ADVERTISER GOALS

Rational Politics Is it possible? Can we invent something?? ...or what???

TEACHER GOALS

Former Secretary of State James Baker argued that a "butterfly ballot" used in Illinois didn't cause any difficulties as some people claimed that this one, used in Palm Beach County Fla, did.  Therefore, the ballot used in Florida could not be claimed to be defective.  "Butterfly ballots are satisfactory ballots."  (We believe that the Illinois butterfly ballot had two columns of punch holes, one for each side.  Apparently, Ted Koppel showed the Illinois Ballot on Nightline.  Does anyone have a photo of the Illinois ballot?)   Ronald Dworkin, Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York Univ, considers the Palm Beach ballot to have many serious mistakes, both legal and logical.  A revote is probably the only rational remedy.  But many argue that if a revote is taken, "then every presidential election for decades would be followed by lawsuits demanding repeat elections in different counties across the nation."  Dworkin recognizes the inverted implications in that argument and responds that, "it would be wrong to declare, as a flat rule, that no remedy is ever available for demonstrable and grave illegality in the electoral process, no matter how clear the mistake or how evident that it changed the final national result, because that would value the right to vote too cheaply."* Dworkin recognizes rationalities that are seldom seen without making the deeper analyses we allude to in our admonition, "Don't shirk hard work." * The New York Review of Books December 21, 2000, pp 96-98   This is but a sample.  An example of an argument that oversimplifies by violating some simple rule of elementary logic.  These are the rules we learn when we take a first course in logic; the things for which Venn diagrams and truth tables provide crutches, for those of us who can't just look—and "see." But some people do "see" without crutches. These are people Jean Piaget might say have developed excellent "formal operational" insights.  Wason's card puzzle and physics textbooks' "Energy is the capacity to do work" demonstrate the profound differences between the insight of those who "see" and those who don't. Political rhetoric and advertising messages both further demonstrate the vast potential for persuasion based on weak "formal operational" insight.  Pseudoscience does, too, and so here we have a bridge between science and politics and economics.  That bridge is rationality—a thing of many dimensions.  Rationality hopfully hinders oversimplification—potentially in politics as in science.  But "rationality" is almost always seen as a thing of one dimension—TROUBLE!

James Baker misidentified relevance.  The relevant issue was that this Florida butterfly ballot confused the voter—because the holes to be punched were all in a single column, were not in similar positions with respect to the names they represented, and presented a highly ambiguous set of apparently possible appropriate responses by the hole puncher.  (Furthermore, the ballot violated a state law which had been written to avoid this problem—by not placing all the hole-punch marks to the left of the names.  And the inventor of the machine used to read the punched cards said it was not intended to be used in the way this ballot used it.)  Some reports indicated that about half of the ballot cards were misprinted is such a way that when placed in the vote punching machine, the appropriate black dots to punch out did not align properly with the names. That the ballot did confuse is an observation:  large numbers of multiple holes were reported punched on this page (but not elsewhere, where these shortcomings didn't exist?), and large numbers of ballots were rejected.  Pat Buchannan said the county gave him far more votes that had been expected and that the reason appeared to be that voters trying to vote for Gore/Lieberman were misdirected to punch the dot corresponding to Buchannan/Foster.  Mike Collins of Elmira New York put a cartoon on the Internet which spread like wild fire.  It hit to the heart of the problem, and millions of people downloaded it.  In an interview on PBS, Collins said he became famous overnight.  The cartoon looked like this (probably; see "The Disappeared"): In his comments, James Baker called attention only to "butterfly ballot" and avoided talking about the real causes of the confusion.  By attending to the irrelevancy, "butterfly ballot," and ignoring the relevant issue, the causes of the confusion, Baker's arguments failed to meet elementary logic criteria, rendering his statements more spin than substance.  (He then accused his opposition of spinning without substance.) However, Baker was using techniques of persuasion that are well established in the advertising industry, which recognizes that logic criteria are frequently unrecognized.  Widespread failures to see logical requirements is the basis of much of advertising.   ("For a treat instead of a treatment..."; advertising techniques have successfully sold even the most absurd arguments.)

The above says nothing about whether James Baker's comments are correct or incorrect. Baker was speaking advertising speak, "full of sound and fury...signifying nothing."  Baker's comments simply say little or nothing about relevant issues.
 
 

Advertising speak...

is the language of partisan politics—of all parties.  It is the language of a certain kind of irrationality. It's an irrationality that is not necessarily wrong: it simply misses breadth and scope that human thinking is capable of.  Advertisers must avoid any recognition of bad qualities of their product, tout the good qualities, probably exaggerate the good qualities and invent good qualities if necessary.  At least they must imply good qualities, possibly by nothing more than visually associating those good things with their product.  In the 40's, cigarette advertising sucessfully carried the message that smoking is good for you, a sort of panacea for your medical problems.

July 1949      .

The truth about smoking eventually got out; first in the medical literature, then in such publications as Consumer Reports and Scientific American, and finally in the Surgeon General's report on smoking.  Advertisers ceased and desisted with cigarettes, but they refined, perfected, and extended their techniques until today advertising persuades with power, misinforms with astonishing subtlety and absurdity, and seems to recognize no bounds.  A TV ad is often so disconnected from its product that it's impossible to tell what it's about until the end.

Advertising speak is, in many ways, the language of modern society.  It's the way we learn to learn, being much easier than the truly hard work we encounter in schools, especially in college science and mathematics classes.   But, by encouraging us to avoid hard work, advertising speak is anathema to improving scientific literacy.  And to effective decision making.  It is, nevertheless, a powerfully effective way to convey persuasive messages.

A few decades ago a group of physicians went to a group of advertisers and asked if the advertisers could help the physicians get the medical profession to oppose smoking.

The advertisers said they could get any group to do just about anything.  Opposing smoking, both among themselves and among their patients, would be easy.

The physicians pointed out that physicians are an especially intelligent group, not likely to be easily persuaded except by reason.

The advertisers laughed.  "Anything," they repeated.  "Intelligence has nothing to do with it."

If the target audiences of advertisers don't resist, they will be gulled into thinking those attractive first glances reveal reality.   Then they get what they pay for.   Took! EXPANDING BREADTH AND SCOPE LEADS TO SEEING A BIT OF:
THE SIMPLE BUT DIFFICULT . . .
THE OBVIOUS YET UNOBSERVED . . .
AND THAT CAN LEAD TO . . .
Science...

grew from the recognition of logic problems in the ways people saw some of the simpler things in our lives.  Politics, economics, and just everyday life are a lot more complex.  The logic problems are harder to see; solutions harder to find.  Nevertheless, the advertisers have discovered a lot of those widely "unseen" errors of reasoning, and they have discovered how to take advantage of those who don't see.

We can look at the science that is "hard to see," figure out just what the difficulties are, and note how science resolved the problems.  Then we can look for similar problems and solutions in the more complex facts of life; and especially look at where the advertisers have cracked the code to crack our resistance to being gulled.
 

Seven (+1) Tools of Propaganda

Three Powerful Potentials of logic

take a look at advertising Be a Swift, not a Gull

Ralph Nader once suggested that the first thing a skilled manipulator of human opinion does is tell his potential victim, "You're much too smart to be fooled."  Then he takes him: it's easier if you first grease the skids. 

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