Appeal to fiction

An appeal to fiction (also generalizing from fictional evidence) is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone makes claims about reality based on evidence drawn from works of fiction.

Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Key articles
General logic
Bad logic
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Explanation

Fiction is not reality — it is driven in large part by considerations of being interesting to the audience rather than reflecting reality with 100% accuracy. Furthermore, fiction shows systemic bias in its distortion of reality; common deviations for the audience's benefit are catalogued and studied as tropes. Using fiction to argue about reality can therefore systematically skew your beliefs and expectations.

Example
  • This tactic was deployed by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia when he justified the use of torture on terrorism suspects by citing the television show 24[1] as evidence, stating "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so."[2]
  • Just about anything to do with 1984.
gollark: Does exact matching actually work on sound files? It's possible there's some weird conversion stuff going on, and if they're from a lossily compressed source it probably won't work exactly right.
gollark: The enzyme simulating, as well as the folding.
gollark: Aren't there distributed computing projects doing that sort of thing?
gollark: Presumably they use a lot of GPUs.
gollark: Yep. Apparently it can even add 4-digit numbers now, *and* produces slightly more coherent text.

See also
  • Things to keep in mind before starting a conspiracy, mostly informed by fictional examples
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  1. 24 IMDb.
  2. Scalia and Torture (Jun 19, 2007) by Andrew Sullivan The Atlantic.
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