The fallacy that I see the most is the equivocation. I have watched my parents argue over
something and I am sitting there and saying in my head, “They are talking about two
different things!” She thinks he meant one thing, but he meant another. And yes, I have been
guilty of it myself. We have tempers in our family. I have been working a long time on not
jumping to the wrong conclusion. To stop and ask questions to make sure that what I think I
heard is what they are saying, but I am not always successful, especially in my family life. I
have more success with it in my professional life.I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time,
but the first time that I remember using a fallacy was when I was in the 5th grade. And I
used the fallacy of Popular Appeal. I was raised in a strict religious household. Until I was
in the 5th grade, I was not allowed to wear pants. My parents were raised to believe that it
was a sin for women to wear pants, and they still firmly believed that it was. I had spoken to
my parents about it several different times, but I wasn’t getting anywhere with them, so I
started thinking outside the box. My father was and still is a huge sports fan. As a matter of
fact, we had a TV in our house for one reason and one reason only, so he could watch sports.
So, I decided that I would play basketball (even though I did/do not have an athletic bone in
my body) with the plan that I would be able to convince him that I would have to wear pants
(not shorts) in order to be able to play. And it worked. Yes, I conned my father when I was
in the 5th grade, but I have been wearing pants ever since, and I am not dying and going to
hell as a result. My mother also now wears pants. As young as I was back then, I honestly
don’t know how I could have used reason and critical thinking. I was a child, and my
thoughts and opinions didn’t matter. There are things now that come up that they believe is
a “sin” and we can have logical discussions about it, but not back then. For example I work
in a doctors office and we see all types of patients. Mostly we see pediatric patients and with
that we give a lot of vaccines but we do have parents who choose not to vaccinate their
children/child because they believe or read that it causes their child to develop these
diseases. A lot of our parents use google and they seek false information from word of
mouth into making their decisions. Even when we give them correct information, facts and
recent outbreaks on certain diseases and let them know that this will help and benefit their
kids/kid in the future some still choose not to vaccinate. I also know that some religions do
not believe in vaccinating their children as well. I also instruct that some schools or even
daycare won't accept children without up-to-date vaccine record. Even when I disagree with
the decision that some of the parents choose to make I still respect their decisions but still
give them great feedback and maybe they may change their minds in the future.Second
example is when a co-worker disagreed with me on what color tube a lab was supposed to
be drawn in. PSA (prostate test) is supposed to be drawn in a gold tube but a co-worker
stated that she always drawn them in a red tube and this is the first time the lab had rejected
the test because it was in the wrong tube. Asked the co-worker why was it drawn in that
colored tube and my co-worker stated that it said red or gold so it was always drawn in red.
Instructed to my co-worker that it has always been gold per the lab request. We got into a
slight argument because we both believed that we were right until we actually called the lab
and they stated that the test should be drawn in a gold which they prefer. Searching the lab
site to verify the tube color was not enough for my co-worker we needed verbal
confirmation.With everything I've learned thus far about critical thinking and the reasoning
behind the ways we think as human beings. My approach will be totally different and I won't
be bias to other people decisions. There was a post on social media that was posted by a
young girl requesting help so she could feed her family, it stated she was single and had two
young children. Many people posted negative comments on the post accusing this young girl
of being untruthful and accusing her of just wanting money for drugs they stated "the
majority of people asking for handouts are drug addicts". If certain people would have
carefully read the post before jumping to conclusions they would have realized she never
asked for money. She was asking for food donations or to please order food to the hotel she
was staying in. This was a perfect example of how it took just that one negative untrue
comment for others to blindly follow without any evidence of the accusations. Stories that
are shared on social media a lot of the time are untrue and cause fear which turns into hate.
I have seen many people (including myself a few times) who rely on bias, fallacy, and
assumptions when speaking about a topic. I have noticed that it's easy to get information
from the people that you surround yourself with or false social media news.One example
that comes to the top of my mind involved a co-worker. Steve was having a conversation
with me about interracial relationships. He mentioned that interracial relationships were
disgusting and white men should not be with someone of color because it was unnatural (he
quoted the bible as a reference). It was quite an awkward situation for me to be in because
my wife is Pakistani and Italian. I let him know that I was in an interracial relationship and
he should try to challenge his way of thinking instead of believing what he's believed his
whole life.While my first example was fueled by ignorance and hate, my second example
was fueled by love and compassion. My wife is invested in equality and loves every living
thing and there have been a few times where she would hear of an injustice and it would
emotionally impact her for weeks. One particular time that comes to mind is when DFW
airport (along with other airports across the U,S,) were holding families and not letting them
leave the airport. When my wife heard about this, she immediately broke down in tears and
rallied up people to protest. Without knowing much information, she told her friends that the
families, who were here legally, may be deported so they had to act fast. The situation itself
was awful, however, my wife didn't really know what was going on. She jumped to the
worst case scenario so that she could get the support she needed.
