357. Influencer Red Flags Miniseries, Part 14: “There’s no evidence…”

0:00Have you ever wondered how two people could look at the exact same thing and come away with two very different opinions on what it means? Or have you been baffled how someone could believe something that to you is obviously untrue? This kind of thing happens all the time, but how can you be sure you're the one seeing things accurately? Hi, I'm Kathy, a homeschool mom, passionate about teaching critical thinking to the next generation, so they're propaganda proof and impossible to fool with bad arguments. I like to have fun doing it. Welcome to the filter through a brain cell podcast. Hey, what's up, thinkers? Kathy Abenzir. Alright, let's start off today's episode by reviewing a form of media bias that we covered earlier in season two called spin. Do you want to hit pause real quick and see if you can remember what spin when it comes to media bias is? So spin is when news or information is presented in a way that influences how people feel about it rather than just stating the facts. So it doesn't necessarily mean lying, but it involves twisting or emphasizing certain details to make something seem better or worse or somehow different than it really is.

1:04So if you want to review or hear more about media spin, go back and check out episode 279. And this episode is brought to you by my membership, Crazy Thinkers, where every single month I put out a publication that gives you all kinds of real life examples of fallacies and biases, and you get to practice. It's memes, it's headlines, it's articles, and in fact, I have a whole special edition that I did just on media bias, where it gives you all different examples from headlines in the news and online, and you get to practice recognizing the media biases. So if you're interested, if you want to go check that out, you can go to filter through brainsell.com forward slash crazy. Okay, so let's continue where we left off in the last episode where we were talking about evidence. And we left off with an example of a comment that I saw recently on a podcast that I listened to where a commenter was wanting the host to give them proof or evidence for this topic that they discuss on their podcast, which they've been doing for several years,

2:04but they were expecting it in this short little little response, right there on social media when these two podcasters actually had over 400 episodes where they had been discussing this topic at great length with different experts and bringing hundreds of hours of evidence. So the reality is sometimes there's evidence, but people just don't want to see it. So that brings us to the line that we're talking about today. There's no evidence, right, or here's a few other examples of what it could sound like. There's zero evidence for that, and sometimes here's guys, this is the part that's tricky. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes what somebody is saying is just something they're saying and they're not giving any evidence, but sometimes there is evidence and the person for whatever reason isn't convinced or they haven't bothered to look or they're just trying to dismiss the person without examining the evidence. And so it's like they're walking into a room and closing their eyes and saying, I don't see anything here. Well, open your eyes. If you open your eyes, you'd see something. Okay, let me give you a few simple examples of what this can sound like.

3:07Somebody coming online, refuting what somebody else is saying, that's not true. There's no evidence for that, but they don't give any evidence that they've even looked into the claims, or they don't show what they did to research the claims to be able to say that there's no evidence for it. You see how this kind of can go? Feel like it goes round and round here. Or here's another one. I've never seen any evidence of that, so it's probably false. Okay, well, in this example, what this person is saying is that they think their personal and probably limited exposure is the totality of reality on that one topic. So basically they're like, well, if it was true, I would have heard about it before. Well, that's, we know that's not true. There's lots of things that we haven't heard of before. Here's another one. That's been debunked. There's no evidence, but then they don't give any explanation of what was debunked. Okay, it's been debunked. Well, tell me about that, right? Tell me what you're, what you're claiming here. Or here's another one. Somebody who says, there's literally zero evidence that works. And then there's actual studies or data that does exist, but they just didn't bother

4:11going and checking. So sometimes people say, oh, there's no evidence of that, but they don't actually know. They're just saying, I just haven't seen it, so it must not exist. Now I want to be clear. What I'm talking about in this episode is when someone just makes the claim that there's no evidence, when there actually is evidence, or when they haven't made the effort to look into it, just like the example that I gave about the podcast. Okay, so can you guess the fallacies or biases that might be happening behind this statement? All right, so the main bias happening here is from the argument from ignorance. We covered this back in episode 28. So the argument from ignorance, or it's sometimes called the appeal to ignorance happens, and someone insists that something must be true just because it can't be, or hasn't been proven false, or because the other party doesn't know that it's false, or because they don't know whether it's true or false. So the appeal to ignorance is when someone tries to convince you to accept a conclusion based on assumptions or guesses, rather than providing real evidence for the conclusion.

