3 ms·
"Fallacy of the undistributed middle" all A are X this B is X therefore this B is A then: for A: successful business. for X: has certain traits. for B: our
by bladedtoys 13y ago
"Fallacy of the undistributed middle"
all A are X
this B is X
therefore this B is A
then:
for A: successful business.
for X: has certain traits.
for B: our new product.
- spenuke 13y agoNot really. The case is not being made that "all successful businesses have this specific trait". I think the most relevant fallacy here is "post hoc ergo propter hoc", which says that if A came before B, then A must have caused B. I.e., this business had traits A, and then they went on to become successful, so it must have been these traits, since they were there first.
- bladedtoys 13y agoTrue, there isn't even a claim of "all" (which makes it even weaker of course). But there is likely a plausible explanation why some property of the product improves its sales. And indeed, that property may really be necessary for a product's success. But it may be an insufficient cause. e.g. facebook started among college kids so my product focused college kids will success. So I'm thinking it's a flavor of over generalization or selection bias and I opine that you can most easily show how ridiculous that kind of reasoning is with the "A is X, B is X therefore B is A" fallacy.