I’ve edited this in a way that hopefully removes some of the controversy. Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll here. Actually, wait, no, the opposite of that. The two options ended out perfectly balanced, plus a bunch of people wanted me to make it even snarkier, and it was super confusing.
Anyway, I decided to respect the split poll by making a combination of the two drafts. The name has been changed to “the marginal fallacy”, credit to James_G (sorry, Konkvistador, but I really do think that the fallacy of accident is something slightly different), but I kept Worst Argument In The World as a subtitle.
I deleted the euthanasia example, both because it was overkill on the “X is murder” examples and to exactly balance the liberal and conservative examples at three each. Then I heavily edited most of the others, and added to the end a paragraph about how maybe this pattern could be useful in sparking conversation. Then I added some footnotes and just a tiny bit of snark to satisfy the pro-snark contingent.
Hopefully this will be a less than entirely unsatisfactory compromise.
Er… “marginal fallacy” sounds like it should involve failure to think on the margins. Sorry I’m late, but how about “the noncentral fallacy” or “the categorization fallacy”?
They’re not quite the same. The association fallacy takes the form “A is a C and A is a B therefore all B are C,” whereas this argument takes the form “A is arguably a B and Bs are often C therefore if I call A a B I can implicitly accuse it of being C without having to justify it.” It’s not a standard logical fallacy in the sense that it relies a lot on fuzzy, human definitions of things.
I’ve edited this in a way that hopefully removes some of the controversy. Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll here. Actually, wait, no, the opposite of that. The two options ended out perfectly balanced, plus a bunch of people wanted me to make it even snarkier, and it was super confusing.
Anyway, I decided to respect the split poll by making a combination of the two drafts. The name has been changed to “the marginal fallacy”, credit to James_G (sorry, Konkvistador, but I really do think that the fallacy of accident is something slightly different), but I kept Worst Argument In The World as a subtitle.
I deleted the euthanasia example, both because it was overkill on the “X is murder” examples and to exactly balance the liberal and conservative examples at three each. Then I heavily edited most of the others, and added to the end a paragraph about how maybe this pattern could be useful in sparking conversation. Then I added some footnotes and just a tiny bit of snark to satisfy the pro-snark contingent.
Hopefully this will be a less than entirely unsatisfactory compromise.
Er… “marginal fallacy” sounds like it should involve failure to think on the margins. Sorry I’m late, but how about “the noncentral fallacy” or “the categorization fallacy”?
Not sure why you are intent on renaming the Association Fallacy.
They’re not quite the same. The association fallacy takes the form “A is a C and A is a B therefore all B are C,” whereas this argument takes the form “A is arguably a B and Bs are often C therefore if I call A a B I can implicitly accuse it of being C without having to justify it.” It’s not a standard logical fallacy in the sense that it relies a lot on fuzzy, human definitions of things.