RE: Hello soulcalm17
August 2, 2024 at 4:43 am
(This post was last modified: August 2, 2024 at 5:18 am by Sheldon.)
(August 1, 2024 at 10:13 pm)Foxaèr Wrote: It's rational to understand that just because most people enjoy the food of a particular establishment does not mean I will also enjoy the food or that it is the best restaurant in town.
It was an illuminating choice really, as taste can be very subjective, and if one were visiting a town where one had never been, as the hypothetical suggests, then it is quite possible the local tastes might differ substantially from my own. Also of course the claim is falsifiable, so it can be tested, paradoxically all the concepts of deities @Belacqua has offered so far, are carefully crafted to evade such objective verification.
FWIW in the absence of any objective evidence, and assuming I couldn't test the restraint in some objective way, the assertion it is the best in town, based solely on a bare appeal to numbers, would of course have all the hallmarks of an argumentum ad populum fallacy. I suspect he picked a trivial claim on purpose to make that fact less obvious, perhaps to imply logically fallacious claims can have credence, so lets try another example that more amply demonstrates why this is poor reasoning.
One thousand people claim they saw a mermaid in the surf, the people are a cross section of demographics from professional like doctors, lawyers etc, even a few eminent scientists.
Are we now to believes mermaids exist, would @Belacqua?
Note the scenario is a textbook argumentum ad populum fallacy, with an appeal to authority fallacy thrown in, because I couldn't resist. No objective evidence is offered just as with his claim, it is just a bare appeal to numbers but for a more extraordinary claim. Logically however, declaring the claims true is equally fallacious.
Though as I said originally, since the first claim is a trivial one, we'd be inclined to ignore the fallacy, but it remains poor or weak reasoning. As I said very telling...