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Its annoying that people complain about analogies like that. “youre comparing the good thing A to the bad thing B?? How dare you?” Its just an analogy to make a point, noone was arguing that A was bad or that B was good…
Oversimplification does not an analogy make.
Right… but analogies use simplifications. The only thing perfectly analogous to A is A itself. So to make an analogy between A and B, I need to simplify both to the point where the differences disappear. What was your point?
My point is that ignoring a bunch of implied context isn’t a compelling argument. The obvious difference between cancer and body hair is that hair growth is the normal state and cancer is aberrant growth. This shouldn’t need to be pointed out.
I get that sometimes there is implied context. But at this point we are guessing what her argument is… some guess the argument is just “it grew there naturally so it must be supposed to be there” and you should be able to replace “it” with anything, while other people like you guess that its implied that “it” shouldnt be replaced with things that grow aberrantly. The analogy dinogatorr makes is fine for critiquing the first ‘unrefined’ argument that we see a lot of people make all the time. We could use “implied” context to dismiss any pointing out of flawed logic leading to good conclusions (you need to swap the objects for that, i suppose).
Body hair blocks UV and directly reduces the risk of cancer including reducing the risk of dinogatorrnoma.
Evolution is a myth anyway!
He’s not comparing hair to cancer, he is demonstrating that just because something grows doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be there.
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How do we know women hair isn’t just cancer? 🤔
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Says who? Your god?
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Incorrect
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Then explain whales and dolphins
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He didn’t say otherwise, just pointed out the argument used was poor.
Who’s to say cancer isn’t supposed to grow?
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Again, who are you to say that? I could make the exact opposite argument and you would have to obey because I said so.
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It’s not a comparison except in logic, where it is a perfect comparison.
Nobody is supposed to have body hair.
“supposed” is a bit of a tricky word for biology anyway, given that it implies intent. I guess if one is religious it works, but otherwise, itd be ascribing thought to evolutionary processes that dont seem to have a mechanism for that.
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Depends on the mammal I guess, but sure. But, theres a difference between something being what typically happens, and what is supposed to happen. Were you somehow in charge of designing mammals, and decided that hair should be a crucial aspect of them, then you could say that they are supposed to have hair. But, absent anyone doing this, them having hair is simply how they happen to be and equally as unintended as them not having it, regardless of how overwhelming the percentage that has it is. If anything, one could argue that if a person shaves their hair, or decides not while being given the option, then that person has actively taken charge of designing their own appearance, at least in that regard, and therefore the way they are “supposed” to look is the way they intend to make themselves look.
I don’t believe there are any truly hairless mammals?
I have never seen a dolphin, dugong or whale with hair
I wouldn’t know if like naked mole rats or Sphinx cats or whatever are truly hairless or not, but tbh it doesn’t really matter for what I was trying to say.
There is a certain degree of genetics and environmental adaptation here as well. Not all ethnic groups share similar body hair genes. It doesnt even seen to correlate to something like melanin production and higher/lower latitudes since body hair across Africa varies wildliy.
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Of course - what I’m saying is that there’s huge variation within humans. Some ethnic groups simply don’t grow as much body hair, or it’s not nearly as course or pronounced. My partner can go weeks without shaving her legs and it’s almost impossible to tell. Many East Asian ethnic groups have far less hair than Europeans or Levant peoples. People in West Africa have relatively little body hair, while I’ve seen women with full on beards and chest hair in southern African countries.
If this conversation is between a Maori or Norwegian kid and a Bulgarian or Spanish or Armenian babysitter, that’s a stark contrast that actually would be plausible without the reality of unreasonable beauty standards ruining everyone’s day.
That variation also means that the “logic” of comparing leg hair to cancer makes as much sense as comparing leg hair to my nipples. They don’t do anything either, but XY bodies still get them. And I would bet $10 that any kid young enough to be baby-sat and say that grows up to get lip filler and joker-esque work done by the age of 28.
No. There’s plenty of mammals without hair.
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This comment thread is really revealing how many people here have the critical thinking skills of a rock.
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See, you keep trying to make this about gender. It’s not. That’s what you seem to be too thick to understand. The topic is no longer about if women should have hairy legs or not, that’s a completely moot point. It’s about the logical fallacy of trying to argue something by saying “well if x shouldn’t exist, then why is it there?”, which is just bad logic.
