There’s a bit of a trend among TAs to cite something they call the “salient exemplar fallacy”. I don’t know how this fallacy is defined (assuming it is) and I’ve only ever come across references to it by trans activists.
It looks very much to me as though it’s a deceitful attempt to make the perfectly reasonable use of examples appear like a scary logical fallacy in order to frighten people into silence. It’s yet another Motte & Bailey: on the few occasions I’ve challenged anyone on the claim, they’ve slithered back to the perfectly reasonable “examples are not necessarily representative of a general population”, which nobody is claiming anyway.
There’s a meme going around, which I can’t find right now, stating outright that use of the “salient exemplar fallacy” is automatically a “hate tactic”, whatever one of those is.
It’s entirely possible that there really is a salient exemplar fallacy and I’ve missed it, but even if that’s true and however it’s defined, it’s being used as a Motte & Bailey, which is another (informal) fallacy.
It’s entirely possible that there really is a salient exemplar fallacy and I’ve missed it, but even if that’s true and however it’s defined, it’s being used as a Motte & Bailey, which is another (informal) fallacy.
I’d check my handy Skeptics Guide to the Universe fallacy list, but that particular well has been permantently poisoned for me.
Yeah, same kind of deal but more scary and logicky-sounding, I guess.
Of course anecdotes can be evidence for the right kind of hypothesis, we can’t just automatically dismiss something as evidence in every case because it’s an anecdote. People who cry ‘anecdote’ are often up to no good, in my experience.
But I think there’s a subtle difference here, perhaps too subtle for me to explain well after a long day.
As I understand “salient exemplar” as a linguistic term, it’s a kind of cognitive bias: a conflation of things we notice because they’re unusual (man bites dog) with the norm. We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so rare, so when we see occasional man-bites-dog stories, we conclude that the majority of man/dog biting incidents are in that direction.
A highly regrettable example: stories about sexual or violent abuse by women are highly sensationalised because they’re so common, so people falsely get the impression that they happen all the time.
So I think the salient exemplar fallacy is supposed to be that picking the examples of trans people being bad is a fallacy because most trans people are not like that.
But this is a strawman, because nobody is claiming they are, we’re saying (for example) that if we create more opportunities for opportunistic abuse, then it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen.
Calling it a fancy-name fallacy is nothing more than a smokescreen designed to hide this sleight-of-hand. At least, I’ve only seen it used that way. Which is probably an example of the salient exemplar fallacy.
@6 actually that is an excellent explanation, and an interesting paradox. Media cover (or our attention is drawn to) a specific type of incident BECAUSE it is so rare, but because the media cover that specific type of incident to the exclusion of more common incidents those of us who consume media incorrectly perceive the specific type to be relatively common.
We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so rare, so when we see occasional man-bites-dog stories, we conclude that the majority of man/dog biting incidents are in that direction.
Which is why most people I talk to think plane and train crashes are the norm, that it happens all the time, while car crashes are fewer in number. They also think that every airplane/train crash ends in many deaths, because the small accidents that occur and no one is hurt are not newsworthy, any more than every fender bender in the car is newsworthy.
But…when using these examples, we are NOT saying all transwomen are this way. latsot is right about that. We ARE saying that we have no way of knowing which ones will be that way. It’s like men in general; I am aware that #NotAllMen (for one, my husband, who treats women with respect and dignity). That doesn’t mean that I can feel safe around random men especially ones I don’t know.
Exactly that, yes. That’s why I think the examples I’ve seen of TAs doing this are either deliberate exploits of ordinary human cognitive bias or by people who have rote learned or absorbed that behaviour without understanding it, because it sounded cool.
“A: This things do happen, they are a problem and they need to be recognized and addressed.”
“B: Ah, no, you’re just making a claim, it doesn’t really happen; notice how they always make claims and can’t substantiate them?”
“A: Here are a dozen examples of these things happening.”
“B: Ah, no, those are just anecdotes; notice how they always just give anecdotal evidence?”
A friend posted a “facts” article about trans-identified male athletes not really having any advantage over female athletes. Or maybe it was about male athletes, and female athletes catching up to them; I’ve read this kind of stuff before, and didn’t bother reading another one, the claims have been rebutted to my satisfaction. I was going to provide a link to Emma Hilton’s paper on the topic, but found that my friend has limited who can comment on the post, and I am not among the Chosen Few. I have a feeling I’m not going to remain in this friend’s good graces for too long; we’ll see.
Wait. latsot you asked me to change “We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so normal, so when we see occasional man-bites-dog stories, we conclude that the majority of man/dog biting incidents are in that direction” @ 6 to “We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so rare” and I did, but now I read the whole comment (I was rushing before because I had to leave) you were right the first time, weren’t you? We don’t see stories about normal things, because nobody cares.
Emma Hilton has been very informative about the general physical advantages that males retain over females regardless of lowered testosterone.
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1485363419570216960
Yes, how dare we look at individual examples of physical advantage.
There’s a bit of a trend among TAs to cite something they call the “salient exemplar fallacy”. I don’t know how this fallacy is defined (assuming it is) and I’ve only ever come across references to it by trans activists.
