"Untangling the Truth" Analysis

A novel, simple and effective method of untangling the truth from lies we are told that is easy enough for any intellectual to use.

Imagine that  you have  many ropes in  a hopelessly tangled  mess.  Is this not the truth about truth and lies we are told?

How does one untangle this complicated mess?

LOGICAL FALLACIES

The first step is that one must be able to recognize when a fallacy is being employed  to support an  argument.  Since the truth  consists in knowing  which assertions  are correct  and which  aren't,  the proper methods  of  proving  assertions  are necessary.   If  someone  argues unfairly - i.e. invokes a fallacy to support a step of their argument, you must be  able to confute them.  It follows that  one must know how to recognize  a fallacy.  So study  these.  By our  analogy, each time you recognize  a fallacy,  you have succeeded  in undoing part  of the knot.

GO

Believe it  or not,  the game  of Go is  necessary to  our theoretical analysis.  Why  is this the case?  Go  is a game in  which two players fight for control of territory.  There is a large conceptual framework and enormous literature on  which techniques work.  The major concepts in Go are cutting and connecting.  You can strengthen weaker groups of stones by connecting  to stronger groups, and you  can weaken them and sometimes kill them by cutting them off from stronger groups.

These two tools, and indeed, many  tools in Go, are very useful to the propagandaist.  Think  of an  argument as a  group of stones.   If you don't wish a person to believe that what this argument proves is true, and  in this  case that  would be  any of  the  premises, intermediate assertions,  and  conclusions  of  the  argument,  you  can  kill  the argument.  You can do this but  cutting it at the premises, cutting it at an  intermediate step,  or cutting at  the conclusion.   Of course, logical fallacies  are what one  cuts otherwise valid  arguments with. So, the propagandist employs fallacies  as his stones, and the student of  truth employs  truths as  his  stones, with  assertions being  the points of  play and the rules of  inference as the edges  of the board graph.  If  the game is to  fight over other  peoples' territory, i.e. mindshare, they can also employ fallacies.

There are  many properties of  the game of  Go that also hold  true of propaganda techniques.   It follows that many of  the conceptual tools from Go have  a either a direct analog or can  be modified to function in counterpropaganda applications. 

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So you have  two areas to study - Logical Fallacies  and Go.  It would also help to ensure familiarity  with formal logic, topology and graph theory, as  this would clarify the true  properties wrt argumentation. Then,  by identifying  where stones  have been  placed to  cut certain arguments, you can begin to  gain control of larger territories of the truth.

EXERCISES

Develop a formal theory of  the basic moves behind employing fallacies in   propaganda/counter-propaganda  applications.   Write   a  generic graph-based  graphical  visualizer  for  these  moves  which  displays verticies/assertions  and  edges/rules-of-inference.   Develop an  NLP program  using  any variety  of  methods for  recognizing/categorizing logical fallacies with a high degree of accuracy.  Process texts using this tool  and employ shape  analysis from Go to  visualize mindshare. From  this  visualization -  assess  the  positional attributes  using transformed Go positional analysis techniques to develop an assessment criteria for counter-propaganda strategies.  Develop a feedback system that measures  the real-world effectiveness of  these strategies.  Use these techniques to convince others to  work with you in your fight to know the truth - a necessary condition for (true) freedom.