Yeah, the third post is "Local Tumblr User Doesn't Understand Reductio ad Absurdum; More at 11."
The user isn't saying leg hair is like cancer (like fucking obviously; how disingenuous would you be to even suggest that?). They're saying the argument of "it wouldn't grow there if it wasn't supposed to" is completely stupid – that it has little discriminative power to distinguish what's good and bad if you don't already know. It isn't even nearly limited to the absurdity of that contradictory example:
"Sorry, honey, but the dick cheese wouldn't be there if it wasn't supposed to."
It's a fine-ish retort to get a seven-year-old to chill out, but it's total bullshit when you don't already know leg hair on women is fine. Pointing out that "Gravity is real because most people think it is" is a bad argument by saying "Germs didn't exist because most people thought they didn't" doesn't mean I'm trying to say believing gravity is like disbelieving germ theory; I'm pointing out the argument doesn't hold water regardless of what the fallacy (in the OP's case, a pretty clear appeal to nature) was supporting.
Ah, but you're forgetting that rationality and the strength of one's argument are irrelevant. This is the 21st century. People will attack you based on whatever assumptions they make about you.
So even if you don't refute the conclusion, but merely point out the flaw in argumentation, they will assume you disagree with the conclusion and will torch you accordingly. I see soup has already demonstrated this for us.
It doesn't matter how you actually feel about leg hair on women. If you point out the logical invalidity of the justification given for it, people will assume you're a misogynist.
Ok, but as long as the hair isn’t actually doing anything then what’s the problem? Cancer kills you and dick cheese is fucking nasty as hell(especially in the context of expexting someone to allow it into their body). Excessive, unwashed body hair that is producing an odor is nasty because it affects other people and cannot be easily ignored, but someone saying “that’s gross because now I don’t find you attractive” does not deserve any more of an answer than “go fuck yourself.” That kid’s question got a better answer than it warranted.
You write a lot for someone who doesn’t understand communication.
You write a lot for someone who doesn’t understand communication. [200 words btw did I time travel back to fucking 4th grade?]
The fact you read that and couldn't even grasp that there fucking is no problem with leg hair and I'm not saying there is one and I even directly said "leg hair on women is fine" is just *chef's kiss*. You missed the excruciatingly obvious point of the entire comment – for which apparently even "a lot" of unambiguous clarification wasn't enough. Fucking Mordecai'd that shit.
Who exactly doesn't understand communication here? The one who thinks 200 words is "a lot" of writing?
You're perceived intention should be irrelevant during an argument. Either expose the belief directly so it can be engaged with honestly, or focus on the logic of the argument being made. It is entirely possible to be both correct in your argument and incorrect in the foundational belief. But engaging with a factually correct argument with the assumption that it was borne from a place of ignorance just makes YOU less capable of being reasonable.
The first poster made a claim, and assigned faulty logic as justification.
The second poster pointed out the flaw in this logic.
The third poster ignored the logic argument entirely and resorted to an appeal to outrage rather than the structure of the argument itself.
Personal experience, beliefs, gender, identity. All of these points are entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand. The title of this post was about logic. The second commenter pointed out a legitimate logical error, and the third commenter exposed themselves at appealing to indignation and dressing it up as an argument. You (royal you) shouldn't support bad reasoning just because it agrees with you.
It's not impossible that they are, but given there's a perfectly logical and highly plausible explanation that they're making an entirely cogent point (because the argument is severely flawed, and they point out the flaw accurately), I choose to not just assume that they're a shitty person who thinks women are icky and need to shave their legs or they're gross – like the third comment from "geekandmisandry" (really self-reporting the bias there) does instead of just... asking them to clarify.
The majority of men do expect and prefer that women are shaved, thus the assumption.
You know, I wasn't going to call it out in my original comment because it was beside the overall point, but "geeksandmisandry" and now you are interestingly assuming the gender of an anonymous user with a default pfp and the gender-neutral username "dinogatrr".
I don't think even if they were a man that this would be a good reason to assume they're a shitty person (especially because the sample of "men on Tumblr" is going to be vastly different than "men overall" or even "men on social media overall"). But it is an interesting assumption on top of an assumption: they're a man, and they're a shitty person who thinks women's legs are naturally icky.
Actually the study says they prefer light stubble, which is impossible to have without shaving unless you're 15. For that matter, how many women do you think would like a man with a beard or pubic hair that had NEVER been shaved? So women expect men to trim and groom their body hair at the very least, which is just as unnatural as shaving your legs.
Unless the hairs are really thick and dark, outside of the average, those aren't that noticable or at least it requires active focusing to look for those.
Basically randomly walking on the street or just doing basic daily tasks and the difference is unnoticeable.
