# Is there a name for this fallacy? See OP for details **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 7, 2023, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707 "2023-07-07T01:26:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/1 "2023-07-07T01:26:43Z")
I’ve been feeling pessimistic about global warming recently given the news about the record worldwide high being broken for three consecutive days. My thinking was along these lines. “Given the large number of highly intelligent people working on the problem (plus large amount of money, computing power etc.), if there was a solution someone would have figured it out by now. Since the problem hasn’t been solved yet, that means there is no solution.” Obviously that’s a fallacy, but I don’t recall if there is a name for it. Does this fallacy have a name? ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/2 "2023-07-07T01:53:34Z")
Not sure, but I have a story: When I was in grad school I was trying to derive a particular physics formula and had been having trouble. I said to my thesis advisor that maybe the reason it had never been derived was because it wasn’t true, so our efforts were in vain. He blew up at me, saying I’d never be a scientist with an attitude like that. P.S. I was able to derive it after a few more weeks of working on it, and it became my first published paper. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/3 "2023-07-07T01:56:45Z")
I would submit that we already know the solution but there is no political will to make it happen. Too much money is involved to take the measures needed. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/4 "2023-07-07T02:32:33Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > if there was a solution someone would have figured it out by now. Since the problem hasn’t been solved yet, that means there is no solution. When you say “a solution,” are you thinking that there should be _one_ particular, ideal solution? While neither is quite what you asked for, the [Fallacy of the Single Cause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause) and the [Perfect Solution Fallacy](https://yandoo.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/perfect-solution-fallacy/) may be relevant here. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/5 "2023-07-07T02:36:49Z")
To clarify, I was thinking about one specific issue, that of CO2 sequestration. I was thinking that if CO2 sequestration was a viable solution to global warming, someone would have figured out how to do it at an effective scale by now. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/6 "2023-07-07T03:29:06Z")
I would say it’s the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle as a choice between now and never. Solutions that arise in the future have been excluded. ---
**Author:** ![Oly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oly/32/8255_2.png) [@Oly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oly)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/7 "2023-07-07T04:49:22Z")
Not an answer to the question, but a related anecdote. When I first heard about smokeless fire pits, such as the Solo Stove and the like, I thought no gd f’n gd way. Fire is proto humanity’s first “invention”. People have been dependent on it and tinkering with it since forever. If there was a way to make it uncomplicatedly smokeless some pyromaniac would have figured it out long long ago. But dadgummit! Those smokeless fire pits actually work. And they are simple in principle and simpler to use. So maybe backyard carbon capture is just one tinker away. It’ll probably show up on Amazon as a Solo Stove accessory. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/8 "2023-07-07T10:29:30Z")
It’s a form of the [Argument from Ignorance.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance) - hovering around the familiar “absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence” territory. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/9 "2023-07-07T11:06:31Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I would submit that we already know the solution but there is no political will to make it happen. Too much money is involved to take the measures needed. Really this is the true issue. It’s not a logical fallacy. We can solve this. Just not at an economic cost that current society is willing to bear. So instead Nature will deliver us a different set of costs to bear. Probably higher ones. If I was to try to label a thought-process fallacy here, I’d call it the [Fallacy that there must exist an attractive answer, not merely a least-unattractive answer.] Said more succinctly: [Free lunches aren’t]. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/10 "2023-07-07T11:30:53Z")
Reminds me of the old rational-expectations joke: guy sees a dollar on the sidewalk, gets assured by an economist that, no, if it were, someone would’ve picked it up by now… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/11 "2023-07-07T13:32:52Z")
Dangit, @The_Other_Waldo_Pepper , that’s exactly the joke I was about to post. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/12 "2023-07-07T13:39:45Z")
The other thing it reminds me of is Sydney Smith’s [The Noodle’s Oration](https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/english-prose-an-anthology-in-five-volumes/sydney-smith-17711845-4) which is a fun exercise in putting every fallacy the author can think of into a speech given by the titular idiot. It starts off with exactly this. Best imagined in a very pompous oratory style: > “WHAT would our ancestors say to this, sir? How does this measure tally with our institutions? How does it agree with their experience? Are we to put the wisdom of yesterday in competition with the wisdom of centuries? (Hear, hear.) Is beardless youth to show no respect for the decisions of mature age? (Loud cries of hear, hear.) _If this measure be right, would it have escaped the wisdom of those Saxon progenitors to whom we are indebted for so many of our best political institutions? Would the Dane have passed it over? Would the Norman have rejected it?_ ---
