Decisions can be affected by fallacies. Decisions are taken based on subjective knowledge. Knowledge need to be prioritized or decisions can lead to death. I find that this is the most extended fallacy of people; no matter who, even close friends or family fall into this error: taking bad decisions due to bad prioritization.
Q: I see a lot of fallacies on several lists, but no fallacy of priorities. Is there a priorities fallacy? Is there any formalization of such a fallacy?
I have several examples, but this are some that come to my mind right now:
- People is religious because they prioritize their personal issues in front of logic. Some individuals need to show they are strong before accepting any argument stating that the bible has a minimum logical error.
- We are destroying the planet because we don't understand the importance of changing. For most individuals, pleasure is of more priority than survival. It is clear that saving the planet is not a current high priority, while for a lot of us, this is the imperative.
- Populism is also a fallacy of priorities: people decides based on the smile of politics, some phrases, friendship, work possibilities, instead of deciding based on best actions.
- Education is bad, due to people educates to follow a fallacious priority: a medicine student studies first, for surviving, for having money, status, looks, house, etc.; second, to heal. Then, the universities that give easy titles earn more money (don't need to teach how to heal).
- Media contents are garbage. But that's not due to media, but caused by each individual's priorities about information. Media sellers can only survive selling what people buys, so they need to include some sexual oriented content, some yellow-ish news, some soap-opera histories, some scandals, etc. Then, this becomes the main media contents.
- Fidel Castro is honored by several governments because he did some good things: this is a very clear error due to prioritization of facts: goals doesn't justify means. Means are more important than goals. If not, Hitler can also be honored, because Germany has learned a lot from the Holocaust.
- A trial is clearly a decision between several facts, having priorities a very important impact. Bad prioritization leads to judicial errors.