“Give us money to keep your stuff here. Also, we are going to poke through your stuff whenever we feel like it.”
I agree with Reply that this isn’t a logical fallacy. It’s just a disagreement about acceptable levels of risk. But if you want to look at who’s arguing irrationally, consider this:
He started out with a wild exaggeration by comparing the risk of drugs being left in the garage to the risk of aliens landing. This is absurd but you admit he then toned it down to a comparison with the risk of a plane crash. Which is reasonable. Yet it is notable that even after he moderated his comparison you still felt a need to rebut what he’d already backed down upon.
Your response, ie that the difference is that you can’t do anything about a plane crash, is not logical. Are you saying that you should do something about any risk that you can? Not rational. There are risks that are so low that the expense of guarding against them is not worth it. If you don’t recognise this and you think that every risk you can guard against you should, it’s you who is being irrational. Further, and illustratively, one can do something about the risk of planes crashing into your house. There are areas that are farther away from flight paths than others. Did you choose where you live accordingly? Betcha didn’t. You actually do take risks that you could do something about, it’s just that you think the risk of someone leaving drugs in your garage is high enough to do something about and he doesn’t.
So your position ultimately may be rational, but your argument is not because you are attempting to suggest an absolute basis for your position being correct, when this entire subject is one about which one can only make judgment calls based on relative risks and rewards.
Further, you then attempt to rebut his “deadbolt” point by ignoring the key part of what he said: he said no doubt sarcastically “we should just go ahead and deadbolt the front door and never leave the house” but you then ignored the “never leave the house part” in your rebuttal. You are ignoring his key point which is that precautions come at a cost.
There’s nothing about your post that makes me think you are any less annoying to argue with than he is.
Well said!
I sometimes do something similar (but not quite the same) with my wife, and she gets annoyed for almost the same reason, so this thread is helpful for us (thanks!).
When she expresses a concern about something unnecessarily, I sometimes try to reassure her by giving an analogy which has the exact same logical and/or factual force behind it, but is obviously untrue (“absurd,” I suppose).
This often backfires – she accuses me of implying that she’s stupid. I can see why she’d think this – after all, I pretty much HAVE to begin my reassurance with a phrase like “It’s as if you had said…” – but it’s never my intention.
Just to keep the peace, I’m really going to try to avoid using this particular tool in the future. I don’t like having to restrict myself in my options of explaining something to her for reassurance purposes – honestly, I just want her to feel relaxed, when there genuinely is no reason to worry! – but I’ll do it anyway.
I know, I know, Venus and Mars and all that. I should focus more on reassuring her that I feel her feelings. It’s just so hard for me to see someone so love suffer needlessly!
I disagree. She’s trying to take steps against what she percieves to be realistic risks, in the sense that they will very rarely happen, but if they do, could be catastrophic. It’s all about balancing the likelihood of something happening with the outcome of that thing happening divided by the pluses of taking that risk.
If there are lots of potential garage renters in their area, and they won’t actually gain that much necessary cash from renting their garage, then you can afford to weight the risk factor more. It’s kinda the opposite to the way insurance companies would think, because they’re operating on a larger scale and you’re just one person.
I’m sure there’s an actuarial term for this. @Kabbes?
Though taking insurance into account is also a point. It would be well worth checking into how your insurance company would view your renting. You will need insurance for this, at any rate.
The fallacy going on in the scenario is catastrophizing. That is taking the worst possible outcome of a situation and acting as though it is the likeliest scenario. The idea that drug dealers are going to take items worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and would result in lengthy prison sentences or death if anyone found out and store those items in a stranger’s garage seems highly unlikely.
Catastrophizing is a symptom of an anxiety disorder. I recognize the symptoms because I have one myself.
It is frustrating communicating about this type of topic. The thought of renting the garage creates very real anxiety in you. You are asking him to respond to the anxiety and instead he is responding to the thought that caused the anxiety. It is like he is asking you to go back and time and not feel what you feel. From his point of view he is being asked to rationally argue against a irrational feeling. A recipe for hurt feelings all around.
I don’t think it’s a strawman argument. A strawman argument would be if the husband is pretending that her position is actually about aliens landing in the garage. But it doesn’t seem that this is what he’s doing. He’s just saying that a logical outcome of her concern would be to also be concerned about aliens landing in the garage.
So it’s a reductio ad absurdum.
However, I think what’s causing some confusion is that people are not separating the type of argument from the strength of the argument itself. A strawman argument is generally or always an illegitimate technique, while reductio ad absurdum has a honorable place in debate, so people who disagree with the husband want to call it the first and not the second.
But just because reductio ad absurdum is valid as a debating technique that doesn’t mean that any given reductio ad absurdum is valid in that particular case. Like here.
The husband is arguing that someone concerned about drugs or guns would also be required to be concerned about aliens in order to be logically consistent. However this is simply untrue, because there’s a much higher likelihood of people storing drugs and/or guns in a rented garage then of aliens landing in the garage.
So in sum, the verdict is: it’s an invalid reductio ad absurdum argument.
