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Logical Fallacy Bootcamp: The Fallacy of Relative Privation [1]

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Date: 2023-04-28  

How can we fix climate change when there are children starving in Victorian England? Or something.

Hi folks! Time for another entry in the Bootcamp series! Just a quick one today. For today’s offering, let’s take a look at the Fallacy of Relative Privation.

So, what is it?

This fallacy happens when a party rejects an argument by countering with a perceived worse problem. The intention is to render the original argument irrelevant by stating that there are worse problems, so therefore the original argument is minor/irrelevant/not really a problem.

This is a pretty popular fallacy. It’s the old “We can’t do anything about X because children are starving in Africa!” argument, or “How can you even be thinking about Y when Climate Change is such a big issue!”

Expenditures on things like NASA get hit with this a lot. “Why are we even thinking about sending people to Mars or the Moon when we have kids going to school hungry here in the US?”

The truth is that people (and countries) can walk and chew gum at the same time, as the saying goes. In the last example, it’s not that there is a lack of resources to do both, it’s that we don’t have the political will to do both. The Mars program isn’t stealing food off the plates of school children. That’s being accomplished entirely by our own politicians making decisions about where to allocate funding and deciding that feeding kids is less of a priority than, say, giving a tax break to billionaires.

The key on this one is to understand that just because there may be other issues in the world, perhaps even ones that ARE legitimately more pressing or important, that does not preclude taking action on other issues as well or require that all attention and resources be devoted to the issue the fallacy user expresses to be more important.

Just a quickie today folks, so that’s it for now! Until next time!

Prior Bootcamp Installments

Logical Fallacies Bootcamp:

The Strawman

The Slippery Slope

Begging the Question

Poisoning the Well

No True Scotsman!

Ad Hominem

False Dilemma

Non Sequitur

Red Herring

Gamblers Fallacy

Bandwagon Fallacy

Appeal to Fear

The Fallacy Fallacy

Appeal to Personal Incredulity

Appeal to Authority

Special Pleading

Texas Sharpshooter

Post Hoc

Appeal to Nature

Furtive Fallacy

Alphabet Soup

Middle Ground

Cognitive Bias Bootcamp:

Bystander Effect

Curse of Knowledge

Barnum Effect

Declinism

In-Group Bias

Hindsight Bias

Survivor Bias

Rhyme-as-Reason Effect

Apophenia (& Paradoleia)

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Confirmation Bias

Anchoring Bias

Critical Thinking Bootcamp:

Sea Lioning

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