Unless the hairs are really thick and dark, outside of the average
Average for where? I never knew any girls in middle/high school that felt they could ‘get away’ without shaving their legs for more than a couple of days unless they were blonde. Even before I went on testosterone you could probably tell if I’d shaved from 20 yards.
a man won't know a woman doesn't shave her legs unless he's intimate with her anyway.
.... are you maybe teensy weensy stoned right now? Baked like a potato? Lit like a Christmas tree? Toasted? Zooted? Zonked? Roasted? Lil bit stoney baloney?
The point that you completely glossed over is that women have preferences, some like facial hair some don’t.
We’re talking about society treating leg hair on women as abnormal. If you want to see if there’s a societal double standard there then you need to ask how society looks at men’s legs, not their faces.
So men have or don’t shave their faces accordingly
If some unknown man can make you do something, you have a problem
Surely you need to be living in a cave to not see the asymmetry there though. On men facial hair is unattractive for half of women and very attractive for other (making up the stats). On women leg hair is perceived as unattractive for all but most people.
A man which has a stubble, when going out, does not generally think "shit I should shave otherwise everyone will look at me with disdain". While a women going to swimming but realizes that she has not shaved her legs will generally feel ashamed thinking she will be seen as "not taking care of herself".
I mean not necessarily appeal to nature because the woman does not try to prove that body hair on women are inherently good. She just points out that "not supposed to be there" is as meaningless as saying "your head shouldn't be on your shoulders". The rest is personal choice (that is if you can disregard the immense societal pressure).
No it was definitely an appeal to nature, "if it isn't supposed to be there, why is it there?" is asserting that it's supposed to be there because it naturally grew there. It has nothing to do with the inherent goodness of women, appeal to nature is a logical fallacy where you assert something is good or just because it is natural, e.g. "clothing is bad because we were born naked."
Doing a fallacy doesn't mean she's wrong (that would be the fallacy fallacy, of course), it just means her reasoning is wrong (plenty of bad or unwanted things are natural).
She is not trying to prove hair leg is good or healthy because they are natural. If anything I would say she is doing a bit of tautology because her argument is along the lines of "they are supposed to be there because there is where they normally are"
It has nothing to do with the inherent goodness of women,
What I said had nothing to do with inherent goodness of women. My argument is that she is not trying to state body hair is inherently good and beneficial because of their naturality.
If it was appeal to nature, would expect something along the lines of "Why do they naturally grow there if it wasn't good for women"
She is not trying to prove hair leg is good or healthy
She doesn't need to be proving that leg hair is good or healthy to do a logical fallacy, she is defending that it is right for it to exist (as opposed to it being wrong for hair to be there).
If anything I would say she is doing a bit of tautology because her argument is along the lines of “they are supposed to be there because there is where they normally are”
I don't think that is accurate. She's saying they are supposed to be there because they grow there, that's not saying the same thing twice, she is justifying its existence through an appeal to the natural order of it growing there.
She doesn't need to be proving that leg hair is good or healthy to do a logical fallacy
She does need to be doing that if you want the logical fallacy to be "appeal to nature fallacy".
that's not saying the same thing twice
Tatutology is when two seemingly different statements carry the same information. The two different statements in "They are supposed to be there because that is where they naturally are" don't actually say anything much different. If "naturally" was to be replaced with "normally", then it would be a complete tautology but I only said a bit of tautology because "naturally" contains more information than "supposed to". But the whole point of my argument is that I think she is using naturally in lieu of "normally" rather than as a precursor for healthy or good.
buddy I think you are really missing the point, let me copy and paste from Wikipedia:
An appeal to nature is a rhetorical technique for presenting and proposing the argument that "a thing is good because it is 'natural', or bad because it is 'unnatural' or 'synthetic'."[1] In debate and discussion, an appeal-to-nature argument can be considered to be a bad argument, because the implicit primary premise "What is natural is good" has no factual meaning beyond rhetoric in some or most contexts.
But the whole point of my argument is that I think she is using naturally in lieu of “normally” rather than as a precursor for healthy or good.
It doesn't matter if she says "normally" or "naturally," or if she never says "good" or "healthy;" by using the natural (or normal, or typical, or whatever word you want to use) state of the human body as reason for why it should be there, that is an appeal to nature.
Wikipedia even has a section about natural/normal:
In some contexts, the use of the terms of "nature" and "natural" can be vague, leading to unintended associations with other concepts. The word "natural" can also be a loaded term – much like the word "normal", in some contexts, it can carry an implicit value judgment. An appeal to nature would thus beg the question, because the conclusion is entailed by the premise.[2]
And in that context, begging the question refers to the actual fallacy, which is:
begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: petītiō principiī) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion
I don't understand how the fact she never said "body hair is good" does not matter when the very definition of "appeal to nature" requires it: "a thing is good because it is 'natural'".
