 So arguments are inferences and inferences are based on facts Inferences do not replace facts and facts themselves are not arguments Facts are not the fact that inferences aren't facts doesn't mean that inferences aren't true, but Inferences are what we do with facts so in my original example the Smile-a-don skull that's found in the bottom of the labria targets that object is a fact and The argument that it ended up there because it was trying to Take advantage of an easy meal when another animal was trapped in the tarpets that is not a fact that is an inference and it Specifically, it's a causal inference So we look at that fact and we say how did this fact get here? Looking at it in the context of all the other available facts the most likely cause seems to have been that it was trying to attack an animal that was stuck in the Tarpets and that's how it itself got stuck and that's why its skeleton is right next to the fossilized skeleton of its potential prey So the inferences we come to are going to depend on the facts we have available hopefully if Otherwise we're using confirmation bias when we start with an inference and then we go looking for facts that support it so it's extremely important that we have all the facts and No matter what sources you use no matter how many great peer-reviewed Academic articles you have access to that collected all of this data all of those facts are still going to necessarily be incomplete We're always going to lack for something. We're never going to be able to see every potentially relevant fact So it matters a lot what our sources are and it matters that we collect all the facts We can even if those facts are anomalies even if those facts seem to be counter evidence to the claim We want to make we still want to take in all those facts if we're making an argument of inquiry because those anomalies those Those facts that don't quite fit our inferences Those make us go back and rethink those inferences and and reword our claims to make them actually work better to fit reality rather than just being Convincing and easily memorable and I've already used the example of the World War two bombers that were Coming back to the runway after a bombing run Fill with bullet holes on the tips of the wings and in the tail and even in the center of the plane in the fuselage But they weren't coming back with holes in the engine They weren't coming back with holes in the cockpit and they weren't coming in with holes in the back part of fuselage with the bombs restored and Those bullet holes that came in on those planes. Those were facts those were Independently verifiable pieces of information and what people did with those facts was that they reasons a Cause for why those facts were there they reasoned that this is where the planes were getting hit the most and They wanted to put armor somewhere on the plane But they couldn't cover the entire plane and armor because it would be too heavy So they decided we value those areas where those bullet holes are more we're gonna choose to put the Armor there and so they adopted that policy where they were about to adopt that policy Based on those facts, which were real facts that were independently verifiable But the inferences they made about what was causing them and which parts of the plane to value more and where to put the armor Those inferences were based on the available facts But it took the mathematician Abraham Wilde to realize that the facts that were coming back were not all the facts that there were The fact that the engines were coming back without holes didn't necessarily mean the engines weren't getting shot It just means the only planes coming back were the ones with functional engines So he was able to recognize what facts were missing and he was able to revise his inferences accordingly So just having access to facts is never going to be entirely enough We always have to be aware about how our inferences are automatically generated. There's system one. They're coming from our Non-reflective cognition and we want to treat them the same way we treat the bat and ball problem in the cognitive reflection test Taking that first answer is only a first step. You want to then say well wait a second Let me verify that first. Let me see what other inferences this generates and Ask myself if these inferences match all the facts So when we look at the fact we also want to look at how we're looking at the fact We want to be aware of our own consciousness of those facts and see What we may be noticing what we may not be noticing what we may be Emphasizing you're focusing on and if we're focusing on one thing that means we're not necessarily focusing on something else And if we're making one inference that might mean that we're ignoring other possible inferences for example if you look at this series of markings the first thing that probably pops in your mind is the letters ABC and That's what most people see when they see this and when you look at these you probably the first thing that pops in your mind It's probably 12 13 14, but of course you probably see where I'm going with this the two lines in the middle could be a B and it could be a 13 and What pops out at our awareness immediately is based not on the shape of the lines themselves Or not just the shape of the lines themselves But also the context in which we find them the other lines that frame them and so Changing the way we see the data in this case those shapes or the the repetition of that shape in the top and in the bottom box Those lines that you see are facts. I can see them You can see them other people watching this video can see them We can all independently verify the shape of those lines, but we can't all independently verify that Those lines are necessarily a B or necessarily a 13 and that is because it whether it's a B or a 13 is a matter of definition and We have to decide what we're using to define it Should it be the the fact that the lines are disconnected from each other in which case we'd say well, they're Not one unified letter, but that inference might be something that people or that definition might not be something people agree on So you'll have to make that argument later But the facts themselves are not that that is a B or a 13 you can't say that's a 13 and that's a fact You can't see it's a B and that's a fact all you can say is those are lines and They look like kind of like a B and they kind of look like a 13 But as we are aware of what we're looking at We also want to be aware of what's around it and how the frame Shifts the way we interpret it now if I showed you this four-letter word It's missing the