Critical thinking about COVID-19: lowered expectations

The U.S. has been impacted by COVID-19 more than any other country. Currently, they have had four times more cases than any other country, and twice as many deaths (note that the vertical axis in the graph below is logarithmic).

A major contributing factor to this devastating impact is the Trump administration’s slow response to the crisis. Over a period of six weeks, Trump downplayed the problem and delayed desperately needed social distancing measures. This allowed the virus to spread so that when measures were finally implemented, the damage was already done. But when questioned about the number of deaths, Trump refers to the millions who would’ve died if he’d done nothing.

How do you assess an argument like this? In the paper Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors, Peter Ellerton, David Kinkead and myself develop a methodology for systematically deconstructing and analysing potentially false claims.

The steps are 1) deconstruct the claim into premises and a conclusion, 2) assess its logical validity, then 3) assess the truth of its premises. In this case, here is the argument structure of Trump’s claim.

This argument is logically invalid – the conclusion doesn’t logically follow from the premises. Before we can proceed to the next step of assessing premises, we need to add the unstated premise that makes this argument logically valid.

Adding the third premise helps identify more clearly where this argument goes wrong. It commits the technique of lowered expectations. This involves lowering the standard by which you grade a performance or assess evidence. This technique is often seen in science denial where conclusions are based on weak or anecdotal evidence. In this case, it suggests grading the government’s performance against the lowest possible standard – doing nothing (although technically, an even lower standard is being actively damaging such as suggesting injecting disinfectant).

Having a framework to help identify reasoning fallacies is essential and so for the last half decade, I’ve been developing the FLICC taxonomy. FLICC stands for Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, and Conspiracy theories – the five techniques of science denial. Underneath these five categories is an ever growing landscape of fallacies, rhetorical techniques, and traits of denialist thinking.

I’ve added the technique of lowered expectations to the FLICC taxonomy (and updated the original FLICC post). I confess I struggled to find the best place to add this to the taxonomy. On the one hand, we see examples of lowered expectation in anecdotal thinking. An argument like “cold weather proves global warming isn’t happening” is both anecdotal thinking (a subset of cherry picking) and also a good example of lowered expectations: coming to conclusions on minimal evidence.

However, I decided to position it under the category of impossible expectation, which involves demanding unrealistic standards of proof before coming to a conclusion. Psychologically, impossible expectations stem from disconfirmation bias – the tendency to argue against unwelcome evidence. The flip side of disconfirmation bias is confirmation bias – the tendency to place greater weight on welcome evidence. This is the psychological driver of lowered expectations.

Lastly, while I would be delighted if everyone watched the entertaining video introduction to our critical thinking research, read our critical thinking paper, and engaged with our process of deconstructing misinformation, I recognize that this is, well, an impossible expectation. Humans are hardwired for quick, easy thinking. Slow, effortful critical thinking doesn’t come easily. Given this psychological hurdle, what is an accessible, engaging way to communicate Trump’s lowered expectation fallacy? Satire and visual humor offers one approach:

I’ve also created a 1920 x 1080 version of this cartoon, which people are welcome to use in Powerpoint presentations.