I think tautology can be a form of begging the question if it is used as a means of proving a statement. Nevertheless I agree calling it a begging the question is better because that is the actual fallacy I was trying to get at.
Doesn't evolution highlight thst the hair being there means it WAS/IS useful or wanted? I'm pretty sure those hairs act as a germ net or something, or maybe it's just because that part of the body is best kept warm.
No, evolution allows for vestigial parts all the time. And sometimes random mutations happen and doesn't make much of a difference so it doesn't get selected out and now there's just something there for no reason that never had a purpose.
I’m pretty sure those hairs act as a germ net or something, or maybe it’s just because that part of the body is best kept warm.
The biggest argument against that is the fact that humans have lost most of their body hair anyway and still managed to thrive. Not that it makes leg hair bad, but we clearly don't need it to survive.
Even by the article you linked, it's not wrong to point out a fallacy. It'd be wrong to conclude that since the argument was fallacious, the opposite must be true, but the local man didn't say that.
To do that, you should also couple the pointing out of a fallacy with some reasoning as to why the conlusion drawn is incorrect, not just that the logic used to get to it was fallacious.
If you don't address the conclusion at all, then you haven't really done much, argument-wise.
I think "a few days" is the problem zone. It will be itchy and rough stubble by then (at least for me). After like a month it smooths back out. It could well be your wife telling you "this will be uncomfortable for both of us, at least wait a bit, or give me time to shave".
"supposed" is a bit of a tricky word for biology anyway, given that it implies intent. I guess if one is religious it works, but otherwise, itd be ascribing thought to evolutionary processes that dont seem to have a mechanism for that.
Depends on the mammal I guess, but sure. But, theres a difference between something being what typically happens, and what is supposed to happen. Were you somehow in charge of designing mammals, and decided that hair should be a crucial aspect of them, then you could say that they are supposed to have hair. But, absent anyone doing this, them having hair is simply how they happen to be and equally as unintended as them not having it, regardless of how overwhelming the percentage that has it is. If anything, one could argue that if a person shaves their hair, or decides not while being given the option, then that person has actively taken charge of designing their own appearance, at least in that regard, and therefore the way they are "supposed" to look is the way they intend to make themselves look.
I wouldn't know if like naked mole rats or Sphinx cats or whatever are truly hairless or not, but tbh it doesn't really matter for what I was trying to say.
There is a certain degree of genetics and environmental adaptation here as well. Not all ethnic groups share similar body hair genes. It doesnt even seen to correlate to something like melanin production and higher/lower latitudes since body hair across Africa varies wildliy.
Of course - what I'm saying is that there's huge variation within humans. Some ethnic groups simply don't grow as much body hair, or it's not nearly as course or pronounced. My partner can go weeks without shaving her legs and it's almost impossible to tell. Many East Asian ethnic groups have far less hair than Europeans or Levant peoples. People in West Africa have relatively little body hair, while I've seen women with full on beards and chest hair in southern African countries.
If this conversation is between a Maori or Norwegian kid and a Bulgarian or Spanish or Armenian babysitter, that's a stark contrast that actually would be plausible without the reality of unreasonable beauty standards ruining everyone's day.
That variation also means that the "logic" of comparing leg hair to cancer makes as much sense as comparing leg hair to my nipples. They don't do anything either, but XY bodies still get them. And I would bet $10 that any kid young enough to be baby-sat and say that grows up to get lip filler and joker-esque work done by the age of 28.
I'm 60, and I realized recently, maybe in the past five years, that I've lost all the hair on my legs. I was a bit confused, I remember having hair on my legs, so I looked at some old pictures. Yep, I used to have hairy legs. I like having smooth legs, it's nice. I still have all the hair on my head, so that's good, too. Small consolation for having one foot in the grave, I suppose.
The hair doesn't harm or otherwise negatively impact the organism's survival rate. The organism's immune system didn't evolve to prevent and kill hair cells as they arise.
With modern soap and washing capabilities, it's rather easy to keep oneself clean, even with long hair.
So shaving everything off serves no purpose, just extra work for no benefit.
It's not the wrong reason, nor is it an argument that hair doesn't belong there. All it is is a counter to the logic that supports her conclusion, but it doesn't dispute the conclusion itself.
Fun fact: hedgehogs aren't rodents, and are actually more closely related to tigers than to mice (by about 10 million years). Porcupines are rodents and echidnas are another thing entirely so spines developed on mammals a bunch of times.
90% of people have herpes simplex virus. Everyone(?) on Earth catches the common cold repeatedly throughout their lives.
