Teaching Critical Reasoning with AI: Humiliation Rituals

A test of image processing with Claude

I am going to start posting a series of tests where I check the usefulness of using generative AI to outline and critique arguments. I will label them clearly with the Teaching Critical Reasoning With AI prefix so if you’re not interested you can just ignore them.

In this one I wanted to test the image processing element of Claude, so I chose this image:

“Humiliation rituals” is part of conspiracism about “Occult Hollywood”, the idea being that stars must humiliate themselves to show servitude to Satan or the Illuminati as an offering to those gods or humans that give them fame.

Yeah, it’s dumb.

But I wanted to see how it would do at analyzing visual evidence. Caveat, I am not sure how much it guessed here because of the prompt with humiliation ritual in it and background text about these incidents, but here goes.

Here was my prompt:

Do a Toulmin analysis of this evidence in support of the claim that this proves hollywood engages in occult rituals along with a description of the evidence, the warrant, the claim, backing, and rebuttals. Follow it with a summary.

And here was its analysis:

Let me conduct a formal Toulmin analysis of this argument:

CLAIM: Hollywood engages in occult "humiliation rituals" as part of its practices.

EVIDENCE (Data):

• A collection of 9 images showing various performers in situations that could be interpreted as unconventional or potentially embarrassing:

  • A person appearing nearly nude at what seems to be an awards show

  • Various performers in gender-nonconforming clothing or situations

  • Provocative performance outfits and acts

  • Unusual fashion choices and artistic expressions

WARRANT (Assumed reasoning connecting evidence to claim):

• If performers engage in acts that appear humiliating or transgressive, these must be ritualistic rather than artistic choices

• The frequency and similarity of such performances suggests orchestration rather than individual choices

• The entertainment industry's hierarchical structure implies these acts are imposed rather than chosen

• The pattern of public "humiliation" suggests occult rather than commercial motivation

BACKING (Support for the warrant):

• Historical examples of secret societies using ritual humiliation

• The hierarchical nature of the entertainment industry

• The frequency of provocative performances in entertainment

• The apparent discomfort or controversy these acts sometimes generate

QUALIFIERS:

• These interpretations rely heavily on subjective assessment

• The context of each image is removed from its original setting

• The selection of images represents a curated subset of all Hollywood performances

REBUTTALS:

1. Alternative Explanations:

   • Artistic expression and boundary-pushing for creative purposes

   • Marketing strategy to generate publicity

   • Individual agency in career choices

   • Cultural commentary and social statements

   • Fashion and entertainment trends

2. Logical Fallacies in the Argument:

   • Post hoc reasoning (assuming causation from correlation)

   • Selection bias in choosing examples

   • False pattern recognition

   • Confirmation bias in interpretation

   • Overlooking simpler explanations

3. Missing Context:

   • The performers' own statements about their choices

   • The commercial motivations behind performances

   • The historical context of provocative art

   • The role of individual artistic expression

   • The vast majority of conventional performances not fitting this pattern

SUMMARY: While the evidence presents a collection of unconventional performances and artistic expressions in Hollywood, the leap to attributing these to occult rituals requires multiple unsupported assumptions. The Toulmin analysis reveals significant weaknesses in the argument's logical structure. The warrant relies heavily on speculation rather than demonstrable connections, and the backing fails to establish a necessary connection between unusual performances and occult practices. The numerous strong rebuttals and alternative explanations suggest that simpler, more evidence-based interpretations (artistic expression, marketing, cultural commentary) better explain the observed phenomena. The argument's structure ultimately fails to support its extraordinary claim about occult practices.

A more robust analysis would need to:

1. Establish clear criteria for identifying "rituals" vs. performances

2. Provide evidence of orchestration beyond coincidence

3. Rule out simpler explanations

4. Show direct rather than circumstantial connections

5. Account for the full context of each example

Would you like to explore any particular aspect of this analysis in more detail?

Commentary

As it does sometimes, it mucks the qualifiers, which aren’t really qualifiers in the Toulminian sense. It seems to get this right about half the time. The backing seems to me pretty good, and matches the warrant. The warrant passes what I call the “and since…” test in that each of these assertions makes sense if you put the evidence in front of it and connect it to the claim with “and since…”

But of course the interesting piece is the description of the evidence. I have to believe a lot of this comes out of the statistics of what sort of words describing these events would fit the theme, but it is clearly doing some object recognition too. The two things together makes it look quite impressive:

• A collection of 9 images showing various performers in situations that could be interpreted as unconventional or potentially embarrassing:

  • A person appearing nearly nude at what seems to be an awards show

  • Various performers in gender-nonconforming clothing or situations

  • Provocative performance outfits and acts

  • Unusual fashion choices and artistic expressions

Overall, I thought the way it combined expectations about what the evidence would be with the picture provided to be very interesting. I’ll be interested to see if it works this well in other instances.

Questions for classroom discussion

Interestingly, the analysis is good enough here I’m not sure there is much left for students to do.

Here's a couple ideas though.

Weakest rebuttal. I think they might be asked to “pick the weakest rebuttal” (To my mind “The vast majority of conventional performances not fitting this pattern” (Rituals are by definition not all experience) or “Individual agency in career choices” (circular maybe, since what we are trying to prove here that they are not?) but I’d be open to other options).

Match backing with warrant. There is a one to one match of backing with warrant here, but they are not precisely in order. Have the students match the warrant to the relevant backing. Discuss whether that backing is correct common knowledge and or would need specific evidence such as an event, citation, article, or primary source.