With family and friends this next logical fallacy is probably the most common in my life, "Everyone is doing it..." or "Everyone has it." I hear this from friends especially now that Christmas is around the corner and I even find myself using this false logic. This logic prevails with some, for instance my boss. She will get her kids anything just so they can "fit in" and have the same fashions that everyone else has. This logic begs the question "If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" The answer is all too commonly, "Do they all have parachutes?"
We all want to find a reason to buy something or do something. We come up with connections, no matter how distant, and use those connections to make a point. We learn to draw paths in our mind linking two almost unrelated events and then we listen and believe others that do the same thing. These lines are drawn so precisely and data is shown. Then it must be true, right? This logical fallacy is known as correlation and causation and it is one of the most convincing.
Logical fallacies happen around us all of the time. We are told not to be so skeptical but a skeptic is the one unswayed by the false information. In the words of Henry James,
Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
