Day: December 18, 2024

 

110 Fallacies on Amazon

Also Known as: Appeal to Anecdote

Description:

This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. The fallacy is often considered a variation of Hasty Generalization. It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise 1:  Anecdote A is told about a member M (or small number of members) of Population P.

Premise 2: Anecdote A says that M is (or is not) C.

Conclusion: Therefore, C is (or is not) true of Population P.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2:  Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is false

 

This fallacy is like Hasty Generalization in that a similar error is committed, namely drawing an inference based on a sample that is inadequate in size. One difference between Hasty Generalization and Anecdotal Evidence is that the fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence involves using a story (anecdote) as the sample. The more definitive distinction is that the second form of Anecdotal Evidence involves a rejection of statistical evidence for a general claim.

People often fall victim to this fallacy because stories and anecdotes usually have more psychological influence than statistical data. This persuasive force can cause people to infer that what is true in an anecdote must be true of the whole population or that an anecdote justifies rejecting statistical evidence. People often accept this fallacy because they would prefer that what is true in the anecdote be true for the whole population (a form of Wishful Thinking). For example, a person who smokes might try to convince herself that smoking will not hurt her because her Aunt Jane smoked 52 cigars a day and lived, cancer free, until she was 95.

People also fall for this fallacy when the anecdote matches their biases (positive or negative) or prejudices. For example, a person who fears and dislikes immigrants might believe that immigrants are likely to commit crimes because of an anecdote they hear about an immigrant who committed a crime. A person who has a very favorable view of immigrants might be swayed by an anecdote about an exceptional immigrant and infer that most immigrants will be exceptional.

As the example suggests, this sort of poor reasoning can be used in the context of causal reasoning. In addition to cases involving individual causation (such as Jane not getting cancer) this poor reasoning is commonly applied to causal claims about populations. What typically occurs is that a person rejects a general causal claim such as smoking causes cancer in favor of an anecdote in which a person smoked but did not get cancer. While this anecdote does show that not everyone who smokes gets cancer, it does not prove that smoking does not cause cancer.

This is because establishing that C is a causal factor for effect E in population P is a matter of showing that there would be more cases of E if all members of P were exposed to C than if none were. Showing that there are some anecdotal cases in which members of P were exposed to C but did not show effect E does not show that C does not cause E. In fact, that is what you should expect to see in most cases.

That said, the exceptions given in the anecdotes can provide a reason to be suspicious of a claimed causal connection, but this suspicion must be proportional to the evidence provided by the anecdote. For example, the fact that Alan Magee survived a fall of 20,000 feet from his B-17 bomber in WWII does show that a human can survive such a fall. However, it does not serve to disprove the general claim that falls from such great heights are usually fatal.

 Anecdotes can also provide the basis for additional research. For example, the fact that some people can be exposed to certain pathogens without getting sick suggests that they would be worth examining to see how their immunity works and whether this could benefit the general population. As another example, the fact that people do sometimes survive falls from aircraft does provide a reason for investigating how this works and how this information might be useful.

 

Defense: The defense against the first version of this fallacy is to keep in mind that an anecdote does not prove or disprove a general claim. It is especially important to be on guard against anecdotes that have strong persuasive force, such as one that are very vivid or nicely line up with biases.

For the second version, the person committing it will ironically raise the red flag for this fallacy. They will admit that they are rejecting statistical evidence in favor of an anecdote. In effect, they are telling you to believe the one piece of evidence they like in favor of the weight of evidence they dislike. To avoid inflicting this fallacy on yourself, be on guard against the tendency to confuse the psychological force of an anecdote with its logical force.

 

Example #1

Jane: “Uncle Bill smoked a pack a day since he was 11 and he lived to be 90. So, all that science and medical talk about smoking being bad is just a bunch of garbage.”

Example #2

John: “Oh no! That woman is bringing pit bull into the dog park! Everyone get their dogs and run away!”

Sally: “Oh, don’t worry. I know that people think that pit bulls are aggressive and that there are all these statistics about them being dangerous dogs.”

John: “Yeah, that is why I’m leaving before your monster kills my dog.”

Sally: “But look at how sweet my pit bull Lady Buttercup is—she has never hurt anyone. So, all that bull about pit bulls being aggressive is just that: bull.”

Example #3

Bill: “Hey Sally, you look a bit under the weather.”

Sally: “Yeah, I think I’m getting a cold. In the summer. In Florida. This sucks.”

Bill: “My dad and I almost never get colds. You should do what we do.”

Sally: “What is that?”

Bill: “Drink red wine with every meal. My dad said that is the secret to avoiding colds. When I got old enough to buy wine, I started doing it.”

Sally: “Every meal? Even breakfast?”

Bill: “Yes.”

Sally: “Red wine goes with donuts?”

Bill: “It pairs perfectly.”

Ted: “That is baloney. I know a guy who did that and he had colds all the time. Now, this other guy told me that having a slice of cheese with every meal keeps the colds away. I never saw him so much as sniffle.”

Sally: “Why not just have wine and cheese every meal?”

Example #4

Fred: “You are wasting time studying.”

George: “What? Why aren’t you studying? The test is going to be hard.”

