This one is fairly self-explanatory. It means to draw conclusions from a limited set of data. One way, or the most common way perhaps, this affects people is stereotyping. I remember a line in a comedy film, someone refers to a man as “one of the worst men in the world”, and his retort is, “Have you met all the men in the world”?
In a way, whenever you stereotype someone you are wrong, technically, unless you have observed more than half of that population. But even then, you can be wrong. For example, you could do some research and find that it’s rare for women to marry a man who earns less money than him. So for the sake of argument, some data from 2019 in the US from Pew Research Center found that 25% of women are the primary breadwinners in a family (and so earn more). So as a generalisation, if some guy reasoned “If I want to find a partner, she’ll expect me to earn more than me, women just want money”, it isn’t really purely logic, although it would be true in some cases. As a pure, logical fact with no fallacies or distortions, you can say, “Some research in 2019 found that, at that time at the US, women were the primary earners in family units 25% of the time”, but who ever thinks or talks like that? Maybe lawyers; not good people 😛
So what if you say, “If I met some woman I liked, who liked me, then she would expect me to earn more than her.” Now this is perhaps a moot point. I was watching some well known commentator ranting online about this recently, although he was making some good points. He was roasting a video made by a woman who made a decent amount of money but can never date, and she’s complaining that men are so insecure and intimidated by successful women that earn more than them.
So this guy was really funny, although comedy is often based on uncomfortable truths that we’re not allowed to directly voice (which is why Americans have a first amendment right to parody). Most men would ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT if a rich woman fell in love with them and wanted to have relationnship where she paid for most things and was the primary bread-winner. I mean, think about it. Do you really know any man who would be ‘intimidated’ by that? The truth is that, even women that earn half as much as a man won’t even look at him unless he’s six feet tall, ripped, and ON THE WAY to earning ten times more, or a rich family or whatever.
He makes another good point also. Look at Hollywood movies about romance, and find one where the woman has all the money and pursues a man who has less to offer, not just financially even, but in any way, is way less attractive than her, or more disabled than her or whatever, it doesn’t exist — unless as a comedy or something.
I digress. Let’s look at the statement we are making using pure logical qualifiers, which are two conditional statements, IF THEN
IF I met a woman I liked and liked me, to have a relationship THEN she would expect me to earn more than her.
It’s illogical because the statistic doesn’t say it’s 100%. To be logical, the second condition would need to be THEN there is a one in four chance it would be OK for me to earn less.
But there is still so much that is wrong with it. To be technically correct, you need to add the tag at the end “according to a single study in a single country, which took data from [insert number here], which is actually 0.00001% of the global population”.
But the study could have included 99.99999% of the global population and there is just one instance of a woman earning more than a man, technically it would be incorrect. Not only that, it also involves another distortion, the FORTUNE TELLING error, can you definitely say that the only woman in the whole world wouldn’t meet you and fall for you?
Yes, we’re getting silly now, and also, who walks around thinking like this, tearing apart every single thought like a bigshot prosecution lawyer trying to send a murderer to the electric chair. That isn’t the goal of logic, or critical thinking, or sanity or whatever we’re doing here. You don’t turn your mind into an analytical, cold version of AI. But you have a tool, based on being sane. If you spend time observing and recording the contents of your mind and found that this was a theme, an underlying thought driving much, or significant parts of your stream of spontaneous consciousness, in the form of thoughts, insights, daydreams and FOCUS, i.e. DWELLING ON EVIDENCE THAT CONFIRMS THIS (aka Texas sharp-shooter/mental filter, keep reading….) then you have the tool of sanity.
You’ve uncovered this particular thing, this thought, and it creates a lot of stream of consciousness and this always reflects to a self-concept in some way. So you can drill down, to find the self-concept at the bottom of it all. Look at the distortion, “women marry richer men”. WHY DOES THIS MATTER “I don’t have/can’t make enough” WHY DOES THIS MATTER. “I won’t ever have a partner. ” WHY DOES THIS MATTER. “I’ll never experience intimacy. ” WHY DOES THIS MATTER. “I’ll feel lonely. ” WHY DOES THIS MATTER. … I don’t know, actually.
But what is the self-concept that drives the thinking? If you were a millionaire, then a billionaire partner wouldn’t consider you. The thought chain is full of insanity, but the underlying self-concept is I AM UNWORTHY. You want to have the thought that if you met someone you liked whom you clicked with, then it would be possible to get together but because of some statistic, you are unworthy and it couldn’t happen, and it keeps you from the actual need, which is intimacy and/or meaning. So now we have something we can work with.
Let’s move onto the next distortion.