Outside a train station near Tokyo, hundreds of people cheer as Sohei Kamiya, head of the surging nationalist party Sanseito, criticizes Japan’s rapidly growing foreign population.
As opponents, separated by uniformed police and bodyguards, accuse him of racism, Kamiya shouts back, saying he is only talking common sense.
Sanseito, while still a minor party, made big gains in July’s parliamentary election, and Kamiya’s “Japanese First” platform of anti-globalism, anti-immigration and anti-liberalism is gaining broader traction ahead of a ruling party vote Saturday that will choose the likely next prime minister.
“I want to protect my children and I believe that vaccine are MORE dangerous then disease so I don’t vaccinate my kids” - that’s a logical statement.
“I want lower value and I believe A < B so I choose A”. That’s logical.
In this case, to change the outcome you need to attack the facts. You have to prove that vaccines are in fact LESS dangerous and then, using the same logic, the person will conclude that he should vaccinate his kids.
“I want to protect my children and I believe that vaccine are LESS dangerous then disease so I don’t vaccinate my kids” - that’s illogical statement.
“I want lower value and I believe A < B so I choose B”. That’s illogical.
In this case you’re not going to argue the facts. The person already thinks that vaccines are LESS dangerous but his logic is wrong. You have to fix theirs logic and they will arrive a the correct conclusion.
The original case of anti-foreigner sentiment is the first case. The logic is valid, the facts are wrong. For some reason you’re not getting the difference.
No, I’m getting what you’re saying.
I’m saying what you’re saying is wrong because it demands you consider only the statements they are explicitly making and disregard any statements they are not enumerating but that need to be included for it to follow some semblance of logic.
You are arguing that “I believe” has the capacity to contain all the false premises and justify them as long as every action that isn’t belief-based remains internally consistent.
I am saying that… well, no, you need to assess the premises included in that belief to evaluate the entire statement.
“I want to drain the swamp so I vote for Trump because I believe he’ll drain the swamp” or “I want to protect children from pedophiles and I believe Trump will do that” are just as valid of a statement, regardless of whether Trump is a convicted criminal or a sex offender.
As long as you are willing to collapse all incorrect arguments into “belief”, you can justify the logic of any premise at all by just assuming the speaker is incorrect somewhere else that you’re not evaluating. It’s entirely tautological at that point. All human action follows some perceived set of incentives. Not all human action makes sense.
You’re also presuming that the incorrect statements that make sense to you are fixable, which they absolutely are not. None of these people are working down that logic chain that you’re stating. Let me be clear, you won’t convince an antivaxer by changing their factual basis. Their factual basis is built to reach the conclusion they want to reach.
It’s also important to point out that even if that was possible, “we have a population crisis so we need to close the borders” is a contradiction, and it’s exactly what these guys are saying. They aren’t saying “we prefer the effects of the population crisis to the changes to our culture immigration brings”. That’s not the statement in the first place.
The statement is fundamentally incongruous because it’s incomplete and backwards. The real train of thought here is as follows:
“I hate foreigners” “Our population is shrinking” “I miss when women worked for me having babies and cleaning after me” “Foreigners are coming here because our population shrinking creates demand for them” “If women worked for me again having babies and cleaning after me we would be able to grow our population without creating demand for foreigners I hate”
The statement being provided is strategic. They won’t say what they want, they will act to reach it. That includes misrepresenting their argument.
Yes, I can see that.