Now, I’m not going to say I’m proud of the fact, but I’ve blown off and avoided a lot of people in the past. So I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and due to the nature of certain circumstances I’ve honed my Bull Shit game to a fine point. In technical terms the goal of Bull Shit is to lead someone to accept some form of logical fallacy, usually “Ad Homonim” (appeal to emotion), “Ignoratio Elenci” (missing the point), or defective induction. The first two are fairly straight forward, the third could probably stand to be explained. Defective induction requires the “deceiver” to produce a series of prepositions that APPEAR to lead necessarily to the chosen conclusion. This is where it gets tricky, because you are trying to disguise an inductively weak argument as a deductively valid argument, and deduction has stricter criteria for validity, and it is often more apparent when this validity is missing. For the sake of clarity, I feel an example is necessary.
I most frequently employ deffective induction when I am trying to cover up prolonged financial irresponsibility. If I have been spending excess money on trivial things, and I am questioned about it, I would likely start by thinking of the most recent thing that I needed that I spent a large sum of money on. {A. I spent $130 on train tickets and metro cards last week.} From there, I would think of a few comparably inexpensive things I buy regularly. {B. I spend about $12 daily on cigarettes and drinks at school.} From there the person being mislead comes to a conclusion that looks something like this {C. Blaze spent over $200 on regular expenses last week; ergo Blaze spends over $200 on regular expenses weekly.}
The argument appears deductively valid, however I did not mention that when I spent $130 on train tickets and metro cards, I was buying 2 weeks worth of tickets and a month worth of metro. When this information is introduced, the argument reveals itself to be inductively weak.
Similarly one may attempt to explain their near total lack of availability and tendency to blow off friends over the past 6 months or so as a result of their attempts to kindle and nurture a romantic relationship. This seems like a valid argument, and even aims to vilify anyone who questions or complains about this lack of availability. But what happens when you highlight that said unavailable person has only been pursuing said significant other for at most 2 months.
Sound familiar?
