What's the name of this logical fallacy?
I can't find it in RationalWiki.
It's basically an overstatement.
Imagine causal factors a, b and c that cause effect x.
We don't know what their causal weights are.
But someone insists a is the greatest.
I notice a lot of political discussions degenerate towards this conversation-ender.
They're insisting that a is the greatest factor, so that they can drive to the conclusion that a is what needs to be increased or decreased, in order to decrease some social ill or whatever else. That's the motivation to commit the error. It's either empirically true or it isn't, but we don't have that information and they're insisting they know without any evidence.
It's basically an overstatement.
Imagine causal factors a, b and c that cause effect x.
We don't know what their causal weights are.
But someone insists a is the greatest.
I notice a lot of political discussions degenerate towards this conversation-ender.
They're insisting that a is the greatest factor, so that they can drive to the conclusion that a is what needs to be increased or decreased, in order to decrease some social ill or whatever else. That's the motivation to commit the error. It's either empirically true or it isn't, but we don't have that information and they're insisting they know without any evidence.
Comments (6)
Also, "Rational"Wiki >:O
It basically just boils down to people arguing over opinions, and has very little to do with a scientific approach. That said, they could very well be right, if a, b and c are all explanatory variables of the response variable x, then one of the explanatory variables could have significantly more influence than the others.
1. Fallacy of oversimplified cause
2. Cherry picking
Seems like fallacy of the simplified cause is the closest answer.
It happens a lot with me. I'm the cause of everything that's bad (so people around me say). Worst part is, I think it's true. LOL