Jesus is the way, the truth and the Life. It is often important to know how to establish truth among men for the spirit to help bring them to the ultimate truth: Jesus Christ.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain
It’s dangerous to think that man knows everything there is to know. It is even more dangerous to think that if one man knows it, then everyone will know about it. Trade secrets are often kept locked up in corporate vaults. How long was KFC’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices kept? Besides lots of things kept secret, you also have lies that propagate as false ideas. Science is not immune to lies accepted by the majority. Roughly from the 1600s til about the time of Einstein(1900s): Lumifierous Aether was thought to be how light traveled. To Restate: The reason all people don’t do everything the most optimal way or know all the facts are: Facts being kept secret, and facts being occluded by lies.
It’s such a dangerous way of thinking to appeal to the majority that it is one major illogical and erroneous things they teach in early philosophy class: The fallacy of populism, aka fallacy of the majority, aka bandwagon philosophy.
From: https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/popular.html
Three forms of this
I: Argumentum ad Populum (an appeal to popularity, public opinion or to the majority) is an argument, often emotively laden, for the acceptance of an unproved conclusion by adducing irrelevant evidence based on the feelings, prejudices, or beliefs of a large group of people.
How many times have you talked to someone and they get emotionally charged instead of having logic and facts to back em up? They believe what they want to believe even if it is not truth. No amount of facts, first hand evidence, school, law or history will convince them otherwise.
II: Snob Appeal: the fallacy of attempting to prove a conclusion by appealing to what the elite, the noteworthy, the wealthy, or celebrities think or feel about a subject which is outside their field of knowledge.
In this appeal to majority, it’s the idea that someone people look up to or are popular even if they’re knowledge is outside the realm of the scope of the discussion. Look at Joe Namath getting paid to push products on television. Lots of famous celebrities get paid to say stuff they may or may not agree with. These celebrities then influence people because they’re popular.
III: Bandwagon: the fallacy of attempting to prove a conclusion on the grounds that all, a majority, or many people think, believe, and feel it is true.
The main issue with the bandwagon fallacy is the mere fact that many people agree on something often does not imply that what they agree on is true.
IV: The Argumentum ad Captandum (Vulgus) (captivation of the masses): an emotive argument devised to appeal to the popular favor of an unthinking crowd, often used in advertising and political speech.
V: Consensus Gentium (the general consent of mankind): “the notion that some things which all men will be found to agree upon as right, real, just, or attractive, and that these things are, therefore, in fact right, real, just or attractive.”
VI:Argumentum ad Judicium (nonfallacious): Arguments from probability or knowledge — the reasoning is based on the nature of things.
VII:Argumentum ad Passiones: an appeal to strong feelings, emotions, or enthusiasm rather than judgment in order to establish a conclusion. So instead of providing reasons or evidence for the truth of a conclusion, strong emotion is invoked to impart belief in a conclusion.
VIII: The Ad Populum as an Inductive Argument: As we have seen, not all argumentum ad populum arguments are fallacious arguments. The ad populum appeal can be a correct inductive argument when what most persons or an exclusive group or persons believe is relevant and provides acceptable evidence for what is true.
IX: Ad Populum Distinguished from Other Informal Fallacies: Other fallacies which can appear to be similar to argumenta ad populum include:
IX_a:Hasty Generalization: the fallacy whereby an overgeneralized conclusion is based on insufficient or complete lack of evidence .
[This is the idea of not fully vetting a fact before moving on to the next point. Hasty Generalization never fully establishes the steps as valid before leading to the conclusion. This is why knowledge is a very slow process to establish when parties disagree and patience must be established if you respect the other individual.]
IX_b: Argumentum ad Baculum (appeal to threat or force): when an appeal intended to invoke fear is irrelevant to the truth of a point at issue is pressed upon the public.
[We’ve all seen fear been pushed to change policy. Heck, people are more afraid today since fear was bought into. Fear is a mental disease and it is often more deadly than physical disease.]
IX_c: Argumentum ad Verecundiam: Identification of the ad populum fallacy (either snob appeal or a given reference group’s bandwagon effect) can occasionally overlap with identification of an ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) when the irrelevant authorities cited are an exclusive or elite group.
IX_d: Argumentum ad Misericordiam (argument from pity or misery): The ad misericordiam fallacy occurs when pity, misery, or a related emotion such as sympathy or compassion is used as an excessive or irrelevant appeal in support of a conclusion.
[It is good to help oppressed people, but then groups all want to appear to play the victim.]
IX_e: Argumentum ad Hominem (argument against the person): the ad hominem fallacy occurs when the character or circumstances of an individual is attacked instead of attempting to refute what is claimed.
[If everyone says person X should be ignored, then they ignore em. Common instances of this are the news slandering a person or group nonstop until people believe it’s fine to slander em. Or people talking behind a person’s back to their acquaintances to establish lack of credibility instead of directly with them and reasoning for yourself. Both of those are failures of thinking.
IX_f: Ignoratio Elenchi (irrelevant conclusion): the fallacy of reaching a conclusion different from the point at issue is often taken to include all fallacies of relevance.
[It’s common for people for X conclusion to be met. So because they want to be right so much, they use every flawed way of thinking possible to get from reality to where they want to go. This is the land of the ‘dirty trickster arguer’, a person who doesn’t care about truth, but just wants their way to be pushed. This is common in the laughable, political, attack ads you see on tv.]
X Vox Populi Vox Dei: (the voice of the people [is] the voice of God)[86] — this derisive phrase attests to the disdain of the madness of crowds as reflected in such phenomena as hysteria of the speculative booms of the South Sea Joint-Stock Company, the Compagnie du Mississippi, or Dutch tulip mania.
In conclusion, I’m sure everyone can agree that people disagree these days. There’s a certain rule set by which humanity establishes knowledge, and the realm is known as philosophy. It is the root of sciences. Philosophy is grounded in truth, logic and reason. You cannot establish knowledge by rejecting logic and reason to grab hold of emotion to claim things are the way you want them to be.
I hope to be educational to my friends and family. I try and use common words that everyone understands and reasoning you guys can get. Even if you don’t get all the above(certainly the Latin is kinda irrelevant), I’m sure you understand a lot of it. The goal is for you to understand more than you did when you woke up today.
This lends itself to more valid conversations when the words ‘fact checking’, ‘misinformation’, and lies are being used. People I know use these philosophical lies known as fallacies commonly. When someone is using an established philosophical lie and are so confident they’re an authority on truth, they don’t realize they’re confidently trying to balance a conclusion on a lie. You can’t lie for the cause of truth. If you’re using fallacious ways of reasoning and logic, nothing you convey through such mediums is of any value to knowledge. Before you can learn how to know the truth, you must learn how to learn.
There are many other fallacies other than just appeal to the majority/tyranny of the majority. I recommend reading up about them on regarded university websites or listening to some youtube. It’s quite important to be able to personally know the truth from lies in the Age of Disinformation. I hope you find these lessons fun as well as informative.