third letter and I asked you what the missing letter was an idea might pop into mind really quickly But if I preface that by saying before you eat fill in this missing letter I think I can probably guess what letter pops into your mind And I bet it's not the same letter that would have popped into your mind if I said this After you wash your hands fill in the missing letter the same three letters with the missing third could be either soup or soap and Probably a 50-50 chance you would guess one or the other if you just saw the letters in isolation But by making you think about eating and showing you a dinner plate or by showing you a sink Notice that neither of these pictures in the background had the thing that the word could spell You don't see soap in this picture and you didn't see soup in the previous picture But all of those other elements that you saw formed a pattern and to be coherent with that pattern You would probably pick you for the word soup in the previous picture and a for the word soap in this picture Remember the example of the words that go with needle that that I asked you to remember in the previous thought experiment and The word needle wasn't in that word list, but it seemed like you may have heard it because it was coherent So this is called associate of coherence. I'm using your associate of coherence to Lead you to see the same Letters with the same blank in different ways based on what's around it and it's a each of these is a different frame And by choosing that frame I'm deliberately priming you to think of one thing or another I'm priming you to think of a particular pattern rather than another equally valid pattern to go with this fact and to Shape the inferences that you have about this fact now priming has a lot to do Not only with what we see what we pay attention to in the environment But also what we think we see or thought we saw as in the case of the associate of coherence with the word needle You didn't actually hear the word needle in that That word group, but you may have thought you did because it fit that pattern An early example of priming came quite by accident a few decades ago at the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands Very rare red panda escaped from the zoo one day They're apparently very good at getting out of cages and that sort of things are kind of a close to raccoons They're called red pandas is It's slightly inaccurate. They're not actually related to pandas. They're not actually related to the great panda But they do come from the the same area. They come from the Himalayas and Southwestern China but at the Rotterdam Zoo a red panda got out and in order to Find it. It could have gotten anywhere in the city. So the zoo officials put out press releases in newspapers and on the radio and People all over Rotterdam were told to keep an eye out for this red panda that's escaped and see if you can Help the zookeepers find it. Well, the Rotterdam Zoo got hundreds of phone calls reports of sightings of this red panda all over the city so for Dozens of miles in every direction people thought they saw or were convinced enough that they had seen the red panda to Call the Rotterdam Zoo and report a location But the problem was these locations were nowhere close to each other in fact a few days later Unfortunately, they found that the red panda had been killed just about a block away from the zoo So in fact none of the sightings of the red panda were accurate people were calling insane They had seen the red panda Which they clearly had not because it had not gotten more than a block away from the zoo but because they were Made to think about this particular animal even if they didn't know exactly what it looked like just a description of it and Knowing that there's this animal out there Whatever it is people were seeing may have been a cat may have been a dog may have been a fox or something else but in their minds it was a red panda so The actual facts that they were seeing the data of the visual stimulus that they were taking in interpreting Was based on something they were actually seeing something out there in the real world But the way they interpreted it was primed It was connected with what they were thinking of at the time rather than strictly based on what they saw a More recent example of this comes from this little doll Mattel's little mommy cuddling coo that the doll what random times make cooing noises and different kinds of Nonsense baby sounds but when people listen to it they started to think they heard something other than just random sounds Listen to this now and tell me what you hear That sound came at the end of a series of babbling sounds but it's those sounds that people focused on and Listen to it again and see if you can hear any specific words At first a few customers took the doll back to the store and Demanded their money back because they said that they heard the phrase either the phrase Islam is the light or Satan is king Now certain news outlets began to run the story and report the phrases Islam is the light and Satan is king And once they did a lot more parents started bringing their dolls back hearing the same words Listen one more time and see if you can hear either of those sentences To me the last syllable sounds a little bit like the word light Of course, it could also be delight those last two syllables sounds more like delight than the light but Either delight or light closer to any other words I can think of but I certainly can't make out Islam in there anywhere Listen to the first part of that without the last part So that by itself now listen to the whole thing again And I should point out that this is again just the last of a long series of babbling sounds That's the TV news spots selected But if you're primed to think of one of those sentences Islam is the light or Satan is king And you anchor that speech pattern on to the actual sound of like the like the sound that sounds like like Then your system one automatic cognition fills in the whole sentence into your memory Around that one syllable, but what do those two things have in common Satan is king and Islam is the light would a pro-Muslim doll even if You think that there's a doll that is programmed to brainwash children into believe it into Converting to Islam would a pro-Muslim doll be worshipping Satan Muslims regard Satan as the enemy just like Christians do the only thing that Islam and Satan have to do with each other is That there are both things that scare the parents who get their news from these particular media companies and Remember that anxiety and the feeling of loss of control Causes people