One of my favorite arguments, socially speaking
Intro
Generalization is one of the key mechanisms that help us cope with things, and also understand them. In theory, generalization should be used to group identical or similar “objects”, draw a conclusion, and after that, when faced with a similar use case, you already have it figured out.
Historically speaking, generalization was and is one of the evolutionary factors that led us to where we are now. Just imagine – it has claws and killed people from my tribe, so by generalization, if it has claws and sharp teeth, I should avoid it. Good thinking! This kept us alive and away from danger.
Furthermore, “generalization knowledge” was achieved firsthand through interactions with the environment. Starting with the growth and evolution of communities and social interactions, people moved from generalization using their own experiences to something I like to call “society’s generalization” and labeling. This is the context where I will place my favorite argument ever.
The thing is…
Society or any size organized group of people will commonly have strong opinions or beliefs. Those are constructed based on their experiences and are their “general” idea, but not a general idea per se.
This has to do with a hasty generalization.
“The hasty generalization fallacy is sometimes called the over-generalization fallacy. It is basically making a claim based on evidence that it just too small. Essentially, you can’t make a claim and say that something is true if you have only an example or two as evidence.” – From here
Also, it is a faulty generalization (the quote is from Wikipedia, but trust me, it’s the best and most comprehensive one):
“A faulty generalization is an informal fallacy wherein a conclusion is drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. It is similar to a proof by example in mathematics. It is an example of jumping to conclusions. For example, one may generalize about all people or all members of a group, based on what one knows about just one or a few people:
* If one meets a rude person from a given country X, one may suspect that most people in country X are rude.
* If one sees only white swans, one may suspect that all swans are white.
Expressed in more precise philosophical language, a fallacy of defective induction is a conclusion that has been made on the basis of weak premises, or one which is not justified by sufficient or unbiased evidence.Unlike fallacies of relevance, in fallacies of defective induction, the premises are related to the conclusions, yet only weakly buttress the conclusions, hence a faulty generalization is produced. The essence of this inductive fallacy lies on the overestimation of an argument based on insufficiently-large samples under an implied margin or error.”
And real examples from our day-to-day lives follow the same pattern:
Women are weak.
Gypsies are thieves.
All men are interested only in sex.
All women are gold diggers.
All Italians are angry people.
And the list goes on indefinitely… with the same construction — a group of “objects” is something. And that something was determined not by studying the entire “group of objects” but just a few.
Leaving the discrimination and rational wrong aside from the examples above, the biggest weakness of any generalization as an argument for anything, is the particular exception. And this is what I love about this argument.
Quoting “the fact” that a big group or even the entire society believes “X” about the “Y” group can be compelling and even justified for a generalization, right? Well, if this is your only argument, it is sufficient to find an element from group Y that does not have the X characteristic to destroy the hypothesis.
Women are weak — I will find a strong woman, and this will break your argument, also, I can find Gypsies that are well-known and respected figures of society, Italians that are patient, and women that are interested in anything else but money. The end of the argument.
Before you go
Even if all the people are assuming something, question it! Don’t fall for a generalization, and try to put your mind on a singularity, an exception, that particular thing that can break the argument. I tend to put this generalization of thought into the sophism category of my brain, but all that, coming in another story 😀 Keep safe and embrace your particularity as nature intended it for you!