When the Story Starts With, “I Have a Friend….

It begins with, “I have a friend.”

We next hear the story of the friend’s calamity and then how it coincides with some other event. That these events coincide are then used to make the assumption they are connected. This is the basis of a logical fallacy.

We all have them. Logical fallacies.

My personal big one was believing the whole world was was Jewish. This was based on my early life experience growing up near Bathurst and Wilson in Toronto. This was the heart of the Jewish part of the city. As a child, wherever I went, everyone was Jewish. From that I extrapolated that this was indicative of the whole world.

When we moved to Thornhill in 1967, all of a sudden, I was a minority in a community of mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. My thinking remained that the whole world was Jewish and that this community was the exception.

It took years of learning and exposure to the larger world to truly learn how wrong my thinking was. This is a remarkably common phenomenon. That is the nature of the logical fallacy. It makes sense we would think as we do, although the basis for our thinking is wrong, a fallacy.

So it is with the “I have a friend” argument.

It is based on putting together two circumstances and believing there to be a connection where one doesn’t actually exist. In a world of 7 billion people, there is ample opportunity to make such false connections. These connections happen even faster if they coincide with a pre-existing concern or belief system.

This kind of logical fallacy is based on something also referred to as anecdotal evidence.

Anecdotal evidence is considered the weakest from of evidence. I have a friend. I was told. Have you heard.

Education and exposure to more robust information is key to moving beyond the “I have a friend” beliefs. It can take years to get it.

It was stunning when I finally came to understand the actual population of Jewish folks in the world. We are a remarkably small minority.

So too with other people’s logical fallacies. If or once we get it, we wonder how we could have ever thought otherwise.

The answer?

We’re human.

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I am Gary Direnfeld and I am a social worker. Check out all my services and then call me if you need help with a personal issue, mental health concern, child behavior or relationship, divorce or separation issue or even help growing your practice. I am available in person and by video conferencing.

Gary Direnfeld, MSW, RSW

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Gary Direnfeld is a social worker. Courts in Ontario, Canada, consider him an expert in social work, marital and family therapy, child development, parent-child relations and custody and access matters. Gary is the host of the TV reality show, Newlywed, Nearly Dead, former parenting columnist for the Hamilton Spectator and author of Marriage Rescue: Overcoming the ten deadly sins in failing relationships. Gary maintains a private practice in Georgina Ontario, providing a range of services for people in distress. He speaks at conferences and workshops throughout North America. He consults to mental health professionals as well as to mediators and collaborative law professionals about good practice as well as building their practice.