Logical Fallacies by Special Guest, Greg Overacker!

  Hi all! I am very excited to post Brianna Maitland Private Investigator Greg Overacker’s first guest post on Chloe from Crawlspace. I have learned a lot about logical, critical thinking from him and am thrilled he chose my forum to share some of his thoughts. Enjoy! -Chloe




  Lance, Tim, Chloe and I have discussed critical thinking and topics that are closely related to the subject on a few occasions and of course my conversations with Lou Barry are always laden with common sense, critical thinking and brutal honesty. After reading Chloe’s blog and her discussion about confirmation bias I thought I’d like to throw in my two cents at the risk of sounding like a blathering opinionated madman. I also would like to commingle some discussion of common sense with the topic of critical thinking . First I’d like to say that after contacting Tim and Lance while trying to get into contact with John Smith , which they helped me out with, and after some discussion on the topics of Maura and Brianna, they cordially asked me to come on the show and I believe both cases have benefited from their involvement . It didn’t take long to realize that they knew exactly what they were doing . I speak to people in the legal community, law enforcement and people on the other end of legal problems day in and day out and it’s become very natural to realize who can rationally evaluate problems, ask the correct questions and properly evaluate the information they have or are given. I’m guessing it’s their journalistic point of view and natural curiosity that’s cultivated their skills. On more than one occasion they’ve brought interesting points pertaining to Brianna’s case to my attention. So there’s the point. I was taught to surround myself with people who think properly. Every relationship comes with a cost. Cost not necessarily being bad, but nevertheless a cost. Pick and choose wisely who you share your time with and it will pay off in the long term.

   When the guys introduced those of us in Brianna’s camp to Chloe it was easy to see why the guys would have her involved in their work. I’m guessing her insight and ability to think clearly stems from her education and line of work. There’s a lot to be said for someone who works in the healthcare or mental healthcare field. You are unable to put a price tag on that experience. Experience like that carries over into your everyday life. There are instances when I hear someone say a key word or phrase that rings a bell in my mind. There was an instance during one of the podcasts that I was on where Chloe mentioned an interviewee’s “ limitations” and described his attributes succinctly. The importance of being able to properly evaluate information is invaluable. An example of this is an author who wrote a book about Maura Murray’s disappearance. Keep in mind that this is only my opinion . I read the book and realized he’d gained an enormous amount of information . That is what a good journalist and a good private investigator does. We are really just gatherers of information to be applied in some way by others. His evaluation of that information seemed poor at best. I don’t agree with it whatsoever .

    Lou Barry came into Brianna’s camp out of nowhere and thankfully so. It’s a bit hard to explain what talking to a 35 year veteran cop can be like. I’ve remarked to my friends before that I’m glad my father wasn’t a lawyer or a cop . When asked why I always laugh and say “ I can’t imagine being a kid and trying to bullshit a parent who deals with liars all day long “ The skills are there and they don’t even realize it . Lou makes deciphering situations seem easy because it is for him. It’s become innate. Becoming that good of a critical thinker takes time and effort. If I had to guess I’d say the time has passed and the effort is no longer needed for him.

    That having been said ( and don’t let your heads swell guys ) there are some things I’d like to point out and this may get a little disjointed and rambling.

    I’ve seen comments made that Tim, Lance and possibly Chloe are making money off of Maura and Brianna’s cases. Common sense 101 , here we go. What do these commenters have to back this up ?  Do you know how much money they make ? Have you seen their paychecks? Have you asked them or their clients ? I know how much they make for their time and effort being on Brianna’s nonprofit as board members . Zero. Maybe someday guys. Do you know how much they were paid to partake in Maura’s mini series on the Oxygen channel ? Not much . What is a  commenters motive for making this statement ? You don’t believe that someone should be paid for their time, effort and expenses ? Find better ways to express yourself or more constructive things to do with your time. The same commenter stated that they were just looking for fame. Well here are people who’ve put countless hours into researching a subject and sharing that information on a public platform. Being asked to be on a television show or any type of show is their business , that’s literally what they do. Are you actually suggesting that they should say no when asked to participate in an event that will be the largest effort to bring Maura’s case into the public’s awareness ? That show by the way would never be possible without the involvement of people who have incredible funding and professional technicians . The cost was enormous . Everyone should be thankful for the opportunity to have Maura’s case treated in such a way whether you were in front of the camera or a viewer.

Podcasts may make money but theirs isn’t reaping the big bucks. That aside , making money is not a bad thing . You can trade money for food and clothing and businesses and opportunities go away without money . Now that I know these people I can assure you their motives are altruistic. It’s always good to question motives but don’t assume the worst, in fact don’t assume anything , just resist making a poor comment and do your homework.

    Changing direction a bit let’s get back to Chloe’s critical thinking lesson and take it a little further. I had told the guys that I’d listened to podcasts where the topic was missing persons. One in particular pertained to an ex cop who investigates people who have gone missing in national parks, I’m sure some of you are familiar with David Paulides and his books called missing 411. I know nothing of David other than what is publicly written and discussed . ( yes that’s a disclaimer) . That having been said I do know that he’s an ex cop so my questions are initially ….a cop in what capacity ? For how long ? Did he work for two years and go on disability ? Did he simply direct traffic? Those questions aren’t in any way supposed to discredit David at all . I know nothing about him. But it’s an example of how I start to evaluate what I intend to listen to. (APPEAL TO AUTHORITY - We often mistake and assume that someone is an authority on a subject primarily based on their title or how they are presented to us, but are they really ? Would you ask Albert Einstein for information about religion ?  Better to ask him about physics) David and his interviewer begin this podcast and each case is told in about 8 to 10 minutes and there are many that are discussed . A brief synopsis is given for each case and at first seem incredibly intriguing. They’re each ended with comments of how absolutely bizarre the disappearances are and a lot of innuendo to them having been super natural in cause.( INNUENDO gives an advantage to the maker of the statement , they can try to give plausible denial if called on it ). The comments are ablaze with references of Dogmen, Bigfoot , Fairies and alternate dimensions and various nonsense. ( If you believe in this nonsense please seek a mental health professional ) Of the many hundreds of comments only one expressed that these ideas are ridiculous. My point is that the vast majority of people when confronted with the unexplained simply revert to a default position. There’s a word for that ...lazy. Do your homework. Just because you don’t have the answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one.  Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you’re stupid . You may be stupid but that’s another issue . After listening for about an hour I went back to the beginning and started over. As each case was reviewed I googled them and low and behold the first 6 had been solved with reasonable explanations. After the sixth I stopped looking them up. Case one ( and I’m doing this by memory so I may screw a few details up but that isn’t what’s important here) was about a woman in her mid to late sixties that went missing while hiking Mt. Mckinley. She was an avid hiker of that mountain, hiking it’s trails 2 to 4 times a week for years. Did you get that ? That’s a lot of hiking by anyone’s standards. One of the things that was said was that she was the last person who would go missing because of her experience  . Excuse me ? Did a cop just say that ? Who would you expect to go missing on that or any mountain ? Someone who hikes it 4 times in their life or 100 to 200 times a year? She is far more likely to get lost, injured or have a medical emergency than the novice. In fact it would be odd if she never had an incident at the rate she hiked. ( THE LAW OF TRULY LARGE NUMBERS - With a large enough sample many odd coincidences or events are likely to happen . A good quote-That a particular specific event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely, that some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight ) Remember also that this is a mountain, not her back yard. It’s vast and rugged terrain. Her body was found over a difficult to traverse hilltop and in an odd location on the other side . They seemed to find this insane. Have you ever witnessed someone’s actions who has low sodium or in a diabetic stupor ? There’s always a reasonable explanation.

    Case 2 was a 66 year old female named Geraldine Largay from Tennessee who went missing in western Maine while hiking the Appalachian trail which runs from Georgia to Maine and is approximately 2,200 miles long. Her husband would meet her periodically at public points and they would eat, replenish her supplies and generally make sure she was ok. Between meetings she disappeared. An extensive search ensued and she was not found. Remember it’s in all likelihood that she will be somewhere between the 2 meeting points. David and the interviewer discuss how absolutely baffling it is. Commenters swoon about the madness of her vanishing into thin air. First of all the area she disappeared in is rugged. She was found in an area owned by the US Navy and they practice their Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape program there. Sounds like a good time to apply Occam’s Razor. ( OCCAM’S RAZOR is a problem solving principle which states that simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than more complex solutions. When presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, you should select the one with the least assumptions.) She was found deceased and it’s believed she survived for nearly 4 weeks . It was the largest search in Maine history and searchers came within 100 yards of her without finding her themselves. Commenters came up with some pretty wild explanations most of which were blamed on the supernatural . How did she perish ? Lack of food and environmental exposure. She wasn’t far from the trail and had set up a camp and kept a journal. She’d removed a page from the journal and wrote “ When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry, It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me~no matter how many years from now. Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them. “ How did she get to where she was found? She simply left the path to relieve herself, got confused and could’t find her way back to the trail. It’s that simple.

