No. 38 Distraction Fallacies
Personal Incredulity
In Turkish: Aklım Almıyor Safsatası
Your not understanding it isn’t the plane’s fault. It flies anyway.
How does that much iron stay up in the air? It makes no sense. There’s a trick in it somewhere.
It’s staying up, though, Temel. Will it fall out of the sky because you don’t get it?
Not understanding is no shame, Temel. Saying “impossible” because you don’t understand is.
What is it?
Counting something as false because you can’t understand or imagine it: “how could that possibly be?” Not understanding says something about the one who doesn’t understand; it says nothing about the thing. The world isn’t obliged to fit inside our heads.
The pattern
- I don’t understand / can’t imagine how X could be.
- Therefore X is false.
Why it fails
We distrust what we don’t understand, and that instinct protects us from the unknown. But “it doesn’t make sense to me” is a personal limit mistaken for a limit of the world. Aeroplanes, germs, radio waves and drifting continents once fitted in nobody’s head either. Something being hard to grasp is far more often a sign that learning is hard than that the thing is false.
How to spot it
- Phrases like “how could that be”, “it makes no sense”, “that sounds absurd to me”.
- What stands against the claim is an expression of surprise, not evidence.
- Incomprehension is presented as a verdict on the subject, not on the speaker’s knowledge.
What to say
Separate the surprise from the claim: “Not understanding is normal; but it doesn’t show the thing is false. What’s the evidence that it is?” Then open the door: “Let’s work out how it happens.” Someone who wants to understand asks; someone who doesn’t says “impossible”.
When it’s not a fallacy
Noticing that a claim lacks an explanation and asking for one isn’t the fallacy; it’s exactly the right reaction: “Can you explain how this works?” Staying cautious about an implausible claim until evidence arrives is fine too. The fallacy is treating your own incomprehension as a refutation instead of asking.
Examples
- Health“How could an invisible germ make anyone ill? I don’t buy it.” The germ makes people ill without waiting to be believed.
- Tech“How does a voice travel from a phone with no wire, that’s absurd.” Its being absurd didn’t stop the call connecting.
- School“This formula makes no sense to me, so it must be wrong.” The way to show a formula is wrong is a counterexample, not a feeling.
- WorkManager: “There’s no way that few people did that much work; something’s off.” They did it; asking how teaches more than saying it can’t be.