Cogito ergo sum

Key articles

Logical fallacy Syllogism Argument

General logic

Absence of evidence Equivocation Non sequitur Post hoc, ergo propter hoc Paraconsistent logic 稻草人谬误

Bad logic

Adding epicycles Cherry picking Tu quoque Appeal to the minority Relativist fallacy One of the good ones v -t -e

Wronger than wrong is alogical fallacy that occurs when it is asserted that different degrees of "right" or "wrong" are the same — a form ofequivocation of degrees of truth.

The fallacy is afallacy of ambiguity and aninformal fallacy.

Explanation[edit]

The phrase "wronger than wrong" was coined byIsaac Asimov inThe Relativity of Wrong^[1] (expanded and popularised byMichael Shermer, who called it "Asimov's Axiom").^[2]Wronger than wrong describes any idea that equates errors that clearly aren't equal. The example originally given is that a belief in aflat earth is wrong, but a belief in a spherical earth is also wrong (as it's actually an oblate spheroid) — however, saying that belief in a spherical or in a flat earth areequally wrong is more wrong than both those errors combined. Blurring concepts into the same category of "wrong" or "improbable", despite their obvious difference in the magnitude of how "wrong" and "improbable" they are, is an example of thecontinuum fallacy (the "fallacy of gray"). Another example to illustrate the difference is that it would be wrong to categorize bats as rodents but also to categorize bats as insects. However, bats as rodents is far less wrong as both are orders of mammals, and their superficial similarity to mice has led to a common misconception that bats and mice are closely related, an understandable mistake by someone who isn't well-read on the subject. However, categorizing bats as bugs is entirely wrong, arthropods andchordates are entirely different phyla and have very little in common with each other except that they're both part of the clade Nephrozoa.

• 

  The Earth as a sphere: wrong

• 

  Flat Earth: wronger

• 

  Thinking the two are equally valid:not even wrong

Importance[edit]

This phrase has important implications regarding the nature ofscientific theories and aptly describes how thescientific method builds up knowledge and understanding — theories may change and adapt, but calling them outrightwrong is not necessarily the right way to go about it. One reviewer of Asimov'sThe Relativity of Wrong asserted that such thinking was a great tool for "arming oneself against the inevitableanti-science attack that one often hears — [that] theories are always preliminary and science really doesn't 'know' anything".^[3]

See also[edit]

• Not even wrong
• Relativist fallacy
• Science was wrong before
• Fractal wrongness
• LessWrong

External links[edit]

• See theWikipedia article onWronger than wrong.

References[edit]

• Logic
• Fallacies
• Fallacies of ambiguity

• Pages using DynamicPageList parser function