What surprises me a lot in these days of Covid-19 is that so many people stick to false views that allegedly should explain the origin of the virus. Even highly intelligent friends of mine with a university education adhere to so-called conspiracy theories, for instance.
One of the most important fallacies used when “explaining” the origin and spread of Covid-19 is the false cause fallacy. This occurs when “the link between premises and conclusion depends on some imagined causal connection that probably does not exist” (see Source below, p. 342). There are three different types of this fallacy:
- Post
hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for: after this, so because of this).
- Cum
hoc ergo propter hoc ((Latin for: with this so because of this).
- Ignoring
a common cause.
The post
hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy involves that “one argues that a causal
relationship exists between A and B mainly because A happened before B” (id.
p. 343). For instance this fallacy happens (Manninen’s example) when athletes attribute
winning a race to an article of clothing they wore during the event. The cum
hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy involves assuming “a causal relationship between
two events [simply] because they occurred simultaneously” (id. p. 335).
For instance, a door bangs shut and at the same moment you hear a bang
outdoors. Your automatic reaction may be that the one caused the other, but
normally there is no connection. The ignoring a common cause fallacy “occurs
when one notices a constant correlation between A and B and assumes that A
caused B (or vice versa) while ignoring that there is a third variable, C, that
causes both and therefore accounts for the correlation” (id. p. 338).
For instance, an example I learned when studying sociology: In the countryside
more babies are born than in cities, while there are also more storks in the
countryside than in cities. Of course, this doesn’t happen because storks bring
the babies to the parents, as fairy tales say. My teachers didn’t tell what the
common cause was, but if there is it must be a factor that can be typified as “countryside-city
difference”.
You find the
post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy especially in politics and “so” also
in Covid-19 discussions, which often are political. But actually this is not
important. What is important is the false reasoning in these types of fallacies
namely that correlations are interpreted as causal connections without any
further proof but only for the reason that two events occur together.
We often
see such unsound reasoning in popular Covid-19 theories. It’s true that in
Wuhan, where the pandemic started, there is an institute that studies viruses,
and viruses can escape from laboratories, indeed. However, in order to prove
that this virus comes from this laboratory it must be explained how
the virus escaped and spread and so far nobody has been able to do so. Or take
the view that Bill Gates is the puppet player behind the Covid-19 scenarios to
control the world. Until now I haven’t heard any sound reasoning that makes
true how Bill Gates does this. The only thing I see is that Bill Gates is an
influential person (indeed!) and that he has a big influence in the
international health world by sponsoring the WHO and other organisations. Nobody
has made clear by now what’s wrong with this and how he uses his impact to the
detriment of others. It looks like the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
If a doctor sees many Covid-19 patients, it doesn’t mean that he made them ill …
Recently I
read a suggestive article in a paper published by an “antivirus movement”. It stated
that organisations like the WHO, the Rockefeller Foundation or persons like
Bill Gates have developed or supported scenarios how to control people in order
to stop a pandemic and how to keep controlling them after the pandemic has gone.
It was also the WHO that declared that there is a pandemic going on. “Big
organisations and do-gooder Bill Gates promise [sic] us a big pandemic already
for years. And they got it. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared earlier
this year Covid-19 to be a pandemic.” Now I must admit that it’s my
interpretation but what this article suggests to me is that the WHO etc. are
the cause of the misery that now rules the world. However, isn’t it just
reasonable to develop scenarios of what might happen in case of …? And declaring
the Covid-19 to be a pandemic is nothing else than stating how worrying the
situation is.
I think
that what the WHO etc. do can also be interpreted in a different way. You can
read such scenarios as possible ways to restrict people in their doings in order
to keep a virus under control (and if you are in bad faith how to oppress
people). However, you can also read these scenarios and the measures proposed
as what they consider the best thing to do in order to suppress a nasty virus.
Of course, it’s no problem to discuss whether the proposed measures against the
pandemic are correct. Many politicians have seen already that at least some
measures taken were not the right ones. But when you want to solve a problem
like Covid-19 you must not simply put facts (if they are facts) together and correlate
them in the sense of simply saying that they occur together (and nothing more
than that). What you must do is showing how such facts are causally connected.
Otherwise we’ll never get rid of the problem and besides of a nasty virus we’ll
also have a nasty controversy.
Source
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