#94: How To Handle Contrary Evidence (II)

April 3, 2011

Finding facts that seem incompatible with what we want to believe generates a mental discomfort that psychologists have called “cognitive dissonance” and our immediate impulse is to reduce that discomfort. We have different ways of doing this.

A radical and not uncommon method is by way of what we call self-deception, which is just a willful refusal to acknowledge the obvious. Consider the case of  Neville Chamberlain proclaiming that he had procured “peace for our time” by giving the Czechoslovakian regions of the Sudetenland to Hitler in the Munich Agreement. Arguably, only a willful refusal to know could have allowed Chamberlain to believe that Hitler’s aggression was going to end with this appeasement. In less grand examples, we can all probably remember a friend or acquaintance who refused to believe that their “other” was unfaithful despite the fact that the other flaunted the infidelity in plain sight of all.

Self-deception is the “brute force” method of reducing the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.

A second, more defensible, method is that of the ad hoc hypothesis that I mentioned in my last post. This is the strategy of introducing a supplementary hypothesis to rescue a main hypothesis from a failure based on incompatible facts.

While ad hoc hypotheses are generally treated with suspicion and contempt, the truth is that no decision can be made on them mechanically. An ad hoc hypothesis could very well be true. But the mere existence of an ad hoc hypothesis is not sufficient to protect a main hypothesis. The ad hoc hypothesis must itself carry a certain level of plausibility. We can see this by considering the famous legal phrase used in American criminal law: the defendant must be considered guilty beyond any reasonable doubt before being judged guilty by a juror.

The operative expression is “beyond any reasonable doubt.” First, what is a “doubt” in this context?

In the adversarial context of a criminal jury trial, the prosecution asks the jurors to believe the hypothesis X that so-and-so committed a certain crime on the basis of evidence e. The defense, however, asks the jurors to reject X in favor of not-X. Yet, since the evidence, e, strongly supports X, the combination of e and not-X causes considerable cognitive dissonance in the jurors. The defense attempts to reduce this cognitive dissonance by introducing ad hoc hypotheses which “explain away” the apparent linkage between e and X.

These ad hoc hypotheses are the “doubts” spoken of in “beyond any reasonable doubt.” But not just any old “doubts” must be taken into account by the jurors.

Consider the case of O.J. Simpson. There was an enormous amount of evidence tying him to the murder of Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman and so, for a fair and rational jury, accepting the proposition that he did not murder Nicole Brown and her friend would have caused too much cognitive dissonance for it to rule that way. For this reason, the defense introduced many different “doubts” or ad hoc hypotheses to diminish the link between the evidence and O.J’s guilt. The defense argued, for example, that the police could have interfered with the evidence and that the DNA evidence was unreliable, among other doubts. But the one I want to focus on for our purposes is their claim that the murder could have been committed by “Colombian Drug Lords.”

Now, to say that a defendant must be proven guilty “beyond any reasonable doubt” means that the jury believes that all reasonable doubts have been taken to be less probable than that the defendant did the crime he is charged with.

Understanding what the phrase means, we can see just how important the ruling whether a “doubt” is “reasonable” is in a trial. The reason is that jurors are only required to be able dismiss the “reasonable” doubts, not any “unreasonable” ones. Had Judge Ito ruled the Colombian-Drug-Lord doubt an unreasonable one, then the jury would not have had to consider it and reject it. And it was an “unreasonable” one simply because of two things: 1) there was no evidence to support it at all, and 2) it was totally unclear how this hypothesis could ever have been rationally rejected. The Colombian-Drug-Lord doubt was just about as reasonable as an Angry-Venusian-Transvestites-did-it doubt, and it should have been ruled out of order by Ito.

The point of this is that the same applies to making a decision on ad hoc hypotheses in science or in politics or in our private affairs.

In the case of Obama and Israel, the evidence suggests the hypothesis that Obama is a pro-Palestinian sympathizer. If liberals like Ms. Susan Estrich were to want to retain their own hypothesis that he is a reliable and committed supporter of the Jewish State, they would have to reduce the cognitive dissonance caused by the clash of the evidence with that proposition. If they wanted to do that by appeal to ad hoc hypotheses, those hypotheses would have to be at least as plausible as the initial one that he is anti-Israel. What would such an ad hoc hypothesis look like? Perhaps they might argue that his treatment of Netanyahu was nothing other than a case of “tough love” intended to move the Israelis towards the same goal they desire, namely peace with its neighbors.

But here’s the problem. This idea must be at least as plausible as the proposition that he hates Israel and loves the Palestinians, but the former is supported by evidence, namely his treatment of Netanyahu. In order for the ad hoc hypothesis to be used in Obama’s defense, it must have at least as much credibility as the original hypothesis. But what independent evidence is there for the ad hoc hypothesis? Absolutely none!

No, my friends, there is no room here for liberal weaseling, the man is what he is, and that’s not a pretty thing. Let’s all pray that the damage that he and his truly disgusting party do by the time they are neutralized is not so great as to terminally damage this once-great nation.