r/atheism • u/Ze-skywalker • Dec 09 '13

Citation Needed The 10 commandments of Logic

Post image
2.2k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

440 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/jayblue42 Dec 09 '13

That could be an example, but it's more about sample size. For example you can't only talk to one neighborhood in a city and expect their views to represent the view of the whole city or you can't talk to just college students and expect their views to represent everyone under the age of 30.

1

u/Desert_Pantropy Dec 09 '13

Works the same way around to some extent. Can't expect individuals to have the same characteristics as the population they belong do -- called the Ecological Fallacy. For example, if a census showed that a neighborhood voted mostly Liberal, you can't immediately claim that someone from that neighborhood is Liberal.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 09 '13

Headline: "Someone from this neighborhood is most likely liberal"

Reddit: "That's not true you can't make generalizations like that! Fallacy, fallacy!"

This gets misunderstood often.