I’ve been holding this post on the back burner for weeks now, but examples keep popping up and I just can’t help but write about them. Have you heard of the Toupée Fallacy? It goes like this: “All toupées look fake; I've never seen one that I couldn't tell was fake.”
OK, I admit, a big part of the inspiration for this post was needing to put up this picture.
If there’s a toupée that doesn’t look fake, you don’t see it. Every time you spot a toupée it reinforces your conclusion, and you never see the evidence that could refute your conclusion.
This fallacy is more than just a quick joke, though, because I’ve seen it in effect over and over and over.
“How can you tell if someone is vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” “How can you tell if someone is a marathon runner? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”
And then more seriously, “poly people won’t shut up about being poly.” “Trans people look like ghastly parodies.”
Yesterday I was finishing up Phil Zuckerman’s “Living the Secular Life”, and he quoted Rick Warren as saying “I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry”. If you think about it, that’s the same fallacy. Because what would an atheist who wasn’t angry ever say to Rick Warren? Why would they ever interact with him in any way?
It’s hard to know how many people might be in the “silent majority”. It’s dependent, among other things, on just how observant you are. Perhaps you are uniquely skilled at spotting toupées. But it’s far more likely that you are only seeing the loudest, angriest people in that group… or the ones who are very new to it and haven’t learned the boundaries. After all, there’s no believer like a convert.
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