# New logical fallacy I'm sick of **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 13, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800 "2011-05-13T17:26:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2011, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/21 "2011-05-14T17:53:24Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I am fully in favor of women dressing like sluts. Me too. Makes me want to shake their hands, it does. ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/22 "2011-05-14T18:17:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > But a “continuum” is not well defined. 😃 [Sure it is!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_number) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/23 "2011-05-14T18:18:18Z")
So we can only discuss what can be defined in black and white terms? The gray areas shall not be addressed because it’s messy and ill defined? Maybe in an Asperger’s world. Here in the real world the very best discussions are all about the gray areas between the black and white, at least to my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/24 "2011-05-15T01:59:41Z")
This crap came up in the ‘there is no such thing as race’ thread awhile back. Arguing there is no distinct difference at all in any human race is fine, but pedantically quibbling about commonly accepted terms and saying they didn’t even exist was just…was just…more Dope then I ever needed. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/25 "2011-05-15T02:43:54Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > A major way to win internet arguments is not to win at logic, but rather to make your opponents do a lot of pointless work. In that way, saying something slightly dumb - and making your opponents cover a lot of tedious, obvious rhetorical ground, can be a better strategy than coming up with a counterargument. I’m keeping this quote. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/26 "2011-05-15T07:04:31Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > So we can only discuss what can be defined in black and white terms? > > The gray areas shall not be addressed because it’s messy and ill defined? > > Maybe in an Asperger’s world. Here in the real world the very best discussions are all about the gray areas between the black and white, at least to my mind. Gigantic misread. What he says is that the presence of gray areas doesn’t negate the huge black/white areas. If I say “I’m sexuallt attracted to women, not men” it’s silly to turn the discussion into the extreme cases were men/women does not obviosuly apply when the original statement is clear, gray areas notwithstanding. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/27 "2011-05-15T14:10:57Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > A major way to win internet arguments is not to win at logic, but rather to make your opponents do a lot of pointless work. In that way, saying something slightly dumb - and making your opponents cover a lot of tedious, obvious rhetorical ground, can be a better strategy than coming up with a counterargument. > [@Cubsfan](#): > > I’m keeping this quote. Frankly, I don’t think he considers it so much a “quote” as a “strategy.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/28 "2011-05-15T14:13:19Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Frankly, I don’t think he considers it so much a “quote” as a “strategy.” > > 😉 ORLY? Could you give me 5 links to a cite you would consider a “quote”, and then 5 links to something you would consider a “strategy”? Then maybe we can define our terms better! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/29 "2011-05-15T14:45:09Z")
Heh. Nice. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/30 "2011-05-15T15:51:49Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > A major way to win internet arguments is not to win at logic, but rather to make your opponents do a lot of pointless work. In that way, saying something slightly dumb - and making your opponents cover a lot of tedious, obvious rhetorical ground, can be a better strategy than coming up with a counterargument. as they say, it’s like wrestling a pig. you both get dirty but the pig enjoys it. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/31 "2011-05-15T15:55:18Z")
To be fair, sometimes it’s important to bring clarity and scope to a discussion. “Democrats are stealing our freedom,” for example. Or “Facebook is stealing our privacy.” I find it necessary for people to tell me exactly what in the hell they are talking about. Which isn’t to say it is always necessary or useful, and your example is a case where it isn’t, because however you define “dressing like a slut,” that’s begging the question that anyone is ever “asking for it,” and hence a steaming pile of rape apologist horse manure. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/32 "2011-05-15T21:56:05Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I think this is the same kind of argument that people trot out when you say something like, “Traffic in Calgary is terrible!” and they all race in to tell you that no, traffic in Calgary is not terrible because it’s much worse in New York or Boston or Toronto or Vancouver or wherethehellever. My answer to that is, “Just because one thing is worse doesn’t make this thing not bad.” > > Now I can’t figure out if that is the same kind of thing or not. I’ve driven in 3 out of your 4 counterexample cities, and I’ve driven in Calgary. I can state, with anecdotal certainty, that traffic in Calgary can be as bad as any I’ve encountered in New York, Boston or Toronto. Tell those people that you have it on the authority of some random anonymous guy on the internet that they are full of shit. Then you will be committing the fallacy of “Argument from a Worthless Authority”… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/33 "2011-05-15T21:56:27Z")
> [@tnetennba](#): > > Which isn’t to say it is always necessary or useful, and your example is a case where it isn’t, because however you define “dressing like a slut,” that’s begging the question that anyone is ever “asking for it,” and hence a steaming pile of rape apologist horse manure. His example is a case where he is assigning blame to people based on a certain behavior that he can’t define beyond “I know it when I see it.” It’s one thing to call it a fallacy if people are arguing that X doesn’t _exist_ – that it’s an incoherent concept – just because it’s hard to define. It’s something else entirely to cry “fallacy” when they point out that if you’re saying people should be judged based on X, and blamed for exemplifying X, you better have a pretty good idea in your head what you mean by X, or at least some kind of argument about where you’re drawing the line. If they pass a law saying it’s OK to beat the shit out of people with beards, suddenly the “fallacy of the beard” seems like a pretty reasonable argument. Acknowledging that a continuum exists isn’t a bulletproof defense to all suggestions that you’re not doing a very good job defining your terms. That’s just that one example. Maybe it happens the other way lots of times. It’s a weird thing to start a pit thread about, but if he’s really sick of it, more power to him. But the thread he linked to doesn’t illustrate the point. ---
**Author:** ![Gestalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/90ced4/32.png) [@Gestalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gestalt)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/34 "2011-05-15T22:35:29Z")
Actually it annoys me too. I started a thread about differences b/w Judaism and Islam and I made it a point to say in the OP that I realized that there wasn’t a monolithic “Judaism” and even further said maybe we should limit it to Orthodox Judaism, of which again I acknowledged there isn’t a monolithic form. And fairly early on in the thread someone started with, “It was a mistake to even start this discussion because there are soooo many variables within each religion” (paraphrase). I was irritated. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/35 "2011-05-16T01:55:09Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > His example is a case where he is assigning blame to people based on a certain behavior that he can’t define beyond “I know it when I see it.” It’s one thing to call it a fallacy if people are arguing that X doesn’t _exist_ – that it’s an incoherent concept – just because it’s hard to define. It’s something else entirely to cry “fallacy” when they point out that if you’re saying people should be judged based on X, and blamed for exemplifying X, you better have a pretty good idea in your head what you mean by X, or at least some kind of argument about where you’re drawing the line. Who ever said there was a line being drawn? It is never right to have sex with a 10 year old, even if they claim they’re consenting. Having sex with a consenting 30 year old is OK. So somewhere in there is a line. But I can’t draw it, or claim I can draw it. But we need there to be a line, so a law is made setting an age. That doesn’t mean that anyone can ever really point to one single thing and say “that’s the thing that indicates that that person is now able to consent to sex”. Similarly, I can come up with one set of behaviors that seems very reckless as far as increasing one’s risk of being raped, and another set of behaviors that seems to minimize them. That doesn’t mean I magically claim the ability to rate any or all behavior, or that I can define some line with “safe” on one side and “risky” on the other. My failure to be able to do so doesn’t mean that my initial advice (do this set of things, don’t do that other set) is meaningless. It might not make it very useful in some situations, and for that matter I might be flat out wrong in my advice to begin with, but my point is that my claim is not automatically rendered meaningless just because it doesn’t come with a scale, or a line, or ratings for all possible sets of behaviors, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/36 "2011-05-16T15:26:33Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Who ever said there was a line being drawn? > > It is never right to have sex with a 10 year old, even if they claim they’re consenting. Having sex with a consenting 30 year old is OK. So somewhere in there is a line. But I can’t draw it, or claim I can draw it. But we need there to be a line, so a law is made setting an age. That doesn’t mean that anyone can ever really point to one single thing and say “that’s the thing that indicates that that person is now able to consent to sex”. Similarly, I can come up with one set of behaviors that seems very reckless as far as increasing one’s risk of being raped, and another set of behaviors that seems to minimize them. That doesn’t mean I magically claim the ability to rate any or all behavior, or that I can define some line with “safe” on one side and “risky” on the other. My failure to be able to do so doesn’t mean that my initial advice (do this set of things, don’t do that other set) is meaningless. It might not make it very useful in some situations, and for that matter I might be flat out wrong in my advice to begin with, but my point is that my claim is not automatically rendered meaningless just because it doesn’t come with a scale, or a line, or ratings for all possible sets of behaviors, etc. While that might be true, I’d argue that you had better have SOME idea of where the line might be if you want to argue the point in any useful fashion. Using your example, unless you commit to a point SOMEWHERE on the line as a first pass of how you’d define “appropriate age of consent”, then your statement is very nearly useless. Congrats, you’ve defined a 20-year range where the line MIGHT be. Now what? To go back to the OP, your example is equivalent to “I know that a woman in a burqa is not dressing like a slut, and a woman wearing two pasties and a thong is dressing like a slut.” If you then assert that “dressing like a slut is bad”, what exactly are we supposed to do with your definition? Wear burquas and wait until 30 to have sex, just to be sure? Or, I don’t know, maybe we could ask you questions to see if we might be able to tighten up the definition to something that might actually become useful. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/37 "2011-05-16T16:54:41Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > While that might be true, I’d argue that you had better have SOME idea of where the line might be if you want to argue the point in any useful fashion. > > Using your example, unless you commit to a point SOMEWHERE on the line as a first pass of how you’d define “appropriate age of consent”, then your statement is very nearly useless. Congrats, you’ve defined a 20-year range where the line MIGHT be. Now what? > > To go back to the OP, your example is equivalent to “I know that a woman in a burqa is not dressing like a slut, and a woman wearing two pasties and a thong is dressing like a slut.” If you then assert that “dressing like a slut is bad”, what exactly are we supposed to do with your definition? Wear burquas and wait until 30 to have sex, just to be sure? Or, I don’t know, maybe we could ask you questions to see if we might be able to tighten up the definition to something that might actually become useful. I see what you’re saying, but I guess I was never trying to give productive advice in the first place. It’s not like I was publishing a book on how to reduce your chance of being raped and charging $10 for it and the first page says “don’t dress like a slut” and the rest of the pages are blank or something. Rather, I was joining a conversation already in progress, and was attempting to respond to a position that I found to be overly absolutist, that being that there could not possibly be a connection between a woman’s attire and her risk of rape, and that even if there was it was somehow taboo to discuss it without being patriarchal. That said, I could name plenty of individual characteristics of an outfit that push it over towards the “dressing like a slut” side of the spectrum, as I’m sure could you, but that’s not really a topic I have any interest in getting into. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/38 "2011-05-16T18:16:52Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I see what you’re saying, but I guess I was never trying to give productive advice in the first place. It’s not like I was publishing a book on how to reduce your chance of being raped and charging $10 for it and the first page says “don’t dress like a slut” and the rest of the pages are blank or something. Rather, I was joining a conversation already in progress, and was attempting to respond to a position that I found to be overly absolutist, that being that there could not possibly be a connection between a woman’s attire and her risk of rape, and that even if there was it was somehow taboo to discuss it without being patriarchal. > > That said, I could name plenty of individual characteristics of an outfit that push it over towards the “dressing like a slut” side of the spectrum, as I’m sure could you, but that’s not really a topic I have any interest in getting into. Well, that’s fine. However, you have to acknowledge that saying “don’t do X”, in the absence of a definition of X, is not terribly useful at all. We could easily not have ANY overlapping concepts in our respective definitions of “dressing like a slut”, for example. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/39 "2011-05-16T18:22:01Z")
Sounds to me like the fallacy is trying to apply mathematical proof rules to an argument that’s heavily influence by semantics. > [@](#): > > It goes like this: > A: I think that when people do X, there’s a tendency for Y to happen > B: Wait but can you precisely define exactly what is and is not X? Here are a bunch of examples, please categorize each of them precisely as X or not-X. If you can’t, then X has no meaning, and your whole claim is groundless What they’re trying to do is say that the rule works for X and not-X, but “partial X” doesn’t fit the rule and doesn’t really work, so they’re mistakenly thinking that they’ve shown the rule not to apply in all cases and therefore is not valid. This might work in math, but in message board arguments, things are not nearly so cut and dried. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800/40 "2011-05-16T18:47:19Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > “black, white, Asian or Latino”. Latino isn’t a race, and people we think of as Latino are actually Asian/White blends. :D;)😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-logical-fallacy-im-sick-of/581800.md?page=3)