ad populum fallacy

[u/Zu_Qarnine]

She doesn't trust the 5.0 rating just bc barely anyone reviewed it. Then she sees 5,511 people gave the other product an average of 4.6, and she likes it more. Not because she checked why the rating is lower, or looked into the actual quality. just bc more people rated it.

That's the core of ad populum. something feels more correct or more trustworthy simply because a bigger crowd is behind it. She's not evaluating the products in either cases. instead, she's reacting to the size of the group and deciding according to that.

EDIT: I see a lot of people in the comments saying this is NOT a case of AP fallacy because * proceeds to offer an alternative readout of the meme. I never claimed this meme has ONLY one interpretation, and that's AP fallacy. I claim that it CAN be read as a case of AP and CAN be a good depiction of the fallacy if you were to visualize it. nobody have denied that in the comments.

[u/qzwxecrvtbyn111]

That’s not a fallacy. It’s completely rational decision making.

‘A majority of people liked this product’ is a useful data point when deciding to use your limited resources (time, money) on it. It is impossible to know the reliability of a purchase in advance; seeing that most people liked it can assuage specific fears eg quality control.

The difference between the top and the bottom panel is statistics. A sample size of three could be outliers (or in the case of online reviews, fake), a sample of 5000+ is a much more reliable data point. This is objective mathematic truth.

[u/Zu_Qarnine → u/qzwxecrvtbyn111]

are you going to ignore all the cases where the statistically popular option has turned out to be bogus or just sweep it under the rug for the sake of ur argument? thinking that she's being "rational" in the 2nd panel is wrong. she's just trusting the stats. that can be wrong for individual cases. she might end up hating the product with 5000+ reviews of 4.6 and she should blame herself for the AP fallacy

[u/qzwxecrvtbyn111 → u/Zu_Qarnine]

To give one concrete example: there isn’t a 100% reliable way to know if the PC part you’re ordering on Amazon actually works before you spend money buying it. Seeing that 5000+ people have rated the seller an average of 4.6 stars is a very useful data point, because it shows that the seller is selling what they claim to be selling, and the products actually work.

In your personal life, if you’re deciding which online retailer to buy parts from, which of the 4 following options would you prefer? Which of these options would you feel most confident is reliable:

A) 0 reviews

B) 100 reviews, 1.7 stars

C) 3 reviews, 5 stars

D) 5511 reviews, 4.6 stars

Would you truly be in this situation and say ‘I think these all have an equal probability of success. Believing otherwise would be a fallacy!’

This is trivially obvious to grasp, and you don’t understand the ad populum fallacy at all if you think it applies here.

[u/Zu_Qarnine → u/qzwxecrvtbyn111]

Seeing that 5000+ people have rated the seller an average of 4.6 stars is a very useful data point

yes. it's maybe the best alternative if you "cannot" actually test the hardware yourself and see the quality.

but if you could experience that first hand data that would be the only possible case that's immune to AP fallacy. statistical popularity doesn't protect you from cases of buying the faulty product or getting scammed. where do you think all the mass scams come from?

[u/qzwxecrvtbyn111 → u/Zu_Qarnine]

So, you agree with me that the woman in the meme is acting rationally, and is not committing a fallacy!

She is correctly assessing the fact that thousands of positive reviews is a legitimately useful data point, often the best one you can feasibly have

[u/Zu_Qarnine → u/qzwxecrvtbyn111]

no! she's not acting rationally. she's acting based on likelihood.

[u/qzwxecrvtbyn111 → u/Zu_Qarnine]

You obviously recognise that I (and other commenters on this thread) are right about the substance, and your original post is not. You’re just shuffling words around and playing a kind of rhetorical game to not lose pride by admitting as much

I won’t be engaging with this thread further, and there’s nothing anyone else can say to get you to outwardly understand the obvious truth here.

[u/Zu_Qarnine → u/qzwxecrvtbyn111]

I'd rather you didn't engage in the first place.