The Appeal to Popularity Fallacy: Very simply explained... Think of it in context of Marches...
Now we are often shown videos of large amounts of people marching for this or that agenda. It doesn't really matter what the agenda is. We simply know that popularity and quantity of people are used to try to sway opinions.
Logic: The truth doesn't change based upon quantity of people.
This is known as an Appeal to Popularity Fallacy. It is common. It is basically because X people believe Y then Y must be true. Quantity does not make things true or false. Quantity has nothing to do with the truthfulness/facts of anything.
If you have a person with an ignorant, stupid, naive, or misinformed idea that is stating their information as fact and as truth we naturally know that it may not be the truth.
The problem is that as more and more people join this person and repeat the idea suddenly we doubt ourselves. Perhaps there is something to this... look how many people believe it to be true.
This is the Appeal to Popularity fallacy. It did not become true. All that happened is more and more people chose to follow and believe the false thing. Perhaps the first person was very charismatic. Perhaps the idea attacks a person or idea we don't like so we support the idea without researching it simply because it attacks something else we dislike.
It is still not the truth. We become part of the problem and also hypocritical when we are willing to support something as true without any thought or research simply due to quantity of people, because it says something that FEELS NICE to believe in, or because it attacks an idea or person we perceive as an enemy.
This is kind of like the idea of saying. "It's okay if that person was raped. They were my enemy."
You can see this at work when if there is any encounter by someone challenging a GROUP they are not met with thought, consideration, and willingness to listen to challenge but instead perhaps they all mindlessly chant the same phrase over and over again. It is almost like they are at a sporting event rather than making important decisions about life. They are content to be part of the group and chanting much like cheerleaders and rally leaders at a high school event trying to chant about winning, and trying to intimidate the other team. That is a game. It should not be how people deal with critical information and activities that actually are important to the lives of themselves and other people. Those subjects that matter to life should be treated with the utmost care and vigilance.
Disliking someone does not make them immediately wrong in everything they say.
Liking someone does not make them immediately right in everything they say.
Are you an individual, or are you part of some collective and there is some other mind in the collective that you let do your thinking for you?
If you find yourself watching a lot of people doing something and instinctively you think "Wow, there is something really OFF here" then perhaps there is. The quantity of people should not have you questioning yourself or doubting yourself. The quantity of people though might be a good reason to go INVESTIGATE something. If you think it is OFF then go investigate it. You'll either confirm why it is off or you'll find out what makes it make sense and you might start to agree.
If a million people suddenly believe all a person need do is flap their arms and they will be able to fly, they won't suddenly start flying. Truth and facts do not care about consensus or quantity of people.
So do you care about the truth?
Or perhaps do you instead care more about fitting in?
I find myself not fitting in more and more these days. Finding the truth is not always popular
The truth is often very unpopular. So do we face it, learn from it, and deal with reality? That is what I try to do. I fail sometimes too... yet I am willing to admit failure and learn from it.
That is excellent post about what is truth... Some times truth is what we want to hear... sometimes from who we like to hear... Actually there is no real truth or wrong! Just there is only one truth and that is I Upvoted this post, Followed you. :) Hugs from Spain.
Truth can be subjective since it is based upon what each of us know. Facts on the other hand are not subjective. I sometimes forget to differentiate between the two.
You are right! As you said truth is not popular nowadays. Yes again, fact is objective! There is differences between them! We sometimes can't notice which is true which is fact! Thank you for this discussion!
If I may be so bold...
"You can see this at work when if there is any encounter by someone challenging a GROUP-...-Those subjects that matter to life should be treated with the utmost care and vigilance." That about sums up the non voter issue. majority does not vote,system is not broke. Admit needs an overhaul. but just ignore it it will fix itself... I vote w/ my $ (the Fed Reserve debt note that's part of the problem!?)...not My President mentality... smh.
I LoL at them !!! I know a lot of non voters that sure enjoy smoking pot now that voters pass laws to make it legal. I tell them your welcome thanks for doing nothing!
