The Plague of Misidentification

Biases, Fallacies, & Heuristics Part 3

Continuing With the Fallacies List & Explanations

Ad Hominem Fallacy

Ad hominem is Latin for - "to the person." You will also see it stated as "against the man" or "attack the man." It is part of a series of fallacies that follow the attacking of an individual rather than the concepts or ideas that should be the focus of the discussion. It occurs when someone accuses X of various character flaws rather than deal with the facts of their argument. For example, "My opponent might have you believe X, but he is a known liar." Whether or not his opponent is a liar at that specific time has little to nothing to do with the argument the accused liar presented.

Let's do one more for clarity: "It is all well and good for you to accuse me of adultery while you are the confirmed adulterer here tonight. I made a phone call, and I have a surprise for you! Your ex-husband is here and ready to tell this entire crowd all about your adulterous affairs!" Whether or not the person whose husband is in attendance is, in fact, an adulterer is of zero significance concerning the truth of whether or not the one who brought him to this public meeting is an adulterer or not. Logically speaking, they could both be adulterers. 

Hasty Generalization Fallacy

This fallacy occurs when someone draws far-reaching conclusions without the proper supporting evidence for such conclusions. E.g., "X employee I hired from Y agency was excellent." "P Employee I hired from Y agency was also very good." "We should only hire employees from Y agency from now on." You might like the employees, and they may all be excellent, but your sample size is way too small to conclude such a vast and impactful decision with this amount of evidence. Not to mention, you will box yourself into not having multiple options later when you realize your error. Time is money in the business world, and this decision just wasted both. 

Let's do one more: This is one that will hit home: Person X is of Y race. Person W is of Z race. Persons X and W get into a conflict about the perceived breaking of trust. They both walk away from the conflict, concluding that all of the Y and Z races are not trustworthy. Fallacies are destructive. The behavior of one individual of one race could never be concluded to speak to the behavior of all of the individuals of that race. This is patently insane, and yet, we see it every day. 

Ad Metum or Appeal to Fear Fallacy

This fallacy has the form X causes fear; Y has some relationship to X; therefore, Y is true. We see this with threats pretty often. E.g., "I know where your children go to school. It would be horrible if something happened to them!"

Let's do another one: We see this constantly in the political and advertising realms. "Do you want your children to love you?" "Then use X item, and they will find you far more pleasant." 

This one is very important, so let's do one more. "If you want to be safe, just give me control over X aspect of your life, and I will promise you safety." Not being safe will certainly cause one fear (X). Now, attach that fear (X) to Y, their saving power, and there you go, another weaponized fallacy. This is also obfuscated inducement. If one is not careful, what is exchanged for safety will yield destruction. 

Ad Nauseam or Repetition Fallacy

This fallacy occurs when a thing is repeated with great frequency, and with each iteration, it becomes more true to those hearing the iterations. 

"If you tell a big enough lie, and you tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." Adolph Hitler. 

E.g., X pop star is the best singer in the world. Take this and say it in every news article, publication, and a plethora of social media sites of all shapes and forms, and before long, the hype machine will make this person "The greatest of all time." Well, that plus autotune. 

Let's do one more for clarity. "Bacon and eggs are the quintessential American breakfast!" Seem strange? Edward Bernays was tasked with the job of helping the pork industry sell more pork. He succeeded by using appeals to emotion, insecurity, patriotism, and the ad nauseam fallacy. Yes, it is true. Bacon and eggs were not always the American breakfast. He also did this for the cigarette industry, among many others. 

Ecological Fallacy

This fallacy occurs when an analysis of the data of a group is used to draw conclusions about the individual. E.g., a study of people who wear earrings finds that the group is statistically ten pounds overweight as compared to the non-earring wearing group. It is then concluded that the wearing of earrings causes one to gain weight. Whether or not one wears an earring(s) cannot be used to conclude that this is the reason they are overweight. There are way too many contributing factors that will be a part of the environment such that concluding based upon this data, even if the pool is large, cannot be done on a large scale and, thus, certainly cannot be logically trajected to the individual. 

Let's do another one: A study of political leanings finds that the leaders of X political party always vote Y regarding Z topic. It is then concluded that all members of that party vote Y regarding Z topic. Thus, you vote Y regarding Z topic, which you have never done. Watch the news for any length of time, and this one will pop up. Listen to a podcast, and it is very likely to show up in any political discussion. 

This, in part, deals with these types of thoughts: In a group of twenty Y's, they will only agree in percentages across a myriad of topics. You would organically have 35% agreement on B topic, 86% on C topic, 27% on D topic, etc. There are laws within Mathematics & Statistics that will account for this type of environment. We will be digging into them in detail in future writings. For now, think about your friend groups that agree on X ideology. Do they agree on every aspect of that ideology? 

