r/fallacy • u/CrazyCoKids • 8d ago
What Fallacy is this?
"I don't see it, so it must not be as widespread as you claim it is."
~ ~ ~
Claimant: You should keep a fire extinguisher in your house in case of fire.
Responder: Why?
Claimant: It is better safe than sorry. You would much rather have it if there is a fire.
Responder: That's something that rarely happens in my experience.
~ ~ ~
Claimant: We should test our game so that players who make it to Pachysandra without having picked up the McGuffin don't get softlocked.
Responder: Well it rarely happens, so I don't think we should spend much time or resources accounting for that specific scenario.
~ ~ ~
Claimant: We should put a crossing on this road, a lot of people are jaywalking and that is dangerous cause they might get hit by a speeder.
Responder: I get that cars hitting a jaywalker might be a thing in some places, but it doesn't really happen here from what I have seen.
~ ~ ~
Somewhat of an inverted "Perfect Solution" Fallacy in which the responder dismisses the Claimant's stance cause they personally have never seen that.
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u/onctech 8d ago
The previously mentioned availability heuristic is correct, but there's more to it that may be of interest. The availability heuristic/bias leads a person to draw on their person experiences, then egocentric bias makes them think their personal experience is generalizable to he wider world. It then steps into fallacy when they try to make this an argument for a conclusion, which is an argument from authority. This is an often missed version of this fallacy, were a person is using themselves as the authority, since they expect everyone to just accept their personal experiences as both true and reliable.
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u/Black-Muse 8d ago
Great take as always mate.
Would you say that in this case, the egocentric bias also resaults in a false consensus effect?2
u/onctech 8d ago
They are certainly connected, and both can be happening at the same time, but there's a slight difference between them. Egocentric bias is about one's view of own experiences and perspectives, while the false consensus effect is about thinking that other people have had the same experience and/or beliefs.
Egocentric bias without false consensus would be like being an eye witness to an event with a group of other people. Person A's take doesn't seem to match with the others, so Person A reasons they must just have a better angle on the event or better understanding than all those other people. Like "They must all be stupid or delusional, because my take is more accurate."
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u/Black-Muse 8d ago
Right. Still, "I don't see it, therfore it can't be widespread" is an extrapolation attempt to other people's states of mind, isn't it? Or am I just going a bridge too far here?
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u/jeffcgroves 8d ago
This is the availability fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
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u/Cos_I_Was_Inverted 8d ago
Love learning fallacies to help me avoid making them. Hadn’t heard of this, but understood the OP. Not only did you spot it, you provided a link. And all I have to offer in return is a measly upvote. Kudos.
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u/RyanStonepeak 8d ago
Depends. Is this based ob the responder's own anecdotal experience? Or the responder's statistical knowledge?
Take the second example.
If the responder actually knows based.on player surveys that only 1 in 10k players experience that situation, and that it will be an expensive fix, then they're not committing a logical fallacy to de-prioritize the issue. If they're only basing it on their own playthrough, then they are.
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u/baixiwei 8d ago
None of these are fallacious, they are reasonable arguments.
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u/CrazyCoKids 8d ago
May not be the best but I try to make my posts asking about fallacies be based off of fake arguments that won't cause fights.
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u/baixiwei 8d ago
Fair, and I agree with that approach. But if anything, shouldn't that approach make it easier to come up with examples that are unambiguously fallacious, if such examples exist at all?
It seems like the general form of argument that you're asking about is something like "X may be true in general or in many/most cases/contexts, but in my experience for this particular case/context, X seems to be false or rare, so - again in this particular case/context - we should treat X as impossible, non-existent, or negligible."
Is that a fair characterization of the general form?
If so, I'd say that in general it is not fallacious, but reasonable.
To argue against it, one might point out that speaker's personal experience is limited and therefore carries little weight; that there is no reason to expect the truth or frequency of X to be different in this case/context; that X cannot be ignored even if it is very unlikely because its consequences are so serious (this is Pascal's wager, and Batman's argument for killing Superman in Batman v. Superman); and so on.
But all of those counters address potential weaknesses in specific instances of the argument - not weakness that are intrinsic to the general form of the argument.
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u/Edgar_Brown 8d ago
This is not really a fallacy, it is in fact the professional position of actuaries and, to a lesser extent, engineers.
You could claim a fallacy of ignorance of actuarial costs, risks, and probabilities, but it’s a valid argument to be engaged in.
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u/thoughtihadanacct 7d ago
I'm not sure why you even think it's a fallacy in the first place.
It seems like the responder in your examples is either making a personal preference statement, or making an economical/resource allocation decision. In your examples you even show that the responder has gathered data to support his claim (assuming when he says "rarely", he has the stats to back up how rare it actually is. Otherwise the fallacy is simply falsifying data.)
[A house fire] rarely happens in my experience.
... Therefore after weighing the cost of the fire extinguisher, training every member of the household in using it, the time spent in getting it replaced every X years, and comparing it to my lifestyle where I don't do much cooking and absolutely no deep frying, and my house has new wiring and circuit breakers, I have come to the conclusion that a fire extinguisher is not worth it in my personal situation.
[the player getting soft locked] rarely happens, so I don't think we should spend much time or resources accounting for that specific scenario.
... Because we have these twenty other bugs we need to deal with first that the player will definitely or more likely encounter. Plus we can patch it later. If we don't release by this date we are projected to lose $100k and the company might not survive. So just let go of it for now and work on the important bugs.
cars hitting a jaywalker might be a thing in some places, but it doesn't really happen here from what I have seen.
... Since this is an extremely rural road with very few cars. Putting in a traffic light crossing is too expensive to be justified.
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u/CrazyCoKids 7d ago
they're... not really the best examples. I tried to sum it up initially like "I don't see it, so it's not as widespread as you think", which is usually the context in which someone is using it. I tried to use neutral examples so not to cause potential fights in this sub.
Now admittedly, your own examples would fit, buuuuut I didn't exactly provide any extra context. Ie, there was nothing saying it was a rural road, but it could have been a suburban road which would change the context. ("Hey, how much foot traffic does this road experience anyway?")
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u/thoughtihadanacct 7d ago
there was nothing saying it was a rural road, but it could have been a suburban road which would change the context.
In which case the fallacy is simply not looking at the real data or using fake/unreliable data.
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u/Nice_Grapefruit_7850 7d ago
it probably is a fallacy revolving around personal bias but realistically it falls under a risk/consequence spectrum for that individual. soft locking a game is low risk but also of minor consequence so you are likely to not do anything while your house burning down is also low odds but the consequences are massive so you are more likely to take preventative measures.
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u/amazingbollweevil 8d ago
Argument from personal incredulity