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Nirvana Fallacy
The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume there is a perfect solution to a particular problem. A closely related concept is the "perfect solution fallacy". By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely implausible—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be "better". History In '' La Bégueule'' (1772), Voltaire wrote ''Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien'', which is often translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good" (literally: "The better is the enemy of the good"). The nirvana fallacy was given its name by economist Harold Demsetz in 1969, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes found in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drunk Driving
Drunk driving (or drink-driving in British English) is the act of driving under the influence of alcohol. A small increase in the blood alcohol content increases the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash. In the United States, alcohol is involved in 30% of all traffic fatalities. Effects of alcohol on cognitive processes Alcohol has a very significant effect on the functions of the body which are vital to driving and being able to function. Alcohol is a depressant, which mainly affects the function of the brain. Alcohol first affects the most vital components of the brain and "when the brain cortex is released from its functions of integrating and control, processes related to judgment and behavior occur in a disorganized fashion and the proper operation of behavioral tasks becomes disrupted." Alcohol weakens a variety of skills that are necessary to perform everyday tasks. One of the main effects of alcohol is severely impairing a person's ability to shift attention fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearson Prentice Hall
Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari Books Online e-reference service. History On October 13, 1913, law professor Charles Gerstenberg and his student Richard Ettinger founded Prentice Hall. Gerstenberg and Ettinger took their mothers' maiden names, Prentice and Hall, to name their new company. Prentice Hall became known as a publisher of trade books by authors such as Norman Vincent Peale; elementary, secondary, and college textbooks; loose-leaf information services; and professional books. Prentice Hall acquired the training provider Deltak in 1979. Prentice Hall was acquired by Gulf+Western in 1984, and became part of that company's publishing division Simon & Schuster. S&S sold several Prentice Hall subsidiaries: Deltak and Resource Systems were sold to National Education ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire. Methodologies to examine wishful thinking are diverse. Various disciplines and schools of thought examine related mechanisms such as neural circuitry, human cognition and emotion, types of bias, procrastination, motivation, optimism, attention and environment. This concept has been examined as a fallacy. It is related to the concept of wishful seeing. Some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results. This is called the "Pygmalion effect". Christopher Booker described wishful thinking in terms of :"the fantasy cycle" ... a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history—and in storytelling. When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollyanna Principle
The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative. This subconscious bias is similar to the Barnum effect. Development The name derives from the 1913 novel ''Pollyanna'' by Eleanor H. Porter describing a girl who plays the "glad game"—trying to find something to be glad about in every situation. The novel has been adapted to film several times, most famously in 1920 and 1960. An early use of the name "Pollyanna" in psychological literature was in 1969 by Boucher and Osgood who described a ''Pollyanna hypothesis'' as a universal human tendency to use positive words more frequently and diversely than negative words in communicating. Empirical evidence for this tendency has been provided by computational analyses of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good
Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism which means insistence on perfection often prevents implementation of good improvements. The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule explains this numerically. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient. Origin In the English-speaking world the aphorism is commonly attributed to Voltaire, who quoted an Italian proverb in his ''Questions sur l'Encyclopédie'' in 1770: "". It subsequently appeared in his moral poem, , which starts Previously, around 1726, in his , Montesquieu wrote "" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good). Antecedents Aristotle and other classical philosophers propounded the principle of the golden mean which counsels against extremism in general. Its sens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimism Bias
Optimism bias (or the optimistic bias) is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. Optimism bias is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age.O’Sullivan, Owen P. (2015)The neural basis of always looking on the bright side.''Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences'', 8(1):11–15. Optimistic biases are even reported in non-human animals such as rats and birds. However, autistic people are less susceptible to optimistic biases. Four factors can cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood. The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emotional Memory
Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events. The activity of emotionally enhanced memory retention can be linked to human evolution; during early development, responsive behavior to environmental events would have progressed as a process of trial and error. Survival depended on behavioral patterns that were repeated or reinforced through life and death situations. Through evolution, this process of learning became genetically embedded in humans and all animal species in what is known as flight or fight instinct. Artificially inducing this instinct through traumatic physical or emotional stimuli essentially creates the same physiological condition that heightens memory retention by exciting neuro-chemical activity affecting areas of the brain responsible for encoding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cutting Off The Nose To Spite The Face
"Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" is an expression used to describe a needlessly self-destructive overreaction to a problem: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" is a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the object of one's anger. Origins It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for a person to cut off the nose of another for various reasons, including punishment from the state, or as an act of revenge. In particular, the English Saint Ebbe was said to have severed her own nose to dissuade violation by Viking raiders. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker notes that the phrase may have originated from this practice, as at this time "cutting off someone's nose was the prototypical act of spite." The expression has since become a blanket term for (often unwise) self-destructive actions motivated purely by anger or desire for revenge. For example, if a man was angered by his wife, he might burn do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appeal To Consequences
Appeal to consequences, also known as ''argumentum ad consequentiam'' (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view. In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments that assert a conclusion's truth value (''true or false'') without regard to the formal preservation of the truth from the premises; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's consequential desirability (''good or bad'', or ''right or wrong'') instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thalidomide
Thalidomide, sold under the brand names Contergan and Thalomid among others, is a medication used to treat a number of cancers (including multiple myeloma), graft-versus-host disease, and a number of skin conditions including complications of leprosy. While it has been used in a number of HIV-associated conditions, such use is associated with increased levels of the virus. It is taken by mouth. Common side effects include sleepiness, rash, and dizziness. Severe side effects include tumor lysis syndrome, blood clots, and peripheral neuropathy. Use in pregnancy may harm the fetus, including resulting in malformation of the limbs. In males who are taking the medication, contraception is essential if a partner could become pregnant. It is an immunomodulatory medication and works by a number of mechanisms, including stimulating T cells and decreasing TNF-α production. Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 in West Germany, where it was available over the counter. When first r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seat Belt
A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduces the likelihood of death or serious injury in a traffic collision by reducing the force of secondary impacts with interior strike hazards, by keeping occupants positioned correctly for maximum effectiveness of the airbag (if equipped), and by preventing occupants being ejected from the vehicle in a crash or if the vehicle rolls over. When in motion, the driver and passengers are traveling at the same speed as the vehicle. If the vehicle suddenly stops or crashes, the occupants continue at the same speed the vehicle was going before it stopped. A seatbelt applies an opposing force to the driver and passengers to prevent them from falling out or making contact with the interior of the car (especially preventing contact with, or going t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
