Tag Archives: logical fallacies

Gendernomics: I’m Not Like Other Girls

This is post two that was inspired from the same thread regarding Emilia Clarke on the red pill reddit [1], the other being dedicated to means of communication. I’ve written much on the concept of differentiation in my posts on female sexual strategy, and I also cover it in the Gendernomics book. Differentiation as a concept can be summarized as “setting yourself apart from the competition” and good differentiation should rely on unique and hard to replicate attributes, thus also contributing to competitive advantage. The two generic strategies often being cited as low-cost, which attempts to compete based on producing a good or service cheaper than the competition, and differentiation, which is based in attempting to set oneself apart from the competition through other means than price.

One thing most men will find themselves hearing at least once from every woman they ever find themselves dating is “I’m not like other girls”, this statement is representative is interesting when seen in light of “Not all women are like that” (NAWALT), in that women themselves appear to be cognizant of how “women are” and seek to actively differentiate themselves from it. Likewise, a blue pill man having found his “soul-mate” is hardly at a loss when asked to explain how she is “not like other girls“.

In the case of the woman, encouraging a perception that she is different from all other women, positions herself as an extremely scarce product. The Beta male through “She is not like other girls” justifies his oneitis through a perception of her as extremely scarce, thus justifying his over-valuation of her. Both of these rely on an unstated axiom about “how women are“, after all how can one be an exception if there is no general rule or principle? Continue reading →

Fun with fallacies 18: Oh you won’t believe how horrible I felt!

The fallacy of misleading vividness is one that I didn’t think I would end up writing about for this series. It used to be quite rare, and the anecdotal fallacy would usually be sufficient to cover most bases on this issue. However, as I’ve been spending way too much time online and following the primary season in the US election, it became very apparent that this fallacy was trending.

The fallacy is in my opinion a form of an anecdotal fallacy, yet it uses strong language and vividness in the description to make it seem as a relatively rare or low probability occurrence is a big problem.

This also seems to be a social justice warrior/third-wave feminist favorite, judging from the high volume of pathos and ethos used in their communications. It also signals a departure from the objective to the subjective wherein the narrative of what is taking place is the major part of what is being communicated, rather than the facts and pure logic that should inform action.

A typical example is the 1/4 women in college will be raped argument, which is not true when statistics from the BJS are involved and show about a 1/40.

[1]http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf

Fun with fallacies 16: #Yesallmen and #Yesallwomen

Yes, I picked this just by accident, it has nothing to do with the hordes of feminists, social justice warriors and male accomplices of these group committing this fallacy so frequently that its easier to point out when they are not doing it. Of course, I’m guilty of doing this on occasion such as arguing “AWALT” (all women are like that) or using phrases such as “All women” or “All feminists”.

The basic foundation of this fallacy is to generalize from a small sample to the whole of a group. For instance, the leap from “1% of men are rapists” to “All men are rapists” is a hasty generalization.

To give you a little bit of a background on representative samples when it comes to research. The basic principle is that the sample should:

A) Be representative of the population as a whole

B) Be large enough to capture the population as a whole.

For instance, if you are looking into “campus rape culture” among 30000 students, matching the demographic mix of society as a whole in the age range of 20 – 25. Then in order for your sample to be valid within a reasonable confidence limit, you would have to:

A) Ensure that your group consists of people who represent the right mix of race and gender, are college students and are in the age range of 20 – 25. If you pick students at an adult learning facility who are mostly white, and between 40 and 45, you cannot say that this is representative. You also want to make sure that your sample is not confined to one area of study as this can influence your results. For instance if you asked the arts department at Columbia and the Arts and humanities departments at Duke you probably would have poor results.

B) Ensure that your sample is big enough to ensure that your sample size is valid.

Once this is in place, you can make educated generalizations about a group as a whole based on the information you got from your research. This is how this type of research is done for polls, or census surveys and so on.

The problem with the hashtag activists behind those hashtags is that it becomes very easy to prove their proposition wrong, as if you find a single man or a single woman who protests, that invalidates the proposition.

I’m reminded of David Hume, who made the observation that we can say:

  • The sun has always risen as far as we know.

But we cannot say:

  • The sun will always rise.

 

Fun with fallacies 15: Kettle logic

Kettle logicKettle logic originally comes from “Interpretation of Dreams” and refers to a person who holds a position, using multiple arguments to defend that position, when his arguments are internally inconsistent.

The original example given by Freud is one where a man is accused to returning a kettle he borrowed from a neighbor in damaged condition and he then uses 3 arguments to defend himself:

  1. He returned the kettle undamaged.
  2. The kettle was already damaged when he borrowed it.
  3. He never borrowed the kettle.

As you can see, each of these arguments by themselves are acceptable. However, argument 3 is inconsistent with arguments 1 and 2. He could not have returned the kettle if he never borrowed it, and in argument 2 he states that he did in fact borrow the kettle.