Fred: “No need.”

George: “You’re not going to cheat, are you?”

Fred: “No, of course not! But I heard about this woman, Keisha. She aced the last test. She went to the movies and forgot to study. So, I’m going with the Keisha Method—I just need to pick a movie and my A is assured.”

Example #5

Tucker: “Did you hear that story about the immigrant who killed that student?”

Sally: “I did. Terrible.”

Tucker: “So, I bet you’ll change your stance on immigration. After all, they are coming here to commit crimes and endangering Americans.”

Sally: “The statistics show otherwise.”

Tucker: “That is your opinion. That murder shows otherwise.”

Example #5

Sally: “Did you hear that story about the immigrant who saved ten Americans and is now attending medical school and law school at the same time?”

Tucker: “I did. Impressive.”

Sally: “So, I bet you’ll change your stance on immigration. After all, they are amazing people who will do great things.”

 

This is the last of the virtual cheating series and the focus is on virtual people. The virtual aspect is easy enough to define; these are entities that exist entirely within the realm of computer memory and do not exist as physical beings in that they lack bodies of the traditional sort. They are, of course, physical beings in the broad sense, existing as data within physical memory systems.

An example of such a virtual being is a non-player character (NPC) in a video game. These coded entities range from enemies that fight the player to characters that engage in the illusion of conversation. As it now stands, these NPCs are simple beings, though players can have very strong emotional responses and even (one-sided) relationships with them. Bioware and Larian Studios excel at creating NPCs that players get very involved in and their games often feature elaborate relationship and romance systems.

While these coded entities are usually designed to look like and imitate the behavior of people, they are not people. They are, at best, the illusion of people. As such, while humans could become emotionally attached to these virtual entities (just as humans can become attached to objects), the idea of cheating with an NPC is on par with the idea of cheating with your phone.

As technology improves, virtual people will become more and more person-like. As with the robots discussed in the previous essay, if a virtual person were a person, then cheating would seem possible. Also, as with the discussion of robots, there could be degrees of virtual personhood, thus allowing for degrees of cheating. Since virtual people are essentially robots in the virtual world, the discussion of robots in that essay applies analogously to the virtual robots of the virtual world. There is, however, one obvious break in the analogy: unlike robots, virtual people lack physical bodies. This leads to the question of whether a human can virtually cheat with a virtual person or if cheating requires a physical sexual component that a virtual being cannot possess.

While, as discussed in a previous essay, there is a form of virtual sex that involves physical devices that stimulate the sexual organs, this is not “pure” virtual sex. After all, the user is using a VR headset to “look” at the partner, but the stimulation is all done mechanically. Pure virtual sex would require the sci-fi sort of virtual reality of cyberpunk: a person fully “jacked in” to the virtual reality so all the inputs and outputs are directly to and from the brain. The person would have a virtual body in the virtual reality that mediates their interaction with that world, rather than having crude devices stimulating their physical body.

Assuming the technology is good enough, a person could have virtual sex with a virtual person (or another person who is also jacked into the virtual world). On the one hand, this would obviously not be sex in the usual sense as those involved would have no physical contact. This would avoid many of the usual harms of traditional cheating as STDs and pregnancies would be impossible (although sexual malware and virtual babies might be possible). This does leave open the door for concerns about emotional infidelity.

If the virtual experience is indistinguishable from the experience of physical sex, then it could be argued that the lack of physical contact is irrelevant. At this point, the classic problem of the external world becomes relevant. The gist of this problem is that because I cannot get outside of my experiences to “see” that they are really being caused by external things that seem to be causing them, I can never know if there is really an external world. For all I know, I am dreaming right now or already in a virtual world. While this is usually seen as the nightmare scenario in epistemology, George Berkeley embraced this view in his idealism. He argued that there is no metaphysical matter and that “to be is to be perceived.” On his view, all that exists are minds and within them are ideas. Crudely put, Berkeley’s reality is virtual and God is the server. Berkely stresses that he does not, for example, deny that apples or rocks exist. They do and can be experienced, they are just not made out of metaphysical matter but are composed of ideas.

So, if cheating is defined in a way that requires physical sexual activity, knowing whether a person is cheating or not requires solving the problem of the external world. There is the philosophical possibility that there never has been any cheating since there might be no physical world. If sexual activity is instead defined in terms of behavior and sensations without references to a need for physical systems, then virtual cheating would be possible, assuming the technology can reach the required level.  

While this discussion of virtual cheating is currently theoretical, it does provide an interesting way to explore what it is about cheating (if anything) that is wrong. As noted at the start of the series, many of the main concerns about cheating are physical concerns about STDs and pregnancy. These concerns are avoided by virtual cheating. What remains are the emotions of those involved and the agreements between them. As a practical matter, the future is likely to see people working out the specifics of their relationships in terms of what sort of virtual and robotic activities are allowed and which are forbidden. While people can simply agree to anything, there is the deeper question of the rational foundation of relationship boundaries. For example, whether it is reasonable to consider interaction with a sexbot cheating or elaborate masturbation. A brave new world awaits and perhaps what happens in VR will stay in VR.