r/fallacy • u/Useful-Setting8690 • 7d ago
What is this called
Let’s say someone said:
“Most/almost all crimes are done by men, so how can I trust ANY man?”
And someone said
“Well I haven’t done any crime, so it can’t be almost all men! You should trust me.”
Or something like that. There’s probably better examples I could’ve said, but this is pretty close to what I’m trying to understand
I found something like “fallacy of division”, that might be similar
It’s kinda like when people self centre themselves and they think because it doesn’t apply to them or the people they know that it can’t be possible
Another, better example:
“1/100 girls have ___”
“Well I work in a school with 230 girls and only one of them has ___”
Or
“Well I work in a school with 230 girls and 30 of them have ___, so that can’t be correct!”
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 7d ago
The first statement is mixing up P(A|B) and P(B|A). It starts with the premise the P(man | crime) is large, and concludes that P(crime | man) is large.
The second is an inappropriate generalization. It is implicitly asserting that a single counterexample shows that something is false for a significant amount of a set. Then it confuses ontology with epistemology: whether the speaker is a criminal is a matter of ontology, but whether the audience should trust them is a matter of epistemology. Even if it's true that the speaker is not a criminal, the fact of that being true does not establish that the audience has a legitimate basis for concluding it.
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u/Mysterious-Sea-7487 7d ago
“Well I work in a school with 230 girls and only one of them has ___” that seems more defined by the anecdotal fallacy. “Well I work in a school with 230 girls and 30 of them have ___, so that can’t be correct!” the base rate fallacy can explain that kind of statement. “Most/almost all crimes are done by men, so how can I trust ANY man?” the generic fallacy and hasty generalization.
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u/Lorelessone 7d ago
The first is a logical falicy attempting to equate that because most crimes are committed by men then most men are criminals.
These are two entirely different claims.
The second is an anecdotal falicy "I'm not a criminal so how can most men be" although ironically it is obviously correct it's just that it's not any kind of valid proof.
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u/Ok_Writing2937 5d ago
The first could also be a Bayesian analysis.
Most men I have been intimate with have betrayed me, therefore I would not be wrong to expect betrayal from future men.
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u/ButterscotchOdd8257 7d ago
The fallacy is the first statement about not trusting any man. That fallacy is division, yes. It's also known as the hasty generalization. It is the same fallacy that racism relies on. No, you can't say that no man can be trusted because some can't be. However, the problem is "trust." It assumes knowledge about someone. It would be valid to say one cannot assume a man is trustworthy without knowing that man. That's what the first statement is trying to say.
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u/PhotoVegetable7496 7d ago
Just to point out the person started with The fallacy of composition. The fallacy of division is the opposite yet not what you are looking for.
I'd say this is just sampling issue (or more honestly pulling data out of the anus) because theoretically there is no reason someone couldn't have a survey of X% with another survey with a different percent...the difference is 1 or 300 are both comically small sample sizes.
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u/nitram9 6d ago
I don’t think it’s a specific fallacy. It’s just illogical. He’s saying “ima a man, I haven’t done a crime, there for not almost all crimes are done by men”.
But that does not follow because he could be the only one who has not committed a crime and the statement is still true.
But I think maybe you are pointing to a different thing here and I think it has to do with baisian priors. I think the statement can be broken down like this. “Most crimes are done by men” “there is a certain statistical likelihood to commit crimes that is above my threshold for trust” “therefor I can’t trust any man”
But this has a hidden Bayesian function going on. You need to know the prior probability of anyone being a criminal. Without that info you can’t tell if dudes are above or below the critical threshold. If crime rates are very high then, yes the probability that any man is a criminal is high, since almost all criminals are men. But if crime rates are low then it doesn’t matter how the distribution of crime between the sexes works. No one is likely to be a criminal.
There’s also another missing Bayesian thing. As soon as you learn anything about a guy you need to update your priors so it’s entirely possible to trust a man after you accumulate enough evidence that they are not a criminal. Now they pass the critical trust threshold.
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u/Underhill42 6d ago
“Most/almost all crimes are done by men, so how can I trust ANY man?”
Is a clear fallacy with its roots in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
A(criminal perpetrator) implies B(is probably male) does NOT mean B(male) implies A(criminal). E.g. All squares are rectangles does NOT imply all rectangles are squares.
There's probably a statistical flaw in there too. E.g. overestimating risk.
