Buy local - either to save fuel, or to keep the money in your community. All sorts of crazy ideas to prevent the spread of infection by toilet seats. Static stretching before exercise to prevent injury and improve athletic performance.
The World Health Organization decided in 1988 that it could eliminate polio from the planet. Within 11 years they were mostly successful. The last of one type has not been seen since 1999. Yes, just because it has not been diagnosed since, does not mean that it has not existed, or does not exist. But 11 years is a pretty short time to achieve such a global result.
This topic is not about any particular fallacy, but rather about how they arise, why they are not successfully refuted, and whether elimination of fallacies might be harder or easier with communications using the internet, social media, etc.
- Are these fallacies simply beliefs (approaching religious conviction strength) which will be believed regardless of contrary evidence?
- Does the durability of a false belief depend upon what age it it learned? For example, can you unlearn things taught in "potty training" age, elementary school, college, etc.
- Does it depend on who taught it?
- Can fallacies be successfully purged from "common sense" like we are able to do with certain types of disease?
- Does the news media's pandering to the lowest common denominator make them more or less likely to play a role in spreading fallacies rather than eliminating them?
- How much of the population is sufficiently intelligent to be able to unlearn what they have learned?
- Are social media more likely to create or spread a fallacy than identify and eliminate one?
- What are successful approaches to eliminating fallacies?
- What role do governments or religious institutions play in originating or spreading them?
- Is it politically or socially desirable for wide-spread belief in fallacies?
Please, offer any ideas, research findings, or additional questions on this topic. Please do not introduce your own pet peeve fallacy, or offer refutations of any that might be introduced in the discussion. Those could all rightly have their own topic.