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Nirvana Fallacy
The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the "perfect solution fallacy". By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely unrealistic—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be "better". It is also related to the No true Scotsman, appeal to purity fallacy where the person rejects all criticism on basis of it being applied to a non ideal case. History In ''s:fr:La Bégueule, La Bégueule'' (1772), Voltaire wrote ''Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien'', which is often transl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the Fallacy of composition, fallacies of composition and Fallacy of division, division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into cate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seat Belt
A seat belt, also known as a safety belt or spelled seatbelt, is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduces the likelihood of death or serious injury in a traffic collision by reducing the force of secondary impacts with interior strike hazards, by keeping occupants positioned correctly for maximum effectiveness of the airbag (if equipped), and by preventing occupants being ejected from the vehicle in a crash or if the vehicle rolls over. When in motion, the driver and passengers are traveling at the same speed as the vehicle. If the vehicle suddenly halts or crashes, the occupants continue at the same speed the vehicle was going before it stopped. A seat belt applies an opposing force to the driver and passengers to prevent them from falling out or making contact with the interior of the car (especially preventing contact with, or going ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire. Methodologies to examine wishful thinking are diverse. Various disciplines and schools of thought examine related mechanisms such as neural circuitry, human cognition and emotion, types of bias, procrastination, motivation, optimism, attention and environment. This concept has been examined as a fallacy. It is related to the concept of wishful seeing. Some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results. This is called the " Pygmalion effect". Christopher Booker discussed wishful thinking in terms of "the fantasy cycle", which he described as "a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history – and in storytelling." He added: "When we embark on a course of action which is unconscious ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollyanna Principle
The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative. This subconscious bias is similar to the Barnum effect. Development The name derives from the 1913 novel '' Pollyanna'' by Eleanor H. Porter describing a girl who plays the "glad game"—trying to find something to be glad about in every situation. The novel has been adapted to film several times, most famously in 1920 and 1960. An early use of the name "Pollyanna" in psychological literature was in 1969 by Boucher and Osgood who described a ''Pollyanna hypothesis'' as a universal human tendency to use positive words more frequently and diversely than negative words in communicating. Empirical evidence for this tendency has been provided by computational analyse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Politician's Syllogism
The politician's syllogism, also known as the politician's logic or the politician's fallacy, is a logical fallacy of the form: #We must do something. #This is something. #Therefore, we must do this. The politician's fallacy was identified in a 1988 episode of the BBC television political sitcom '' Yes, Prime Minister'' titled " Power to the People", and has taken added life on the Internet. The syllogism, invented by fictional British civil servants, has been quoted in the real British Parliament. The syllogism has also been quoted in American political discussion. As a meme, the quasi-formal name "politician's syllogism" is clunky and not widely known; the notion is often conveyed by invoking the central phrase this is something with ironic import, such as when a major league sports team whose season is in dire straits exchanges an aging athlete with a bad leg for an aging athlete with a bad arm. Overview In ''Yes, Prime Minister'', the term is discussed between the Cabinet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good
Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism that means insistence on perfection often prevents implementation of good improvements. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible; one should not let the struggle for perfection stand in the way of appreciating or executing on something that is imperfect but still of value. Origin In the English-speaking world the aphorism is commonly attributed to Voltaire, who quoted an Italian proverb in his ' in 1770: "". It subsequently appeared in his moral poem, , which starts: Previously, around 1726, in his , Montesquieu wrote "" ('The best is the mortal enemy of the good'). Antecedents Aristotle and other classical philosophers propounded the principle of the golden mean which counsels against extremism in general. Its sense in English literature can be traced back to Shakespeare. In his tragedy ''King Lear'' (1606), the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103: Variations The 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimism Bias
Optimism bias or optimistic bias is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. It is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age. Autistic people are less susceptible to this kind of bias. It has also been reported in other animals, such as rats and birds. Four factors can cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood. The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung cancer or disease than other smokers, first-time bungee jumpers believing that they are less at risk of an injury than other jumpers, or traders who think they are less exposed to potential l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emotional Memory
Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events. The activity of emotionally enhanced memory retention can be linked to human evolution; during early development, responsive behavior to environmental events would have progressed as a process of trial and error. Survival depended on behavioral patterns that were repeated or reinforced through life and death situations. Through evolution, this process of learning became genetically embedded in humans and all animal species in what is known as flight or fight instinct. Artificially inducing this instinct through traumatic physical or emotional stimuli essentially creates the same physiological condition that heightens memory retention by exciting neuro-chemical activity affecting areas of the brain responsible for encodi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cutting Off The Nose To Spite The Face
"Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" is an English-language idiom, used to describe an irrationally self-destructive act taken in pursuit of revenge. The phrase often takes the form of a proverb, "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face". An early record of this phrase appears in the 12th Century writings of Peter of Blois, who referred to it as a "common saying" ''(Proverbium vulgare)'' and recorded it as: "He who cuts off his nose takes poor revenge for a shame inflicted on him." ''("Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum.")'' Modern Use and Examples Popular Culture Taylor Swift's 2019 single, "The Archer", provides a straightforward example of the phrase:“I cut off my nose just to spite my face / And I hate my reflection for years and years.”An invocation of the idiom that emphasises the everyday character of spite which is quickly regretted appears in Seamus Heaney's 1966 poem, "Gravities":"Lovers with barrages of hot insult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appeal To Worse Problems
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies. Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classified by their structure (formal fallacies) or content (informal fallacies). Informal fallacies, the larger group, may then be subdivided into categories such as improper presumption, faulty generalization, error in assigning causation, and relevance, among others. The use of fallacies is common when the speaker's goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. When fallacies are used, the premise should be recognized as not well-grounded, the conclusion as unproven (but not necessarily false), and the argument as unsound. Formal fallacies A formal fallacy is an error in the argument's form. All formal fallacies are types of . * Appeal to probability – taking something for granted because it wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appeal To Consequences
Appeal to consequences, also known as ''argumentum ad consequentiam'' (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view. In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments that assert a conclusion's truth value (''true or false'') without regard to the formal preservation of the truth from the premises; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's consequential desirability (''good or bad'', or ''right or wrong'') instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thalidomide
Thalidomide, sold under the brand names Contergan and Thalomid among others, is an oral administered medication used to treat a number of cancers (e.g., multiple myeloma), graft-versus-host disease, and many skin disorders (e.g., complications of leprosy such as skin lesions). Updated as required. Thalidomide has been used to treat conditions associated with HIV: aphthous ulcers, HIV-associated wasting syndrome, diarrhea, and Kaposi's sarcoma, but increases in HIV viral load have been reported. Common side effects include sleepiness, rash, and dizziness. Severe side effects include tumor lysis syndrome, blood clots, and peripheral neuropathy. Thalidomide is a known human teratogen and carries an extremely high risk of severe, life-threatening birth defects if administered or taken during pregnancy. It causes skeletal deformities such as Amelia (birth defect), amelia (absence of legs and/or arms), absence of bones, and phocomelia (malformation of the limbs). A single dose of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
