Talk:Nirvana fallacy

message: This page provides absolutely no citations or external links. If it wasn't labeled a philosophy stub, it'd hardly be attached to the rest of Wikipedia at all. 71.198.74.1 03:34, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  no cit, lnk 

message: Hi folks - I was wondering, isn't this sort of a case of the "straw man fallacy"?  I would write that in the article, but I'm not quite sure.   --Bmk (talk) 08:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, setting up a straw man involves someone attacking a distortion of a position because the distortion of the position is easier to attack than the position itself. Its a fallacy, however, because an attack on the distortion is not the same as the attack on the position. Frankja79 (talk) 21:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw man 

message: I've just run Google searches for candidate names:
*"nirvana fallacy" had 17500 hits without site filter, 31 at site:ac.uk, 170 at site:edu, 5770 at site:org, and 8 at site:org.uk
*"perfect solution fallacy" had 620 hits without site filter, none at site:ac.uk, 5 at site:edu, 647 at site:org, and 2 at site:org.uk
*"perfectionist fallacy" had 571 hits without site filter, 1 at site:ac.uk, 61 at site:edu, 571 at site:org, and 1 at site:org.uk
It looks as though Nirvana fallacy is the right name after all. Does anyone object or can we go ahead with the merge process now? - Pointillist (talk) 16:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: While the raw numbers from my Google searches were quite different from yours, Nirvana still outweighed perfect solution by a factor of 10, though I suspect we're picking up a decent number of hits that are more related to the concept of Nirvana than to the Nirvana fallacy. I personally preferred perfect solution because it requires no knowledge of the concept of Nirvana and avoids any possible entanglement in issues related to that subject. All the same, I think it's time to go for it, and Nirvana solution seems to have the upper hand in Google hits. Scj2315 (talk) 06:43, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Support Nirvana fallacy as merged name -- hit numbers seem clear. -- Bricaniwi (talk) 07:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge proposal - article name

message: Le mieux does not mean "the better", it means "the best".  Le meilleur is the french term for "the better".  Could someone please correct accordingly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arisevoice12 (talk • contribs) 14:38, 28 June 2009
:Changed. Be bold and fix errors yourself when you see them. Thanks! --Mrwojo (talk) 23:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Native French speaker here, grand-parent post is untrue. "Mieux" is the comparative form of "bien" ("good"), and it means "better"; "meilleur" can be either the superlative form of "bien", or either the comparative or superlative form of "bon". In any case, "mieux" is a comparative, and will never mean "best", which is a superlative. Fixing article accordingly. 80.200.221.233 (talk) 13:24, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not a native speaker, but that's not true. "Mieux" as an adverb is comparative, but as a noun with a definite article is superlative. That's true of all comparatives in French.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:2002:7414:8305:2180:13E8 (talk) 18:55, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wrong, that's not that exact kind of French which you are aware of but sententious phrasing and what is meant is "better". In fact, the overall worth of the sentence is  rather disputable when taken outside of its original context(s). Some are making of it "willing to make it better is of lesser worth than willing to make it well, and often, spoils the achievements like as of those last", others prefer to keep it meaning: "what's on top is the enemy of what's below". Voltaire's just an old beast to me. --Askedonty (talk) 10:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  French Translation 

message: Other possible names for this fallacy:
* perfectionist fallacy
* unobtainable perfection fallacy
* unattainable perfection fallacy (haven't seen a RS for this yet)
—Mrwojo (talk) 02:15, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternative names 

message: I removed this recent addition because:
#If we need to improve the example, it should be discussed on the talk page and not commented on in the article. 
#It does not improve the article and instead is likely to confuse readers.
#The source cited to justify the statement says that safety features do not reduce accidents. The rebuttal statement says seat belts reduce the chances of death in an accident. These are not the same thing.
Jojalozzo 02:42, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rebuttal of rebuttal 

message: The credibility of Wikipedia is going to go down, if these kinds of fraudulent, unscientific claims are distributed here, especially as "correct" "rebuttals" to "fallacious" claims
The example says currently:
"Posit (fallacious)  Wearing a non medical grade mask will not protect me or others from SARS-CoV-2."
"Rebuttal While wearing a mask does not provide 100% protection, it does provide some protection.[5][6] Some protection is better than none, especially when the virus is not under control."
This "rebuttal" is a completely unscientific, false claim, and it should be removed. I already removed it, but someone else reinstated it
The best quality studies clearly state, that masks do not work. The absolute best quality evidence we have are rigorous meta-analyses of randomized, controlled trials (RCT's), and they clearly show, that masks don't work:
The largest meta-analysis on masks, with over 3000 studies gone through / examined:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/epdf/standard
20 November 2020
"What are the results of the review?"
"Medical or surgical masks . . . Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported, but included discomfort."
"Medical/surgical masks compared to no masks . . . wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio (RR) 0.99, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.18."
WHO meta-analysis on RCT's:
https://www.who.int/influenza/publications/public_health_measures/publication/en/
"OVERALL RESULT OF EVIDENCE ON FACE MASKS
1. Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that face masks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza."
"Quality of evidence
There is a moderate overall quality of evidence that face masks do not have a substantial effect on transmission of influenza."
A very widely distributed meta-analysis on mask-RCT's that was supposed to be pro-masks, but actually was erroneous, and has RR>1 for masks after corrections:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.20166116v2.full.pdf
(Larson 2010 had the biggest data error in the meta-analysis, the numbers switched around, number of "no reported symptoms" switched to "reported symptoms")
Ioooi (talk) 22:51, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The example about masks & COVID should be removed, it is completely anti-scientific 

message: I feel like the opening paragraphs should more clearly explain why the line of reasoning is fallacious rather than imply that certain solutions are inherently "idealistic" or "implausible." That raises the obvious objection that dismissing ideas as "idealistic" is often a fallacious appeal to tradition.
The nirvana fallacy is is a fallacy not because some solutions are idealistic by some objective standard, but because the solutions posited by the person committing the fallacy are irrelevant (as in the example of COVID-19 vaccines, which were never intended to eradicate the virus), or because imperfect solutions are dismissed without serious consideration. These points get lost in the loaded language.
I feel like a person would come away knowing how to accuse others of the fallacy, but unable to recognize the fallacy in their own thinking. Logic needs to be clear.
Thoughts? 104.128.175.120 (talk) 17:41, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fallacy could be more clearly defined.