=> yujiri.xyz | Argument

What if everyone thought that way is one big fallacy

last edited 2024-11-05

A common argument raised against many good ideas is some variation of "if everyone thought that way, X would happen". For example, when I was young and indoctrinated with conservatism, I was taught to think, "it might not seem like my vote makes a difference, but if no one voted, the system would fall apart, therefore I should vote". This is just a blatant non-sequitur.

My decision is causally independent of everyone else's. Whether I vote doesn't affect whether everyone else does, so if it really is true that my vote is not an efficient way for me to create change, then I shouldn't vote, no matter what would happen if no one voted.

One version of the Wikipedia donation ad said:

If you donate just $2.75, the price of your Tuesday coffee, Wikipedia could keep thriving.

Dear Wikipedia admins, look I understand from experience the frustration of making non-scarce goods and not getting paid, but that's blatantly false. $2.75 will make no discernible difference. A truthful version of this would say "if a whole bunch of people donated just $2.75, Wikipedia could keep thriving".

Obviously, if one Y happens for each X, you can say that one X causes one Y, or you can say that a thousand Xs causes a thousand Ys. What you can't say is that one X causes a thousand Ys. That's what their ad said.

A final example is this tweet from a claimed anarchist back in 2020 meant to demonize anyone resisting COVID-19 lockdowns:

Death is a pretty big curtailment of freedom, and projects that seek to increase freedom should try hard to avoid mass death as much as possible.

But I dunno, maybe your personal entitlement to Baskin Robbins is worth killing millions.

There are many other problems with this tweet, but this is one of them.