Bad arguments are like bad pennies, they keep turning up

Interesting that this is in the family advice section rather than in the opinion section, Childhood Heroes: Once Self-Made, Now to the Manner Born by Rachel Kadish.

Separate from the substance of her argument, Kadish's article is a good example of the grey area between asserted opinion, a rhetorical call to arms, and logical and empirically-based arguments. In this instance, Kadish has made a rhetorical argument in the form of a logical one. It is a nice case study in telling the difference between the two.

In public discourse, the quality of argumentation is often quite poor, sometimes because the person has only a few hundred words to make a case, but often, also, because people fail to construct an argument that is logically and empirically robust, with many unstated assumptions, hidden biases, averted definitions, etc.

In fact, there are two different argument structures. You can make an argument based on logic and empirical evidence. Or you can make a rhetorical argument. The first is essentially an effort to get at some underlying truth; a defined thesis supported by logic and evidence. With this empirical approach, you evaluate it by looking at the soundness of the logic and the quality of the empirical evidence. Do the conclusions logically follow from the predicates? Is the evidence voluminous, robust, double-blind, longitudinal, replicated by independent researchers, randomized, etc. The drawback to an empirical argument is that it takes time, knowledge, diligence and large word counts in order to cover all the definitions, assumptions, methodology, etc.

Consequently, what you most often see in papers and magazines are not empirical arguments but rhetorical ones. Arguments that might be salt-and-peppered with a dusting of logic and evidence (or not) but which are essentially an assertion based on personal experience and faith in a set of prior, often unstated, beliefs. Sometimes, but not always, the rhetorical argument is a call to emotional arms to address some perceived issue. How can you tell if a rhetorical argument, absent robust logic and evidence, is a true argument? It is often easier to simply look at what we would need to know in order to determine if the argument is true. To the extent that the rhetorical argument does not address those elements that need to be known, then it can be set aside as either unproven or false.

In this case, when you strip away the rhetorical dressing, Kadish is making a straightforward argument: Children derive their heroes from comic books. There is a difference between past children’s comic book heroes and contemporary heroes. The past heroes earned their powers and contemporary heroes are bequeathed their powers. Children who believe that outcomes are predetermined by innate abilities do worse than those who believe outcomes are achieved through effort. Children are measurably affected by what they read. Therefore there is a problem for children being exposed to heroes who are gifted with their abilities rather than heroes who earn them through struggle and effort.

Put so bluntly, it becomes clear that this is a redux of Seduction of the Innocent, 1954 by Frederic Wertham. Seduction of the Innocent was the battle cry for suppression of comic books based on the argument that comics were damaging to the development of children. The research (loosely defined) on which it was based has long since been undermined and discredited.

Kadish’s argument is essentially rhetorical and therefore in order to asses her argument, we need to know:

What do we mean by hero? How are we defining it?

What past era are we talking about? Modern comic books began more than eighty years ago with great fluctuations in volume, variety, titles, genres and characters over the decades. Which decades are we talking about as the past and to which we are comparing the present? The 1930s, the 1960s, the 1990s?

Is there actually a change in the earned versus bequeathed origin stories from past and present comic book heroes? Half a dozen cherry-picked examples from each era does not provide a basis for believing so when there were many dozens of comic book heroes in each era.

What percentage of children actually read comic books with any regularity?

Who do children actually identify as their heroes? Are comic book characters actually viewed as heroes by children?

Of the people and characters that children identify as heroes, what percentage of those are comic book characters (now and in the past)? If comic book heroes are a small percentage of all heroes, then this is likely much ado about nothing.

Do children derive more of their heroes from other sources and do those heroes earn or receive their accomplishments? The stories around sports, arts, religious, and historical heroes are virtually all earned accomplishments rather than received accomplishments.

If most children identify athletes, for example, as their heroes, then what is happening with comic book heroes is likely moot.

Does what we read affect who we become? A widely shared assumption with virtually no empirical support. What studies there are, are mixed. In what way does it matter whether contemporary heroes are gifted or bequeathed if what you read has no measurable impact on your life outcomes?

Do children themselves believe that they get ahead through their own efforts versus simply by good luck and is this more or less prevalent than in the past? If there is no decline in the belief that “the gods help those who help themselves” as it were, then whether there is change in comic book hero origins is likely moot.

Kadish is making a thinly supported rhetorical argument that children should not read modern comics because modern heroes are poor character models for children and set such bad examples that children might pick up bad moral dispositions that end up harming their life outcomes. Basically, comic book characters are bad characters. This is an age old argument with very little empirical evidence over the eighty years to substantiate that comic books, comic book characters, or comic book storylines have any discernible effect on children.

I personally believe that it does make a difference what children read (and when) but I acknowledge that that is a personal opinion with, at best, indirect and anecdotal evidence. Certainly not enough to support a robust argument.