5:17So when someone dismisses a claim without looking at the argument with their actually saying is, I don't know of the evidence, so therefore there is none. But a lack of awareness is not the same thing as a lack of evidence. Now the other thing, or another thing that we're also seeing here, is confirmation bias that we covered back in episode 255. So confirmation bias leads people to be more likely to accept evidence that supports their view and to dismiss or ignore evidence that challenges the view that they already have. So the line, there's no evidence, in this case, can really mean there's no evidence that I accept, right, because if they see something, but they don't like it or they don't want to accept it, they might still be claiming, oh, there's just no evidence. So when an influencer says, there's no evidence, it might actually be true that there's no evidence, but what would you need to know to know whether or not that's true? Here's what we have to keep in mind. What we have to keep in mind is that somebody might actually mean, I haven't seen convincing

6:21evidence, they might actually mean, I don't trust the sources you're using. Maybe they mean, I disagree with how that evidence is being interpreted, interpreted. Or they could mean, I don't find that evidence to be strong enough. And these are fair positions, but they should be communicated as such, because that's different from, there is none, or there is no evidence. You see the difference there between the two? It's one thing to say, I don't trust your sources. It's another thing to just say, there's no evidence. So why does this line work so well to get attention? Well, one of the big reasons is because it sounds so final. It sounds like, oh, the case is closed, don't even bother looking any further. And that shuts down the debate. It makes it seem like there is no need to engage any further here. It also works because it makes the person saying it sound like they're informed and they're confident. It makes it sound like they did the research and looked into it and can confidently say that there's no evidence, but that might not be true at all. So you guys, you realize that there are people, and it counts, with very large followings

7:22on social media, who all they do is provide commentary on what other people are saying. So for example, there'll be the ones who listen to a full episode on something that could have been hours long, and then they come on social media and they give their version of the summary in just a few minutes. And there are lots of people who only listen to this person who's giving the summary, and they take their word for it without going and actually listening to what the original person said, and they think they're informed, y'all, they're not. But this happens because it takes time to really look into whether what somebody is saying is true or not, and most people just do not have the time to do it. Nor do they want to make the time to do it. And quite frankly, there's nobody who has the time to dig into the truth about all the different things that we're confronted with on a daily basis. So I'm always very leery when I see somebody who, as soon as something happens in the news or something happens in culture, they immediately come out with some kind of explanation that makes it sound like there's some kind of expert on it.

8:23And I always think, okay, just yesterday you were the expert on climate change, and today you're the expert on geopolitical relationships, and then two weeks ago you were the expert on this health topic, and I'm like, there's no way. There's no way that somebody can be an expert instantly on everything that's happening around us. And so we have to just keep that in mind with the things that we're hearing. And then lastly, the reason that this, people use this line and that it works is because it just kind of feels like a safe excuse and lets them keep their existing beliefs without having to do any extra work without having to do the extra work to actually look into it. Now, there are a few other fallacies that can be playing into this, and one of them, it could be a form of the moving the goalposts that we covered back in episode 57. So moving the goalposts is when someone keeps coming up with new things for you to do in order to meet their approval. And so this one, this is usually done by somebody who you're trying to please or who standards you're trying to meet, and in this instance of this line, when evidence is presented, they'll

9:27say, well, that doesn't count, or that's not real evidence, or that source isn't valid. There's almost like the standard or the goal keeps shifting, and for the people who are doing this, no amount of evidence that you bring is going to be enough, they're not going to change their mind. So again, I want to be clear that sometimes with what people say online, there really is no evidence or just saying stuff. And sometimes people say there's no evidence because they haven't looked or because they don't want to. So in this case, discernment means asking, is the claim unsupported or is the evidence being ignored? So how can we think about it when we hear this phrase? Well, as always, as you guys know, that I'm going to say, ask some questions. And if you really want to know the truth, you're going to have to be prepared to do some work and to dig in and to spend some time. But let me give you, here's a few questions to get you started. Do they mean no evidence exists or no evidence that they accept? Or here's another question. Have they actually examined the evidence to prove that it's not true?

10:30Are they engaging with different sources or are they just dismissing them? And then lastly, what would count as evidence for them? Because here's a deal. Good thinking doesn't just ask, is there evidence? It asks, have I honestly looked at it? Again, good thinking doesn't just ask, is there evidence? It also asks, have I honestly looked at it? All right, y'all, that's it for today. Remember, biases happen automatically and will affect your ability to discern the truth. You can slow down your thinking by asking, what am I not seeing and how could my view be incomplete?