This particular article is from my “Logic and Reason” series on my website at MichaelBunker.com. I’ve abridged and amended it here because I think it might serve some people with everything going on these days.

Today’s Bunker Logic and Reason Lesson I’m going to call THE CONTRADICTION FLOOD. The contradiction flood form of the common persuasion tactic called “flooding the field”. Flooding The Field is when someone throws so much data (real or manufactured) into an argument, ad, or persuasive media that it becomes impossible to fact-check or handle even a portion of it. The goal is to overwhelm the hearer or reader so that they just accept the premise without question. The Contradiction Flood is similar to flooding the field, but instead, the one making the argument or attempting to persuade others floods the field with apparent, evident, or implied contradictions. The goal is to overwhelm the hearer or listener with the subtle idea that the truth is impossible to know or discern because no one is trustworthy and all the information is contradictory – and of course, this is never true.

In the meme world of social media (remember, memes are programming chips for stupid people,) memes can be used to confuse and immobilize people so that they remain inactive and don’t do anything to change their situation. A recent comic meme had a long list of contradictory health and fitness information, at the end of which the reader was to conclude that all health and fitness activities are fruitless since there is so much contradictory information out there. Better to do nothing… be stupid and happy. Eat Fritos on the sofa and watch The Bachelor. That’s better than being hoodwinked by health and fitness claims.

But the categories of health and fitness aren’t the only areas where The Contradiction Flood is used so often in discussions on religion, politics, culture, etc.

When your great-grandparents were young, there wasn’t an internet, and most people had no access to a multitude of opinions. Grandma told them that cod liver oil was going to make them better, and they believed it. If Grandma said to hold a willow branch in one hand and suck on a raisin and they’d get better, they believed that too. Until maybe years later they would learn that the willow trick was an ‘old wives’ legend. Eventually, with so much information “debunking” natural remedies and treatments, people would give up and just go with whatever the medical and pharmaceutical cartel told them to do. The point is that 100 years ago it was impossible to flood the field because there just wasn’t enough bandwidth to have a million opinions available at our fingertips. Today it is easy.

In the health and fitness arena, are we surprised that today a Google search brings up thousands or even millions of opinions, most of them seeming to be contradictory? Add in a dose of societal Dunning-Kruger and then mix in a dollop of cultural influencers – people getting paid to share opinions.

Then add a sprinkle of this… a society full of dimwits and hypochondriacs who don’t have any discernment and who will give some heed to any opinion that comes from someone who claims to be an expert. What do we expect to happen?

OMG there are contradictory opinions on the Internet! Is this a surprise?

The Covid fiasco and the response was a perfect laboratory example of the contradiction flood. No matter your opinion, if someone told you that the goal was to get you to give up and do what you’re told, would you think that was a fair assessment?

But enough lead-in, let’s get to the nuts and bolts of this.

Using the contradiction flood, the aim is to make all attempts at study, research, or understanding seem fruitless and moot because the field has been flooded with apparent contradictions. In the health realm, the “trust the science” cult is put in intentional tension with the “do your research” people. Once the parties are separated and bubble-wrapped to prevent cross-contamination, the field is flooded with data proving one side or the other with most “customers” just giving up and going along with the crowd.

Flooding the field with information, most of it seemingly contradictory, serves a purpose.

The contradictions can be true, contrived, false, apparent, seeming, or only contradictory in certain contexts. Let’s change the terms and leave the topic of health and fitness for a moment. We see the same tactic in debates on religion. I read and hear some version of it every day. “Oh look, there are a thousand denominations and dozens of different ‘bibles’ and a million doctrines, and they all contradict each other!” “Oh look, this ‘expert’ says this thing and if I don’t believe that thing I will go to hell, and this other expert says the opposite thing and if I don’t believe it I’ll go to hell!”

The whole point of the contradiction flood is to drown out any attempts at truth or intensive research, to deluge any deep and meaningful study, and to obscure any truth in useless and contextless objections. There is no real searching for truth here, it is just an attempt to shut down the conversation.

In the movie The Thomas Crown Affair (The 1999 Pierce Brosnan version,) Crown announces that he is going to steal a certain painting from a certain museum at a certain time. The cops and insurance people are there in force ready to nab him. Crown shows up wearing a bowler hat and carrying a briefcase. Easy to catch, right? Not so fast. Suddenly hundreds of men appear, all dressed the same with a bowler hat and a briefcase, all moving in concert to “flood the field” and confuse the watchers. Does it work? Yes. Now imagine this scene in print, and instead of everything being the same, what if every bit of it seemed to be contradictory?

The point is that just because seemingly contradictory information exists doesn’t mean that it’s all false, or that any of it is false. Contradiction can be implied using numerous sophistical tricks. Context is important. Cultural elements are important. Sometimes things are true when taken in concert, but they can look to be false when observed alone. Sometimes two seemingly opposite opinions are both wrong. Sometimes they are both right given the right context. The question to ask is if the people who are flooding the field with apparent contradictions have a reason for doing so? Have they legitimately sought the truth, and do they sincerely want you to? Is the method used to garner this flood of information a good one?

You could dismiss any particular meme or attempt as purely coincidental or comedic, but the practice is so widespread today and it fits too readily into the mental training regimen of our times. It’s a programming chip like almost all memes are.

Logic and Reason are tools to examine thoughts and ideas and opinions and to determine if there is any truth to them. Logic is not anti-faith. It uncovers tricks and tactics used to fool you. The word LOGOS (from which we derive the word ‘logic’) means: The WORD, the TRUTH, the REASON. Log-ic is the practice of understanding and apprehending the truth. That is something we should all want.

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.