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Base Rate Neglect


Logical Fallacy of Base Rate Neglect  / Base Rate Fallacy / Neglecting Base Rates / Base Rate Bias / Prosecutor’s Fallacy / Ignoring Proportionality

Base rate neglect is one of the many smokescreens that are used to cover the fact that the reasoning is based on one of the three fallacies of Agrippa's trilemma. Whenever a logical fallacy is committed, the fallacy has its roots in Agrippa's trilemma. All human thought (without Divine revelation) is based on one of three unhappy possibilities. These three possibilities are infinite regress, circular reasoning, or axiomatic thinking. This problem is known as Agrippa's trilemma. Some have claimed that only logic and math can be known without Divine revelation; however, that is not true. There is no reason to trust either logic or math without Divine revelation. Science is also limited to the pragmatic because of the weakness on human reasoning, which is known as Agrippa's trilemma.

The logical fallacy of base rate neglect / Base Rate Fallacy / Neglecting Base Rates / Base Rate Bias / Prosecutor’s Fallacy / Ignoring Proportionality occurs when someone uses specific instances or unrelated instances in favor of verified statistical information. The corresponding fallacy is to try to apply statistical analysis to something that does not yield itself to this type of analysis, such as miracles, God, the spiritual real, Heaven, Hell, etc. In this case, a person who wanted to prove a certain thing would dismiss any and all specific instances in favor of statistics that could not possibly measure what they claim to measure.

Examples of the Logical Fallacy of Base Rate neglect  / Base Rate Fallacy / Neglecting Base Rates / Base Rate Bias / Prosecutor’s Fallacy / Ignoring Proportionality

"There were three murders in the city that were committed by Christians this week. Only one Atheist committed a murder. That says something about Christianity."

This is an example of base rate neglect along with small sample size and hasty generalization. There is also a definist fallacy here in that, while three people out of four self-identify as Christians, there are many definitions of what "Christian" means. The group, Christians, is quite diverse ranging from followers of Christ to people who have never met Jesus Christ personally and who don't allow the label, "Christian," to affect their lifestyles. Atheists, on the other hand comprise only about 2% of the population of the city.


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