Tag Archives: cause and effect reasoning

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Fates Fantasized in Verbs

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , , ,

We assume we are active and powerful because our language lets us imagine it.

Second Thoughts BannerPresidents easily muster fantasies of mastery and control. It is a habit to overestimate their abilities to manage events. My two over-the-top examples in this Hall of Fictions includes Donald Trump’s recent claims that destroyed Gaza along the Mediterranean can be turned into a vacation spot like the Riviera, and that Canada will be the 51st State. Trump always overpromises and then retreats.  Even so . . .

Rhetoricians like to say that language has its way with us. The phrase is meant as a reminder that everyday language steers us to conclusions that usually promise more than we as individual agents or nations can deliver. Word choice can easily create perceptions that can make the unlikely more likely, the improbable possible, and a fantasy as an imagined outcome. Such is the nature of linguistic determinism. We can tie a wish to an action verb, and we are off and running, creating expectations for things that probably will not materialize. Who knew that simple verbs like “is” and “will” can be taken as fate, when they are more likely phantoms of deceit? Blame our overly-deterministic language.

Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro indirectly made this point several years ago in The Atlantic when they noted that civil wars must usually “burn out” from the inside. A civil war such as Syria’s or Sudan’s might take years to wind down; an outcome outsiders can’t change very much.

Our verbs may sing their certainty, but forces we can’t predict are going to produce their own effects.

What seems inescapable is that committing ourselves to the control of complex political forces is too easy. That is something we’ve come to know all too well since the Vietnam era, reconfirmed more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. The military and social problems associated with nation-building are unforeseeable, giving us under-considered reasons to get lost in the neon glow of action verbs.

We construct the world as a web of causes and effects. It’s natural that we will place ourselves and our institutions in the driver’s seat. We assume we can be in charge because our language so easily lets us imagine it. Blame our overly-deterministic language, along with the hubris that comes with being a preeminent military power. Both set up tight effects loops that seem clear on the page but elusive in real life.

If we put individual culprits in a lineup they all look more or less innocent: verbs like affect, make, destroy, break, causes, starts, produce, alters,  triggers, controls, contributes to, allows and so on.

In the right company these can be companionable terms. But let them loose within the rhetoric of a leader determined to make his or her mark and they can turn lethal. Fantasies of power and control impose more order on human affairs than naturally exists. They depend on verbs that flatter us by making us active agents, usually with all kinds of “unintended effects” we only discover later.

This sense of predictability is ironically aggravated by our devotion to the scientific method. As Psychologist Steven Pinker has observed, we can’t do science without buying into the view that we can identify first causes. That’s surely fine for discovering the origins of a troublesome human disease. But even though this logic is diffused through the culture, it cannot hold when we immerse ourselves in the infinite complexities of human conduct. Discovering the reasons and motivations of others is far more difficult. Add in entities such as nations, political parties and tribes, and first causes are often unknowable. And so strategic calculations based on efforts to influence or control events are bound to produce disappointment.

It’s a great paradox that we are easily outgunned by the stunningly capricious nature of human responses. Take it from someone who has spent a lifetime studying why people change their minds. We have models, theories, tons of experimental research and good guesses. But making predictions about any specific instance is almost always another case of reality crushing hope. We may be able to say what we want, giving eloquent expression to the goals we seek. And our verbs will predictably sing their certainty, but language is always going to produce its own surprises.

What if There Are No Dots to Connect?

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , ,

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After decades on the planet, I’ve come to think of the idea of causality in human affairs as problematic.

The idea of causality is such a comfortable mental device. It frequently allows us to take the mystery out of an action by labeling a plausible cause. Early in my career I had a brazen certainty that Action X will produce Result Y. But especially in the realms of human conduct and attitudes, we are still a long way from claiming accurate causal chains. “Serendipity” is not a term one is likely to hear very much from social scientists who seek explanations for conduct in so many forms of human affairs. Too bad, because we need to allow uncertainty to have its place. We are maybe on slightly firmer ground to talk about one individual’s influences. But just when that road seems promising, we encounter persons with responses that have boomeranged far away from predicted linkages to parents, mentors, influencers and friends. None may work out as particularly good predictors.

There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, creating an incalculable number of neural pathways that might be activated to produce certain actions or attitudes. Some of those neural highways could be activated by heredity or the chemistry of the body. Others probably arise from the ineffable forces of individual experience accumulated over time. But many are far too obscure to be measured with the relatively crude tools of psychology, neural imaging, or the discovery of predictive antecedents. Even what seems like a simple and straightforward persuasive message may not produce attitudes we would expect.

One study trying to get  teens to lower the volume coming into their earbuds thought another teen explaining the risks might be a good source.  Not so. That particular study showed the boomerang of a slight increase in their post-message listening levels. Go figure.

All of us who teach and write about persuasion should be a bit embarrassed to be so clueless.  After all, rhetorical strategies are predicated on the idea that if an individual takes a certain verbal approach to an audience, it should yield more or less predictable results. Like most realms of theory, there is the implicit promise of finding an “if-then” sequence. Call a person a “jerk” and they will not react well. Even so, I am constantly surprised by the unpredictability of audiences.  Even in our text on the subject, for the sake of clarity we more or less settled disputes about causal factors that are–in truth–not quite so neatly resolved.

Every new case of a mass shooter or some other form of human depravity leaves me scratching my head and scoffing at the journalists who want to identify specific causes now.  How could a new mother abandon her four-year old to die in an alley? What was mass murderer John Wayne Gacy thinking? What could explain how a professional clown who was hired out to do children’s parties could turn into such a monster?

It is possible to build causality claims using the laws of physics or chemistry, but human nature is far less predictable. 

It’s the rare “expert” who says, “I don’t know.” We have a natural compulsion to sort out the motives of others. It is one of the narrative lines that must be filled in when we parse human behavior. Try out a few random movements around your friends and watch the wheels start to turn as they try to figure out what’s up with you. Wanting to know the causes of everything is natural instinct. And we clearly know a lot about the chemical and biological causes of many conditions and diseases. But assigning  motives to a human can be a fool’s errand. What Hollywood usually wraps up by the time the credits roll remains largely unwrapped by the police professionals left to sort out real mayhem. In the study of crime, knowing who did some action is easier than knowing why.

After recent demonstrations at Columbia University, New York’s Deputy Police Commissioner Kaz Daughtry held up a book on terrorism at a press conference and said, “there’s somebody. . . [who is] radicalizing our students.”  He surely had causes in mind. But that rhetorical flourish doesn’t stand up very well. What person would have that kind of power? And are the protesters so uniform as to be influenced by the same persons or groups? It is more likely that many students have absorbed news of Palestinians living in what some have called “the open-air prison of Gaza,” mustering youthful outrage for the status quo. And even that simple causality chain could be suspect.

Thankfully, not every case is so difficult. Apple recently ran an advertisement selling a new tablet.  You may have seen the ad where a room full of creative tools–a piano, a guitar, paints, a record player, books, a trumpet–are slowly crushed in real time by a giant industrial press, leaving a tableau of shards and ruin. The tag line suggested that all of these wonderful tools are not needed if you have an Apple tablet. Only in advertising can a person be so cluelessly reductionist. Within hours media and arts creators of all sorts reacted with horror at the idea that this is what the company thought of their tools. Actor Hugh Grant called it “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.” The revulsion was real, and clearly not what Apple’s marketing geniuses predicted.

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