That has literally nothing to do with gender anymore. No one here gives a shit if women shave or not, dumbass; it’s just the initial topic that triggered the fallacy which we are now discussing. It’s pretty fucking obvious, but that seems to have gone entirely over your head; again, because you have the critical thinking skills of a rock.
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Let’s watch sonic hedgehog
No argument about things being “supposed to” exist is gonna seriously be good or make sense with pure logic… dont you need to lean on religion to argue stuff like this?
And then everybody applauded
I remember following Iguanamouth on tumblr back in the day, she always posted good stuff.
I see alot of people claiming that the second comment identifies an “appeal to nature” fallacy. Imo, she is forming a tautology and commiting a “begging the question” fallacy to confuse the kid, roughly along the lines of “the hair is supposed to be there because that is where it normally grows”. She demonstrates no intention of proving that body hair is good because it is natural.
In which way does my statement fall for naturalistic fallacy? Also in which sentence does the woman in question say leg hair is better than no leg hair because it is natural?
Seems to me that in both cases you are assuming things.
Well no because in part you yourself fall for the naturalistic fallacy. For a tautology to work it always has to be true. But this is not the case for if it grows there it belongs there(and by extension is not bad for you). For example you could plug in cancer and you would see this equation is not always right. Here is a rather nice website for fallacies https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Nature
What they want to say is it’s ok because it’s natural but that is the basics of the appeal to nature fallacy
For a tautology to work it always has to be true.
Sorry to butt in, but I think I might know where the confusion is coming from. Apart from its strictly logical meaning of “a statement that’s always true”, the word tautology is often used to mean repetition or circular circular reasoning (e.g. “I should join this honor society to show colleges I’m honorable, and I’m honorable because I’m in an honor society?”).
okay but the local man did make a smart argument by identifying the Appeal to Nature fallacy
I mean not necessarily appeal to nature because the woman does not try to prove that body hair on women are inherently good. She just points out that “not supposed to be there” is as meaningless as saying “your head shouldn’t be on your shoulders”. The rest is personal choice (that is if you can disregard the immense societal pressure).
No it was definitely an appeal to nature, “if it isn’t supposed to be there, why is it there?” is asserting that it’s supposed to be there because it naturally grew there. It has nothing to do with the inherent goodness of women, appeal to nature is a logical fallacy where you assert something is good or just because it is natural, e.g. “clothing is bad because we were born naked.”
Doing a fallacy doesn’t mean she’s wrong (that would be the fallacy fallacy, of course), it just means her reasoning is wrong (plenty of bad or unwanted things are natural).
where you assert something is good
She is not trying to prove hair leg is good or healthy because they are natural. If anything I would say she is doing a bit of tautology because her argument is along the lines of “they are supposed to be there because there is where they normally are”
It has nothing to do with the inherent goodness of women,
What I said had nothing to do with inherent goodness of women. My argument is that she is not trying to state body hair is inherently good and beneficial because of their naturality.
If it was appeal to nature, would expect something along the lines of “Why do they naturally grow there if it wasn’t good for women”
She is not trying to prove hair leg is good or healthy
She doesn’t need to be proving that leg hair is good or healthy to do a logical fallacy, she is defending that it is right for it to exist (as opposed to it being wrong for hair to be there).
If anything I would say she is doing a bit of tautology because her argument is along the lines of “they are supposed to be there because there is where they normally are”
I don’t think that is accurate. She’s saying they are supposed to be there because they grow there, that’s not saying the same thing twice, she is justifying its existence through an appeal to the natural order of it growing there.
She doesn’t need to be proving that leg hair is good or healthy to do a logical fallacy
She does need to be doing that if you want the logical fallacy to be “appeal to nature fallacy”.
that’s not saying the same thing twice
Tatutology is when two seemingly different statements carry the same information. The two different statements in “They are supposed to be there because that is where they naturally are” don’t actually say anything much different. If “naturally” was to be replaced with “normally”, then it would be a complete tautology but I only said a bit of tautology because “naturally” contains more information than “supposed to”. But the whole point of my argument is that I think she is using naturally in lieu of “normally” rather than as a precursor for healthy or good.
buddy I think you are really missing the point, let me copy and paste from Wikipedia:
An appeal to nature is a rhetorical technique for presenting and proposing the argument that “a thing is good because it is ‘natural’, or bad because it is ‘unnatural’ or ‘synthetic’.”[1] In debate and discussion, an appeal-to-nature argument can be considered to be a bad argument, because the implicit primary premise “What is natural is good” has no factual meaning beyond rhetoric in some or most contexts.
