'Evidence Maximalism' Is How the Internet Argues Now
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> [Caulfield] has written that all of the information online—news, research, historical documents, opinions—has conditioned people to treat everything as evidence that directly supports their ideological positions on any subject. He calls it the era of “evidence maximalism.” It’s how we argue online now, and why it’s harder than ever to build a shared reality... Caulfield has three rules for evidence maximalism:
> 1. “any small thing can be evidence of my thing”
> 2. “any big thing is always evidence of my big thing”
> 3. “All your evidence against my thing is, on closer inspection, very strong evidence for my thing.”
1 is anecdotal fallacy. 2 and 3 are reframing.
I'd say all are forms of confirmation bias, but that requires good faith in debating. The point of all modern internet discourse is to "win" by any means available, not to debate with respect for logic and reason. (Or even Truth.)
Every high schooler figures out you can cite any source remotely related to your topic and write an essay making the exact opposite point. It goes unchecked so it becomes normalized.
Since the internet is overrun with overeducated adult children, we're now predictably plagued with fallacious discourse and fraud.
I do like the reframe focused on evidence as the object since it gets us to think more about how those objects move about and come to us, which moves us toward the concrete realm of how products work. Personally I think it's much easier to change products than people, so ways to frame problems in terms of product can be helpful.
Just some extra terminology for people to throw into arguments like it means anything substantial. Big words from guy in university must be scientific