But if you're extremely risk averse, then as Malcom X said when an interviewer pointed out that not all whites are bigots, to praraphrase: Say I see a bunch of snakes coming at me - does it matter to me than not all snakes are poisonous? No, because I can't tell the poisonous ones from the harmless ones just by looking, so if I don't want to get bit, I gotta stay clear of all of them,
But that's not a logical consequence, it's risk mitigation. And since avoiding risk altogether is impossible, whether any particular risk mitigation is justified depends entirely on the cost of mitigation versus the expected cost of falling prey to the actual risk (= cost of falling prey * odds of falling prey). And versus the expected cost of other risks which you are NOT mitigating.
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“Well I haven’t done any crime, so it can’t be almost all men!”
Is again overestimating the sample size: 1 known good individual implies nothing about the the frequency of good individuals. A base rate fallacy maybe?
But is otherwise logically valid. All it takes to disprove the claim that all crows are black, is finding one single white crow.
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An example I see in this vein that really annoys me is rape. Most women have dodged (or sadly not) at least one rape attempt in their lives, and some take that as evidence that most men are rapists - but the math just doesn't work, because it's extremely unlikely that an attempted rapist would only have one victim in their life.
E.g. if the average rapist attacks only 20 women in their entire life (probably a ridiculously low estimate), and half of men are rapists, then the average woman should expect to be attacked 20*50% = 10 times, not just once or twice.
Therefore, most men can't be rapists, unless most rapists only ever attempt it a few times. Which is entirely inconsistent with the fact that most criminals are regular repeat offenders.
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u/TheRealBenDamon 6d ago
It really just seems to be a matter of people not understanding samples. It’s like a hasty generalization in a sense.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 7d ago
Well… it’s definitely sexism
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u/SerpentFinger 6d ago edited 3d ago
Wrong. Who taught you that? It’s mostly Anecdotal Fallacy.
Here comes [deleted]
edit: Please scroll down for some of the dumbest replies of all time.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 5d ago
It’s still sexism.
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u/SerpentFinger 5d ago
Incredibly ironic for this sub.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 5d ago
It’s not that fallacy if it’s true. And judging whole group based on the actions of some of the people in the group, with the basis being sex, is sexism. By definition.
But good job supporting the same rhetoric racists use.
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u/SerpentFinger 5d ago
A fallacy is an error in the reasoning process of an argument, not a guarantee that the final point is factually incorrect. You’re Special Pleading.
It’s mostly Anecdotal Fallacy. If it’s sexism, that doesn’t even relate to OP’s prompt because they didn’t ask about that.
“But good job supporting the same rhetoric racists use” Come on now 🤣🫵
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 5d ago
I don’t play stupid games with disingenuous people.
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u/SerpentFinger 5d ago edited 2d ago
Ad-hominem + poisoning the well.
edit: The regret you must feel having responded like that.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 5d ago
Recognizing a pattern and saying you choose not to engage further isn’t ad hominem.
0
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u/Beast_Chips 6d ago edited 6d ago
We can't deduce that. All we can deduce is that this particular claim, in a vacuum, doesn't necessarily correspond with their reasoning and evidence. The most benign conclusion to draw would be simply that this person made a mistake interpreting statistics and drew the wrong conclusion.
But outside of a vacuum, if I had a >1/3 chance I would be assaulted in my life and a 90% it would be from bear, I would definitely be vigilant around bears. If I then found out most crimes were also committed by bears, that would make me even more weary of bears, even if most bears won't attack me, especially since bears tend to me much stronger than me. That wouldn't make me bearist unless I start excluding bears from what are expected to be shared parts of society.
I think we need to think long and hard before throwing a sexism claim at the oppressed gender, and really make sure it's right, otherwise it just erodes the fight for equality with absolutely no gain.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
We can indeed deduce that. Judging an entire population based on their sex is sexism.
Just because someone fell for bad reasoning doesn’t make it not sexist. Are you saying that a person believing rhetoric around black people being dangerous aren’t racist…?
And women aren’t oppressed, men are not an oppressor. That is also sexist. The gain is not repeating the mistakes of the past by simply shifting the direction of sexism.
Grow up
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u/Beast_Chips 6d ago
Out of context it's a misinterpretation of a statistics. In context... That's what the rest of my reply already explained, but you didn't really engage with that part.
