Talk:Continuum fallacy

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The expansion[edit]

I think ADK's extension went in a wrong direction, probably because of the "fallacy of grey" synonym. The day/night example should have stayed in, as a "clean" example of what the fallacy is about: see wp:Continuum fallacy and the examples there.--ZooGuard (talk) 14:52, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

The Fallacy Files lists "argument of the beard" as a sub-type of "slippery slope",[1] and here is a dedicated page on another website that has some interesting examples.--ZooGuard (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps it may have, because I noticed by the end I was getting into "wronger than wrong" territory. Scarlet A.pngmoralModerator 15:09, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Yudkowsky focuses it on being about uncertainty. I think it just needs to expand a little with concrete examples, rather than abstract (but clear and obvious) demonstrations of it. Because if you can only apply it to contrived examples and not real situations, then there's no point. Scarlet A.pngbominationModerator 15:14, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
My second link gives a real example: argument about "drinking age", and I've heard similar ones about the ages of consent and criminal culpability. The search I used for research also found people trying to apply it to the when does life begin/personhood question.--ZooGuard (talk) 15:37, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Zeno's paradoxes? Scarlet A.pngpatheticModerator 16:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
No, more like wp:sorites paradox, to which this fallacy is related.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I was thinking whether it's related to that too. Sorites paradox seems to arise out of arbitrary definitions (as does the baldness example), but the paradoxes of motion do arise because of an evidently flawed interpretation of the world being divisible into a continuum - it's obviously a fallacious interpretation as outrunning arrows clearly doesn't happen in reality. Scarlet A.pngnarchistModerator 16:19, 2 December 2012 (UTC)