Farting Aliens Cause Snowstorms
* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”
“Farting aliens cause snowstorms.”
I think that the above false cause statement would be easy to dismiss as pure BS. Here most of you would say that A (farting aliens) clearly does not cause B (snowstorms).
First of all, because we do not even know if aliens exist. Secondly, if they do exist – do they fart? And lastly, how exactly would an alien fart cause a snowstorm?
Although the first example is too bizarre even for the most broad-minded of people, some may accept the following:
“Homo-sex is a sin. And God is punishing us right now. Just like it said in the Bible, he will punish the wicked, and boy are we being punished. We got floods, we got drought, we got starving children and rapes and murders and all kinds of trouble. And it’s all because we allowed them homos to freely fornicate. We have got to make it illegal again, or God will continue to punish us.”
Here the arguer wants people to believe that A (legal gay sex) causes B (floods, drought, rape, murder, starving children). Although, as usual with these kinds of arguments, there is no evidence that these things are linked.
It also ignores the fact that all the supposed effects have been around since before the assumed cause (making gay sex legal).
For comparison, it would be like me saying that, ‘I made you sneeze by turning on the light’. Even though I turned on the light after you sneezed, and therefore could not have caused it.
But why do we accept the false cause?
Because, we tend to trust people that can give us the impression that they know what they are talking about. Especially if we have little or no knowledge of the topic ourselves. Share on X
And if the person making the claim throws in a few expert references, a little statistic and maybe a graph or two, anything can be made to appear legit.
So, if you want to make people agree that we need to put weapons in space, here is one false cause that might actually get them on your side:
“According to NASA’s statistics from their Near Earth Object Program, the Earth, the planet that we call home, has near misses with thousands of comets and asteroids each year. Massive lumps of space rock that can obliterate entire cities into nothing but dust.
Luckily though, this will most likely never happen as the few objects that do hit us are burned up by our atmosphere. But here is what you probably don’t know, and that you need to know.
All those asteroids and comets up there, that have their near misses with Earth – when they are in close proximity with our planet, their gravitational pull on the Earth causes floods.
That’s right. I bet you didn’t know that. Even though I am sure that most of you are familiar with the Moon’s effect on our tides, the fact that these other near Earth objects also have such an effect on our planet is not common knowledge. But now that you do know, maybe you’ll understand why I want weapons up there.
But not just any weapons. I want strategic weapons that can target these objects at a distance and nudge them away from their path towards the Earth. That is the only way that we can keep them from causing havoc down here.”
The false cause here, is that ‘near earth objects cause floods’. Everything else is correct.
NASA does have a Near Earth Object Program, several of these objects do pass us every year, and the moon does have an effect on the tide.
Using the moon as an example, of how objects outside of Earth can affect the Earth, makes the false cause seem more plausible.
Bake a lie into proven facts, and you will be surprised at how many fall for it. Share on X© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
