Circular fallaciousness, or argumentum ad misericordiam

By -

I was reading a district court decision for fun last night work and encountered an actual use of logical fallacies in the wild (begging the question in this case). Now you can reassure your kids of the eventual utility of education when they cry plaintively, "Whyyyyy do I have to build my own trebuchet for science class? I'll never uuuuuse this in real life!"

But I digress…while looking up a patent related to the court decision I got sidetracked. Did you ever do that back in pre-internet days when you looked up a word in an analog dictionary? 
Flipping pages and glancing at the headers, you noticed something like latifundia and you just had to know. (Take a guess…then give up and look here.)

One time my brother and I used the dictionary to work out the title structure of the British monarchy and peerage. It went something like king/queen, prince/princess, duke/duchess, earl/countess…wait, what? The first earl's wife was in possession of both ears, apparently. Is a jarl’s wife jarless by definition? No canned goods in that latifundium.
(Why is preserving things in jars called canning, anyway? Did the first case of botulism decide jarring meant having a harsh or unpleasant effect on one's nerves?)
But I divagate again. Patents. I stumbled across this one. What do you think it is?

Clue: the device is categorized under human necessities.
Leave your thoughts in the comments. Don’t worry about keeping it clean; appeals to prurience are enthusiastically welcomed.
Here are a few more.
This one is under guiding mechanisms.



 And another human necessity.



What would you invent and patent if you weren’t squandering time with logical fallacies on social media? What about a Cult patent? We can come up with something at least as fun as these devices.
(Disclaimer: this discussion is not a safe zone. Despite the jurisprudentially-themed opening, all ideas are up for grabs.)
What fallacy would you use to describe never-used patented devices and commenting on the internet?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Common Sense

By -
Image
I only wish it were not so common. That probably disappoints a lot of you, maybe even makes you wonder if I am being satirical. Most assuredly, I am not. Plus, this is my second rodeo on common sense. I am not as certain that people will take it any more seriously, but I do hope that they'll.  It may be written rather flippantly, but I am completely serious. Common sense usually serves as a proxy for obvious solutions to easy problems. Which then prompts people to recommend commonsense solutions to all problems. Consider some that you might have heard: "If only we had some common-sense gun laws, we would not have these mass shootings." "Our healthcare system is far too complicated. What we need is to replace it with some common-sense solutions." "People losing their retirement savings in the financial crisis was sad. If only these investors had exercised some common sense and not bought houses they could not afford!" "You do not ne
Read more

Slavery FTW, because starving kids in Africa

By -
Image
The Cult has been silent for a while. If anyone is still around and reading, I'm sorry about that! Technology is advancing rapidly and I'm awaiting cyborg-based or fully virtual existence, but real life still gets in the way sometimes. I had another post (related to science and Covid) almost ready last weekend when the aforementioned IRL interfered. This morning I ran across an item that looked more urgent, especially in light of current events in the US. [Photo and story, Wikipedia ] For those who don't already know, Scott Adams is the creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert , which is a well-done satire of US office life. Normally at this point I'd share an example or two. Not this time, and not sorry. I don't want to make light of the decidedly not-humorous material  he's generating about slavery and efforts at making reparation . [To determine what slavery stole from the black community] ...[C]ompare what would happen to the average black pe
Read more

The One With the Sunk Cost

By -
Image
We've been on the topic of fallacies lately and I owe my esteemed co-blogger  SK  a thank-you for educating me about them, so I thought I'd offer one. I look forward to your thoughts. (I'll also borrow SK's disclaimer that thought experiments are included in this post, and if you dislike Friends you may want to stop reading now. Are there people who dislike  Friends ?) This fallacy is a favorite of mine: "sunk cost." Logically Fallacious  offers a nice definition and examples, but basically I think of it as, "This [project/relationship/activity] isn't working and doesn't seem likely to get better, but I can't walk away because I've already put so much [effort/time/money] into it!" As an example, I like to ask people whether they finish a book or movie they're not enjoying. If they tell me they stick with it to the bitter end, I'm always curious about their reasoning. Because they've already spent time on i
Read more