't show his taxes, some would say "yes, but what about some emails that were deleted." These two things don't have anything to do with one another of course, but the attempt is made to make them equivalent. The information in Trump's tax filings are still important and can still be revealed, which indicates that this really was a false equivalency. If Clinton had been elected President, those emails would still be deleted. There is no reasonable demand that we should be able to see every email ever sent by a public employee, and no reasonable analogy between emails and tax information.
David:
Though a quick review of past blogs shows you continued to introduce Trump's taxes into Clinton's email discussions. I guess no one is immune to false equivalency.
Doug:
You mean like when I said this:
Doug:
Trump: "My taxes? We need to think like me! I will release my taxes when Clinton undeletes 33,000 emails."
You see, I was pretending I was Trump speaking, and having him make a false equivalency.
David:
No, I was actually talking about the many other times you added Trump's taxes into a discussion, like the blog we did on candidate's health. Health and taxes. They don't really seem to be the same thing, do they?
Doug:
Which is it? Did I "continued to introduce Trump's taxes into Clinton's email discussions" or did I "add Trump's taxes into a discussion ... on candidate's health"? Are you trying to make a false equivalency on false equivalency?
David:
You added his taxes into just about everything, because somehow you believe showing your taxes is a Constitutional requirement. You weighed it very heavily in your criticisms of Trump. By your argument, you make a false equivalency everytime you introduce it.
Doug:
No, you're making a false equivalency again. Trump's taxes are import (especially now) to show that there are not conflicts of interest of investments. You wouldn't want some national policy influenced by a Trump business deal.
David:
Or a foundation's bottom line.
Doug:
There are no laws about general conflicts of interest for regular citizens, of course. But there are for people making decisions in our government.
David:
And the e-mail/taxes issue really is equivalent if you consider they are really about producing documents for the public to review for fitness to be the president or conflicts of interest. You feel that Trump's taxes show he's hiding something. Hillary deleted emails, which she was required to turn over by law, because many feel she was hiding something. Same issue.
Doug:
That is a great example about making a false equivalency: they are both documents! Therefore the same. You realize that she does not have to turn over private emails. But I like the idea that we need to see Trump's taxes. And to follow your logic, we need to see his foundation records too, in order to "review fitness to be president." But I have a feeling that we'll never actually say that Trump needs to show either.
David:
Do you realize he did not have to turn over private tax returns? Several of her "private" emails that were recovered contained classified government documents. So much for that excuse. What I'm saying is on both sides, these were examples of candidates hiding something potentially damaging. That made these two issues equitable.
Doug:
Not showing personal emails is not "hiding." Not showing your personal investments (like all modern presidents have done) is not equivalent in any way shape or form. Especially now! The election is over. Trump absolutely needs to come clean now, right?
David:
The election is over, so he needs to make sure there is no appearance of conflicts with his business. That won't be entirely or completely possible, but as President, he needs to make every effort to do so.
Doug:
So this is something that we really could agree on. But it isn't the appearance that bothers me...it is the actual conflicts of interest. Trump has said that he has no intention of divesting anything. He intends to make money on this Presidency thing. Regardless of any other bad decisions he (or his staff that he has been announcing), this could end up being a terrible outcome for our country. To me, this is protest-worthy.
David:
Then we're back to the emails indicating Clinton made personal cash as SOS, and had conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and foreign governments. Perhaps we should continue the investigations. You've convinced me.
Doug:
Ok, as long as we treat the Clinton Foundation in exactly the same manner as the Trump Foundation. Let's do it. Something we can agree on!
David:
But why do you think that all of these articles appear in liberal or left-leaning sites, but not conservative? As I read through the a few of the articles, they all seem to believe that Hillary Clinton's foibles were mere mistakes, like misspelling a word, while Trump's issues were atrocities that the press glossed over. It appears to me that there really was no false equivalency if you were comparing the potential wrong-doings of two candidates competing for the same office.
Doug:
I think I see why conservative sites don't have articles on "false equivalency": they don't understand what it is. If you still don't understand why it was important to see Trump's taxes, then there is nothing that will make you understand why such a comparison is a logical error.
David:
It would have been important to be able to see his tax returns. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it appears that Clinton deleted emails she was required to save, and some that have been recovered had classified information on them. It would have been just as important to see those emails, or to have had them examined by an independent reviewer before deletion.