to misperceive patterns in ambiguous data sites and sounds visual information auditory information Remember that study by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Golinski at the University of Texas at Austin They brought in managers and executives The experimental group was asked to remember a time in their life when they had a project to complete and they could not finish it on time they were unable to complete an assignment and They were primed to think of a loss of control Whereas the control group was primed to think of time when they were in control when they completed a task just fine Where they had control over a situation The group that had been primed to think of a loss of control were much more likely to say that they saw Some sort of pattern in this ambiguous black and white image in the center But there is no pattern in that image But people who felt lost control were more likely to misperceive patterns in this image Whereas people who were primed to think of themselves as in control looked at the image and quite confidently said I don't see anything there this phenomenon Seeing or hearing something scary in ambiguous information Was the subject of a movie a while back called white noise where people used to listen to The static on old landline telephones and say that they heard the voices of dead people During the 70s and 80s people for some reason ended up playing Rock music backwards and saying they heard satanic messages in it and there's a humorous example of this in the other Michael Shermer talk I assigned one Michael Shermer talk Ted talk, but if you watch the other one Why people believe strange things He plays these this Led Zeppelin song stairway to heaven Forward at first and then backwards and he plays it backwards the first time and you maybe hear one or two words But then he shows you lyrics of what people have sort of parsed out and when you're reading the lyrics You can totally hear what you're reading in the sound, but again you take the lyrics away and it's becomes more obvious that those Weren't actually words. They're just syllables that were matched with the closest scary word possible But a big emphasis on the things that make us feel scared anxious or Like we're at a loss of control Now this is one of the reasons why conspiracy theories see patterns that aren't there Because when we feel that someone else is taking control of our world away from us We're much more likely to see false patterns and ambiguous information but the point is We can look at the same thing or listen to the same thing And hear very different things depending on the patterns that we have in our heads The frames that we see those facts embedded in What we're primed to think of what we see as coherent All of these things other than the facts themselves cause us to Do something with that fact to make an inference that may or may not be justified by the actual fact By the actual thing that we're perceiving So to recap I remember the difference between a fact and an inference a fact is independently verifiable information It's something other people can go verify and see that yes What you see is actually there. What you hear is actually there an inference is what you do with that fact Does that trigger an interpretation? Does it is it something you define one way that somebody else might define a different way? Do you immediately assume to know a cause or do you Guess about what caused those facts to be the way they are or Are you afraid that those facts are an indication that some other thing is about to happen? Does it make you want to Do something about it or does it is does it inhibit you from doing something? Do you look at those facts and see them as good or bad? You see them as better or worse than other alternatives All of these inferences are subsequent to the facts themselves And they have just as much to do with the patterns that are in our own heads As they do with the things that are out there in the world that we're perceiving Now we have to make generalizations We wouldn't be able to exist in the world We wouldn't be able to learn anything if we weren't able to generalize from specific facts and predict New situations with similar facts may have other things in common Generalizing means forgetting some of the specifics of a fact in order to Recognize it in a different connotation But we don't want to over generalize because when we over generalize we're no longer learn anything. We're now Removing too much information from the facts And when that over generalization becomes completely free of facts when it's no longer falsifiable But it's no longer testable it becomes a platitude the kind of thing The kind of sentence that could be interpreted to mean something But could also be interpreted to mean the opposite of that thing in other words the it's so ambiguous That it really doesn't mean anything at all So we want to generalize to a point we want to generalize from specific facts But don't carry those generalizations beyond what we can prove beyond what we can test And even if we're not very good at doing that even if we're not very good at critical thinking and arguments of inquiry individually even if we are sort of biased toward bias This is what peer review is for other people are going to be much better at being skeptical of our interpretations of the facts Than we are going to be of ourselves So peer review is your best source for facts that you haven't gathered yourself But it's not perfect peer reviewed articles have a lot more critical tests passed before they get published Than anything else published anywhere including anything published in a newspaper even a reputable newspaper or magazine or tv news network And facts whether the facts we see ourselves or the facts we learn from reputable sources Always occur within a frame And we typically are constantly being primed to interpret them one way or another And we have to be aware. We're never going to be able to completely remove Facts from frames. We're never going to be able to conceive of facts just completely isolated the way artificial intelligence might But critical thinking means even though you've got that initial frame You become aware of that frame and you become aware of how that frame is influencing you or you become aware of that priming effect and you become aware of What inferences are already there in your automatic cognition and The fact that they're already there doesn't mean you're stuck with them You can put them to the side and say, okay, those are the most obvious inferences But what other inferences are out there and could they be tested as well?