Research 3

Source:

Appeal to Popularity
http://logical-critical-thinking.com/logical-fallacy/appeal-to-popularity/
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html


My Topic:

Should we always follow majority opinion?

What I hope to learn from this source:

People nowadays believe that fact most people agree is true. I want to show how concept of 'popularity' came from the concept of the 'majority', and find some connections between two of them. Also, I want to show several problems popularity has.

Notes:

1. Appeal to popularity is when someone tries to validate a statement based on the number of people that support or do not support the statement.

  The Appeal to Popularity has the following form:

1. Most people approve of X (have favorable emotions towards X).
2. Therefore X is true. 

2. Then, "Appeal to Popularity" is a basic idea that a claim is accepted as being true simply because most people are favorably inclined towards the claim. 

3.  However, It is clearly fallacious to accept the approval of the majority as evidence for a claim.

4-1. EXAMPLE 1 : Suppose that a skilled speaker managed to get most people to absolutely love the claim that 1+1=3. It would still not be rational to accept this claim simply because most people approved of it.

4-2. EXAMPLE 2 : At one time people approved of claims such as "the world is flat."

4-3. EXAMPLE 3 : They also believed "humans cannot survive at speeds greater than 25 miles per hour."

4-4. EXAMPLE 4 : Most people believed "the sun revolves around the earth."

5. EXAMPLE 1~4, these claims all turned out to be false.

6. Since most humans tend to conform with the views of majority, convincing a person that the majority approves of a claim is often an effective way to get him to accept it. Also, advertisers use this strategy when they want to sell products by claiming that everyone uses and loves their products.

7. The fallacies as Appeal to Belief (the fact that most people believe a claim) and Appeal to Common Practice (the fact that many people take the action in question) are similar with the fallacy that has been mentioned.

Final Thoughts:

Thus, the idea many people believe has popularity and this popularity might cause fallacious information or result. This content could be extended to popularity in 'media', especially in Korea, where only popularity is regarded important instead of quality. Therefore there are a lot of movies, music, and other entertainments which persue popularity through sexuality or appearance. It's also a serious problem caused by the majority only chase dramatic things which become popular easily.