Entries tagged with fallacies

Current Mood: aching

Entry tags:

FILL: Superstitions

Original Posting 16 Dec 2009

I caught part of a "Cool Japan" TV show the other morning. This was a panel of foreigners, who were looking at various Japanese trends or news events. In this case, they had interviewers in Tokyo in the streets asking Japanese young women -- teenagers -- how they make wishes come true. They dug in their purses and started showing off... candy wrappers with 10 pictures? Train tickets with matching first and last numbers -- 9549? Or on a cell phone, certain graphics and their colors apparently have mystical interpretations. If you get a red one, you're going to get a new boyfriend?

During the panel discussion, a British man declared that children might believe that kind of thing, but adults certainly don't have such superstitions. No one seemed to feel like arguing with that, but I'm not so sure. How many people happily buy lottery tickets at the store that has had more winners, because you're more likely to win there? Or listen to certain stock market advisors, because some people got rich listening to them? Hasty generalization, along with other fallacies, certainly give us a disposition to creating superstitions. And once you start practicing, it can be difficult to disprove. Since I started wearing a garlic necklace, I haven't seen any vampires -- so I better keep wearing it, right?

I got to thinking about the temple sticks here in Japan. At many temples, you pick up a round case -- like a piece of bamboo with a bottom and a top. There is a small hole in the top. You shake this and tilt it until a single stick falls out. The number or symbol on the end of this stick is a fortune -- pick up your fortune from the nearby case and read it. Then, if you don't like the fortune, fold it into a thin strip and tie it on a nearby tree -- there's usually a bunch of other fortunes that have been tied up too.

The interesting thing is that while this is relatively random, people like the feeling of influence or control. I shook the case -- so what falls out is my fortune.

So much of our lives is really not under our control. National economies, grand disasters, even the fickleness of personal relationships, are not really something that we can simply decide and control. Still, any influence is better than none, right? So there's a temptation to look for things that might improve the odds, things that might let us shake the case.

And I'm not sure that it makes any sense to criticize such superstitions. After all, if someone carries around a lucky ticket, or a lucky rabbit's foot, and it makes them feel more empowered, more in control of their lives, what's the harm?

Current Mood: confounded

Entry tags:

FILL: Staying Awake with Fallacies?

Original posting 1 December 2008

[Fair warnng -- I'm likely to be a bit hit-or-miss this week -- I'm at a conference in China, and I'm supposed to have a chapter ready for a book next week -- software engineering stuff, but I do need to put some time in. So if I seem to be somewhat scarcer than usual, that's probably it. Later!]

Slip sliding away

The other day I ended up in one of these situations that I get caught in from time to time. You see, the students were giving their final presentations, so from one o'clock to five o'clock -- four hours -- I was sitting in the middle of a number of Japanese colleagues, listening to Japanese students rattle on in Japanese. I wasn't really expected to ask questions, understand, or even stay awake, really, although I do tend to try to look somewhat interested. At least I stayed awake -- not everyone around me did that, even.

Anyway, one of my tricks for this is mental puzzles. In particular, this time, I picked a fallacy ahead of time, and thought about various situations or twists on the fallacy. This time it was a slippery slope fallacy -- the notion that having taken a step in this direction, we are automatically committed to going too far, tumbling down the slippery slope into the abyss.

Some of the twists and turns that I thought about include:

-- when the weeds start to crowd the pond, it's already too late -- so kill them early and all.
-- when the snowball hits the slope, the avalanche won't stop.
-- fairness versus special cases and situational awareness: if we do something for one case, must we do it for everyone?
-- anti-slippery slope: even after the most energetic strike, the pins stop bouncing eventually.
-- positive feedback cycles always grow to the limits of their environment, and then die from destroying it.
-- once you let a fuse, it's hard to put out the fire, forest fire, explosion
-- providing atmosphere to one crew member usually means letting everyone catch their breath

Not all the best, and not even all of the variations that I can come up with, but I find having this kind of a mental puzzle in hand can be useful when I run into the ceremonial meeting madness.

Who knows, maybe you will too. There are plenty of fallacies to play with, and we certainly need to think about the various ways that we express these fallacies. Philosophers, critical thinkers, and other such folks so often seem to use very drab descriptions, or Latin names. Ad Hominem? Do you get that with bacon and eggs? No? Okay, how about calling it a smear attack? And how many different ways do we mix up personality, individual history and actions, and other such irrelevancies with a person's claim or argument?

Current Mood: twisting

Entry tags:

FILL: Staying Awake with Fallacies?

Slip sliding away

The other day I ended up in one of these situations that I get caught in from time to time. You see, the students were giving their final presentations, so from one o'clock to five o'clock -- four hours -- I was sitting in the middle of a number of Japanese colleagues, listening to Japanese students rattle on in Japanese. I wasn't really expected to ask questions, understand, or even stay awake, really, although I do tend to try to look somewhat interested. At least I stayed awake -- not everyone around me did that, even.

Anyway, one of my tricks for this is mental puzzles. In particular, this time, I picked a fallacy ahead of time, and thought about various situations or twists on the fallacy. This time it was a slippery slope fallacy -- the notion that having taken a step in this direction, we are automatically committed to going too far, tumbling down the slippery slope into the abyss.

Some of the twists and turns that I thought about include:

when the weeds start to crowd the pond, it's already too late -- so kill them early and all.
when the snowball hits the slope, the avalanche won't stop.
fairness versus special cases and situational awareness: if we do something for one case, must we do it for everyone?
anti-slippery slope: even after the most energetic strike, the pins stop bouncing eventually.
positive feedback cycles always grow to the limits of their environment, and then die from destroying it.
once you've lit a fuse, it's hard to put out the fire, forest fire, explosion
providing atmosphere to one crew member usually means letting everyone catch their breath

Not all the best, and not even all of the variations that I can come up with, but I find having this kind of a mental puzzle in hand can be useful when I run into the ceremonial meeting madness.

Who knows, maybe you will too. There are plenty of fallacies to play with, and we certainly need to think about the various ways that we express these fallacies. Philosophers, critical thinkers, and other such folks so often seem to use very drab descriptions, or Latin names. Ad Hominem? Do you get that with bacon and eggs? No? Okay, how about calling it a smear attack? And how many different ways do we mix up personality, individual history and actions, and other such irrelevancies with a person's claim or argument?

rocking around the clock, even around in twists!