thomblake comments on Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 - Less Wrong

100 Post author: Yvain 28 March 2009 02:31AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (48)
Tags: argument fallacies

Comments (48)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: thomblake 02 April 2009 07:45:17PM 3 points [-]

I'm not one of those fallacy classification nuts, but for completeness' sake, this is a fallacy of composition.

I disagree. It's more of a hasty generalization. A hasty generalization is assuming all Americans are creationists due to America having some creationists. Composition would be assuming America is creationist because some (or even all) Americans are creationist.

Comment author: Grognor 28 January 2012 02:25:19PM 2 points [-]

I can't tell the difference between your examples, nor do I understand why the two fallacies need be mutually exclusive, thomblake-from-almost-three-years-ago.

Comment author: thomblake 29 January 2012 07:10:21PM *  3 points [-]

They are mutually exclusive because they have different sorts of referents. Here's a hopefully clearer example:

  • hasty generalization: this brick is small, so all bricks are small.
  • composition: this brick is (or even all these bricks are) small, so this brick house is small.

In the grandparent, 'Americans' refers to the people in America, where 'America' refers to the country.

Though the OP does refer to 'America', so I don't know in retrospect which is more appropriate in context.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit