Hey guys, what’s up! So this week, I want to introduce a group of fallacies called “Appeals” and I’m telling you, there are a bunch of them! But before I dive into Appeals, let’s do a quick review of one of the fallacies we talked about a few weeks ago.
Let’s review The Texas Sharpshooter. The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is committed when similarities in data are over-emphasized, but differences in same data are ignored. This fallacy is based on our human tendency to look for patterns and similarities while dismissing differences and ignoring randomness.:
If you want to hear more about this fallacy or get a good review, check out Episode 12.
Ok, so Appeals. An appeal fallacy is when you are pointing to something else as a reason to believe what you’re saying, rather than focusing on the validity of your argument. Like I said, there are a bunch of different types of appeal fallacies, and we’ll go through a bunch of them in the next several episodes.
Today, we’ll start with the Appeal to Authority: An Appeal to Authority is when someone tells you to do, think or believe something based on the opinion of a certain authority. It could be an individual authority or an organizational authority. But this fallacy is essentially saying that: “since so & so says it, it must be true” or “since so & so says it’s wrong, it must be wrong”
Here’s an example: Mom: “Don’t jump on the bed” Kid: “Why not?” Mom: “Because I said so.” Lol…ok, I’ll admit it - parents tend to do this one. And maybe there’s some validity to it b/c they are your parents, but is that really answering the question of why they shouldn’t jump on the bed? Not really. It is appealing to their authority as a parent, which is true - they are! And there are some valid appeals to authority, like when we refer to the leading cancer specialist as a means of learning the best treatment for a specific type of cancer. That’s probably a pretty legitimate appeal to authority. But a lot of the appeals to authority that you’ll hear aren’t legitimate.
Here’s a common example: How about every celebrity athlete that has endorsed a deodorant or foot spray, lol. Just b/c you’re great at basketball or football doesn’t mean I should buy that brand of deodorant! Your athletic ability has nothing to do with my smelly armpits! But they’re trying to appeal to the quote/unquote authority of the athlete just b/c they’re well-known.
Or how about this example: The cover of the cereal box with the olympic athlete’s picture on it? You see how that’s an appeal to a quote/unquote authority, but does that really mean eating that cereal will turn you into an olympic athlete? No. It just means they got an endorsement deal & are making $ endorsing that particular brand of cereal!
The problem with False Appeals to Authority is simple: just b/c this person or organization knows a lot about one thing doesn’t mean they’re also an authority on another thing.
This fallacy gets even trickier when we dig a little deeper & here’s why: sometimes, even the experts are wrong. We see this all the time on the news. They’ll be doing a news story on some topic and to make whatever they’re talking about seem more credible, they’ll bring on some quote/unquote expert. And this expert will say, “Yes, I think this is true.” or “No, I think this is false”. And we’re expected to believe something is true or false based on their claim. The problem here is that the so-called expert didn’t bring any evidence or proof to back up their claim…we’re just supposed to believe it b/c they said it.
A really good example of an Appeal to Authority came up recently in the 9th grade class that I direct once a week. We were talking about economics, and why competition is ultimately helpful for the consumers, and the example I was using was cell phone companies. One of my students added that there’s a certain celebrity who is starting their own cell phone company…and as soon as they said it, it was like the light bulbs came on. They exclaimed - “Hey, that’s an appeal to authority! They think that just b/c they’re famous, we should sign up for their cell service! I’d actually call that an Appeal to Celebrity!” lol And not only were they right, but they coined a new fallacy, too!
This is why I’m telling you, when you learn this stuff, you, too, will start to recognize it everywhere! And you probably already are.
Ok, so the question to ask yourself if you’re faced with an Appeal to Authority is this: “Is it really true just b/c they say it is?” *repeat*
Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about another Appeal Fallacy called the Appeal to Nature.
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