**Author:** ![Feurmann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/779978/32.png) [@Feurmann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feurmann)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2023, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/13 "2023-07-08T10:35:34Z")
I think this is our old friend the syllogism, as per the famous original: Premise one: All humans are mortal. Premise two: Aristotle is human. Conclusion: Aristotle is mortal. The problem with this apparently logical sounding construction is (as I understand it) that so much depends on the definition of the terms that are used, as in this example from Barry Goldberg: 1. In order for God to have created the universe, He must exist outside the universe. 2. Anything that exists outside the universe cannot be said to exist within the universe. 3. The universe is defined as the totality of all existence, meaning that nothing can be said to exist if it is not inside the universe. 4. Therefore, God does not exist. QED. (I’m not meaning to offend anyone with this example. It is a fallacy after all.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2023, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/14 "2023-07-08T11:51:46Z")
IIRC, Raymond Smullyan liked the following: “I have a proof that God exists.” “Okay, let’s hear it.” “God exists, if I’m not mistaken.” “Well, yes, _if you’re not mistaken._” “Hence my statement is true.” “Of course!” “So I was not mistaken — and you admitted that if I am not mistaken, then God exists. Therefore God exists.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/15 "2023-07-12T04:35:16Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > IIRC, Raymond Smullyan liked the following: That’s Curry’s Paradox: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/curry-paradox/#InfoArgu](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/curry-paradox/#InfoArgu) It’s a bit tricky to get rid of. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/16 "2023-07-12T08:06:58Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That’s Curry’s Paradox: > [Curry’s Paradox (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/curry-paradox/#InfoArgu) What an odd one. It seems to me like it would be easy. What that statement is actually saying is that P and Q are causally related. If they aren’t, then the statement is false. In other words, the full version of that statement, with all the implied parts, is “If I am not mistaken, that proves that God exists.” And that is clearly false. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/17 "2023-07-12T08:27:49Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > What that statement is actually saying is that P and Q are causally related. Logic as it’s usually formulated doesn’t have room for causal relations. P implies Q doesn’t require that P causes Q. Just that Q is true whenever P is true. It’s a paradox because it obviously doesn’t work, not least because if you can prove Q then you can also prove not-Q. But many systems of logic allow the statement to be made. You have to do something like restrict self-referential statements to avoid the paradox. To be clear, it’s really a paradox of certain formal systems. Of which normal human language is not. It’s just that the paradox is usually phrased that way to illustrate the weirdness of it. ---
**Author:** ![Saffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saffer/32/6440_2.png) [@Saffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saffer)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/18 "2023-07-12T09:24:54Z")
> [@Feurmann](#): > > Premise one: All humans are mortal. Premise two: Aristotle is human. Conclusion: Aristotle is mortal. > > The problem with this apparently logical sounding construction is (as I understand it) that so much depends on the definition of the terms that are used I don’t understand the problem here. Regardless of the definitions used, the conclusion is always true. All elements of set A have property p. Some specific element a is a member of A. Therefore a has property p. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/19 "2023-07-12T11:26:42Z")
> [@Saffer](#): > > All elements of set And here right away is the problem. Nobody has defined the domain of discourse or the rules of logic being applied. You are (reasonably) assuming a first order logic (aka predicate logic) that includes such useful things as universal and existential quantifiers. Smarty pants who is being annoying with the logic, is using a zeroth-order (aka propositional) logic that doesn’t contain such useful nicieties, and for which the contents of the propositions are just meaningless gobbly-gook that have nothing beyond a truth value. Both are sound logical systems, but some people delight in being annoying by sliding between domains. ---
**Author:** ![Saffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saffer/32/6440_2.png) [@Saffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saffer)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2023, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707/20 "2023-07-12T11:29:59Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Smarty pants who is being annoying with the logic, is using a zeroth-order (aka propositional) logic that doesn’t contain such useful nicieties, and for which the contents of the propositions are just meaningless gobbly-gook that have nothing beyond a truth value Unless I misunderstood you, then such propositional logic doesn’t sound like it would be useful in any context. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-this-fallacy-see-op-for-details/986707.md?page=2)