Is there a name for this fallacy? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14805268
Whenever someone talks about policy, its always possible to go through a million "what if" scenarios until eventually, your opponent is a bad person unless they answered "infinity."

For example, health care. If your opinion on health care policy isn't "infinity healthcare" you want people to die or something. This seems to be the SJW's approach to every issue and the only way you avoid it is by answering every question with "infinity x" which might help explain why that's their position on everything.
#14805293
Are you talking about access to healthcare or what? I really don't get the fundamental complaint you have.

Obviously every system has trade offs, some people just prefer that everyone have access to decent care over a system where some people get really good care, some get decent, some get shit, and some don't get any.
#14805294
@Hong Wu

It is called argumentum ad nauseam or argumentum ad infinitum. The core of the fallacy, as much as I care about it is to turn the argument in to an infinite argument(In your case "what if"). Basically you substitute the proposition by x situation which is logically the same as the previous proposition.

If a person doesn't get healthcare then he will die.
If a women doesn't get healthcare then he will die.
If a man doesn't get healthcare then he will die.
If my grandmother doesn't get healthcare then he will die.

This is a quick example but it can get more complicated then that. Ad infinitum can be used also by changing the proposition all together.

If a person doesn't get healthcare then he will die.
If an old person doesn't get a treatment covered by ACA then highly likely his condition will aggrevate.
#14805301
Hong Wu wrote:Whenever someone talks about policy, its always possible to go through a million "what if" scenarios until eventually, your opponent is a bad person unless they answered "infinity."

For example, health care. If your opinion on health care policy isn't "infinity healthcare" you want people to die or something. This seems to be the SJW's approach to every issue and the only way you avoid it is by answering every question with "infinity x" which might help explain why that's their position on everything.


Yes, it's called the "strawman argument." You accuse your opponents of wanting something they don't actually want. In the case of healthcare, wanting a minimum standard of care available to everyone irrespective of income is a long way from infinity. When you (the right) have an long and uninterrupted record of chipping away at existing health care programs, you can hardly claim the "infinity" argument.
#14805689
Whenever someone talks about policy, its always possible to go through a million "what if" scenarios until eventually, your opponent is a bad person unless they answered "infinity."

As JohnRawls said that's the 'argumentum ad infinitum' fallacy.

For example, health care. If your opinion on health care policy isn't "infinity healthcare" you want people to die or something. This seems to be the SJW's approach to every issue and the only way you avoid it is by answering every question with "infinity x" which might help explain why that's their position on everything.

That's the 'straw man' fallacy - ascribing positions to your opponent which they don't actually hold, and then 'refuting' those non-existent positions. For example, one of the 'arguments' against Obamacare was that it would create 'death panels' to decide who received treatment and who didn't. This was a straw man fallacy, but like most logical fallacies it was politically highly effective - accusing your opponents of wanting people to die is always a vote-winner.
#14805812
Oxymoron wrote:What do you call it when you claim fallacy falsely? :excited:

In many cases, that would fall under hasty generalization. For example, there are slippery slope fallacies where one argues that one set of premises must inevitably lead to a chain of conclusions that are undesirable. But not all slippery slope arguments are fallacies, as in some cases one can logically state why one premise necessarily leads to another, which leads to another, etc. Calling such an argument a fallacy would be an example of a hasty generalization. There's also the fallacy fallacy, or argument from fallacy, in which one reasons that because a person's argument contains a fallacy that their conclusion must therefore be false. It's a form of denying the antecedent.

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