Apples are red.
Apples are good to eat.
Fire engines are red.
Therefore…
{Yeah, a lot of fire engines are that bright neony yellow-green. Then again, so are some apples…]
As I read this, I was hearing Johnhy Cochran’s “Chewbacca Defense”…
[sub]sorry - just had to share[/sub]
My SIL is the Queen of Lack of Reasoning:
When she was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband decided *wouldn’t it be fun * to take the infant (8wks old) on an international 3 week vacation with 10 other people and never stay longer than 2 nights anywhere. ( They travel like marauding vandals on crack.)
When I heard this I burst out laughing. I mean total hysterics. FTR, so did Mr. Ujest, as it is his sister. They were dead serious and could not understand our jocularity. Over the next few months I tried to reason with her ( them) about how absolutely stupid it was to do this trip with an 8 week old infant *when it was not really necessary *. It’s not like Europe is going anywhere. The trip cost $7,300 for three weeks. That is a whole boat load of money to have a big life learning experience.
The biggie was " How can you drag an infant who barely has any immunization shots to all the hot tourist spots ( london, Paris, rome) where there are people there from other parts of the world who do not immunize like we do. ( IE: why not just stuff your daughter in a petri dish?) ( I had a list of why they shouldn’t…and anyone with the brain of a squirrel would have concurred.)
Her response was: We prayed on it and *Jesus * said it would be ok.
:smack:
Same person, believes that women who dress provocotatively
( Modern Ho) are just begging to be raped and that gays chose to be gay and that Harry Potter Books are the gateway to Satan.
This is actually very sound reasoning.
It has to do with the concept of Variation To The Mean. I’ve also heard it described as Regression To The Mean. (link is to the Skeptic’s Dictionary)
Let’s say over his career so far, a baseball player has established a career batting average of .200. Some years he’ll have a better average, and some years he’ll have a worse average, but over time it is highly likely that his career average will stay near .200.
Now, let’s say that in one particular year he has an absolutely outstanding season and bats .300. Given that his career average is .200, the odds of him having another outstanding season is quite slim. His performance will vary towards the mean. This is also true in reverse. If a player has a miserable season (compared to his career average), the odds he’ll do better next season is good.
In the example given, if it were true that in 1997 and 1998 that Henderson had poor seasons, then it’s somewhat predictable that he’d have a good year in 1999. It also is somewhat predictable that 2000 would not be as good as 1999. (Note that I haven’t looked up the actual batting averages for Henderson to see how those years compare with his career average… I’m just using this as an example to describe Variation to the Mean.)
If two players, Henderson and Ventura, both followed this pattern and as a consequence they were substantially responsible for the team’s success in 2000, then I’d agree with the person who argued that it would be unlikely that that success would continue into 2001.
Remember that this is not the same as the Gambler’s Fallacy (is that the right descriptive title?) where the odds of any certain number coming up on the dice is unrelated to what happened on prior tosses. Each toss of the dice is a completely unrelated event.
Human performance over time is not unrelated to what came before. Without some outside influence (performance enhancing drugs, for example) a players ability is not going to change substantially over time. It will bounce around, both above and below their average performance, and year to year variation will generally be towards the average.
Sort of on track, I think:
I once saw an ad for a horse posted at a barn that read " Horse for sale asking $1500.00. Will take $1000.00"
There was a family that had just moved out from our parish’s shelter for homeless families. They’d lived there for over a month getting back on their feet, getting enough for a first and last month’s rent, etc. They decided to buy a car. They chose a relatively new used station wagon, but with the cost of the car couldn’t afford insurance, so instead of buy a cheaper car and insurance, they drove it without. Their teenaged son totalled it. It was decisions like that that caused them to be homeless in the first place. Their family restaurant in Nebraska went under, so they picked up the family and left everything they knew to come to Nashville. They didn’t have enough to live on and ended up homeless with 6 kids. After they go tback on their feet the decided to go west , to Utah or Idaho, I think. I think the wife had family there. Basically they didn’t think things through before executing major life-altering plans.
StG
Let’s see if I can explain this enough to make sense. Where I work we have to balance claims. Meaning if you had no shares before the time period started, bought 100 shares during the period you cannot sell a hundred shares and still have 100 shares at the end of the period. You would not believe the number of people who send us claims that do not understand this concept.
But even worse: There are about 80 transactions on this one claim that a new co-worker is working on. He has a question on one of the transactions for 150 shares. I tell him that those shares should not be included in the claim, subtract them from the claim. Co-worker says he can’t because “That would make the claim out of balance.” He wants to start from the beginning and redo the claim. Mind you, an 80 transaction claim can take an hour or more to do.
No, I explain, you are removing these 150 shares from the equation. They are not included in the beginning, the middle or the end. They do not figure in the equation at all. Just subtract 150 from the purchases and 150 from the end position.
Co-worker could not follow this logic. His position was that, since the shares were already figured in, the problem was now corrupt and the only way to remedy the corruption in the equation was to start all over again. He actually said “The claim is corrupted now.”
Soooooo. Co-worker started from the beginning. Co-worker no longer works for the company, by the way.
I’m sitting here listening to internet radio. The O’Reilly Factor is on, and this is the first time I’ve heard it.
Yuk!
The topic right now is a show on Nickelodeon tonight about gay parenting, and the guest is extremely opposed to the show. His basic point is that it shouldn’t be on Nick because that network is primarily for kids and he feels it’s an attempt to co-opt the education of kids from the parents. He also said a little while ago that all the studies indicating gay parents do not automatically cause gay children were lying. His reason being: If his parents were snorting coke or smoking around him when he was a kid it would make him feel those behaviors were normal and he’d do it too.
