Thinking straight
Thinking straight and recognising when the thinking is not straight is very important. Take President Trump's declaration that the more testing you do the more cases of Covid you are going to uncover. He says the reason the numbers of cases of Covid are going up is caused by increasing testing. A number of good people, in the absence of an ability to describe the holes in the logic, have persuaded themselves that this is indeed correct. But isn't there something wrong here? A lot of people think there is, but can't quite nail it down. If two things happen at the same time, even closely related things, it does not mean one causes the other. If I scratch my chin at the exact moment that my pet parrot squaks: "Whose a pretty boy then?", it doesn't mean either event is caused by the other. Not the itchiness of my chin, not the vocalisations of the parrot. What causes an increase in Covid numbers? Trump's answer to this is: testing. But he is wro...