It looks very much to me as though it’s a deceitful attempt to make the perfectly reasonable use of examples appear like a scary logical fallacy in order to frighten people into silence. It’s yet another Motte & Bailey: on the few occasions I’ve challenged anyone on the claim, they’ve slithered back to the perfectly reasonable “examples are not necessarily representative of a general population”, which nobody is claiming anyway.
There’s a meme going around, which I can’t find right now, stating outright that use of the “salient exemplar fallacy” is automatically a “hate tactic”, whatever one of those is.
It’s entirely possible that there really is a salient exemplar fallacy and I’ve missed it, but even if that’s true and however it’s defined, it’s being used as a Motte & Bailey, which is another (informal) fallacy.
I was thinking it was a kind of hopped-up version of “anecdotal.”
I’d check my handy Skeptics Guide to the Universe fallacy list, but that particular well has been permantently poisoned for me.
Yeah, same kind of deal but more scary and logicky-sounding, I guess.
Of course anecdotes can be evidence for the right kind of hypothesis, we can’t just automatically dismiss something as evidence in every case because it’s an anecdote. People who cry ‘anecdote’ are often up to no good, in my experience.
But I think there’s a subtle difference here, perhaps too subtle for me to explain well after a long day.
As I understand “salient exemplar” as a linguistic term, it’s a kind of cognitive bias: a conflation of things we notice because they’re unusual (man bites dog) with the norm. We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so rare, so when we see occasional man-bites-dog stories, we conclude that the majority of man/dog biting incidents are in that direction.
A highly regrettable example: stories about sexual or violent abuse by women are highly sensationalised because they’re so common, so people falsely get the impression that they happen all the time.
So I think the salient exemplar fallacy is supposed to be that picking the examples of trans people being bad is a fallacy because most trans people are not like that.
But this is a strawman, because nobody is claiming they are, we’re saying (for example) that if we create more opportunities for opportunistic abuse, then it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen.
Calling it a fancy-name fallacy is nothing more than a smokescreen designed to hide this sleight-of-hand. At least, I’ve only seen it used that way. Which is probably an example of the salient exemplar fallacy.
@6 actually that is an excellent explanation, and an interesting paradox. Media cover (or our attention is drawn to) a specific type of incident BECAUSE it is so rare, but because the media cover that specific type of incident to the exclusion of more common incidents those of us who consume media incorrectly perceive the specific type to be relatively common.
Which is why most people I talk to think plane and train crashes are the norm, that it happens all the time, while car crashes are fewer in number. They also think that every airplane/train crash ends in many deaths, because the small accidents that occur and no one is hurt are not newsworthy, any more than every fender bender in the car is newsworthy.
But…when using these examples, we are NOT saying all transwomen are this way. latsot is right about that. We ARE saying that we have no way of knowing which ones will be that way. It’s like men in general; I am aware that #NotAllMen (for one, my husband, who treats women with respect and dignity). That doesn’t mean that I can feel safe around random men especially ones I don’t know.
Snap. While you were writing this I was writing the same thing in response to a tweet by Jolyon the Impossible.
iknklast:
Exactly that, yes. That’s why I think the examples I’ve seen of TAs doing this are either deliberate exploits of ordinary human cognitive bias or by people who have rote learned or absorbed that behaviour without understanding it, because it sounded cool.
“A: This things do happen, they are a problem and they need to be recognized and addressed.”
“B: Ah, no, you’re just making a claim, it doesn’t really happen; notice how they always make claims and can’t substantiate them?”
“A: Here are a dozen examples of these things happening.”
“B: Ah, no, those are just anecdotes; notice how they always just give anecdotal evidence?”
A friend posted a “facts” article about trans-identified male athletes not really having any advantage over female athletes. Or maybe it was about male athletes, and female athletes catching up to them; I’ve read this kind of stuff before, and didn’t bother reading another one, the claims have been rebutted to my satisfaction. I was going to provide a link to Emma Hilton’s paper on the topic, but found that my friend has limited who can comment on the post, and I am not among the Chosen Few. I have a feeling I’m not going to remain in this friend’s good graces for too long; we’ll see.
Wait. latsot you asked me to change “We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so normal, so when we see occasional man-bites-dog stories, we conclude that the majority of man/dog biting incidents are in that direction” @ 6 to “We don’t see dog-bites-man stories because they’re so rare” and I did, but now I read the whole comment (I was rushing before because I had to leave) you were right the first time, weren’t you? We don’t see stories about normal things, because nobody cares.
There is every possibility I have confused myself as well as everyone else.
I meant that we don’t notice very common things because they are so rarely reported and they are so rarely reported because they are so common.
He says, confusing everyone even more.
Sackbut:
It’s very common for TAs to demand citations but explicitly forbid anything by Emma in advance.
Some have a list of sources they will not accept.
Looking up the deleted comment I see you said change it to “common”…so now I’ve confused myself even more than even more.
I think I just phrased it poorly in the first place. I was thinking too far ahead and was supposed to be making falafel.
You were making falafel and didn’t invite us? What kind of friend are you anyway?
I was supposed to be making falafel.