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"X happened to me, and I turned out okay, therefore X is not harmful." Is this a Fallacy?I run into this pattern when discussing any kind of improvement to childrearing. For example, suggesting that parents not spank their children immediately elicits the response "I was spanked, and I turned out fine, so spanking is okay."
Other examples include the comments here: www.seventeen.com/enterta. . . wherein women state that playing with traditional, idealized Barbies did not harm them, and therefore there is no need for a new, more natural-looking Barbie doll... that, in fact, anyone who claims playing with idealized dolls might create poor body image in girls is merely being oversensitive. Same argument for nutrition: "I grew up on fried no-vegetable school lunches, and I turned out okay, so I don't see why it's so important to make school lunches healthier." "I got beat up every day at recess, and I'm fine, so people should stop being such bleeding hearts about bullying." and so on, and so on. It makes the entire argument impossible because people refuse to consider that something they were able to tolerate might still not be a good thing. I suspect that some are merely unable to imagine that other people might not cope as well as they do, but I think the majority respond so defensively because they don't want to consider the possibility that maybe they WERE harmed by these things, that they might be different, more successful people if they weren't carrying quite so much baggage. This happens so often, I'm sure there has to be a proper name for this pattern, but I'm new to learning about logical fallacies and I'm having trouble parsing the lists with enough understanding to confidently say, "Yes, this is appeal to tradition" (for example). Does anyone happen to know what this is? Thank you! |
asked on Thursday, Nov 20, 2014 11:12:21 AM by | |
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This book is a crash course, meant to catapult you into a world where you start to see things how they really are, not how you think they are. The focus of this book is on logical fallacies, which loosely defined, are simply errors in reasoning. With the reading of each page, you can make significant improvements in the way you reason and make decisions.
* This is for the author's bookstore only. Applies to autographed hardcover, audiobook, and ebook.
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In short, it can be considered the anecdotal fallacy. This is accepting one example in place of statistically relevant information. |
answered on Thursday, Nov 20, 2014 11:17:50 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD | |
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