The Biggest Logical Fallacy That We Are Up Against, Debunked

Logical fallacies of various kinds perennially show up in arguments in every debate.  But there is one that seems to be the biggest one on the pro-21 or otherwise prohibitionist side.  That one is the one we call the Reverse Middle Ground Fallacy, or Appeal to Extremes.  It is basically a warmed-over form of the old slippery slope fallacy, in which the Middle Ground Fallacy or appeal to moderation is "debunked", and pretending that the opponent's entire argument is therefore "debunked" as well.  It also functions as a straw man as well as appeal to logic.

For example:

• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between communism and fascism, or alternatively between anarchy and totalitarianism, so we must pick one or the other 
• Claiming there is no philosophically stable position that says that cannabis is OK but hard drugs are not, thus "confirming" the gateway theory
• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between complete Luddism and complete technocracy or Transhumanism 
• Claiming that reproductive rights or birth control of any kind inevitably leads to eugenics 
• Claiming that tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality (or sexual freedom in general) inevitably leads to tolerance and acceptance of pedophilia and other horrible stuff, thus all LGBT+ folks are inherently "groomers"
• Claiming that gender equality is inherently impossible because one gender must utterly dominate and control the other, lest the latter run amuck and become too dangerous (note that this works both ways)
• Claiming that "you are either with us, or you are against us"
• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between unfettered access to alcohol for all ages and complete and absolute alcohol prohibition for all ages (or for all people between some arbitrary age limit).

And yes, every single one of the above are examples of actual arguments that have been put forth by extremists of various stripes.

But simply reversing a fallacy, does NOT a valid argument make.  Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between two extremes, just because one says so, is a sure path to Horseshoe Theory, where the extremes become far more alike than different (far left and far right, for example).

The 21 drinking age is not only a classic example of this fallacy, it actually undermines it's own position in its logical inconsistency and arbitrary selectivity compared to complete prohibition for all ages.  Thus, the 21 drinking age, or any age limit higher than the legal age of majority, is the LEAST logically and philosophically stable position in regards to alcohol (or tobacco or cannabis or really anything else, for that matter) that could ever be conceived.

QED

UPDATE:  Other notable fallacies (and questionable propaganda techniques) on the pro-21 side include:

• Ad baculum (appeal to the stick) 
• Ad hoc (arbitrarily making it up as they go along)
• Ad hominem (of all types)
• Ad populum (appeal to the gallery)
• Alternative facts
• Ambiguity or equivocation
• Anecdotal "evidence"
• Appeal to authority (their favorite)
• Appeal to logic (the "fallacy fallacy")
• Appeal to novelty (or "progress")
• Appeal to tradition (yes, really!)
• Apples and oranges 
• Assuming bad faith
• Citation mills
• Cherry-picking (selected instances)
• Contradictory arguments / kettle logic
• Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
• False dichotomy or false choice
• False "experts"
• Genetic fallacy
• Guilt by association (however tenuous, notably with Big Alcohol or fellow travelers)
• Hasty generalization
• Immune to evidence
• Junk science
• Moving the goalposts 
• Mission creep
• Non sequitur
• Occam's Butterknife
• Oversimplification
• Poisoning the well
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc
• Projection
• Quote mining
• Red herring 
• Slothful induction
• Straw man
• Suppressed evidence
• Using one bad policy to justify another
• Wishful thinking

Alberta Gets It Right

The Canadian province of Alberta is basically the only place in all of North America that gets it right across the board.  Legal age limits there are as follows:

• Alcohol:  18
• Tobacco and Vaping:  18
• Cannabis:  18
• Gambling:  18
• Guns:  18
• Voting:  18
• Run for office:  18
• General age of majority:  18
• School leaving age:  16
• Driving:  14 for learner permit, 16 for GDL, and 18 for full unrestricted license
• All other age limits:  similar to the rest of Canada and the USA overall (at or below 18)
• Curfew:  None at provincial level, only locally in a few towns here and there (usually 15)

In other words, 18 is the age of majority, and once you are an adult, you are an adult.  Period, full stop.  Some age limits can be lower than that, of course, as there is much room for nuance, but no age limit can ever be higher than that, at least not without extraordinary levels of justification.  And guess what?  The sky didn't fall in Alberta.  No seriously, it really didn't.  Alberta still has yet to get the memo about the supposedly catastrophic effects of full adult rights combined with "underdeveloped" 18-24 year old brains.

In fact, the Alberta Human Rights Act explicitly prohibits age discrimination for anyone over 18, except for senior citizen privileges for people over 55.

That is really how it should be everywhere, regardless of what exact age limit is chosen for age of majority (which is 18 in most of the world and most of the USA).  It's really not a difficult concept to grasp, as a child can easily understand it, but too many chronological "adults" seem to be unable to do so.  Anything else is a slippery slope, and such slopes are much, much slipperier than they appear.

