{"id":2316,"date":"2010-10-27T07:59:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T12:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2010-10-27T07:59:28","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T12:59:28","slug":"boo-effing-hoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2316","title":{"rendered":"Boo Effing Hoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I'm not trying to horn in on Scott's rock'n'roll fallacy posts, (kudos <\/em>and kleos <\/em>for correct guesses for what song is in my head right now), but I think there's a sub-type of the ad misericordiam <\/em>fallacy that we might name by the title of this post. I don't have an example in print right now, rather I've been running into this argument occasionally in conversation. It runs something like this.  http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo<\/a><\/p>\n

\tNo really, it runs something like this:<\/p>\n

\tA: "We think X is bad because it places significant burdens on us."
\n\tB: "That's nothing we have had much greater burdens placed on us."<\/p>\n

Or, colloquially:<\/p>\n

B1: "Oh, Boo Effing Hoo, that's nothing compared to what we suffer."<\/p>\n

\tSo, there are some forms of this argument that might be reasonable, but when it is offered as a reason against rejecting X it seems to me to be fallacious, unless some sort of substantive premise, a "shared misery premise" is added. Something along the lines of:<\/p>\n

B2: "It is your turn to share the burden that we have already endured."<\/p>\n

But, as I've encountered it out in the irrational wildernesses of discourse, it seems often to be a nice variation on the ad miseridcordiam<\/em> fallacy–a way of turning an assertion about burdens into a misery pissing contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I'm not trying to horn in on Scott's rock'n'roll fallacy posts, (kudos and kleos for correct guesses for what song is in my head right now), but I think there's a sub-type of the ad misericordiam fallacy that we might name by the title of this post. I don't have an example in print right … Continue reading Boo Effing Hoo<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-pity","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}