The 'argumentum ad populum' fallacy assumes that probability of a belief is increased by the number of people that believe it. This video explores interesting examples of this, especially in democracy.
NOTES
- argumentum ad populam- assuming that a lot of people believing something is a good reason to think it is more probably true
- Arguments that this is fallacious reasoning
- A1: psychological similarity
- A2: gaslighting
- A3: groupthink
- A4: Mandela effect
- Arguments that this is fallacious reasoning
- argumentum contra populum- assuming that a lot of people believing something is a good reason to think it is less probably true
Further Reading
A pretty nice list of notes can be found here, though as you might be able to tell from the video I don't really agree with a lot of what is said there.
I also really liked this blog post, especially the discussion on Zeno and calculus (it was a little off topic--but, I mean, I made an entire career by being off topic)
My favorite logic book that deals with material fallacies is Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic, and I like his discussion of the ad populum, though it's unfortunately short.
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