Why Fallacies are False -- 19, Appeal to Misleading Authority

We have had a bellyfull of appeals to misleading authority over the last ten years. This post starts a "story arc" that will lead to some surprising results, because it will get into a subject almost nobody knows about, as far as I can tell.

One area of my expertise is with urban legends; most of my blog attacks them. Urban legends arise in subsets of a culture, some of which are echo chambers. Urban legends are related to gossip, something we all do, I guess, but the definitions of gossip and urban legend are different, so I’m going to go through the progression. This will come up again in a later post.

When you talk about people you know, that’s gossip. The standard for gossip is that everybody in the chain changes the story a little bit. When you receive gossip, NEVER believe it unless you can get back to the first person who said it. You will be astonished at the difference between what they said and what you heard. Accepting gossip always involves a fallacy called Appeal to misleading authority, the “authority” being whoever told you the gossip.

Urban legends have four key features.

1/ they spread person to person like gossip, although often the medium is email.

2/ they name a vague authority, if any. If the urban legend is detailed enough, you can check with the supposed authority and 100% of the time they debunk the legend. Either they never said anything on the subject, or they never said anything like what’s in the urban legend, or it distorts something they said. Again, this is the fallacy of misleading authority, with the person who sends the urban legend as the misleading authority. Also, any claim that fails to list any sources is probably an urban legend. ALWAYS CHALLENGE CLAIMS THAT DON'T HAVE SOURCES. (Just went through this on Bluesky)

3/ an urban legend is always about some group to which the person spreading it does NOT belong. So an urban legend about people flashing their car lights, saying that they are gang members, does NOT spread among gang members but only among outsiders. This will be important for a definition in a later post.

4/ all urban legends are false because their data is false or their logic is false.

Reporters almost never have worked for the organizations they report on, and they can fail on /2/ because they are part of /3/. They are at risk of creating an urban legend every time they speak on camera or publish an article. Since MSM has fired the experts who know who to talk to at various organizations, reporters have to develop sources – and may pick unreliable ones. And if MSM is publishing articles based on Google results, they are counting on their writers to know which results came from reliable sources. What I’m seeing from MSM suggests that their writers don’t know that at all.

It’s also true that the more sensational the report is, the more you have to doubt vague “sources”.

a/ It could be somebody with a grudge on.

b/ It could be somebody far down in the chain of command who has no idea what is going on above their pay grade but likes the attention they get, or who gets quoted on overall issues they have no clue about because the reporter doesn’t have the brains or experience to know better.

c/ When it’s somebody who “used to work there”, you have to suspect that things have moved on and their information is out of date. Also these people might have been fired, or might have resigned, and have a grudge on.

Why would MSM destroy its reputation by spreading obvious urban legends?

Well, do they know how to tell when they are spreading urban legends?

Second, are they willing to fire writers that create urban legends?

And last and most shameful – both gossip and urban legends attract attention or they wouldn’t spread. MSM can’t survive if it doesn’t attract readers or listeners – what I call eyeballs and eardrums. So when they’re barely surviving anyway, do they stop attracting people (the basis of their advertising revenues), in the interests of having a good reputation?

Before you judge them, look back and think about how many times you refused to pass along gossip. It gets you attention, it’s exciting, and if you answer “Yeah but I’m not asking for money” remember, there are all kinds of compensation. Yours was emotional. MSM has stock holders.