A PSA on the importance of mathematical logic

Despite the undignified title of this post, I promise you that from now on you answer back those shady politicians (conmen!) with their pompous justifications. For instance, how would you answer this charge

” What’s wrong with our economic policies? If it wasn’t the right thing to implement, Malaysia wouldn’t have been so successful right?”

Or this,

” You cannot question government decisions since we enjoy a 92% majority. Questioning us is tantamount to questioning the will of the majority.”

Or this,

” We didn’t do anything wrong. If we did, the regulatory bodies would already have caught us and punished us already right?”

Excuses like this are becoming all to common. Enough is enough! Seriously, people who try to make excuses like this should be given a lecture in the rudiments of stringing a coherent sentence.

” If the sun is shining, the clothes will dry. Well the clothes are dry, so the sun has to me shining right?” So Andy goes out to play football and gets drenched in rain (and a cold). So what went wrong?

In technical parlance, it’s called affirming the consequent. Basically it means that just because the conclusions are correct, it doesn’t mean that the assumptions are.

We all argue in this form:

Assumptions —-> Conclusions.

We make some assumptions, and draw conclusions from it. If the argument is correct, conclusions will follow from our assumptions. So as above, I think we all agree that yes, a shining sun will get our clothes dry. No problem there. So if I want to know whether our clothes will indeed get dry, all I need to check is whether  the sun is shining. Savvy?

But it is very, very, very wrong the find out whether the sun it out just by checking whether our clothes is dry. Because, there are many other reasons why my clothes can get dry on a rainy day. By dumping it into the dryer for instance.

So there’s a short lesson on the rudiments of logic.

As an exercise, lets go through the first three excuses I gave above.

1.  Correct economic policy—-> Successful and prosperous Malaysia. Now, for the sake of argument we grant the conclusion. Does it mean the governments economic policy is correct?

2.  Questioning the will of 92% of the population—–> Questioning the elected government’s decisions. Again same thing…

3.  If we follow the law—->the regulatory bodies leave us alone. By now it should be pretty obvious…

So there you have it. Hope it helps in deconstructing the nonsense that passes of as ‘logic’ on Malaysian TV.

*PSA means public service announcement.