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(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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It's a black and white fallacy. When the only thing that is being expressed is criticism or discontent.
Hi! I'm a mathematician. I specialize in creating logical arguments as well as finding and explaining the flaws thereof. The Black and White fallacy does not apply here. First, we need to keep in mind the principle of charity, whereby we try to figure out what was meant by our interlocutors when we argue with them, as far as we can by what they said. In this case, the argument here is not literally that all votes that are for someone other than Biden are instead counted for Trump (this premise would have a great many flaws far beyond the fallacy you gave) rather, it is a statement of the failures of certain voting strategies which are well-established mathematical facts. Specifically, if you prefer candidate A over candidate B, and all other candidates have a combined extremely small chance of winning, choosing not to vote for candidate A is effectively making candidate B's victory more likely.
Hope that clears things up.
If you vote for anyone else other than Biden, it increases Trumps chance to win (due to a lower amount of total votes for Biden) since we are a 2 party system even though we pretend we aren't. Is this not widely known? We know it's not a literal vote for Trump, but it might as well be a theoretical one.
It is, in fact, widely known.
De-jure we are a multi-party system. De-facto we are a 2 party system.
Without splitting any further hairs, yes; that's essentially correct.
It's really an orange or grey thing.
It's not black and white, but red and blue.
Fallacies apply to debate, not to actions like voting.
Fallacies can apply in any situation where reasoning and logic is used. In my experience, most successful actions are backed up by reasoning.
"Reasoning about" isn't the same as "performing" an action.
I agree that the person who you originally replied to is wrong (see my comment below) but you're putting forth a bad argument. It is true that reasoning about and performing an action are different. However, this isn't relevant to whether bringing up the fallacy in this context is valid. To the point: we are currently talking about and (ostensibly) reasoning whether a specific course of action is good or not. I think that it's good to vote for Biden. I am overwhelmingly likely to vote for Biden. However, if I voted for Biden because I thought Trump was an actual robot, and therefore unnatural, and therefore bad I'd be committing the appeal to nature fallacy. Now, it just so happens that my counter-factual self would have stumbled upon the correct conclusion, but the fallacy would have been committed nonetheless.
My point was more about the fact that voting in our FPTP system, mathematically, is an act not subject to the same "black & white" fallacy label as a discussion about who is the best candidate, because it actually is a choice between the top two candidates, which is why splitting the vote has been an enduring strategy.
But your illustration about the Fallacy fallacy—that is to say that even if something were a fallacy, that doesn't in itself mean it is untrue—is also a fair point.