Of blog posts and sweeping statements

Posted by Alex on February 26, 2007 Leave a comment Go to comments

I do observe that some bloggers (myself included) are very much liable to commit sweeping statements. It’s a fallacy that’s quite common to commit. I know teachers of college freshman English will be so frustrated knowing that a good number of their spawns are going against the rules of academic writing. And it’s just one of the many inductive fallacies and all the other logical fallacies that one can commit in writing.

Here’s my opinion on why we are liable to stumble on such a pitfall such as sweeping generalizations:

To claim authority – Blogs act as our own soapboxes (if not pulpits) to whatever idea we might want to get out to the reading public. And as far as we know, claiming absolutes read more “credibly” during a quick read. So we just sweep rather than bore them with statistics.

Escape from not knowing – Ever tried to Google for that piece of statistic to back up your claims to no avail? So the next “best” thing that one might do is to make haphazard guesses. However, writer seldom resort to choosing the right quantifiers like “some” or “a few.” “More” and “all” seem to command more authority (which leads back to the first dilemma).

In any case, it’s usually the case that being too strict on being logical and keeping oneself in check with all of these fallacies can be a bore. And from personal experience, it kills creativity. It takes real skill to be creative and logical at the same time.

Or is this post full of fallacious claims too? Haha. Any other thoughts?

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