Everyone has it

About this video

"Can I have this game? Everyone in my class has it!" The only reason given is that many people do it. Using popularity as if it were a reason a claim is true is a fallacy called the bandwagon. A bandwagon was a big cart that carried a band through the streets in a parade, and people ran to jump on and join the fun without asking where it was going.

Popularity isn't a good reason because a claim is true or false depending on the world, not on how many people believe it, and a vote doesn't change how things are. This short animation shows a crowd that once agreed the Sun goes around the Earth. For a very long time most people believed it, and they were wrong together.

Numbers can still be a clue, though. If a thousand people who stayed at a hotel say the rooms are clean, that tells you something, because each of them looked. Their reports are many examples, and many varied examples make strong induction. The animation draws them with arrows pointing at the world. Then it draws a crowd whose arrows only point at each other: each person heard it from someone else. That is just a crowd. And for a choice like the game, better reasons are about the game itself: its cost, whether it's fun, whether it's right for your age. This video goes with the Everyone Does It lesson of Logic Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00Everyone has it! So I should have it too?
2. 0:04For a long time, nearly everyone agreed the Sun goes around the Earth. The crowd was wrong.
3. 0:11But many people who each went and looked? That is evidence.
4. 0:18Many people who just copied each other are only a crowd.
5. 0:24How many believe it doesn't make it true.