Steve: False Cause Fallacy

By: steve-wang

The False Cause Fallacy is when someone believes that because one event comes after the other, the first event must have directly caused the second. An example of this is, people thinking that vaccines cause conditions such as autism. Those people say that since more people started taking vaccines, the rate of autism has started going up. However, they fail to consider that there might be other factors that cause autism. People might believe this because they might know relatively little about vaccines and people get vaccines before they birthed a child with autism. An example of False Cause Fallacy made by parents is that, children who play video games are violent. They might believe this because they see children who play video games act violently. However, there are kids who play video games who are not violent but the see the children who are violent play video games. Other possibilities are, the violent child hang out with other violent kids or the parents themselves are violent. Many people have fallen prey to this fallacy in the past. One popular example was, people believed that there were curses placed on Egyptian tombs because many people who have come into contact with the tomb have died in shortly after coming into contact and some under mysterious circumstances. People then started believing that there was a curse on the tombs. In the end the cause of those deaths were attributed to accidents and others due to harmful bacteria on the tomb. The False Cause Fallacy can be used to connect ideas together. This can be done by first, introducing the ideas to the target. Then, connecting those ideas while discrediting other ideas. We should also be aware of these tricks so that we do not fall prey to it ourselves.