Month: November 2015

Everyone failed the test

~ Aaron Groffman ~ Leave a comment

Any story, account, or declaration from one of your kids that starts with “everyone” can’t be true. It’s not possible. Everyone can’t be going to the party, or wearing their hair that way. Everyone is most certainly not staying out all night or skipping school on Tuesday. And everyone didn’t fail the test.

In argumentation theory, according to Wikipedia[1], an argumentative fallacy known as Appeal to Popular Opinion (Argumentum ad Populum) is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: “If many believe so, it is so.”  This type of argument is known by several names, including appeal to the masses, appeal to the majority, consensus fallacy, authority of the many, and bandwagon fallacy.

As a parent, I’m certain you’ve used argumentum ad populum yourself on a number of occasions. “If everyone else jumped off a cliff,” you may have heard yourself say, “would you join them?” It’s also a favorite of advertisers – “Fifty Million Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.” The number of people who believe something is irrelevant to its truth.  In fact, millions of people have been wrong about many things: that the Earth is flat, for example.

According to Robert T. Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary[2], the argumentum ad populum fallacy is seductive because it appeals to our desire to belong and to conform, to our desire for security and safety.  Dr. Philip N. Howard, of the University of Washington, explains that this fallacy claims that because everyone else is doing it, it must be the best, right, or moral way[3].

So why employ the “everyone” ploy? Because it provides cover of course. If I’m part of everyone, then I’m not responsible for that certain someone named me.  If everyone failed the test, then how in the world can I be responsible for not passing it? In fact, it would be downright antisocial of me to get a passing grade.

One more great thing about everyone is that it’s near impossible to prove. Who has the time to ask everyone? And once you realize you can’t ask everyone, then why bother asking anyone?

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[2] http://skepdic.com/adpopulum.html

[3] http://depts.washington.edu/methods/fallacies.html

You’re breaking up

~ Aaron Groffman ~ Leave a comment

Depending on your cellphone provider, you can expect coverage in the U.S. anywhere between 95% and 99% of the time. My carrier, T-Mobile, claims 96% coverage. Of course, this assumes you’re in a place where peot-mobile-4g-coverage-map_thumb_croppedple actually live or visit.

I haven’t sent any of my children on a wilderness expedition (not recently, anyway, and we had no choice). And even though I have a son named Daniel, our last name isn’t Boone. So how is it that my kids don’t have a cell signal when I need to speak to them the most? Or lose their signal at the most critical point in the conversation?

Any of these sound familiar?

“I know I was supposed to be home at 1:00, but the AAA guy … shoulder on the highway … can’t hear you … ”

“Hi Dad … I’m okay … What was that officer? … Dad…Dad?

Dad, I’m in line at (insert trendy store name here) and … on sale today only … credit card … pay you back … hello?

Of course the cell signal seems to be fast and reliable when binge watching Breaking Bad or streaming Breaking Benjamin, but my conversations are always breaking up. And how is it that EVERY Amazon transaction seems to go through the first time?

You said I could

~ Aaron Groffman ~ Leave a comment

you said

The problem with becoming a parent later in life is that, by the time your kids are beginning to flex their get-away-with-things muscles, your memory is not as good as it used to be. Certainly not good enough to match the duct tape quality stickiness of a kid’s ability to remember everything you say, or said…once, or might have said, or never said, though it sounds like something you could have said.

Maybe.

What was I saying?

I’m sure you’ve familiar with some version of the following. It’s nine o’clock at night, and your kid is fixing a chocolate fudge ice cream sundae with a Mountain Dew chaser. Guaranteed to keep an 8-year old awake until her SATs. When you ask the useless rhetorical question “Who gave you permission to have that?” as you prepare to throw your wife under the bad parent express bus, your daughter comes back with “You did, Daddy. Remember when (insert some conversation you have no recollection of).”

According to the Harvard Medical School, it’s normal to forget things from time to time, and it’s normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age. They identify seven normal memory problems – Transience, Absentmindedness, Blocking, Misattribution, Suggestibility, Bias, and Persistence.

Absentmindedness, the memory trait that plays right into your daughter’s hands, occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention to what you were doing or what was being said.  You forget where you put your wallet or phone because you didn’t focus on where you put them in the first place. Your mind was occupied with something else, so your brain didn’t safely store the information.

The later it gets in the day, the less likely you are paying attention, which is what probably the case with your daughter’s drippy, dream dessert. At this point you have two choices. Either you exert your parental authority and veto the sugar caffeine tsunami, contradicting yourself in the process, which will come back to haunt you at a future inconvenient time. Or, you chalk it up to a) not listening, or b) not remembering, or c) what were we talking about?