Help with a fallacy

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chaggle
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Help with a fallacy

Post by chaggle »

I'm having a discussion on another board where someone is accusing me of something-or-other because I am so negative about Brexit - he says we should all be pulling together and stop being so negative. He is asserting that these 'bad thoughts' are not helping the situation.

This has to be a fallacy. Although I suppose it could affect one's own wellbeing, thinking bad things doesn't affect physical outcomes. Nor even in this situation does saying negative things have any effect - Boris ain't going to change anything because of what I say.

Anyway I can't find a fallacy that matches this. Something along the lines of 'thoughts influencing events in the physical world'.

Anyone help?
Don't blame me - I voted remain :con
chaggle
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by chaggle »

OK found it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Magical thinking – fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events. In anthropology, it refers primarily to cultural beliefs that ritual, prayer, sacrifice, and taboos will produce specific supernatural consequences. In psychology, it refers to an irrational belief that thoughts by themselves can affect the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it.
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Ketchup
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by Ketchup »

Any chance of a link pointing to the 'argument'?

Could be interesting ... :cool:
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chaggle
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by chaggle »

Is that allowed? :???:

OK - it starts about here...

https://britishexpats.com/forum/take-ou ... st12804209
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Ketchup
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by Ketchup »

chaggle wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:20 pm Is that allowed? :???:
... allowed by whom? / what?

Thanks. Will take a peek. :-)
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Tony.Williams
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by Tony.Williams »

chaggle wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 11:53 am I'm having a discussion on another board where someone is accusing me of something-or-other because I am so negative about Brexit - he says we should all be pulling together and stop being so negative. He is asserting that these 'bad thoughts' are not helping the situation.
I can see that taking a negative attitude to anything will make it less likely to succeed, simply because if people don't believe in it, they won't work so hard to make it happen.

My view that Brexit was a massive self-inflicted injury has not changed, but I also accept that it is now irretrievable. It is highly unlikely that we will be rejoining the EU in my lifetime, and even if Brexit does fail miserably while the EU is charging ahead, we will have to crawl back on EU terms with nothing like the advantages we have just given up.

So yes, we might as well try to make the best of a bad job.
chaggle
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by chaggle »

Absolutely - make the best of a bad job - what other choice do we have?

It's not as if I'm going to down tools or sabotage anything - I just think the whole thing is huge stinking pile of crap.

But it is my deeds and not my thoughts which could influence events and even then to no great extent.
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Matt
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Re: Help with a fallacy

Post by Matt »

There is a plausible mechanism. Expressing your thoughts is a deed and that deed in turn may affect others' deeds. Such as whether they choose a foreign or domestic holiday, and if foreign then whether they decide to change their holiday money a little earlier in the expectation that the value of the pound will drop. Whether they start stockpiling tinned goods and hoarding wealth through other means. Of course on an individual level each of these make an insignificant contribution to the country's economy, but repeated over millions of small decisions, the mere idea that
Brexit is foolish will have tangible and measurable effects and if the idea is correct and Brexit indeed foolish then this weakening of the economy is an example of the wisdom of the masses being expressed. Similarly your contribution to spread that idea is negligible but if you're actually taking the time to discuss this outside the bubble you may be a greater influence than most. And your correspondent's suggestion that you shouldn't is likewise a small contribution to a popular trope that no doubt has a tangible effect in the opposite direction.

Yet I very much doubt that at this stage in the national debate there's much more shifting to be done. We all utter the same old mantss to each other but they server less as a rational debate and more as a totem by which the two Brexit tribes recognize each other and reinforce their identity as part of their in group.

Remind your friend they the most plausible way of your anti Brexit talk damaging the results hoped for by the Brexiteer's is if he were to actually make the effort to comprehend your arguments and accept them as fact. Only then would this madness lose any support. In the unlikely event of that happening he'd suddenly find that this is in fact a good thing as the people who in reality have been talking this country down are those who argued that Brussels had the power to rule over ever sovereign Britain and so, to Putin's delight, lead us to abandon our highly influential position in the most powerful trading block in the world.
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