Trying to appeal to nature about leg hair is a dumb argument that only "works" because you already – correctly – understand leg hair is fine in a medical (safe) and sociological (acceptable/should be accepted) context.
No argument about things being "supposed to" exist is gonna seriously be good or make sense with pure logic... dont you need to lean on religion to argue stuff like this?
Its annoying that people complain about analogies like that. "youre comparing the good thing A to the bad thing B?? How dare you?" Its just an analogy to make a point, noone was arguing that A was bad or that B was good...
Right... but analogies use simplifications. The only thing perfectly analogous to A is A itself. So to make an analogy between A and B, I need to simplify both to the point where the differences disappear. What was your point?
My point is that ignoring a bunch of implied context isn't a compelling argument. The obvious difference between cancer and body hair is that hair growth is the normal state and cancer is aberrant growth. This shouldn't need to be pointed out.
I get that sometimes there is implied context. But at this point we are guessing what her argument is... some guess the argument is just "it grew there naturally so it must be supposed to be there" and you should be able to replace "it" with anything, while other people like you guess that its implied that "it" shouldnt be replaced with things that grow aberrantly. The analogy dinogatorr makes is fine for critiquing the first 'unrefined' argument that we see a lot of people make all the time. We could use "implied" context to dismiss any pointing out of flawed logic leading to good conclusions (you need to swap the objects for that, i suppose).
I see alot of people claiming that the second comment identifies an "appeal to nature" fallacy. Imo, she is forming a tautology and commiting a "begging the question" fallacy to confuse the kid, roughly along the lines of "the hair is supposed to be there because that is where it normally grows". She demonstrates no intention of proving that body hair is good because it is natural.
Well no because in part you yourself fall for the naturalistic fallacy. For a tautology to work it always has to be true.
But this is not the case for if it grows there it belongs there(and by extension is not bad for you).
For example you could plug in cancer and you would see this equation is not always right.
Here is a rather nice website for fallacies
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Nature
What they want to say is it's ok because it's natural but that is the basics of the appeal to nature fallacy
In which way does my statement fall for naturalistic fallacy? Also in which sentence does the woman in question say leg hair is better than no leg hair because it is natural?
Seems to me that in both cases you are assuming things.
The argument ‘why is it there then?’ is still flawed, even if you are sHoCkEd by an argument by comparison.
Yeah, the third post is "Local Tumblr User Doesn't Understand Reductio ad Absurdum; More at 11."
The user isn't saying leg hair is like cancer (like fucking obviously; how disingenuous would you be to even suggest that?). They're saying the argument of "it wouldn't grow there if it wasn't supposed to" is completely stupid – that it has little discriminative power to distinguish what's good and bad if you don't already know. It isn't even nearly limited to the absurdity of that contradictory example:
"Sorry, honey, but the dick cheese wouldn't be there if it wasn't supposed to."
It's a fine-ish retort to get a seven-year-old to chill out, but it's total bullshit when you don't already know leg hair on women is fine. Pointing out that "Gravity is real because most people think it is" is a bad argument by saying "Germs didn't exist because most people thought they didn't" doesn't mean I'm trying to say believing gravity is like disbelieving germ theory; I'm pointing out the argument doesn't hold water regardless of what the fallacy (in the OP's case, a pretty clear appeal to nature) was supporting.
TL;DR: Denying the means, not the conclusion.
Ah, but you're forgetting that rationality and the strength of one's argument are irrelevant. This is the 21st century. People will attack you based on whatever assumptions they make about you.
So even if you don't refute the conclusion, but merely point out the flaw in argumentation, they will assume you disagree with the conclusion and will torch you accordingly. I see soup has already demonstrated this for us.
It doesn't matter how you actually feel about leg hair on women. If you point out the logical invalidity of the justification given for it, people will assume you're a misogynist.
Ok, but as long as the hair isn’t actually doing anything then what’s the problem? Cancer kills you and dick cheese is fucking nasty as hell(especially in the context of expexting someone to allow it into their body). Excessive, unwashed body hair that is producing an odor is nasty because it affects other people and cannot be easily ignored, but someone saying “that’s gross because now I don’t find you attractive” does not deserve any more of an answer than “go fuck yourself.” That kid’s question got a better answer than it warranted.
You write a lot for someone who doesn’t understand communication.
The fact you read that and couldn't even grasp that there fucking is no problem with leg hair and I'm not saying there is one and I even directly said "leg hair on women is fine" is just *chef's kiss*. You missed the excruciatingly obvious point of the entire comment – for which apparently even "a lot" of unambiguous clarification wasn't enough. Fucking Mordecai'd that shit.
Who exactly doesn't understand communication here? The one who thinks 200 words is "a lot" of writing?
