3 ms·
Not 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 prop
by spenuke 13y ago
Not 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.