Argument dissection, bashers, pumpers, and politic

Argument dissection, bashers, pumpers, and politics

Critical thinking skills are absolutely crucial in separating oneself from the pack of sheeple in either the world of trading, politics, or just every day life. As social creatures we often rely on second hand information. Unless we have the time to go straight to the source for ourself, it is important to be able to filter out the crap.

One approach to filtering, even if one had limited expertise in the subject, is to understand simple argument structure. In the same sense that basic sentence structure has a subject and a predicate, arguments structure has vital components that tie the thought process together and make a value or predictive judgment.

The basic components of an argument are the tag, the data, and the analysis. The tag is the most surface level of an argument. XYZ stock is crap. That is a tagline. XYZ stock is crap because it is down 75% off the 52 week high. Data is presented to justify the tag line. But, why is being down 75% indicate a bad thing? XYZ stock is crap because it is down 75% off the 52 week high which was made on a pump by ABC paid promo company who takes stocks up to highs on newsletter pumps and sells into the volume and will drop 90% lower.

Many times bashers or pumpers lack major components of their argument structure. They will just repeat tag lines over and over. This is a tactic you will see best illustrated by people involved in politics. All they do is repeat the same tagline over and over and create "soundbites" until sheeple are convinced and start repeating the bumper sticker slogans. Recent examples include from the RNC "they just don't get it" or from the DNC "That math doesn't work."

Much like varying quality of computer chips, there are some that are made to process large chunks of information, but then there are some chips that have much more limited capacity. In the world of politics, it's been proven repeatedly that playing to the lowest common denominator through the medium of television is highly effective.

This is why you see the same tactic used by bashers and pumpers on message boards. Their intention is to use the crudest form of argument to have the widest impact possible. Often you will see that the data to back up a tagline is taken out of context, and the analysis used to conextualize the data and back up the tagline is horrendous.

Understanding argument structure, the tag, the data, the analysis, will give you better insights into assessing the statement if not the speaker before you even begin to dive deeper. Start applying simple logic, stuff that the lawyers use not the philosophers, and heck actual research and subject matter expertise, and many message board posters fall apart under scrutiny.

In the world of investing and trading, all statements are just a flowchart of possibilities and weighted probabilities. Statements are only useful to me the trader if I can map out what impact it is intended to have on a stock, the odds, and the magnitude of the move.

The charts to me are the ultimate bottom line of all market capital flows, out of the many possibilities that could have occured, up, down, sideways, the charts to me represent what actually happened.

Take this and use it to the best of your abilities, and let's make some money.