This is also what Epicurius saw when he came up with what has become known as the “3-O” argument or “The problem of evil”. Wherein god cannot be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. In that if God is all of those three, then why is there evil in the world?

Kettle logic is usually one of the harder fallacies to spot, especially if you are not paying full attention. If combined with a flurry of argumentation, and arguments that are obfuscated so as to avoid being clearly contradictory a speaker can easily give the impression of having a lot of arguments at his disposal, despite the fact that they all contradict each other.

One thing that is often not mentioned is “Kettle citations” this is where someone cites a lot of sources in their argument, yet the sources may contradict each other on important points, while superficially giving the impression of a strong case. This is a phenomenon I’ve experienced quite a lot in debates on religion, where a believer will often cherry pick verses or quotations from a work in order to defeat the argument you are presenting that at moment.

For instance, they may cite the new testament if you are criticizing the somewhat harsh and unforgiving god represented in the old testament, and revert to quoting the old testament when the topic changes to homosexuality.

 

Fun with fallacies 14: Cherry picking

cherryCherry picking is not a logical fallacy per say, but I’ve chosen to handle it as one as it is very common in debates and other forms of discourse. The core of the fallacy is misrepresentation of an opponents position. Thus it is related to the straw man fallacy. The core difference lies in that while straw manning is a straight misrepresentation of what was said, cherry picking often quotes verbatim, but Continue reading →

Fun with fallacies 13: Straw man argument

strawmanThose of you who get into a lot of debates online have inevitably found yourself either using, or facing a straw man. Now, this isn’t the fun kind of strawman people burn Nicholas Cage inside for participating in a crappy remake. This is the kind someone uses to make it appear that they have refuted your argument.

The core of the strawman is a misrepresentation Continue reading →

Fun with fallacies 12: The Red Herring

redherringI was going to save this fallacy for later, but in writing the pieces on some other fallacies, I found myself wanting to reference this fallacy so it got expedited in my posting schedule. The Red Herring is a relevance fallacy and thus falls into the same class as straw man arguments. Now unlike the straw-man that is based on misrepresenting your opponents argument. The red herring is ultimately a distraction tactic to draw an audience away from the arguments being made.

As a general rule, the red herring will tend to lead an audience towards plausible but ultimately false conclusions that are not relevant to the topic at hand.

Example:

Participant 1: We need more focus on the suicide epidemic among men and boys, and we also need to focus on men’s health to look for reasons for the “life expectancy gap” between men and women.

Participant 2: I agree with participant 1 about the focus, but it is important that we remain focused on the rape culture as we are in a time where women are under attack.

As you can see from participant 2’s argument, it is not a response to the argument made by participant 1, as the second part of the sentence distracts away from the primary argument made by participant 1.

To write out participant 2’s response in a more clear manner:

“I agree with you, however I disagree with you completely now look at my issue”

Unfortunately, I have no good techniques to respond to red herrings except being brutal in following the red thread of the discourse and steering the debate by staying in control. This can be done by either:

A) Introducing your own red herrings to bring the debate back to the focus you want.

B) Ignore that the red herring took place, and what came of it.

C) Pointing out that the person is shifting the focus of the debate away from the topic (provided there is a defined topic for the debate).

There is also a second form of red herring that I’ve frequently seen politicians use that I refer to as the digressional red herring, where a politician will knowingly switch the subject with digressions a few times to draw focus away from the central topic.

Example:

On the subject of gun control, I think it is important to bear in mind the second amendment rights that our founding fathers built into the constitution. Our founding fathers were wise men, and their legislation has held up remarkably well, I remember when my father first read the constitution to myself and my sister by the campfire at our roaring fire at our cabin by the Lake in North Dakota. This is why family values are central to this country, by having strong and secure families, we can prosper and regain our competitive advantage in exports.

As you can see from the above text, the politician switched topic from the second amendment, to the founding fathers, to family, to family values and finally to the economy.

Fun with fallacies 11: You either agree 100% with what I said or you hate women

false dichotomyThe false dichotomy is one of those fallacies that many people do not notice in a heated discourse. My impetus for writing another fun with fallacies and picking this fallacy was that I ran into a youtube video where the core argument on an abstract level was “Either you accept all aspects of an ideology, or you are an enemy of that ideology”. If you’re read my post on religion vs ideology, here is your sign

At the core of a false dichotomy is a choice between two things, but those two are not your only options. “You are either with us or against us” is a false dichotomy in that you can always be ambivalent. One area in which humans are very prone to this type of fallacy is in our love lives. I’m fairly certain that everyone who reads this has had a friend with “oneitis” who is playing the “If I don’t get with her, I’ll be alone for the rest of my life.”

A way to spot a false dichotomy is by comparing the choice to the choice of “Live or die” there are only 2 options here, if you think there are more then odds are someone is trying to convince you through using a false dichotomy.