3 ms·

I don’t think those examples are right; argumentum ad populum is about relying on the popularity of a belief to prove whether it’s true or false. What interest

by hyko 6y ago

I don’t think those examples are right; argumentum ad populum is about relying on the popularity of a belief to prove whether it’s true or false. What interesting is that in the example of Bitcoin, since currency is little more than a shared belief in something, this would not really constitute a logical fallacy.

faitswulff 6y ago
Regarding your first paragraph: exactly. Regarding your second: you’re making essentially the same mistake. There’s no objective argument here, no deliberations on abstract truth that could be easily countered by pointing out a logical fallacy. Just because it’s a shared belief doesn’t mean it’s not beholden to valid yet purely subjective arguments such as “I don’t have any BTC” or “I don’t have the technical ability to use BTC.” In reality, nobody is going to use your product or service because you can make a fallacy-free argument for it. On the other hand, popularity is a very real and useful indicator of utility. You may hate jQuery, for instance, but it’s going to have a plethora of documentation, blog posts, and StackOverflow answers. Basically - the real world is tolerant and even encouraging of logical fallacies.
- hyko 6y ago
  Yeah, I guess the real world is tolerant of them – otherwise we wouldn’t call them fallacies :) If we’re to get closer to the truth though, we must be intolerant of them (but not each other). I think it also depends on precisely what statement you’re trying to prove. In the jQuery example you have to get really specific, because just talking about the best can be pretty vague. There are many examples of best where merely pointing to the popularity of jQuery is a logical fallacy, and perhaps some where it isn’t (e.g. the breadth of documentation making development easier). This is really a different class of problem to something more abstract such as the belief in alien civilisations, where the fallacy is more clear cut. The currency example is a slightly different case though, because it’s the belief in the currency itself that creates the currency. So the statement everyone should replace their USD with Bitcoin is undermined by the overwhelming depth and breadth of belief in USD (misplaced or not). So I don’t think it counts as a logical fallacy, because it goes beyond merely trying to leverage the majority opinion on the subject; the beliefs themselves are absolutely instrumental in driving the relative utility of USD and Bitcoin.
  - faitswulff 6y ago
    I’m not arguing that it’s a logical fallacy, I’m arguing that it’s outside the scope of logical fallacies. In fact that’s why I’m using it as an example.

by hyko 6y ago

faitswulff 6y ago

Regarding your first paragraph: exactly. Regarding your second: you’re making essentially the same mistake. There’s no objective argument here, no deliberations on abstract truth that could be easily countered by pointing out a logical fallacy. Just because it’s a shared belief doesn’t mean it’s not beholden to valid yet purely subjective arguments such as “I don’t have any BTC” or “I don’t have the technical ability to use BTC.” In reality, nobody is going to use your product or service because you can make a fallacy-free argument for it. On the other hand, popularity is a very real and useful indicator of utility. You may hate jQuery, for instance, but it’s going to have a plethora of documentation, blog posts, and StackOverflow answers. Basically - the real world is tolerant and even encouraging of logical fallacies.

hyko 6y ago
Yeah, I guess the real world is tolerant of them – otherwise we wouldn’t call them fallacies :) If we’re to get closer to the truth though, we must be intolerant of them (but not each other). I think it also depends on precisely what statement you’re trying to prove. In the jQuery example you have to get really specific, because just talking about the best can be pretty vague. There are many examples of best where merely pointing to the popularity of jQuery is a logical fallacy, and perhaps some where it isn’t (e.g. the breadth of documentation making development easier). This is really a different class of problem to something more abstract such as the belief in alien civilisations, where the fallacy is more clear cut. The currency example is a slightly different case though, because it’s the belief in the currency itself that creates the currency. So the statement everyone should replace their USD with Bitcoin is undermined by the overwhelming depth and breadth of belief in USD (misplaced or not). So I don’t think it counts as a logical fallacy, because it goes beyond merely trying to leverage the majority opinion on the subject; the beliefs themselves are absolutely instrumental in driving the relative utility of USD and Bitcoin.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  I’m not arguing that it’s a logical fallacy, I’m arguing that it’s outside the scope of logical fallacies. In fact that’s why I’m using it as an example.