A high-ranking official asked a Chinese
king, "Your Majesty, if someone were to tell you that there was a tiger
roaming the markets of our capital city, would you believe it?"
"No," the king answered.
"What if two people told you there
was a tiger in the market?" the official added.
The king responded, "I might be
suspicious of it, but I wouldn't believe it.”
"What about three people?"
After contemplating on this for a bit,
the king admitted that, yes, he would believe there was a tiger in the market
if three people said it.
That is how three men make a tiger.
This is a powerful fallacy is similar
to argumentum ad
populum, meaning “appeal to the people” in Latin, and the bandwagon
fallacy. Both of these state, simply, that a theory must be true simply because
a lot of people believe it. The idea for three men make a tiger comes from a
Chinese proverb that suggests that individuals will generally accept an illogical
idea as long as enough people have repeated it.
The aforementioned conversation
came from Pang Cong, an official of the state of Wei and one of the king's most
trusted advisors. Cong was escorting a captured prince from another state and
he was worried that in his absence, those resentful of his status would bad
mouth him. This could undermine his credibility with the king.
Pang Cong explained to the king, "It
is obvious that there is no tiger in the marketplace, yet three men saying so
can make a tiger. And the number of men wanting to slander me is far more than
three. I hope your majesty can see my circumstances."
"I understand," the king
replied.
But the king did not understand the
lesson and just as Cong had feared those jealous of him had ruined his
reputation. When Pang Cong returned from his journey, the king refused to see
him because he had fallen pray to the fallacy.
The main problem with this fallacy is the
lack of logic behind it, yet many people will still go with the majority even
if the answer they get is different. The king knew there was no tiger in the
market but because enough people had said that there was one there, he changed
his response to Cong and believed them.
Just because a lot of people in class say
we won’t have a pop quiz in our next lecture doesn’t mean that there won’t be.
A lot of people used to say the Earth was flat, their beliefs and what they
said made no difference other than creating other flat Earth believers. Today,
a lot of people believe that vaccines cause autism in children. Even though
this has been disproven, there are still a wide number of people saying it so
more people begin to believe it everyday.
We see this online more than ever, a
couple of people will make a claim about something and those that read it don’t
necessarily believe it right away. But if those readers do a little research
and find a few more people saying the same thing, they’ll start to think it’s
true. One tweet won’t "kill" a celebrity, but if enough people retweet that Ryan
Reynolds died, others will instantly believe it without trying to Google
it. Even without trying to make a tiger, it sometimes happens. The Onion will post a satirical piece
and someone who only read the headline will believe it to be true. The Internet
has created a place where tigers are not only made, but thrive. We live in a time when it’s
easier than ever before to check the authenticity of a claim or theory, but people
can be lazy and just believe what a few people post.
Humans look to others for guidance, if a
large number of people say something to be true we generally trust them because
we believe they know something we don’t. It can come back to psychological
ideas about conformity,
but at the end of the day we don’t have to believe everything we’re told and everything we read. In fact, we should question it, research it and find out as much as possible before we believe it, rather than just relying on others.
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