You're perceived intention should be irrelevant during an argument. Either expose the belief directly so it can be engaged with honestly, or focus on the logic of the argument being made. It is entirely possible to be both correct in your argument and incorrect in the foundational belief. But engaging with a factually correct argument with the assumption that it was borne from a place of ignorance just makes YOU less capable of being reasonable.
The first poster made a claim, and assigned faulty logic as justification.
The second poster pointed out the flaw in this logic.
The third poster ignored the logic argument entirely and resorted to an appeal to outrage rather than the structure of the argument itself.
Personal experience, beliefs, gender, identity. All of these points are entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand. The title of this post was about logic. The second commenter pointed out a legitimate logical error, and the third commenter exposed themselves at appealing to indignation and dressing it up as an argument. You (royal you) shouldn't support bad reasoning just because it agrees with you.
It's not impossible that they are, but given there's a perfectly logical and highly plausible explanation that they're making an entirely cogent point (because the argument is severely flawed, and they point out the flaw accurately), I choose to not just assume that they're a shitty person who thinks women are icky and need to shave their legs or they're gross – like the third comment from "geekandmisandry" (really self-reporting the bias there) does instead of just... asking them to clarify.
You know, I wasn't going to call it out in my original comment because it was beside the overall point, but "geeksandmisandry" and now you are interestingly assuming the gender of an anonymous user with a default pfp and the gender-neutral username "dinogatrr".
I don't think even if they were a man that this would be a good reason to assume they're a shitty person (especially because the sample of "men on Tumblr" is going to be vastly different than "men overall" or even "men on social media overall"). But it is an interesting assumption on top of an assumption: they're a man, and they're a shitty person who thinks women's legs are naturally icky.
There’s a lot to unpack there. I’ll choose
Hair doesn’t smell.
I can't tell: are you delusional or a pedant (i.e. water isn't wet it makes things wet pedant logic)?
It is?
Ask 100 women what they think of facial hair on men.
ZZ Top wasted a lot of money on dressing sharp when it was the beards all along.
But not a lot on sunglasses.
Hahahaha
Actually the study says they prefer light stubble, which is impossible to have without shaving unless you're 15. For that matter, how many women do you think would like a man with a beard or pubic hair that had NEVER been shaved? So women expect men to trim and groom their body hair at the very least, which is just as unnatural as shaving your legs.
Trimmed, not shaved. Unless you are into women that are into prepubescent boys, you can get away with trimming once a week.
That's not my experience. Ironically, the only negative response I got about body hair, was when I shaved it.
What's natural about trimming? Why would the hair be there if it needs to be trimmed?
That's fucked up.
Interesting, and I'm frankly surprised by it.
Still, there are women who don't prefer it, which makes the point.
Men and women have preferences, we can choose to accommodate that as we (as individuals) wish.
No one holds a gun to anyone's head and says "shave or else".
Fuck, what man is going to know it a woman shaves her legs unless he's intimate with her anyway?
Do you live in Saudi Arabia or are you legally blind? Shorts exist.
Unless the hairs are really thick and dark, outside of the average, those aren't that noticable or at least it requires active focusing to look for those.
Basically randomly walking on the street or just doing basic daily tasks and the difference is unnoticeable.
Average for where? I never knew any girls in middle/high school that felt they could ‘get away’ without shaving their legs for more than a couple of days unless they were blonde. Even before I went on testosterone you could probably tell if I’d shaved from 20 yards.
As the 100th man, the more hair on people the better.
Your feelings are valid, I just don't get to bust this one out too often. Couldn't pass it up.
Found the furry.
Yes!
As the [excluded statical anomaly], it makes no difference.
Why isn't it?
It's up to you to choose what you want. If a man doesn't shave and a woman doesn't find that attractive... You do the math.
Hell, again, a man won't know a woman doesn't shave her legs unless he's intimate with her anyway.
And then it's between them. It's none of our concern.
What's the opposite of observant? Because whatever that is, you are.
I'm guessing they're assuming pants and not bare legs?
.... are you maybe teensy weensy stoned right now? Baked like a potato? Lit like a Christmas tree? Toasted? Zooted? Zonked? Roasted? Lil bit stoney baloney?
Were you aware that the face and legs are two separate parts of the body?
Really? I had no fucking idea.
The point that you completely glossed over is that women have preferences, some like facial hair some don't.
So men have or don't shave their faces accordingly (or according to what they prefer).
That's all. Go ahead and get up on your cross now because women shave because men somehow make them.
If some unknown man can make you do something, you have a problem.
We’re talking about society treating leg hair on women as abnormal. If you want to see if there’s a societal double standard there then you need to ask how society looks at men’s legs, not their faces.
lol?