Exception Fallacy

The exception fallacy occurs when a person or group of people takes the data of an individual and uses it to draw conclusions or conclude X or Y things about a group. E.g., person X is helped out with their flat tire by person Y, who has a beard. Person X then concludes that all bearded people are friendly and can change tires.

Let's do one more: X person attacks a coffee shop and harms several people. X person is of Y religion. The news report stated, “X of the Y faith attacked Bob's Coffeeshop today, resulting in the harming of 4 people.” After reading the news, many people conclude that all people of Y religion are evil, dangerous, and really hate other people who drink coffee. 

Straw Man Fallacy

The straw man fallacy occurs when one attacks the weak areas of an argument or misrepresents that argument by broadening or narrowing one or more of its premises. This effectively sets up a straw man, which is easier to knock down than an actual man (original argument).

E.g., a mother says to her daughter, "you have to clean your room today." The daughter says, "mom, you don't care about my happiness."

Let's do one more to get the point across: During a debate, politician A states that X healthcare plan is costly and extreme in its nature. Politician B steps in and says, "You don't care if children or the elderly die. You just care about your budget." 

The straw man fallacy is extremely common. This fallacy has inhibited billions from seeing and understanding the actual topics at hand. This fallacy reminds me of the defense mechanism a squid will employ when threatened. Once the threat is known, the squid inks the water and becomes invisible through the ink's rapid diffusion, making the squid safe by blinding its predator or opponent. There are many who use this type of technique to keep others from seeing the truth intentionally. As long as this obfuscative inducement works, all of the victims will not see or understand the actual issues and will, therefore, not see reality. If tomorrow morning, everyone in the world would stop falling for this fallacious trap, we would see massive and immediate change across the planet. 

Hypostitasation or Reification Fallacy

The reification fallacy occurs when an abstract idea, model, or concept is treated as if it were concrete and tangible. E.g., "The dark is alive, and when it comes for you, true fear will grip your heart." The dark is not a thing in the sense of it having a substantive existence. Darkness is the absence of something and not the presence of something. Darkness is the absence of light. You cannot attribute anything in that sense to a negation. Poetically, now, that is a different story, as it makes for entertaining writing. The above fallacious statement attempts to hypostatize or reify darkness. It is, therefore, an error of great significance and one I will possibly deal with in great detail at some point, though not likely within this series.  

Illicit Major Fallacy

This fallacy has the form: All X is Y. No P (which is a subset of Y) is X. Therefore, no P is Y. This form could seem a little hard to grasp, but I think an example will help a lot. E.g., all Londoners are European. No Parisians are Londoners. Therefore, no Parisians are European. 

Let's try another one: All cats are animals. No dogs are cats. Therefore, no dogs are animals. Let's do one more for good measure: All fish swim. No human is a fish. Therefore, no human can swim. More to come about this one in future essays. 

Misleading Vividness Fallacy

This fallacy happens when one or more memorable events occur. The occurrence of this memorable event is then used as proof that the event occurs in much greater frequency than it actually does in reality. The form of this fallacy is as follows: M occurs. M is memorable. M is remembered or thought about repeatedly. M is assumed to happen in greater frequency than it does in reality. E.g., a security guard catches a particularly clever thief that almost went undetected. The security guard then theorizes that many, many more thieves are going uncaught even though the yearly inventory numbers state that the actual theft numbers are significantly low. 

Let's do one more for fun: X spy is caught just before he is to turn over critical documents to the enemy of Y country. Y country then goes on an internal rampage, firing, detaining, and interrogating all of its employees because it is believed that thousands more spies are working within Y's governmental structure. In reality, there were four more spies working within Y's governmental offices. 

This fallacy is often weaponized to generate fear of X or Y groups, etc. A member of X group (whether real or not) is said to have done Y heinous deed (it must be significant and scary). As a result, it is then said that many Xs are planning to do Y again and will do it over and over unless stopped. 

Coming Up Next

In the next installment, we will cover the last five fallacies on our list. We will also take a look into heuristics and how they function and outcrop. Along with a possible few other nuggets of interest, we will also deal with more critical questions regarding when, where, how, and why we use these fallacies for protection.

We will continue. 

B.S.R.

Resources

https://logfall.wordpress.com/illicit-major/

https://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/fallacies/fallacies_alpha.htm

https://iep.utm.edu/e/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descriptions/#RusTheDes

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/straw-man-fallacy-examples.html

https://www.oed.com/

https://www.logicalfallacies.org/