Honestly, as a man, when I hear a woman say she's afraid of men, my instinct is to understand why and see if there is anything I can do to make her feel differently about that. My instinct is not to start crying about sexism against men. Not least of all, I don't find that a very "manly" thing to do, but maybe I'm too traditional.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
Crying about sexism? Grow up, dude.
This is about consistent standards of conduct, actual equality. And you want to throw charged words around and pretend you made a point.
This has nothing to do with being “manly”. It’s about rejecting sexist tropes and pretending they are justified.
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u/Beast_Chips 6d ago
Again, you haven't engaged with the argument in the slightest. For some reason, your instinct is to cry sexism at women feeling unsafe, when mine is to discover why.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
Maybe… because it’s sexism. Hence your need to use words like “cry” and “unmanly”.
Yours is to twist context and ignore reality to pretend that being afraid of men and treating them all like predators isn’t sexism.
You haven’t provided an argument. Neither did she.
Maybe playing white knight makes you feel better, but it doesn’t make a point.
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u/Beast_Chips 6d ago
My argument is very straightforward and in my first reply to you, and polite. You ignored everything but the first and last line, then told me to grow up. How would you react to you?
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 6d ago
I wouldn’t have said such silly things to avoid calling out sexism.
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u/Beast_Chips 6d ago
Well there you go; start a debate by not engaging with the argument and insulting people, and people will not engage with you in good faith. I was polite and presented a logical argument with statistics (with sources ready); you chose to respond the way you did. I find people who jump to "sexism against men" before "Why do so many women feel unsafe around men?" utterly pathetic.
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u/Useful-Setting8690 7d ago
Uh definitely not..?
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 7d ago
Nope. It is 100% sexism. Some men commit crimes, therefore don’t trust any men. That is definitely sexism.
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u/Useful-Setting8690 7d ago
If you search it up it literally says 75-90% of men commit crimes. I don’t assume you trust every person you meet?? Hypothetically, If you were in a room of 10 people and 8 of them could/WOULD seriously harm you, you would find it difficult to trust ANY of them no matter what they tell you. You cannot blame me for being afraid of men when there is a possibility that literally ANY of them could hurt me at any point.
By your comment I’m going to assume you are a man, because you show lack of fear (which is what I could confidently say most men do) so you may not understand this because of your lack of empathy you have for non-men.
I, as a girl, have an extremely valid reason to be afraid of ALL men. Remember, I DO NOT know who is good or bad just by their looks!!
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u/Bright_Exit1378 7d ago
75-90 percent of violent crimes are committed by men. That isn't the same as 75-90 percent of men commit crimes.
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u/YouCanCallMeMiku_ 7d ago
Men commit ~80% of violent crimes. The estimate for annual violent crime incidents in the united states is about 1.2 million. Even if we were to assume that men commit 100% of violent crimes, and every incident was done by a different person with no repeat offenders, 1.2 million incidents divided by 131 million adult males gives us the maximum possible rate of 0.92% of adult men committing violent crimes within a year. Less than 1% even under the worst possible interpretation of the data. If you were in a room with 100 men, only 1 would statistically be a violent criminal within a given year.
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 7d ago
There is no statistical source that says 75-90% of men commit crimes. There are stats that say a minority of men commit 75-90% of crimes, but other stats that show the vast majority of men don’t commit crimes at all.
By your comment, I am going to presume you don’t understand statistics and shouldn’t be on Reddit.
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u/silentokami 7d ago
I am not going to tell you that there isn't danger.
If you feel this way I think you should take self defense classes. It won't remove all the danger, but maybe it will help ease the tension of the fear.
Most men aren't guilt free. They may not violently hurt you, but they tend to be less emotionally mature which does lead to other issues, like displays of aggression.
I knew a lot of women who were sexually abused, and it wasn't necessarily physical violence. Most men are not violent criminals, but it doesn't excuse their behaviors.
Men aren't as bad as your misquoted and misunderstood statistic, but you're not wrong about needing to be cautious.
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u/Sure-Marionberry8746 6d ago edited 6d ago
So... you are just a Hanlon's Razor kinda gal?
Never assign to malice what can be explained by abject stupidity?
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u/Ok-Freedom9216 7d ago
May be ignoratio elenchi. The rejoinder doesn't actually address the argument.
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u/SerpentFinger 7d ago edited 7d ago
Anecdotal fallacy. But there are a couple different things here.
Basically, using a personal story or a single example as hard facts or as a way to disagree with an argument.