And for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, while underage possession and consumption is illegal, for all three it is basically a mere ticket-level offense with no criminal record.  Unlike many US states have.  And parents are allowed to give their own underage children (but no one else) alcohol at home (within reason), as many but not all states currently do.

The driving thing is of course probably the most jarring one of all to the rest of the world, so allow us to explain.  The global outlier young age limit of 14, rivaled only by South Dakota and a few other rural states, applies ONLY to the learner permit, which is similar to an American style learner permit, with only supervised driving allowed among other restrictions.  To get a GDL (probationary) license, i.e. what Americans often call a "junior" license, you need to be at least 16 and also have had a permit for one year or more, and pass the basic road test which is harder than an American road test.  There are some restrictions to the GDL, such as no more passengers than there are seat belts, and a zero tolerance limit for both alcohol and cannabis, but no night restrictions.  And to graduate to the next level, the full unrestricted license, one must have had the GDL for at least two years regardless of age, be suspension-free for the final year of two years, and pass an advanced road test, the latter of which is being phased out in favor of simply making the basic road test more difficult and more like the advanced road test.  Honestly, making the American road test more difficult would probably be far more effective than any age-based restrictions ever could be.

Alberta in recent years has had one of the lowest overall traffic death rates per vehicle kilometers traveled in Canada, and lower than the USA, so they must be doing something right!

And DUI laws are quite strict there regardless of age as well.  There are swift and certain penalties of immediate but temporary administrative license suspension and vehicle impoundment for BAC as low as 0.05% (or 0.00% if GDL), in addition to any criminal penalties if above 0.08% and/or obviously impaired.  Note that the zero tolerance for GDL is regardless of age.  For DUI cannabis they are also quite strict as well, and we at Twenty-One Debunked think TOO strict since hard per se limits (let alone zero tolerance) don't really make sense for a substance with such complex pharmacokinetics and long detection times, and generally less impairing than alcohol.  At the very least, in the interest of simple justice, they really need to set the testing cutoff for positivity high enough to prevent false positives or innocent positives. 

Thus overall, Alberta is a good model for America to follow.  So what are we waiting for?

Oh, and they also have the best and largest shopping mall in the entire western hemisphere, the West Edmonton Mall.  It makes the even the vaunted Mall of America look a bit "meh" by comparison. 

Case Closed: Curfews Don't Reduce Crime

Curfews, especially youth curfews for people under an arbitrary age limit, have long been a solution in search of a problem.  They have been touted as a panacea for all sorts of social ills, most notably street crime.  And the evidence for that has been very weak at best, with plenty of evidence against it in fact.

In fact, a 2016 literature review of 7000 studies finds that "juvenile curfews do not reduce crime or victimization".  Proponents of such illiberal policies can cherry-pick all they want, but the hard data are pretty damning against the idea of curfews.  As Ronald Reagan said, "facts are stubborn things".

But now we have the strongest "natural experiment" with the extreme, unprecedented, all-ages COVID lockdowns, curfews, and other restrictions in 2020 that did not exist in 2019 and prior years.  If curfews and similar policies actually reduced crime, we would have seen a sharp decrease in crime in 2020 relative to the average of previous years.  So what were the results of this yearlong natural experiment?

Well, you might wanna sit down before reading this.  Turns out, crime actually went way up in 2020 compared to the past few years, particularly homicides.  Data from the 2020 put the per capita homicide rate in the USA at a 23 year high (highest since 1997).  And of course, plenty of rioting as well.  Even mass shootings and hate crimes are up as well, and have persisted through both 2021 and 2022, well after such restrictions were finally lifted.

Even the supposedly good news about reported rapes being down in 2020 needs to be qualified.  Given how the vast majority of rapes occur behind closed doors and go unreported even in a normal year, the apparent decrease in 2020 may simply be an artifact of an increase in underreporting due to lockdown, especially since domestic violence and child abuse both appear to have increased significantly during lockdown.  The NCVS also shows a decrease in 2020 and 2021 as well, but given the secular downward trend since 1993, and the fact that survey data gathering may have been disrupted during the lockdowns, that needs to be qualified as well.

Reversion to the mean after the #MeToo movement crested and faded probably also played a role in the 2018 spike in self-reporting followed by an even larger crash.  The downward trend continued well after the lockdowns were over as well, so it is unlikely that the lockdowns actually reduced rape.

Back in April 2020, anecdotal evidence of course suggested that crime was down in some areas.  But clearly that decrease was short-lived, and then the opposite occurred.  Whether it is due to pent-up rage, restlessness, boredom, unemployment, fewer "eyes on the street", destruction of community, or all of the above, these sorts of authoritarian and illiberal policies clearly do more harm than good on balance.

So let this be the final nail in the coffin for lockdowns, curfews, and similar restrictions.  If curfews are to ever be used to fight crime and/or civil disorder, they need to be very limited, local, nuanced, and short-term--if they are to even be used at all.  And they certainly should NEVER be used to fight an airborne respiratory virus, as that is a major category error.