Hmmm. My parents both smoked when I was a kid. I hated it. Never have smoked, never will.
Nobody has to watch the show if they don’t want to. (Isn’t it interesting how often people who are opposed to some TV show seem to forget that?) Nickelodeon doesn’t have TV cops who’ll come around and force people to watch it at gunpoint.
Along those lines, here’s another one…
A family friend had cancer a few years ago, and it has recurred. I don’t know what the prognosis was, but she’s getting treatment and declares to anyone who’ll listen that she is going to live.
How does she know this for sure? “Because the doctors are not the ones in charge; God is in charge.”
OK. I’ll be the first person to say that I believe that hope, in any capacity, is a key determining factor in recovery from such situations. Though I am not particularly religious myself, I will also say that I think religion can often be instrumental in achieving such a state of hope.
However, if one truly believes that God is in charge, isn’t it supposed to be about his will? Does she have it on good authority that he wants her to live through this, because it sure sounds like she’s the one calling the shots, here.
BTW, Shirley, how did the trip turn out? And what about the reasoning capacity of those 10 other people who thought it might be fun to take a joint trip with a couple with an infant?
auntie em - I am religous and I think that’s assinine reasoning. People die every day. Many people. If you believe that God is in charge, than you also have to bow to God’s will. Which might be that you die. If she ends up terminally ill, I bet she’ll have a crisis of faith, wondering how God could do that to her. (That’s not even going into causes of cancer, which can be anything but divine).
StG
Yeah, I was wondering how she would explain the bazillions of people who have already died. Is God just in charge of her life, and if so, will she never die?
The worst part of it, frankly (besides, of course, the fact that she is ill) is that she is busy overbooking herself on volunteer work (she’s retired); joining every club, group, or council that will take her. I wouldn’t even think it was a good idea under normal circumstances for her to pile so many obligations onto her plate, but now it’s a really bad idea, especially considering all of the meetings and such she’s been forced to cancel due to medical appointments.
Maybe she’s trying to prove to God how useful she is here on Earth?
I’m not trying to sound mean or crass–this is a family friend, and I am concerned about her–but I just have to say :smack: !
My father whose diet consisted mainly of coffee, cigarettes, bags of cookies and day-old, no-name grocery store pie (how he remained such a skinny man… I’ll never know), once said:
“I do too have a healthy diet! I do too eat fruit! I eat pie. And there’s fruit in pie.”
Of course his logic was also along the lines of:
“I have used a screwdriver, therefore I am a mechanic.”
There are loads of variations on the following brain teaser. I’ll just use one to illustrate the general point about illogical thinking.
Prologue:
"John is a devout Christian Republican. He hates Bill Clinton with a passion. He listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, and subscribes to several conservative publications.
Now… which of the following statements about John is more likely to be true?
A) John is a janitor.
B) John is a janitor and opposes abortion.
*
Now, the brilliant people of the SDMB (many of whom have already seen variations on this poser) undoubtedly chuckle, “How easy! Statement A is more likely.” And they’ll be right.
But you’d be amazed how many people would INSIST that statement B is far more likely! It doesn’t dawn on such people that, since proposition B has 2 conditions, it’s inherently less likely than proposition A.
In this case, the picture painted of John in the prologue makes it seem very likely he’d be anti-abortion. On the other hand, nothing in the prologue suggests he’d be a janitor. So, people who read this passage ignore the part about being a janitor, and seize upon the part that confirms the impression they’ve formed of John’s politics.
Well I know what you mean. However all these things need careful analysis of the conditions.
Given B is supposed to be different from A, doesn’t A therefore imply that John is a janitor who doesn’t oppose abortion?
Which from your introduction is indeed less likely than B. :eek:
Not at all, glee. astorian’s statement A offers no information whatsoever on John’s political views. It only offers information on his occupation. The two statements differ only in that statement B contains more information. There is no implication that they are contradictory–both could certainly be true of the same person. In fact, if B is true, then A is necessarily true.
Sorry that I can’t remember which president this was (I think it was Kennedy but I’m not sure). One of the past presidents was trying to prove that school lunches were indeed healthy. His reasoning: They do have vegetables! Ketchup is a vegetable! Now, even if we assume that a product of a vegetable can be considered a vegetable, ketchup comes from a tomato- which is a FRUIT!
That seems to be more of a fault of lazy reading comprehension than poor logical reasoning…
That would be the “Great Communicator” himself, the only divorced President in history, Ronald Reagan.
My sister-in-law’s mother had been in poor health for many years. SIL asked the preacher at her church to baptise her mother (notice: I said “preacher”, this guy had problems getting ordained, so he never became a minister. But that didn’t stop him from thinking he was Jesus’ twin brother.)
Anyway, he performed the ceremony the next Sunday. A few weeks later, the mom died, because her drunk boyfriend used her perscription money to buy booze.
My SIL said she was sooo happy that preatcher was able to help her mother. That it was as if her mom was just holding on to life long enough to get baptised.
I know it’s too late now, but you should’ve pointed to his shoes and said “Wow! Your shoes are ALIVE!”
If he says, 
You just say, “Your shoes are not lizards, they must be alive. And this pen is alive. And there’s a live rock!”
Maybe it has something to do with lizards hatching from eggs, whereas mammals… No, that doesn’t work. Then you could argue about whether a lizard is alive while it’s in the egg.
OK, he was just bizarre. And repeating something is not an explanation. Pet peeve of mine.