Surely you need to be living in a cave to not see the asymmetry there though. On men facial hair is unattractive for half of women and very attractive for other (making up the stats). On women leg hair is perceived as unattractive for all but most people.
A man which has a stubble, when going out, does not generally think "shit I should shave otherwise everyone will look at me with disdain". While a women going to swimming but realizes that she has not shaved her legs will generally feel ashamed thinking she will be seen as "not taking care of herself".
It's perfectly understandable if you have any nuance. "Why does it grow there [as a design aspect of your body]"
okay but the local man did make a smart argument by identifying the Appeal to Nature fallacy
I mean not necessarily appeal to nature because the woman does not try to prove that body hair on women are inherently good. She just points out that "not supposed to be there" is as meaningless as saying "your head shouldn't be on your shoulders". The rest is personal choice (that is if you can disregard the immense societal pressure).
No it was definitely an appeal to nature, "if it isn't supposed to be there, why is it there?" is asserting that it's supposed to be there because it naturally grew there. It has nothing to do with the inherent goodness of women, appeal to nature is a logical fallacy where you assert something is good or just because it is natural, e.g. "clothing is bad because we were born naked."
Doing a fallacy doesn't mean she's wrong (that would be the fallacy fallacy, of course), it just means her reasoning is wrong (plenty of bad or unwanted things are natural).
She is not trying to prove hair leg is good or healthy because they are natural. If anything I would say she is doing a bit of tautology because her argument is along the lines of "they are supposed to be there because there is where they normally are"
What I said had nothing to do with inherent goodness of women. My argument is that she is not trying to state body hair is inherently good and beneficial because of their naturality.
If it was appeal to nature, would expect something along the lines of "Why do they naturally grow there if it wasn't good for women"
She doesn't need to be proving that leg hair is good or healthy to do a logical fallacy, she is defending that it is right for it to exist (as opposed to it being wrong for hair to be there).
I don't think that is accurate. She's saying they are supposed to be there because they grow there, that's not saying the same thing twice, she is justifying its existence through an appeal to the natural order of it growing there.
She does need to be doing that if you want the logical fallacy to be "appeal to nature fallacy".
Tatutology is when two seemingly different statements carry the same information. The two different statements in "They are supposed to be there because that is where they naturally are" don't actually say anything much different. If "naturally" was to be replaced with "normally", then it would be a complete tautology but I only said a bit of tautology because "naturally" contains more information than "supposed to". But the whole point of my argument is that I think she is using naturally in lieu of "normally" rather than as a precursor for healthy or good.
buddy I think you are really missing the point, let me copy and paste from Wikipedia:
It doesn't matter if she says "normally" or "naturally," or if she never says "good" or "healthy;" by using the natural (or normal, or typical, or whatever word you want to use) state of the human body as reason for why it should be there, that is an appeal to nature.
Wikipedia even has a section about natural/normal:
And in that context, begging the question refers to the actual fallacy, which is:
Is that what you mean by tautology?
I don't understand how the fact she never said "body hair is good" does not matter when the very definition of "appeal to nature" requires it: "a thing is good because it is 'natural'".
I think tautology can be a form of begging the question if it is used as a means of proving a statement. Nevertheless I agree calling it a begging the question is better because that is the actual fallacy I was trying to get at.
Doesn't evolution highlight thst the hair being there means it WAS/IS useful or wanted? I'm pretty sure those hairs act as a germ net or something, or maybe it's just because that part of the body is best kept warm.
No, evolution allows for vestigial parts all the time. And sometimes random mutations happen and doesn't make much of a difference so it doesn't get selected out and now there's just something there for no reason that never had a purpose.
The biggest argument against that is the fact that humans have lost most of their body hair anyway and still managed to thrive. Not that it makes leg hair bad, but we clearly don't need it to survive.
Well that was a good take-down, I bow to your superior knowledge on this
It was certainly useful when we didn't have clothes and had much more hair.
"Smart argument" is pointing at fallacies? What are you, 20?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
Even by the article you linked, it's not wrong to point out a fallacy. It'd be wrong to conclude that since the argument was fallacious, the opposite must be true, but the local man didn't say that.
Nor did I say he did.
You're right, it's not a complete argument by itself, but it is a smart rebuttal to identify the fallacious logic.
To do that, you should also couple the pointing out of a fallacy with some reasoning as to why the conlusion drawn is incorrect, not just that the logic used to get to it was fallacious.
If you don't address the conclusion at all, then you haven't really done much, argument-wise.
My Wife: "I'm just warning you, I haven't shaved in a few days."
Me: "Oh no! Anyway..."
"If I didn't want a sexy sasquatch, I wouldn't have married my best friend."
