(n.) Deceptive or false appearance; deceitfulness; that which misleads the eye or the mind; deception.
(n.) An argument, or apparent argument, which professes to be decisive of the matter at issue, while in reality it is not; a sophism.
Example Sentences:
(1) In March, the Tories reappointed their trusty old attack dogs, M&C Saatchi, to work alongside the lead agency, Euro RSCG, and M&C Saatchi's chief executive, David Kershaw, wasted no time in setting out his stall, saying: "It's a fallacy that online has replaced offline in terms of media communications."
(2) Once availed of the fallacy that athletes are role models, there’s a certain purity that feels almost quaint in an era of athlete as brand.
(3) It's a fallacy, because there is no such thing as 'the people'.
(4) In 2 experiments, representativeness was pitted against probability combination to determine the contributions of each to the fallacy.
(5) It is argued that Western science reductionist approaches to the classification of "mass hysteria" treat it as an entity to be discovered transculturally, and in their self-fulfilling search for universals systematically exclude what does not fit within the autonomous parameters of its Western-biased culture model, exemplifying what Kleinman (1977) terms a "category fallacy."
(6) Attempts have been made to avoid the fallacies with the introduction of quadrilateral and Wits analyses.
(7) Greater efforts to verify the characteristics of apparently discordant pairs than to verify those of apparently concordant pairs can result in the 'unequal ascertainment' fallacy.
(8) It's pure ad hominem (in the classic sense of the logical fallacy): "who is "Cornell [ sic ] West" to think that anything he says should be even listened to by "national security professionals"?
(9) For example, the fallacy is committed when a study contains the conclusion that TV advertising increases preference for sugar-based foods, but the reader later believes that the study concluded that TV advertising should be controlled.
(10) Typically, people get honours for their charity work, and I've never even agreed with that, since it tends to mean donations, which tend to proceed from wealth, and all it does is lock down and make flesh the fallacy that rich people are more honourable than everyone else.
(11) In our response, we place special emphasis on the fallacy of using nondiscriminating similarities between groups (e.g., suicidal ideation) as a basis for positing disease homogeneity.
(12) This is a good example of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc – “after this, therefore because of this” – fallacy.
(13) The author discusses the fallacy in the orthodox interpretation of Wolff's law, and suggests that a "resolution length restriction" be imposed on the trajectorial theory to avoid interpretations that lead to the fallacy.
(14) Simulation can validate a proposed policy, uncover fallacies of a proposal, or determine the sensitivity of the response to a policy change.
(15) being involved is the idea – and it is a core capitalist idea – that if you provide people with perfect information about a market you will be able to make perfect decisions, which is just fallacious in the context of higher education.
(16) The Lib Dem deputy leader, Simon Hughes, told the BBC that the no camp had conducted a "fundamentally fallacious campaign" which would affect the coalition.
(17) It is fallacious to assume that the conditions were worse in the past as it is fallacious to assume that they were better.
(18) Of course the polarisation of old and young rests on a fallacy, if not a downright lie: that all young people possess perfect skin and gleaming hair, have non-stop sex, are bursting with energy and are never lonely.
(19) Amniotomy followed by oxytocin infusion is advocated to simulate the progress of normal labour unless this is evident from an early stage.Oxytocin, the dose of which is limited only by foetal distress, cannot be used effectively unless three popular fallacies are rejected.
(20) While the error of indulging in fantasies such as the " Twitter revolution " and the collapsing Islamic Republic may be understandable, I wonder if the flawed logic that allowed for such fallacies is.
Folly
Definition:
(n.) The state of being foolish; want of good sense; levity, weakness, or derangement of mind.
(n.) A foolish act; an inconsiderate or thoughtless procedure; weak or light-minded conduct; foolery.
(n.) Scandalous crime; sin; specifically, as applied to a woman, wantonness.
(n.) The result of a foolish action or enterprise.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is a folly to think measures to fix eurozone governance will suffice, however needed those may be.
(2) A senior Conservative cabinet minister has issued a warning to leaders "of all political parties" that putting Britain's membership of the European Union at risk would be "complete folly" and that the "irresponsible" debate taking place is damaging the country's influence at the negotiating table.
(3) Whenever I hear about David Blunkett's tests for new immigrants, I think of my mother's initial impressions and don't know whether to laugh or cry: laugh because of the patent folly of his attempts to fix what is fluid and to codify what is contested in British identity; or cry at the racism that has inspired it, the nationalism that informs it, and the historical, political and cultural illiteracy that infects every part of it.
(4) Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really.
(5) Honor & Folly ( honorandfolly.com , one bedroom $165 a night, both bedrooms $215, plus a sofabed for children) is a home away from home with a fully stocked kitchen and a cosy living area decorated with vintage and locally crafted furniture.
(6) His friend Dingle Foot drafted an editorial that David then sharpened up, inserting phrases that summed up his outlook: 'We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and crookedness...It is no longer possible to bomb countries because you fear that your trading interests will be harmed...this new feeling for the sanctity of human life is the best element in the modern world.'
(7) ‘Patriotism’ is a difficult concept to pin, and one man’s patriotism can easily be misjudged as folly or even treachery if we start judging based on a narrow understanding of the term.” Walid, a Muslim veteran of the navy, added that “even though we invaded Iraq based upon bogus information, that doesn’t diminish the sacrifice of Captain Khan and other American service members who lost their lives”.
(8) A few years before Lady Thatcher and Mr Letwin became obsessed with the poll tax, the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about the march of folly in human affairs from the Trojan to the Vietnamese war.
(9) To continue along this path of folly is not compatible with the maintenance of wealth, nor with the health of humans or the biosphere.
(10) At 568,969, the paper’s circulation had recently overtaken that of its old rival, the Sunday Times : it’s not true that it plummeted after Suez as a result of the outrage caused by Astor adding the line: “We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and such crookedness” to Dingle Foot’s leader – but well-heeled middle-class readers who cancelled their subscriptions were replaced by relatively impoverished students and leftwing intellectuals.
(11) Some startlingly grand privately owned buildings have repeatedly appeared on the annual register of the most important listed buildings at risk – virtually all the HHA properties are listed, and many are also scheduled ancient monuments or set in grade I gardens – including garden buildings and follies at Castle Howard in Yorkshire and Frogmore mausoleum, which holds some of the Queen's ancestors, in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
(12) In London, the Times newspaper called Ford’s position denying aid to New York City an “act of monumental folly”.
(13) Giles Swayne London • "Intelligent" Boris Johnson commits the age-old folly of mistaking good fortune, selfishness, narcissism and aggression for intelligence, but unwittingly demonstrates the wrongness of his position.
(14) That police can legally do this, the QCCL argues, illustrates the folly and unfairness of laws intended to safeguard an event at which police, on their own projections, will outnumber protesters three to one.
(15) This sad state of affairs shows the folly of handing over taxpayers’ money to unaccountable groups to run schools.
(16) There are obvious implications for public services, and the clear link between poor public services and demand for healthcare is ignored at our folly.
(17) In a household, it would be economic folly to lay out grand plans without having the money to pay for them.
(18) The cliff-side Mussenden Temple is a folly that was modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Rome and built for the Earl Bishop of Derry (one of Lord Bristol’s eccentric forbears), in 1785.
(19) Follies plays exquisitely on the unreliability of memory and the ephemerality of theatre; it is a stark warning against the distorting dangers of nostalgia.
(20) In giving $850bn to the IMF the G20 are only making the poor suffer more, and forcing them to pay for the folly and greed of bankers and speculators.