Cherry Picking

I had an interesting thing happen at church on Sunday. Before I get into specifics I wanted to talk about the rhetorical tool of cherry-picking. Cherry-picking is the process of picking only the data the supports your position while ignoring or under emphasizing the data that goes contrary to your point.
To illustrate my point today I took a Wikipedia article about an individual and picked only the positive and neutral points. From the information below see if you can identify the subject of the article.

An avid downhill skier while in high school.
He studied law at Utah State University.
In college he was baptized a member of the LDS church.
He worked on Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign.
He liked Volkswagens.
He enjoyed spending time outdoors.
He died at age 43.

Okay. He sounds like a pretty good guy, doesn’t he? Well yeah. Anybody would if you only use the details that make him seem like a nice guy. Now take a look at the rest of his profile and see if I left out anything important.

Big difference isn’t it? Even though everything above was technically true by cherry-picking the data, only picking the positive, I was able to create a false picture of who this man really was.

Now back to my experience Sunday. July 24th is Pioneer Day. It’s a Mormon holiday to celebrate those who made the trek west to help settle the Salt Lake valley. It’s typical for the Sunday talks to tell personal anecdotes about ancestors who made the trek and have them make comparisons to their own lives. This Sunday it became a textbook example of cherry-picking. The closing speaker did indeed have an ancestor who crossed the plains and helped settle the west. As he began to list the positive attributes of his great-great-great-great grandfather his name rang a bell. I pulled out my iphone and did a quick search for him. Now here is a short list of the details that the speaker shared with us.

He learned to hunt as a boy.
He converted to the church as an adult.
He was a close confidant on Joseph Smith.
He crossed the plains with Brigham Young and was one of his most trusted friends.
He was a proud defender of the LDS Church.
He was shot several times and eventually died from complications of his gunshot wounds.

I’m going to spare the actual name of the ancestor mentioned because I don’t want to identify the speaker. However, Suffice it to say that the comparison I made to Ted Bundy is not unfair. He was Danite and essentially a hired assassin. This speaker’s ancestor actually confessed to killing more people than Bundy is suspected of killing. Yes, he was a member of the church but he was excommunicated and became an opponent of the church.

My point here is not to criticize Sunday’s speaker. I just seriously am intrigued by the amount of cognitive dissonance that it takes to spin this character into a hero. It’s one thing to cherry-pick data in order to convince somebody else. But I think that more often than not people unconsciously sort that data. They just actually do not even see the disconfirming evidence. Or if they do they minimize it or rationalize it to the point that even a negative becomes a positive.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Last night Atlanta had some pretty rough storms roll through town. High winds, rain, hail, and lightning made quite a mess outside. My 11 mile commute to work had four detours from roads blocked by trees, utility lines and debris. About half of the neighborhoods I drove through were pitch black because they had no power.

The FM DJs on the station I was listening to were being pretty factual about their reporting. They were just stating the facts. Roads x, y, and z are blocked. Power out in x, y and z areas of town. But when I get in to work a coworker is complaining about how bad the am stations were reporting the storm. In his short commute he heard the aftermath compared to a “war zone” several times. Really? A war zone? Really? Were they bodies in the streets? Gunfire? Burning buildings? Sure there were trees down and leaves and crap spread everywhere, but a war zone? Come on. I remember as a kid being told the story of the boy who cried wolf. Apparently some people need a refresher course.

The boy who cried wolf caused the public to ignore his pleas. He had changed the definition of the word “wolf”. It no longer meant the same thing and was now something that could be ignored. Same goes for calling the storm damage a “war zone”.

A few years ago a gas pipeline blew up in California and completely blew up or burned an entire subdivision. I did not criticize anybody for saying that looked like a “war zone”. Now, if something like that were to happen today in Georgia what words are left to describe it? “War zone” now just means limbs and stuff spread around. You have diluted the words and they no longer have their original meaning.

It hit me today that the problem I have with this type of exaggeration is the same problem I have with the political inflammatory rhetoric. Suppose a real Socialist, a real Nazi, or a real Fascist were to run for election. What words are you left with to describe them? The past few years people have been throwing the words around without understanding that they are diluting the meaning. The three term are used as synonyms, they aren’t, and they are all used to mean “anybody who wants to control something I don’t want them to”.

Perhaps we could all benefit from asking an elementary school kid to retell us the story of the boy who cried wolf. Remember the moral to that story? He used scary words when there really wasn’t anything to be afraid of and people stopped listening and stopped caring when the real wolf showed up.

Obedience?

A few weeks ago at church we had a guest speaker present a talk on the subject of obedience. Obedience is a common theme lately in LDS meetings. Despite the scriptural support to the contrary you’d think it was the greatest commandment in the law.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to express my puzzlement with a motivational story that was given during the talk. This speaker closed his 20 minute talk with a story about a boy who was lost in a mine. A group of boys had gone into a mine and one of the boys got separated form the rest of the group. When he didn’t come out they went back and retraced their steps. When they still didn’t find him the authorities were called and a full search was initiated.

