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"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before to

• 542458 3y ago
  Not an actual Henry Ford quote fwiw. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18247/did-henry-ford-predict-revolution-if-people-understood-the-banking-and-monetary#27316 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18247/did-henry...
  • eurleif 3y ago
    Your link says it's a paraphrase rather than an exact quote. It still represents his sentiment accurately. But quoting Henry Ford, particularly his views on nefarious bankers, is a pretty questionable choice considering what he had to say about Jews.
    • spiderice 3y ago
      This is a logical fallacy. His view on Jews has no effect on whether his statements on nefarious bankers are true. You can quote me saying 1+1=2, even if 2 is my favorite number. Now if he’s being misleading and you have evidence of that, then his feeling toward Jews might explain why he is biased
      • eurleif 3y ago
        You misunderstand the scope of formal fallacies, which only apply to formal arguments. Most arguments aren't formal arguments, and that's ok; they aren't supposed to be. Instead of proving a conclusion from a set of premises, they rely on heuristics to draw probabilistic inferences. In the context of a formal argument, the act of quoting Henry Ford would have been either the fallacy of appeal to authority (if the quote's provenance were meant to demonstrate its veracity), or the fallacy of bare assertion (if it were meant to stand on its own). I didn't invoke those fallacies because I understand that, outside the context of a formal argument, appeal to authority is a reasonable heuristic, rather than a fallacy. There's nothing fallacious about saying, for example: "Most doctors recommend getting vaccinated, so you should probably get vaccinated." In this context, my reply is also not fallacious: it's reasonable to doubt the reasoning ability of a vicious anti-Semite, particularly on the subject of nefarious bankers, which is closely intertwined with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
        • spiderice 3y ago
          > which only apply to formal arguments Um.. sorry.. but this is absolutely false. Logical fallacies apply to all logic. Period. Flawed logic isn't ok just because you're speaking casually.
          • eurleif 3y ago
            The "formal" in "formal argument" does not mean "the opposite of casual". Rather, it refers to arguments which take a particular form: those that assume a set of premises, and use formal logical tools to prove a conclusion from those premises. To accuse an argument of containing a formal fallacy means: the tools you tried to use to prove that conclusion from those premises is defective, and you have not actually proven the conclusion. However, proving a conclusion is only one possible thing that an argument may set out to do. Oftentimes, we are more interested in probabilistic evidence than in absolute proof. Thus, an argument which does not prove anything (and which would thus be fallacious if treated as a formal argument) can nonetheless be useful.
      • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
        perhaps you aren’t familiar with the idea that Jews are the nefarious bankers It’s likely that was at the heart of Ford’s statement
        • djbusby 3y ago
          All bankers are nefarious.