You really have to press your advantage to prevent them from thinking about that
I think "a few days" is the problem zone. It will be itchy and rough stubble by then (at least for me). After like a month it smooths back out. It could well be your wife telling you "this will be uncomfortable for both of us, at least wait a bit, or give me time to shave".
Smooth as silk in one direction
Severe tire damage in the other
but did they watch sonic the hedgehog?
He’s not comparing hair to cancer, he is demonstrating that just because something grows doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be there.
Nobody is supposed to have body hair.
"supposed" is a bit of a tricky word for biology anyway, given that it implies intent. I guess if one is religious it works, but otherwise, itd be ascribing thought to evolutionary processes that dont seem to have a mechanism for that.
Depends on the mammal I guess, but sure. But, theres a difference between something being what typically happens, and what is supposed to happen. Were you somehow in charge of designing mammals, and decided that hair should be a crucial aspect of them, then you could say that they are supposed to have hair. But, absent anyone doing this, them having hair is simply how they happen to be and equally as unintended as them not having it, regardless of how overwhelming the percentage that has it is. If anything, one could argue that if a person shaves their hair, or decides not while being given the option, then that person has actively taken charge of designing their own appearance, at least in that regard, and therefore the way they are "supposed" to look is the way they intend to make themselves look.
I don’t believe there are any truly hairless mammals?
I wouldn't know if like naked mole rats or Sphinx cats or whatever are truly hairless or not, but tbh it doesn't really matter for what I was trying to say.
I have never seen a dolphin, dugong or whale with hair
No. There's plenty of mammals without hair.
There is a certain degree of genetics and environmental adaptation here as well. Not all ethnic groups share similar body hair genes. It doesnt even seen to correlate to something like melanin production and higher/lower latitudes since body hair across Africa varies wildliy.
Of course - what I'm saying is that there's huge variation within humans. Some ethnic groups simply don't grow as much body hair, or it's not nearly as course or pronounced. My partner can go weeks without shaving her legs and it's almost impossible to tell. Many East Asian ethnic groups have far less hair than Europeans or Levant peoples. People in West Africa have relatively little body hair, while I've seen women with full on beards and chest hair in southern African countries.
If this conversation is between a Maori or Norwegian kid and a Bulgarian or Spanish or Armenian babysitter, that's a stark contrast that actually would be plausible without the reality of unreasonable beauty standards ruining everyone's day.
That variation also means that the "logic" of comparing leg hair to cancer makes as much sense as comparing leg hair to my nipples. They don't do anything either, but XY bodies still get them. And I would bet $10 that any kid young enough to be baby-sat and say that grows up to get lip filler and joker-esque work done by the age of 28.
He didn't say otherwise, just pointed out the argument used was poor.
Who's to say cancer isn't supposed to grow?
It's not a comparison except in logic, where it is a perfect comparison.
Again, who are you to say that? I could make the exact opposite argument and you would have to obey because I said so.
Says who? Your god?
Incorrect
Then explain whales and dolphins
How do we know women hair isn't just cancer? 🤔
Let's watch sonic hedgehog
I'm 60, and I realized recently, maybe in the past five years, that I've lost all the hair on my legs. I was a bit confused, I remember having hair on my legs, so I looked at some old pictures. Yep, I used to have hairy legs. I like having smooth legs, it's nice. I still have all the hair on my head, so that's good, too. Small consolation for having one foot in the grave, I suppose.
The hair doesn't harm or otherwise negatively impact the organism's survival rate. The organism's immune system didn't evolve to prevent and kill hair cells as they arise.
It might impact their procreation rate.
If I was a woman, repelling guys like that would be a feature, not a bug.
It's not necessarily everyone's primary goal in life to appeal to you sexually.
As someone with hair loss: it also protects surprisingly well from bumps and scrapes, as well as being warmer than you'd think!
It also protects against mosquitoes
I do have MPB, but the rest of me is hairy as all hell, it also helps protect from ticks and mosquitoes sometimes....
I wonder how old people have to be to get the “more at 6” capper. I know I use it a lot so my kids get it, but I’d bet most don’t.
I legit heard a news anchor say “and what it could mean for your weekend” on the TV at a bar recently, so they’re keeping it alive.
I agree, obviously. With modern soap, hair is all but useless, and we should all be bald and glossy, the way nature attempts to deny us.
Id argue the otherwise.
Based on the hair being unhygienic point of view.
With modern soap and washing capabilities, it's rather easy to keep oneself clean, even with long hair. So shaving everything off serves no purpose, just extra work for no benefit.
You can swim faster and your skin dries faster. Can speedrun showers basically
skill issue im afraid, epilators are fast as fuck
edit: depilators too
Fair point, at least those are reasonable benefits.
Hair in joints like armpits and the groin actually works somewhat as a lubricant, preventing chafing. This is true, even with modern soap
Keeps you warm too. But, again, you have to be pretty hairy. More likely it's a relic of our nomadic past and doesn't serve much purpose these days.
It's a pretty good arsehole detector and repellent in the modern age
You can be correct for the wrong reasons.
It's not the wrong reason, nor is it an argument that hair doesn't belong there. All it is is a counter to the logic that supports her conclusion, but it doesn't dispute the conclusion itself.
I think thats exactly what the person youre responding to meant.
I’m a trans man and I wasn’t able to feel comfortable wearing shorts without shaving until my early 30s either. The indoctrination is real!
Not true. My wife loves being hairless and does it for herself.
Between that comparison and sonic the hedgehog I’ll gladly take a blue rodent eating chilli dogs.
Fun fact: hedgehogs aren't rodents, and are actually more closely related to tigers than to mice (by about 10 million years). Porcupines are rodents and echidnas are another thing entirely so spines developed on mammals a bunch of times.
There is a difference between what was evolutionarily advantageous in the last 150k years and what we prefer today. More at nine.
He is not a local man, he is a dinogator. As such, he is unfamiliar with the concept of hair. Cut him some slack!
Body hair blocks UV and directly reduces the risk of cancer including reducing the risk of dinogatorrnoma.
I remember following Iguanamouth on tumblr back in the day, she always posted good stuff.
And then everybody applauded
Tumors don't grow on a majority of people, hair does.
90% of people have herpes simplex virus. Everyone(?) on Earth catches the common cold repeatedly throughout their lives.
Trying to appeal to nature about leg hair is a dumb argument that only "works" because you already – correctly – understand leg hair is fine in a medical (safe) and sociological (acceptable/should be accepted) context.
Yeah but that's not as fun to say
Not that it matters at all, but tumors grow on (or in) roughly 100% of people. A mole is a tumor, for example.
I stand corrected!
No argument about things being "supposed to" exist is gonna seriously be good or make sense with pure logic... dont you need to lean on religion to argue stuff like this?
Evolutionarily hair growth on legs isn't a deleterious trait. 🤷
Not all tumors are cancer...
Some are bread.
How, much?
Its annoying that people complain about analogies like that. "youre comparing the good thing A to the bad thing B?? How dare you?" Its just an analogy to make a point, noone was arguing that A was bad or that B was good...
Oversimplification does not an analogy make.
Right... but analogies use simplifications. The only thing perfectly analogous to A is A itself. So to make an analogy between A and B, I need to simplify both to the point where the differences disappear. What was your point?
My point is that ignoring a bunch of implied context isn't a compelling argument. The obvious difference between cancer and body hair is that hair growth is the normal state and cancer is aberrant growth. This shouldn't need to be pointed out.
I get that sometimes there is implied context. But at this point we are guessing what her argument is... some guess the argument is just "it grew there naturally so it must be supposed to be there" and you should be able to replace "it" with anything, while other people like you guess that its implied that "it" shouldnt be replaced with things that grow aberrantly. The analogy dinogatorr makes is fine for critiquing the first 'unrefined' argument that we see a lot of people make all the time. We could use "implied" context to dismiss any pointing out of flawed logic leading to good conclusions (you need to swap the objects for that, i suppose).
I see alot of people claiming that the second comment identifies an "appeal to nature" fallacy. Imo, she is forming a tautology and commiting a "begging the question" fallacy to confuse the kid, roughly along the lines of "the hair is supposed to be there because that is where it normally grows". She demonstrates no intention of proving that body hair is good because it is natural.
Well no because in part you yourself fall for the naturalistic fallacy. For a tautology to work it always has to be true. But this is not the case for if it grows there it belongs there(and by extension is not bad for you). For example you could plug in cancer and you would see this equation is not always right. Here is a rather nice website for fallacies https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Nature
What they want to say is it's ok because it's natural but that is the basics of the appeal to nature fallacy
Sorry to butt in, but I think I might know where the confusion is coming from. Apart from its strictly logical meaning of "a statement that's always true", the word tautology is often used to mean repetition or circular circular reasoning (e.g. "I should join this honor society to show colleges I'm honorable, and I'm honorable because I'm in an honor society?").
In which way does my statement fall for naturalistic fallacy? Also in which sentence does the woman in question say leg hair is better than no leg hair because it is natural?
Seems to me that in both cases you are assuming things.
Evolution is a myth anyway!
Holy fuck these comments are cringe as fuck. Nobody here was allowed to touch a woman ever and that is painfully obvious.
Your mom lets me touch her all the time - what are you on about?
That happened
MFW Velma was Shaggy all along!
Sure, but I doubt this one did.
It was created for this post.