Inconsistent Comparison – FT#6

14 Aug Inconsistent Comparison – FT#6

Show Notes

When supporting your claims by comparing two things, it’s important to be consistent in terms of what you’re actually comparing. By doing so you can ensure it is a fair comparison and your point can be supported. If you are not fair when setting up the parameters, and you end up comparing the two in different ways, you are engaging in the fallacy of Inconsistent Comparison.

Trump

We started out with Trump talking about regulations:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Boris Johnson’s £350 million a week promise:

Fallacy in the Wild (Sting: the Muppet Show)

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this print ad from Aldi, which was banned for comparing Aldi own brand products to premium brands at other supermarkets:

Fake News

Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:

1. I’m very pro-Israel. When I decided to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it was time. It should have been done years ago. The State of Israel has had Jerusalem as their capital for over 100 years.
2. For the past 17 years, Obamacare has wreaked havoc on the lives of innocent, hardworking Americans.
3. We met with the Queen, who is absolutely a terrific person, where she reviewed her Honour Guard for the first time in 70 years, they tell me.

Click below for the answer

Mark got it wrong yet again this week, and is STILL on 0%

Collusion is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Rudy Giuliani’s claim that collusion isn’t even a crime

The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about:

• Trump threatened to shut down the government if Democrats refused to fund his wall, forgetting three important things.  The Republicans have control of the House, the midterms are in three months and people don’t like it when the government shuts down.
• Trump tweeted last week “I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!” Which is odd, since it was his administration that allowed the instructions for untraceable homemade 3d printed guns to be published online.
• Trump said at a speech in Kansas City: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”. Oh no, wait, that was from 1984.  What Trump actually said was “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening”. So, basically the same.
• Just when you thought 2018 couldn’t get any weirder, it turns out the Republican candidate in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, who is brilliantly named ‘Denver Riggleman’, is a self published author.  Of Bigfoot Erotica. He claims his interest in Bigfoot is entirely non-sexual. The title of his next book, ‘The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him’, says otherwise.
• Trump announced a 12 billion dollar bailout for the farmers he screwed with his trade war.  He really loves fixing problems he created and acting like a hero.  He’s like Muttley from Wacky Races, begging for a medal.
• The guy who took a pickaxe to Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been bailed out…. by the guy who destroyed it in 2016.  Is it just me, or could this be the beginning of a chain.  Pay it forward!
• Someone set Betsy DeVos’s $40 million yacht adrift, doing $10,000 worth of damage.  In other news, a bird crapped on my car, which, proportionally, is just as bad.
• The Trump administration still doesn’t have anyone in charge of preventing foreign election interference, and the Republicans just blocked an effort to allocate $250 million to increase election security measures ahead of the midterms. I guess when your strategy is so obvious, why waste the money?

If you wanted to buy a T-shirt featuring this fallacy, you could click here. No pressure

And if you have some money left over after that, Jim’s book, 2000 Mules and One Big Lie: A Stubborn Conspiracy Theory is available now.