    I live near the Adirondack National Park . The unique thing about the Adirondacks as opposed to other national parks is that people live within its boundaries. Nothing major, but towns and camps and tourist areas are common. It’s also large . All other national parks in this country combined could fit inside the Adirondacks . I’ve camped out a few times within the park and it’s an experience . If you walk off into the woods 30 feet even from a roadway where the woods are dense and turn around you can’t see where you’ve come from. The canopy is incredible in some areas and the ground stays moist or wet because of that . Wood is everywhere but often too wet to burn . These are not the woods between your house and the farm near you . They are thick , contain years of accumulated ground cover and wildlife is everywhere . It’s not uncommon to see deer , bear or moose walking down the road ways. Ravines, waterways , cliffs , swamps and mountains are at every turn . And the weather is unforgiving . I told you that to tell you this . 99% of the people I know believe they are capable of much more than they actually are. We are accustomed to having a bathroom nearby , food at our disposal , a couch to rest on , heat , water , light etc. Try to live one day with none of that. No toilet paper, no stores to buy food or a refrigerator , no place to comfortably rest , no temperature control , no clean water and the lights go out when mother nature says so. Now try walking all day in that terrain , literally all day ( which you shouldn’t do , stay put ). Try walking your neighborhood all daylight hours for 1 day with no food and whatever water you can find and crapping behind your neighbors garage. That alone would be absolutely exhausting. So why don’t people find it understandable that a  66 year old woman could go missing under reasonable circumstances in deep woods ? When thinking of Maura Murray and the exhaustive searches and effort that has gone into attempting to locate her I can’t help wondering if she was overlooked during those searches. Personally I don’t believe she left her car and entered the woods on her own but if she did or if she was placed there later then it’s entirely possible. Searching or being lost in the woods isn’t a walk in your mind . Poor choices can cost you dearly and the objects you’re looking for aren’t neon flashing signs . They blend in , especially with the passage of time. When looking for a fugitive you have the advantage of their social interactions that leave a trail . People need people in one way or another to survive and travel . It would seem that any searches for Maura now would need to be in semi specific areas and hopefully conducted by well trained professionals.

   Being involved with a missing persons case lIke that of Brianna Maitland can be overwhelming at times for many reasons and I’ve quietly watched the struggle that Maura’s family has gone through. One interesting aspect of the case is the involvement of social media and the public in general . Maura’s case has come to be known as one of the first to become popularized by social media . We’ve had many people get involved in Brianna’s case in many different ways, most come and go . Some seem odd to the point that we keep an eye on them . Most we appreciate greatly. Via computer some get angry or make outlandish claims or simply have the facts confused. It’s interesting that when someone has false information and is corrected and given the factual information they’ll often disregard it . Most even stick to their false information even stronger than ever. Studies have shown that people tend to do exactly that, even in the face of irrefutable evidence contrary to their beliefs ( THE BACKFIRE EFFECT is the tendency of some people to resist accepting evidence that conflicts with their beliefs ). The Backfire effect is one manifestation of confirmation bias. It’s human nature to not want to be wrong but being proven wrong with facts and sticking to your incorrect beliefs is just being obstinate . Better to be a humble and stand corrected than an obstinate preacher of misinformation. You can stand by misinformation until your death and it still won’t make it correct. I’ve seen far more of this while observing Maura’s case than Brianna’s.

    I’ve noticed that some of the people involved in the study of Maura’s case have made statements and given theories and won’t budge on them.  Some of which are explainable by human error and lack of available information .( THE TEXAS SHARPSHOOTER FALLACY-  A cluster of events that lead one to believe there is a causal connection when there is none. In layman’s terms as an example….shooting holes in a barn then drawing bulls-eyes around them to signify significance). Theories are fine as a model to work from but don’t confuse theory with fact . The Texas sharpshooter fallacy can lead someone to believe there is something awry when there simply is no causation.  In Brianna’a case the fight she was in and a few other events combined may have caused this effect. Theories are used in round table discussions to purposely attempt to poke holes in them so they can be discounted, not to try to make information necessarily fit into them. We all have a tendency to have selective hearing at times.( SELECTION BIAS-One of the reasons so many people believe in psychics and other charlatans of that type. We are motivated to hear and believe what endorses our beliefs) The theories tend to give way to large amounts of CONJECTURE. Remember that conjecture is an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information. Of course in the cases of Maura and Brianna you’ll hear a lot of theories and conjecture because of the huge unknown portions of the events leading up to and after their disappearances. Very frustrating. Hearing someone stick behind their conjecture when that conjecture is proven untrue or even highly unlikely is extremely frustrating.

    One question I was asked recently and hadn’t heard in a long time was whether we had suspected the police had had any involvement in Brianna’s disappearance. I know this had become a hot topic among the discussions about Maura. We don’t have those suspicions. I guess if there was any comment for me to make pertaining to that subject in Maura’s case it would be this. Making accusations of that nature is a slippery slope. If you’re going to point a finger at police pertaining to such a serious crime even by innuendo you’d better have something very clear and convincing to back it up. It’s not ok to point fingers at anyone and especially not at someone who takes an oath to protect us every day. If I were to do that I’d make sure I had enough information to approach a district attorney with enough confidence that I’d be taken seriously. If you present this information to the public as a serious argument in support of Maura’s disappearance don’t be surprised if there’s backlash . You should absolutely expect to have other opinions and criticism thrown your way. I’ve heard at least 4 people personally support this conjecture. 3 of those people when confronted with the absurdity of their conclusion retaliated with name calling and personal attacks . ( AD HOMINEM- a response to a person’s argument by attacking the person’s character rather than the logic or content of the argument ).

    Every one of us is guilty of thinking in error and our minds wander as we search for answers. We in Brianna’s camp would like everyone to know that we appreciate all the time and thought that you’ve given to our cause and that it’s not only our cause but yours too. We listen to you in hopes that someone can help. Hopefully my ramblings will help you in some way. Keep the comments coming.

    Thanks again and please take the time to look at Bruce’s page for Private Investigations for the Missing.