Timeline for Word for "drawing a decisive conclusion about a phenomenon according to specific personal experience"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 9, 2012 at 6:26 | comment | added | user21497 | @F: I used it as an example of specious reasoning and a half-truth, not of cherry picking. | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 6:08 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Bill: Well, I must say that it would never occur to me to describe XYZ Aspirin's trade puff as "cherry-picking". But arguably if it turns out they only got to Eight out of ten cats prefer Whiskas by starting with 1000 cats, and eliminating 990 of the ones that didn't prefer it from the trial, that would qualify. But in that case I'd be more interested in what they preferred it to (dogfood, perhaps? :) | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 5:44 | comment | added | user21497 | @FumbleFingers: That categorization comes from Wikipedia & may be too strong. Regardless, it is specious reasoning to choose only examples that support one's own POV rather than present a realistic picture of the range of evidence. It's not necessarily falsifying statistics to present a half-truth. It's more like saying There's no better aspirin than XYZ Aspirin; although this may be true, it omits the information that all chemically equivalent aspirins are equally effective. | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 5:29 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I didn't know that cherry-picking had been elevated to the status of a "fallacy". It sounds a bit weird to me, since it's so strongly associated with deliberately falsifying statistics/attempting to mislead, rather than (possibly accidentally) falling victim to an error of logic. | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 3:04 | comment | added | user21497 | @StoneyB: Thank you for that. It clears things up. :-) | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 2:57 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | The fallacy "after this, therefore because of this" is fine in 2] but would apply in 1] only if the brother somehow concluded that his sister's failure was caused by her attempt (in your example) or by her purchase (in the original). "The iPhone's a good device, if I'd given it to her and shown her how to use it would have worked just fine, but June screws up everything she buys and tries to work out for herself." Of course in that particular case post hoc might (coincidentally) be true. | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 2:45 | comment | added | user21497 | @StoneyB: I agree. [1] A: She tried to operate it. B: She failed. Conclusion: It's not user friendly. Okay, being user friendly or unfriendly's not an event but a state. Wikipedia says post hoc's also "referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation, or correlation not causation", similar, not the same; [2] A: The pitcher touched his cap & balls. B: The batter struck out. Conclusion: This pitcher can strike out a batter if he touches his cap & balls before he throws a pitch. The claim that it's not user friendly's based on a 1-case coincidence: false cause. Logic's hard! | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 2:18 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | Post hoc &tc is something different: A happened, then B happened, so A is the cause of B. There's only an A in OP's example, no B. But your others are spot on: a conclusion based on insufficient or unanalyzed evidence, and a conclusion based on improperly selected evidence. | |
| Dec 9, 2012 at 1:16 | history | answered | user21497 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |