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Talk:Balance fallacy

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This Logic related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be better with improvement. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

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US-centric[edit]

This article is too much US centric. Even in the definition section there are examples and a lot are so specific to the USA that they do not remotely help to understand the fallacy. What follows the fascism vs communism describes some riots in the US that few have heard about and even if they did its a minor event on the global stage. — Unsigned, by: 31.164.4.34 / talk

Dead link -- source 16[edit]

Heyo, noticed that source 16 was broken, linking here. Found an archive, replacing now, revert if necessary :) Moria (talk) 01:04, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

X believes Y just as much as you "believe" Z![edit]

Are things such as "creationists believe in creation just as strong as 'evolutionists' 'believe' in evolution!" a balance fallacy? --NiciesMan (talk) 00:07, 5 May 2021 (UTC)NiciesMan

That's false equivalence if I recall correctly. ☭Comrade GC☭Ministry of Praise 00:43, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
It certainly wouldn't be a "balance fallacy" as the balance fallacy would be the suggestion that the truth lay between the two statements. I'm not even sure there is a logical falicy which covers that. "People who believe in a flat Earth are just as convinced as those who believe it's (more-or-less) spherical." So what?
One of them has evidence and logic on their side and the other is wrong.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
The more I think about this the more convinced I become that there is no actual "fallacy" here. "Group X believes A strongly", "Group Y believes B strongly", "If belief A is correct B must be wrong and vice versa". But nowhere is there a conclusion "therefore .....". It's just statements of fact.
OK, given the way it is structured at least one of the groups must be wrong. But that's all you can say about it.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't this page be separate from the argument to moderation/golden mean fallacy?[edit]

The argument to moderation A.K.A. golden mean fallacy is when someone claims that the truth lies between two extremes even when one of those "extremes" is obviously the correct option. It leads to some really stupid beliefs if one takes it to its limit. It is not the same thing as the balance fallacy, which believes that both options are equally valid, not that the truth lies between them. IMO, these should be separate pages. PLMMJ (talk) 12:42, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

That's not my understanding of the balance fallacy - though sometimes these things go by different names. Do you have some links which support your interpretation?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:46, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for the late response. You want links? I've found links. Numero uno: Logically Fallacious states on their page on the Argument to Moderation that it is "Asserting that given any two positions, there exists a compromise between them that must be correct." Numero dos: Finmasters has an article about the middle ground fallacy (another name for the same thing) where it states that "Middle ground is a common type of logical fallacy [...] whereby a person argues that the correct conclusion must lie somewhere between two opposing arguments." The bit I cut out is an explanation of what a logical fallacy is, which can be confirmed at the page itself. Numero tres: ResearchGate has a paper about the golden mean fallacy in finance from the European Journal of Social Sciences, which states that it "is the tendency [...] to steer an irrational middle course when faced with two meaningful alternatives." The bit I cut out is talking about how many of the subjects fell into the fallacious thinking. Numero cuatro: Fallacy.in, another site dedicated to defining fallacies, lists the Argument to Moderation as "an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth must be found as a compromise between two opposite positions." Numero cinco: Ness Labs has a page about the false compromise fallacy (again, same thing, which is stated on the page as its old Roman name) that states that "A false compromise occurs when a resolution cannot be found between two opposing views, and so the middle ground is accepted as the “best of both worlds” instead." Wikipedia and TV Tropes also agree with me, though the former also cites Ness Labs and they're not proper sources. I'd like to add that they do indeed seem similar, but valuing both sides of the argument equally even when one of them is wrong (balance fallacy) can lead to the argument to moderation. Sorry for the wall of text, but I couldn't figure out how to separate it without making it look weird or like several comments. PLMMJ (talk) 12:43, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
I realize the problem now. This page defines the balance fallacy properly at the top, then defines it with the definition of the golden mean fallacy in the Form section and flip-flops between them. The Problems section talks about the balance fallacy, the Examples section talks about the golden mean fallacy, the Politics sub-section talks about both, then the Teach the controversy sub-section goes back to the balance fallacy and it stays that way for the rest of the article. Yeah, definitely needs a split IMO, but since I'm the only editor who's proposing the split it'll probably go nowhere. PLMMJ (talk) 07:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Put it up to a vote. Carthage (talk) 07:46, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I'm a little confused about your position. The article introduction certainly states that the balance fallacy is the idea that the truth lies between two extremes.
You seemed to object to this when you initially wrote: "It is not the same thing as the balance fallacy, which believes that both options are equally valid. I wondered if you could provide backup for this interpretation.
However the backup links you subsequently provided seem to support the definition in the article introduction - and not the interpretation you proposed.
But you then went on to say that the intro is actually correct, but the article is confused (which is possible and, if true, needs to be corrected). So am I correct is assuming that you have abandoned your initial assertion?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:16, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
No, you aren't. I haven't abandoned anything. The top of the article talks about BOTH of the fallacies and does not list the argument to moderation/golden mean fallacy separately from the balance fallacy, but it defines them correctly. I missed this on my first read.
"The balance fallacy is an informal logical fallacy that occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal or comparable value regardless of their respective merits..." - Balance fallacy itself.
"...the conclusion that the answer to a problem is always to be found between two extremes." - Argument to moderation/golden mean fallacy, which is not named anywhere on the page.
When you asked for links earlier, I thought you were asking about links showing that the golden mean fallacy is not the balance fallacy. If you were asking for links showing that the balance fallacy is not the golden mean fallacy, then I misunderstood and I apologize. But I still have links.
Numero uno: A Berkeley article about false balance which does not contain an outright definition, but instead links to their glossary page about false balance which says that it is "a perceived or real media bias, in which opposing viewpoints are given similar weight though the evidence more strongly supports one viewpoint."
Numero dos: A University of Melbourne article about bothsidesism which also agrees with me, as it says that "bothsidesism is a term of disparagement against a form of journalism that presents both sides of an issue without any regard for their relative evidentiary merits."
Numero tres: Democracy toolkit also talks about bothsidesism, defining it as the same thing as the same as false equivalency. It says that "bothsidesism happens when people use objectivity as an excuse to give equal weight to opposing viewpoints, regardless of merit or factual accuracy."
Hopefully that's what you were asking for. Also, not exactly sure how to put things up to a vote, still fairly new to MediaWiki systems as I don't have to deal with them very often. PLMMJ (talk) 17:43, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
So we agree, then, that the "balance fallacy" is the incorrect claim that the truth must lie between two extremes?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:49, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
No, we do not agree on this, how did you get that idea? There is the problem of false balance in journalism, there is the balance fallacy, and there is the argument to moderation. Three separate things, and you continue to describe the argument to moderation and say it's the balance fallacy. The balance fallacy is the incorrect assumption that both sides are on equal footing, which can lead into false balance in journalism and into the argument to moderation, but these are not the same. To put it as simply as I can, "A argues X, B argues Z, therefore they must have the same caliber of arguments" is not the same as "A argues X, B argues Z, so the answer has to be Y" and it is also not the same as "A argues X, B argues Z, therefore they must be given equal time to talk about their viewpoints." PLMMJ (talk) 15:32, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

i kinda thought the balance fallacy/false balance business is mostly a problem for the media, mainly the news media, giving undue to weight to fringe theories/political views to avoid accusations of bias. like giving nigel farage than his party's seat count and public support actually warrant, convincing the general public his shite is actually mainstream and normalises more extreme rhetoric, political partys think (tories mainly but all of em)they need to pander to demographics smaller than the noise farage generates suggests. the bbc is the hardest hit by the balance fallacy because they are all about balance and the tory media do their best, its all they seem to do right now, is pump up farage and his dogshit. thats not a fallacy thing though thats deliberate efforts to push ever more right wing narratives that make the bbc struggle with the fallacy. it is not as far as know, having two diametrically opposed and intransigent view points and deciding, well in the middle were lies the truth. the example section with this idea is silly. the first, the missouri compromise says it all - compromise. if neither are going to agree and they start loading their rifles, maybe somewhere in the middle might avert violence. not somewhere in the middle solves everything. most of the examples fall into that category. it doesnt matter if one side is objectively correct ie lets murder all the (other of your choice) vs let not be monsters. the murder party is big enough to really cause something really nasty to go down uncomfortable compromises are sometimes necessary to ease immediate tensions while something better has time to arise later. DADT for example. best that could have got at the time. it got fixed when the climate had improved for gays.

from the problems section onward it appears to me that a problem with this article nominally about balance fallacies is that there doesnt seem to be an understanding of what balance actually looks like in the first place. honestly, american news media specifically, is there somewhere still that real attempts at balanced reporting remain? if you want to point at the problems with this article, thats it. it explains a hell of a lot more than just this article tooAMassiveGay (talk) 21:18, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I do think that there needs to be a clearer distinction between "the balance fallacy" - the belief that that the truth lies in the middle; and the problem of "false balance" - a frequent error in the media in which they try to present "both sides" of an issue, even though one side is clearly bonkers.
They are obviously connected, but they might warrant separate articles.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Vote to split this article[edit]

Aye[edit]

Nay[edit]

Goat[edit]