Hey guys what’s up! You ready to get a little harder to fool today? Well, listen on, we’re talking about a new fallacy today. But first, let’s do a quick review of a fallacy we’ve already talked about.
Let’s review the Appeal to Authority fallacy: 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. 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”
So the question to ask yourself if you’re faced with an Appeal to Authority is this: “Is it really true just because they say it is? Or is it really false just because they say it is?”
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back and check out Episode 20.
Ok, let’s dive into our new fallacy for today. And if you listened to the last episode, #35, this one will be pretty easy because it’s the exact opposite. In Episode 35, we talked about the Part-to-whole fallacy and today we’re talking about the Whole-to-Part Fallacy.
The Whole-to-Part Fallacy happens when someone concludes that because a group of people or things has a certain characteristic, then therefore the individuals that make up the group must also have the same characteristics.
A simple example of this comes from sports. Just because the Little Squirt t-ball team won the championship doesn’t mean that every member of the team is an amazing player. Maybe there are 5 amazing players that carry the rest of the team. Maybe the team is made up of mediocre players who work really well together. But we can’t make the assumption that just because the team is good as a whole that each player is amazing in and of themselves.
Or how about this one: “You’re a computer science major, so you must be a nerd.” Ok, so just because a group of people may have a stereotype as being “nerdy”, that doesn’t mean that everyone in that group is in fact nerdy.
The problem with the thinking in a Whole-to-Part Fallacy is the same as the part-to-whole fallacy: It’s based off a generalized assumption.
Just because a piece of art or sculpture made out of trash is interesting and beautiful doesn’t mean that every piece of trash that makes up the sculpture is going to be interesting and beautiful. There could be a lot of ugly, seemingly worthless individual pieces that go into an incredible finished product.
This type of fallacy happens a lot to people and it’s very common. It’s common because our brains have a tendency to want to categorize & organize things. It’s a way that we make sense of the world & find patterns around us. It’s normal. Which is why we need to be aware of it and really work to make sure we aren’t committing these thinking errors. People typically do not like to have assumptions made about them based on being a part of a group or a demographic. Maybe you once knew a Christian who was judgmental, but if you say, “you’re a Christian so you must be intolerant & judgmental” it’s probably not going to go over so well when you’re meeting a new group of friends. They may be Christians, but that doesn’t mean they’re just like the one you knew back in the day.
Question to ask yourself: “Is it really true to assume that this person or thing has a characteristic just because they’re a part of that particular group?”… *repeat*
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?”
