for thinking people
January 20, 2019
The post hoc fallacy is a widespread logical fallacy. Post hoc fallacy examples abound everywhere around us, and especially on the internet – where all fallacies are exposed sooner or later!
The full name of this fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc, which means “after this, therefore because of this” in Latin. In simple terms, a post hoc fallacy is one where when two events happen soon after each other, the occurrence of the second is attributed to the first.
December 27, 2018
Articles on fallacies are popular on the Home for Fiction blog. We’ve talked about the Appeal to Nature fallacy, the Bandwagon fallacy, and the Only Game in Town fallacy. Today I’ll talk to you about the Appeal to Hypocrisy fallacy, also known as “Tu Quoque”. The term is Latin and means “You, too”. I will use the terms interchangeably in this article, they mean exactly the same thing.
As with all fallacies, the Appeal to Hypocrisy is an attempt to ameliorate one’s argument with parameters that do not stand the test of argumentation and logic. Generally speaking, a person committing a fallacy might do it inadvertently; that is to say, without intent. Here’s an example:
Everyone at the office agrees, the boss is stupid.
This feels like a very natural thing to say. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, right? And yet, though the statement might still be true, it’s not argumentatively solid. The mere fact that every employee agrees, doesn’t prove that the boss is indeed stupid. This is an example of the Bandwagon fallacy.
Conversely, it is uncommon that a person would commit the Appeal to Hypocrisy fallacy unknowingly. The nature of this fallacy is such that the person deploying it in an argument is usually fully aware that his/her argument is weak, and the fallacy is committed precisely to create distraction.
November 20, 2018
I have complained many times on this blog about mediocre fiction. I’ve also complained about the loss of the art of reading. Put simply, the average person has lost the ability to read. Combining the two, we need to realize that, in order to read better fiction, we must also learn how to read better.
In other words, there is a chain of causes and consequences. It goes in a way like this:
As you can see, there is a feedback loop here. Reading a book poorly will cause you to leave some erroneous feedback. That is, it will lead you to either downplay the importance of a high-quality book, or overestimate the merits of a mediocre one.
Subsequently, this will distort the book’s intrinsic value. In a world replete with noise, a mediocre book read by mediocre readers receives far more attention than a higher-quality book misunderstood by its mediocre readers. Inevitably, this facilitates the creation and propagation of mediocre literature, which leads back to poor reading.
It is a very vicious cycle. And, since art imitates life (which imitates art in another vicious cycle), this leads us to societal mediocrity.
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