The Ice cream man fallacy.
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:22pm
Thread Topic: The Ice cream man fallacy.
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I live in Northern America, and every once in a while I hear the wonderful tune of Green Sleeves jingling down my street followed by the creepy guy in the ice cream van. Isn't that tune like the mating call of the child molester? What sort of parent would send their child towards that noise?
"Come on kids! It's the pedophilia jingle!"
Sorry. Sorry. That's totally inappropriate. That's awful what I just did there if you think about it. I just made the assumption that having an ice cream van makes you a pedophile. That's awful. It's probably the other way around.
That's what's known in the philosophy of logic as a fallacy. Causation and correlation, yeah. You know about that? Yeah? Post hoc ergo proptor hoc? Logic nerds? Post hoc ergo propter hoc? After this, therefor, because of this.
This is something that we as humans do all the time. It's a flaw that we use with logic. We assume that because one event happens after another event that the first event caused the second one. So we assume that if we see B happening after A, that A caused B. But it can't be the other way around. Or that there could be no cause or correlation between them at all. It could be just a complete coincidence that all ice cream men are pedophiles.
Or another thing we don't think about is that there might be a third factor. Something that has a relationship between both A and B but doesn't imply a relationship between them. A third factor that we didn't realize was causing them. Like Having a comb over(C) might cause you to both (A)be a pedophile, and (B) drive an ice cream truck.
Maybe like a Native American tribal rain dance. Alright? Like, Cherokee indians doing a rain dance. (I didn't do a huge amount of research for this part. So a Cherokee rain dance might be somewhere between very accurate, and very racist.)
Alright, so you have some Cherokee indians two and a half thousand years ago having a party. They're having a wicked party. Alright? They have a great night and at the end of the night they go to bed. But when they wake up the next morning, the drought they had been experiencing for the past few weeks has suddenly broken. It rains and the drought is over. The logical fallacy dictates that they will draw a correlation between their dancing and the rain coming, and then for the next thousand years, every time they have a drought, they do a rain dance. A slightly racist rain dance. The dance didn't help them, but they drew a line of causation and correlation between their dance and the rain.
Or a more contemporary example. Maybe someone reading this has had a bad headache for the past few days, or maybe their necks have hurt. And then later tonight, they drink some hot chocolate, and in the morning, they head or their neck feels better. They might draw a connection between their hot chocolate and their problem going away. And they make the assumption that the hot chocolate actually cured their ailments.
Humans are funny.
Or maybe like a College basketball player, right? He prays on his knees one night. He prays to God for victory in the game the next night. It's his big final and he prays for a win. And the next day, not only does his team win, but he shoots the winning basket. And he draws a correlation or causation between his prayer and the win.
He makes the assumption that God took a moment off from his regular job of systematically murdering African babies, and that God helped him win his game.
So do you understand what I'm saying? You have to be very careful about what connections you make. And be sure of yourself before you make assumptions. -
And never trust ice cream men.
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Butterflykitten NewbieThis is extremely interesting! :) Yay interesting stuff!
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They assume it because they like to believe god's helping them.Praying is not a bad thing actually,it gives them confidence and a positive view.I don't say god helps them or anything.
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I'm assuming this is connected to the flaws of Christianity.
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tl;dr People can be stupid.
If people need the help of an invisible wizard to feel confident in themselves, then we have bigger problems than ice cream men.
Yes Hik, it is. -
I just don't like ice cream men in general.
The only time I bought ice cream from one, was when they were selling a Sonic the Hedgehog ice cream pop.
Sonic was delicious....
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