Appeal+to+Popularity


 * 1) The names of my given fallacy are band wagon fallacy, appeal to popularity, appeal to common practice, peer pressure and ad populum. Also, it's closely related to appeal to belief.
 * 2) My fallacy is the Approval of an action or claim because the majority does the same or accepting something as truth because the majority does.
 * 3) I believe someone would use this fallacy to persuade another person. It's really similar to appeal to belief. Also seems like the fallacy would be a popular tactic in politics. If a person is week willed or just a tool and you want to persuade them into believing something or doing some sort of action you can claim that majority of the people do the same or say that he/she would stick out like an ink spot on a blank canvas. This fallacy is also endemic among teenagers and kids when it comes to peer pressure. The little lemmings haven't developed their own voices yet so they're easily persuaded when someone mentions how popular something is. I've seen this first hand when a good friend of mine was about to get into drug dealing and do the drugs him self because it seemed like most people around was involved with drugs in one way or another.
 * 4)  Examples of appeal to authority
 * Timmy, Most people you know and most people around you believe in a god or some form of higher power so you should too.
 * Giovanni, Rafael, and Michael live in a bad part of town. The surrounding people fall into drug dealing, theft, or mugging. Giovanni befriends the wrong person who convinces him to steal and get into drug dealing by saying a majority of the people in the surrounding area are involved in shady businesses in one way or another. Giovanni is convinced because of his friend's claim that the actions he's about to do are justified because everyone is doing it and later makes some bad decisions
 * The people of a country are outraged and believe that the government is having too much fun exercising their power with laws and actions that are violating the privacy and natural rights of the people. In a poor attempt at appeal to popularity a government representative tries to calm the people by saying that thousands of people are giving approval and positive feed back via letters.
 * The first example represents the use of appeal to popularity in the way that the person speaking to Timmy is using the fact the majority of the community believes in a higher power to persuade him when better reasons could be used like how the belief can be a great aid in moral values and self discipline if it works for him.
 * the second example shows appeal to popularity when Giovanni was convinced to do bad things because his shady friend said that most people are doing the same thing,
 * The third example with the government representative shows the use of the same fallacy because he's using numerous letters from people to try to persuade the outraged people into letting the government continue their outrages actions.
 * The third example with the government representative shows the use of the same fallacy because he's using numerous letters from people to try to persuade the outraged people into letting the government continue their outrages actions.