Can’t you just include a general term in the contract that expressly addresses your concerns: kind of … ‘any items stored illegally will result in the immediate termination of this contract’
You could make it into a reductio, but it’s not a strawman. His statement about aliens is not a position he is attributing to you–he is using it as a counterexample to your reasoning. What’s happening here is that he is (attempting to) pointing out a flaw in your reasoning by counterexample. That’s not a fallacy. What you can do is show how his counterexample doesn’t apply.
For example, you claim that there is a risk of illegal activity if you allow the renter to store boxes. Of course there is a risk, but how much risk? Surely not the same risk as…aliens.
People misattribute fallacies quite a bit. It’s easy to cry “fallacy”, but it is harder to actually show that there is one. Generally, if there is a fallacy, one can show that there is one without even naming the fallacy, simply by pointing out a false premise. It requires a bit of formalization, but not too much.
Your husband is simply being a dick.
As for the real problem - what about checking out a local storage rental place? You could find the going rate, and steal their contract, which you could then modify to your personal needs. As said above - it’s not so much stopping them from storing the wrong stuff, but covering your arse if they do.
A quick look at one near me has loads of small print about insurance including liability (them not you) payment in advance, right to dispose etc etc.
I am not a lawyer, but if you rent out your garage for the purposes of vehicle storage, I don’t think you would be responsible if drugs were later found in that vehicle. (Assuming, of course, that the drugs were hidden and not in plain site.)
Of all the suggestions about what type of argument this is, I think this is the answer. Thank you.
Well, the ‘renter’ is going to say “not mine” and the rentee is going to say “not mine” - both sides are going to be in a world of hurt defending, etc.
Me? drugs/guns - what about the dead bodies?
also - when someone stores a vehicle in 'someone elses property" - they could be hiding it from collections, reposssessions, bankruptcy folks, etc - while it may not be your job to police their intent - there’s a reason you don’t want to get involved.
Would your homeowners insurance cover the other persons vehicle if your garage is destroyed by fire? what if the fire is due to problem in the vehicle?
Personal question: any chance your husband will see this thread? 
:eek:
Still, you’re using the Straight Dope to enhance your domestic debate skills?
Sad…
Since the situation itself is part of this thread (although my actual question is about the argument), I should say - we are renters ourselves. So we’d be subletting our garage. Without permission from our landlord. Who lives two blocks away.
It’s a terrible idea.
I know this is a crappy thing to say to someone, but last night I said, “You resort to this type of argument when you know I’m right and you can’t think of anything else to say.”
IF the unlikely yet possible scenario of someone storing something illegal (and I brought up dead bodies early on in the conversation, then decided to focus on the more likely drugs/guns) in our garage were to occur, we would have no legal recourse because we would in fact be doing something illegal ourselves.
Not to mention - if someone’s property were damaged while in our garage - also an unlikely scenario (fire and earthquake are pretty much the only ways I can imagine that happening, because we live in Southern California and don’t get torrential rain/snow), but a possible one - there would be nothing to prevent that person from suing us.
It’s a dumb thing to do. It’s unnecessarily risky and we would make at most $200/month. I think he knows that deep down, and that’s why he mocks my concerns as being alien-absurd rather than actually discussing the benefits versus the risks.
I was unclear when I relayed his plane crash analogy - he wasn’t talking about a plane crashing into our house, he was talking about being on a plane when it crashes. Most of us agree that it is worth it to fly on airplanes despite the risk they might crash. Just like most of us agree it is worth it to leave the house despite the risk of living in a world with car crashes and criminals and all the other kinds of potential hazards.
The benefit of flying in an airplane and the benefit of leaving the house are worth the risks, because the benefits are large and the risks are unlikely to occur.
The benefit of illegally renting our garage (and I know I didn’t mention it before, so no one responding to this thread knew he planned to do it illegally) is in my opinion not analogous to the benefit of flying in an airplane or leaving the house. And the risks in my opinion are greater. You fly in an airplane because you need to get somewhere. You leave the house because you don’t want to have a miserable agoraphobic life. You rent the garage… to make $200 a month. If any of the risks - dead bodies, roaches, drugs, guns, damage to renter’s property - occur, it will cost us more than we will have earned.
I honestly think he uses this type of argument because it’s guaranteed to frustrate me and I will usually end up crying and/or yelling, which means I’ve lost the argument. I think he does it when he feels backed into a corner and can’t defend his position. I have calmly told him how much it bothers me and have seen him arguing this way more often as a result instead of less often.
That’s why I’m trying to research what it’s called, so I can read about how to logically defeat it, so that it will no longer be a guaranteed way for him to get me to lose my cool and the argument.
Not sad at all. Both A) if she is, and B) who the hell knows what people ultimately use SD for?
For all we know one of those “I just have to get this right for my novel” OPs is a serial killer.
No joke, this is an interpersonal issue that is spoiling arguments, where logic/rationality is almost always is swept away by emotions. Arguments which are necessary and inevitable in marriages. Look into therapy (solo or couple) if it is seriously getting in the way.