A local man felt the need to go volunteer his services since he was familiar with the mine. When he showed up on site he was sent back home by the authorities, who assured him that they had it under control. This happened a few days in a row. The local man offered his services and was sent home every time.

On something like the forth or fifth day of the search the authorities were no closer to finding the boy and announced that they were going to call off the search. One last time the local man went and pleaded with the authorities to be allowed to look for the boy. They reluctantly agreed. Being more familiar with the mine than any of the other searchers so, far he was able to check out a little known passage and he found the boy in about 20 minutes.

Now here is my question. How in the world is a story about the virtues of obedience? If the boy had been obedient to his leaders in the first place he wouldn’t have been alone. If the leaders had been obedient to scout policy they wouldn’t have been in a mine in the first place. But they were not the focus of the story. The most glaring problem I had with it was the prime focus of the story, the local man’s actions. Since he knew the mine better if he had been disobedient and defied the so-called authorities the boy would have likely been found days earlier. I saw this as a story about perseverance to do what you know is right in spite of what you are being told, but obedience?

Sometimes I really enjoy the talks at church. Sometimes I may disagree with the concept but still understand it from their perspective. But this one just eluded me completely. I just couldn’t see how in the world this story would support the idea that we need to be obedient.

What Happend to Civility?

Here’s a not entirely hypothetical situation I’d like to discuss.
Suppose a friend came over to your house unannounced. You invite them in and they begin to tell you their views on what is wrong with everything from your politics to how to you raise your children. They quote celebrities and politicians to back up their position. You listen politely for a while. Then when they are finished you attempt to point out a few misquotations and other errors in the facts they presented to you. They then get insulted and react as if you are personally attacking them. They make one last speech and storm out of your house telling you that they never want to hear from you again.
The above example is an amalgam of several different events that have actually happened to me in the last couple months. It sounds absurd doesn’t it? But they really happened, several times. If this had happened to you how would you feel? Suppose this was a beloved family member, who you had great respect for, you just disagreed on politics? In my situation each time I just sat there stunned. Where did that come from? Why did they bring this to me?
Now I have concealed one small detail until now. These encounters didn’t happen in person. They happened via email. Yet other than that the details are correct. Why does the fact that their message came via an email excuse them the civility they might have granted me in person? Is it really so all or nothing with some people? What has happened to this world that we are so readily willing to cut all ties with people because we don’t march in lock step with them? Is their value as a person so contingent upon me accepting the premises of the email that they mass forwarded to everybody in their address book?
I share this because I am truly saddened. There are people that I have known for decades who have abandoned having any relationship with me because we disagree. What happened to having a civil disagreement? In many of my cases I didn’t even get around to stating my opinion. I was just correcting the facts they presented. It doesn’t bother me that we disagree on some points. But why can’t we discuss the issue civilly?
In stark contrast to these examples I do have a few close friends with whom I frequently disagree. I enjoy discussing things with them. I know that neither one of us is likely to have a complete change of opinion but the conversation is stimulating. And I believe that we are willing to accept when our opinions are based on flawed data and reconsider. I want to thank these friends for accepting me as one who is still looking for answers. I enjoy the search. I hope I never get so many answers that I no longer need the search. And I hope that no matter how much we may disagree you will still walk away knowing that I still value you as a person.

Qualifiers

I had an interesting discussion with a coworker last week. He had just driven back from out west and was relating his trip details to a few of us. Having driven across the country more times than I can count I threw my two cents into the conversation. I was curious as to which route he had taken. It turns out that he had taken one of the same stretches of road that I always take. He commented on how much he liked the road and I remarked about how annoying the road is.
Hwy-78 from Birmingham to Memphis will someday be incorporated into the interstate system. But currently the road is incomplete. The divided hwy part of it starts about 12 miles north of Birmingham and ends a few miles south of Memphis. Consequently if you hit either section at rush hour it can be miserable. Even if you miss rush hour your average speed is severally limited due to the miles of traffic lights.
Well this coworker commented that he just loved the road and I said it was moderately annoying because of the incomplete sections.

Him, “I just drove it yesterday. They’ve completed it.”

Me, “Well they must have completed it since I drove it in July”

Him, “It’s complete all the way except for those 12 miles in Birmingham and a few miles in Memphis.”

At this point he threw his elbows back and was waiting for me to respond.

Me, “I don’t know what else to say. You’ve just completely conceded my only point and you act like we still have something to disagree over.”

This was just a recent dramatic example, but I see people attaching qualifiers to statements and not realizing that the qualifier removes most if not all of the original meaning from the statement. A generic example would be something like, “All psychic predictions come true except those that don’t.” Okay? The statement would seem to be rather powerful, at first. Then the qualifier removed all of the bite. Such was the discussion with my coworker. The road is complete except for the parts that aren't. Once he had qualified the statement to exclude all the annoying parts of hwy-78 we were left with only the nice parts to discuss.

What I find frustrating is that in these types of situations I always feel like the other party walks away feeling like we still have some disagreement when we don’t. In this case we both enjoy the completed sections of hwy-78 and find the traffic lights through both big cities rather annoying.