QED

P.S.  None of the above criticism of course precludes getting tough on REAL crime.  That is, any crimes that objectively harm the person or property of nonconsenting others.  That should really go without saying, but we will say it anyway.  "Catch and release" is every bit as dumb when it comes to real criminals as it is for fish, completely defeating the purpose.  Ditto for the equally boneheaded idea of "defund the police" as well.  Baby, meet bathwater.  Focused deterrence actually does work when done properly. 

A Band-Aid Solution In Search Of A Problem

We at Twenty-One Debunked already noted in a previous article how we oppose the proposed Texas social media ban for people under 18.  Now, there is a Republican bill in Congress that would effectively ban social media companies from allowing anyone under 16 from joining their platforms, opening them up to civil lawsuits from both states AND parents if they do so.  And the FTC would also be allowed to levy fines against them as well, in addition to the "privatized enforcement" resulting from the threat of lawsuits.

So much for the party of "small government".

While that is a marginally better idea than the Texas bill, if largely because the age limit is lower (though even the sponsors note the exact age limit will be negotiable to get bipartisan support, natch), and it effectively puts the heat entirely on the tech companies rather than young people themselves, it is still essentially a band-aid "solution" in search of a problem, like the Staples "Easy" button.  It is both over- and under-inclusive.  It both exaggerates the problems facing a particular age group while also minimizing the problems facing ALL ages.  The real root of the problem is the toxic algorithms that Big Tech designs to be as addictive as possible.  And TikTok is basically the CCP's digital equivalent of their biggest WMD of all, fentanyl, in that regard.

(And speaking of fentanyl, some social media apps such as Snapchat are currently being used by dealers to sell actual fentanyl to both kids and adults, typically disguised as counterfeit drugs such as pills.)

So what should we do instead?  Well, we could adopt the data privacy laws that the European Union currently has.  We could tax the "attention economy" by taxing the advertising that serves as the business model of Big Tech.  We could put regulations on the algorithms that Big Tech uses to manipulate its users of all ages and keep them hooked.  We could investigate Big Tech for antitrust violations. We could, you know, actually educate young people on social media literacy, ideally starting long before they go on such sites.  We could do a smartphone buyback (similar to gun buybacks) for all ages.  And we could also, you know, enforce existing age limits (typically 13) that are clearly NOT being followed in any meaningful sense, honored far more in the breach.

We need not violate the First Amendment in doing so either.  We can treat social media platforms as "common carriers", while regulating the real root of the problem, the toxic and addictive algorithms that can hardly be considered "protected speech," anymore than nuclear weapons could be considered protected by the Second Amendment. 

Or perhaps if Congresscritters and their talking heads are so concerned, they should mean what they say.  Declare a state of emergency, on the grounds that Big Tech and their social media is an existential threat to civilization itself. Impose a "quarantine" on them for "just two weeks" (right!) wherein all social media are frozen and archived during that time, so they cannot be used, and everyone is logged out simultaneously and cannot log back in during that time. During that time, We the People can then re-evaluate our often unexamined and unquestioned relationship to Big Tech, and in conjunction with our elected representatives in government, decide what the next steps (if any) will be.

I guarantee you, that would have saved FAR more lives than the Covid lockdowns ever would have, as the latter saved statistically zilch in the long run in terms of all-cause excess deaths.

Another idea:  Nationalize as public utilities all tech companies larger than a certain size, while banning any ones that are already nationalized (in theory or in practice) by hostile nations (TikTok and the CCP, I'm looking at you!).  Just like we should do with the "too big to fail (or jail)" banks.  Something to think about.

We could do all that and more.  But that would make too much sense, right?  I mean, why let mere facts and logic get in the way of a good moral panic?

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  Republican Senator Josh Hawley's bill, with the aptly-Orwellian title "MATURE Act", would require social media users of all ages to submit 1) their full legal name, 2) date of birth, and 3) a scan/photo/copy of official government-issued IDs (driver license, birth certificate, etc.) for age verification to prove they are over 16 in order to set up a new account.  (Existing accounts would be grandfathered and not subject to this requirement, thank God for small mercies!)  That is, people of all ages would have to submit sensitive information to Big Tech, who we all know would NEVER use it for anything nefarious, right?  Let that sink in for a moment.  What could possibly go wrong?

Another bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), stops short of banning kids under 16 from social media, but rather seeks to make it safer for them.  And while the bill still has significant flaws that need addressing, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still much rather support that bill than the MATURE Act any day.  In fact, it may actually be enough to pre-empt the latter.

Even one of Hawley's previous bills would be better.

Ditto for the new California law, which goes into effect in 2024, which may very well become the national standard at some point.

FINAL THOUGHT:  Lest we forget, as Reason Magazine points out, social media, for all of its warts and flaws, was the only real lifeline that young people had during the pandemic lockdowns when they were not allowed to see their friends in person.  They make some great arguments as to how flawed this bill is.