... Maybe I am just a stupid pothead and I am missing something... lol
;-)
We see this everywhere all the time, I tend to call them herds of sheeple. They for whatever reason just go with the flow and disregard logic as the normal way of life.
This is not always a bad thing and it is how trend setting is done but to just blindly follow is a very destructive path to walk. There are no easy answers as to how to thin the herd, the answer is self worth. Those who believe in nothing will fall for anything is an old saying that always rings true more in the digital world than the real one.
It is much easier to hide behind a screen and go with the crowd when you can log off at the end of the day, many do that and never give it more thought. It is sad really, many people get all of their self worth just going with whatever is popular and not thinking.
Great post as always!
Oh come on now, what is the matter with you? Did you not get the memo on Borg mentality is the way of the future? ;-)
I treat life like a challenge. So if it is "futile" then it is likely something I might be interested in.
You know those life challenges can get interesting ;-)
It's funny, I was reading something just today about a march where the article said "dozens marched" but 8 is not dozens.
Truth is truth, it is perceived, I myself have only found one eternal truth out there - - Change, has, does, and will happen. It does not matter if it is in the past yesterday or 80 million years ago, shit changed. It does not matter if it is today, stuff happens, and it will not matter if it is tomorrow, it will change. - - - Only "Truth" I know.
Facts they rarely change they take a long long time for them to change if ever. "He pulled the trigger" it is not going to change that is a fact "He pulled the trigger", motivations and events surrounding the pulling of the trigger may change, but the Fact "He pulled the trigger" is not going to change. I don't care if a billion people claim he did not pull the trigger, that it was a result of a sudden noise that startled him that made his "finger tighten on the trigger", he still pulled the trigger, that is the fact. everything else surrounding the event is the truth as people and individuals saw it.
Not so much about the truth, I do care about the facts though. I don't worry to much about fitting in though, there are a lot of areas in life that I do fit, so I don't really care to make the effort to fit in where I do not fit.
Yes. I differentiated in another comment between truth and fact. I usually do that in my posts but was in the zone and didn't do so this time.
In a world where one can hire a crowd to push one's agenda both on the streets and on line, it is more true than ever to say that weight of numbers is a poor indicator of truth.
I'd rather always be curious and ask why. Believing something blindly because a million people follow it sounds absurd to me. Such is the concept of God.
Yes, I intentionally didn't point out any specific examples because it can be applied to pretty much any topic. We must not let us decide truth due to quantity of people. It may be worth investigating though.
I used to say I am an Atheist/Deist. I still feel that way. A Deist is not the same as a theist.
That form of creator, catalyst, simulator, god, I cannot prove or disprove. I also cannot prove or disprove atheism. They actually both have the same requirements from me. "Observe and use reason."
Deists do not believe in revealed religions, prophets, and the written texts of religions. Yet they do believe in some catalyst, creator, initial event. They don't know what it is. They just observe and use reason. Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Payne were both such people. Albert Einstein also had numerous decidedly deist quotes.
The ultimate states we cannot explain and I am skeptical we ever will...
Has their ALWAYS been something? If the answer is yes then atheism works.
Was their nothing and then this universe was created? If the answer is yes then there was some catalyst, or creator event.
With that said a deist doesn't typically believe the creation stories in religions.
However, in the "concept of god" in theistic religions I personally believe you are right and it is predominantly an appeal to popularity, appeal to tradition, and appeal to authority fallacy (don't challenge the church heretic, infidel, blasphemer).
There is a possibility of a creator, yes. Maybe, we humans and other beings were given power by the creator.
We can speculate on many things. I'm pretty good at it. The danger is when we choose to decide speculation is fact, and then we convince others of this as well. :)
Human nature. That doesn't mean there may not be something to our speculations. Yet a speculation is basically the hypothesis stage of the scientific method and there is an extreme danger in passing off a hypothesis as fact without proof.