The summer of 2020 was weirdly different as most of us knew it up to then.
Fundamental practices like travelling, being carefree, embracing little things such as hugging, kissing and getting together were put on hold for as long as it takes. Our personal axioms were tossed so that we can safeguard the most significant commodity for us and our loved ones.
A new set of rules have come to practice which are establishing a new way of thinking, a new range of logical assumptions about how things work. Through this period I decided to dive into a more “logical” book which paves the way for building solid arguments amid fake news, tribalism and pervasive irrationality. So here are some core learning outcomes that at least for me shed light to how we should think.
• Logic is to mathematics as evidence is to science.
But unlike evidence logic tells us that something has to be true inherently and it will never change. This process is built through logical implications which are made from moving from one statement to the other. Every statement uncovers new information so gradually a chain of implications is formed until we reach something new by logical proof in every step.
Let’s try to construct a longer chain of implications to result in saying that “We must wear masks”.
1. Corona virus has “attacked” millions of people around the world. We need to treat this statement as an axiom as it is a true fact. Attack means that either they have been sick or in some very unfortunate cases they died.
2. If we, as citizens, want to protect ourselves and our beloved ones in order to disrupt the chain of spread we must take some measures indicated by epidemiologists (by the way these are the experts who happen to be millions around the world and haven’t joined together to form the 21st century conspiracy). They suggest the simple but very effective (and adopted in every emergency unit) precaution of wearing masks.
3. If we take these measures (wearing masks) both on a personal and collaborative level we will protect ourselves and our beloved ones from the existing “enemy”.
4. If then we manage to shield our inner circle of people then we’ll manage to control the spread and go back to our normal life as everyone defines their normal. And this is a way to ensure that we are not shooting ourselves in the foot.
This chain of thinking is easy to follow and “makes sense” without overanalysing things. There is a whole system of interaction between ideas rather than words in isolation. The idea of considering things in relation to each other is some of the most important principles of mathematics. In other words this is a process of concluding something from a logical implication which is called an inference, a rather fundamental principle to the use of logic.
• Another interesting point to consider is that in order to make ourselves believable and “right” is to avoid “sweeping” statements.
“The media is making a mountain out of a molehill ( exaggerating) about the repercussions of covid-19 and they are trying to scare us.” People are prone to making sweeping statements because they let their emotion infiltrate their thinking. Basically what the above statement implies and expresses is the fact that actually what’s going on is your emotional response that I am fed up with this virus and the ominous predictions about its spread and its deadly results.
• Instead of making a sweeping statement we can attempt to refine our statement and make it less ambiguous, thus more believable.
So we in terms of language we can use some qualifiers such as “most” or “almost all” or “some” to be more precise in our thinking. Or we can start by “perhaps”, “probably”, “maybe” and “might”, “it seems that….” to become more believable and open to discussion. The previous sweeping statement could then convert to “ Perhaps the media is exaggerating about….. and so on or “The media may be exaggerating….” or “it seems that the media is exaggerating….”.
• Carefully qualified statements are very precise in their correctness and can reinforce logical chunks of dialogue in order to reach a safer conclusion.
We need to consider here that sweeping statements are true for the person that makes them in their world. Finding the truth in someone’s sweeping statement by applying the right qualifiers can lead to greater understanding of what people are trying to say and where the disagreements come from. The thing is to find the grey areas and fine lines in people’s statements and push the grey to one side or the other.
• Understanding people’s fundamental beliefs and the roots of this system helps us understand where they get their views and how we may be able to address these views.
There are many grey areas in life and it’s important we understand them for what they are rather than ignore them or compel them to be black and white. When coming to media example exaggerating about covid-19 we may think the media tends to overstate everything so at to make headlines and therefore we need to conceptualize the limitations of such a grey area by learning and reading more in depth about the actual repercussions of the virus so we can draw our own logical conclusions and juxtapose them.
Logic and emotions is not a dichotomy; It is a collaborative art to achieve better thinking and understanding of the world around us and of each other. My personal attempt is to always try to build bridges with people who disagree with me even if they don’t seem prepared for that. Trying to figure out the stem of their opinion and through logical implications and non- sweeping statements to reach a common decoding of the world.