But the whole point of my argument is that I think she is using naturally in lieu of “normally” rather than as a precursor for healthy or good.
It doesn’t matter if she says “normally” or “naturally,” or if she never says “good” or “healthy;” by using the natural (or normal, or typical, or whatever word you want to use) state of the human body as reason for why it should be there, that is an appeal to nature.
Wikipedia even has a section about natural/normal:
In some contexts, the use of the terms of “nature” and “natural” can be vague, leading to unintended associations with other concepts. The word “natural” can also be a loaded term – much like the word “normal”, in some contexts, it can carry an implicit value judgment. An appeal to nature would thus beg the question, because the conclusion is entailed by the premise.[2]
And in that context, begging the question refers to the actual fallacy, which is:
begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: petītiō principiī) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion
Is that what you mean by tautology?
I don’t understand how the fact she never said “body hair is good” does not matter when the very definition of “appeal to nature” requires it: “a thing is good because it is ‘natural’”.
I think tautology can be a form of begging the question if it is used as a means of proving a statement. Nevertheless I agree calling it a begging the question is better because that is the actual fallacy I was trying to get at.
“Smart argument” is pointing at fallacies? What are you, 20?
You’re right, it’s not a complete argument by itself, but it is a smart rebuttal to identify the fallacious logic.
Even by the article you linked, it’s not wrong to point out a fallacy. It’d be wrong to conclude that since the argument was fallacious, the opposite must be true, but the local man didn’t say that.
but the local man didn’t say that.
Nor did I say he did.
Doesn’t evolution highlight thst the hair being there means it WAS/IS useful or wanted? I’m pretty sure those hairs act as a germ net or something, or maybe it’s just because that part of the body is best kept warm.
No, evolution allows for vestigial parts all the time. And sometimes random mutations happen and doesn’t make much of a difference so it doesn’t get selected out and now there’s just something there for no reason that never had a purpose.
I’m pretty sure those hairs act as a germ net or something, or maybe it’s just because that part of the body is best kept warm.
The biggest argument against that is the fact that humans have lost most of their body hair anyway and still managed to thrive. Not that it makes leg hair bad, but we clearly don’t need it to survive.
Well that was a good take-down, I bow to your superior knowledge on this
It was certainly useful when we didn’t have clothes and had much more hair.
There is a difference between what was evolutionarily advantageous in the last 150k years and what we prefer today. More at nine.
Not all tumors are cancer…
Some are bread.
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I’m a trans man and I wasn’t able to feel comfortable wearing shorts without shaving until my early 30s either. The indoctrination is real!
Not true. My wife loves being hairless and does it for herself.
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My Wife: "I’m just warning you, I haven’t shaved in a few days.’
Me: Oh no! Anyway…"
I think “a few days” is the problem zone. It will be itchy and rough stubble by then (at least for me). After like a month it smooths back out. It could well be your wife telling you “this will be uncomfortable for both of us, at least wait a bit, or give me time to shave”.
“If I didn’t want a sexy sasquatch, I wouldn’t have married my best friend.”
You really have to press your advantage to prevent them from thinking about that
Smooth as silk in one direction
Severe tire damage in the other
Evolutionarily hair growth on legs isn’t a deleterious trait. 🤷
I agree, obviously. With modern soap, hair is all but useless, and we should all be bald and glossy, the way nature attempts to deny us.
Id argue the otherwise.
Based on the hair being unhygienic point of view.
With modern soap and washing capabilities, it’s rather easy to keep oneself clean, even with long hair. So shaving everything off serves no purpose, just extra work for no benefit.
just extra work for no benefit
You can swim faster and your skin dries faster. Can speedrun showers basically
Fair point, at least those are reasonable benefits.
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skill issue im afraid, epilators are fast as fuck
edit: depilators too
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Hair in joints like armpits and the groin actually works somewhat as a lubricant, preventing chafing. This is true, even with modern soap