If you can't see that voluntarily producing private documents is not as bad as deliberately destroying government documents (which is against the law), then nothing I can say will show you those things are related issues. Both cases were failures to produce documents, and in both cases, those documents may have contained damaging information. Focusing only on one aspect of the subject limits your ability to see the equivalence. Of course it goes without saying that only liberals are smart enough to understand analogies and complicated ideas. Conservatives are too busy patching our overalls, meeting at our racist, sexist, homophobic clubs, and polishing our guns to go get educations. We're lucky to have such smart overlords to keep us in line and tell us how to think correctly.
Doug:
You certainly have some inferiority complex. If I am an overlord, I am not doing a very good job.
David:
Which is why you lost the election. You were focused so much on Trump's taxes, you failed to realize the middle-class didn't care about his taxes. They did care about the emails, for the reasons I listed above. While you claim the emails don't equate to anything at all, many Americans felt they illustrated her secrecy and dishonesty.
Doug:
The minority of people (who voted for Trump) may always believe that Clinton's emails contained conversations with the Devil and that they were "government documents" that they deserved to see. No one can control what they choose to believe. They can choose to believe false equivalencies. That is too bad. Perhaps there will be ways for people to see that things aren't always equivalent.
Did you ever stop and think about why the past elections always seem so close? Like you could split the votes in 2, and you get a near tie between Republicans and Democrats? Could it be that the creating false equivalencies on everything creates an uncanny split down the middle?
David:
I had assumed it was because half of the voting public believes differently than you, and half believes differently than me. This is not because of false equivalency, but because of true beliefs. If you just write off the other side, believing they just don't understand, then you'll never reach any middle ground. Sometimes, when you look through a different paradigm, things that you see as unrelated, become equal in weight.
Doug:
There are lots of "sides." Why would just about exactly half believe the opposite? I think it is because false equivalency tries to even everything out, even when they are not even.
David:
So you're saying that the media presents false equivalencies, to make superior Democrats appear to be equal to the lowly Republicans, and that causes the voting populace to be split down the middle? That sounds like false equivalency.
There are people who believe in big government, and people who believe very limited government is best. It seems there are an equal number of people in both camps.
Doug:
If reasonable people always tries to show "balance" when there is none, then it seems that a reasonable outcome would be artificial balance. That seems to make more sense than your argument: there just happen to be an equal number of people that believe exactly the opposite of each other.
David:
You and I both disagree. That means we balance each other. There is only a false equivalency in that statement if you believe your arguments weigh more than mine. Your last statement seems to illustrate the problem you face: Half of the country believes differently than you do. It's easier to believe that they do because the media, or social media, or something else has convinced them their ideas are worthy or equal to your beliefs, which they aren't. The reality is that the people who voted for Trump have beliefs that are equal to yours, and a paradigm of the world that is equal to yours. It's easier for you to believe that they are racist, sexist, and xenophobes, or some other label that you can disavow. They aren't any of those things. They are other, thoughtful Americans.
Doug:
But then why aren't there more Republican voters? Why does it equal almost exactly the number of Democratic voters? There seems to be something at working balancing into two equal parts.
David:
You and I disagree. There are siblings all over the country that also disagree. We mirror America.
Doug:
Another possibility (discussed in this video on a Mathematicians Perspective on the Election) is that the equal halves are caused by having about the same amount of money on each side, and spending it in places that are seen as threatened, and not put resources where the candidate is seen as being "safe". Perhaps. But I still think that always seeing an issue as an equal balance of pros and cons (even when there is no rational reason to do so) is a contributing factor. Could be an hypothesis to explore.
David:
Except in the 2016 election they did not spend the same amounts. Not even close.
Doug:
That doesn't count Trump's free airtime in the media. But you are correct, and I think misstated the video's hypothesis. I think what she claims is that money is only spent where needed, and need is only made when one is seen as behind in the polls in that particular area. If you dynamically spend money/energy only to get ahead, then the 50/50 split makes sense. This does indeed appear to be a viable hypothesis. But I still contend that things are even remotely close because of a general and pervasive belief in false equivalencies.
David:
Money in politics is an influential issue. On that, we can both agree. Perhaps we'll explore that more, and see if the Blanks can come up with a solution in a future installment of Blank Versus Blank. Join us next week!
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