Terminologically, I think it would be useful to name this as a variant of the epsilon fallacy, which has the benefit of being exactly what it sounds like.
Also, great post, I love the pasta-cooking analysis.
Another reason the pasta terminology is bad is that I bet a reasonable fraction of the population have always believed that the salt is for taste, and have never heard any other justification. For them, “salt in pasta water fallacy” would be a pretty confusing term. I like “epsilon fallacy”.
I had never heard about the salt making pasta cook faster. I know that some people only add salt when the water is on the point of boiling because this makes the boiling faster (which is also true but a negligibly tiny effect: adding salt before just increases the boiling point, meanwhile adding it when the past is already about to boil breaks surface tension and adds nucleation centres which precipitate the formation of bubbles).
I read the epsilon fallacy and verified that it was good. Then I went to the fallacy tag, opened the list of all the articles with that tag, found the “epsilon” article, and upvoted the tag association itself! That small action was enough to make your old article show up on the first page, and rank just above the genetic fallacy. Hopefully this small action is very effective and making the (apparently best?) name for this issue more salient, for more people, as time progresses :-)
Terminologically, I think it would be useful to name this as a variant of the epsilon fallacy, which has the benefit of being exactly what it sounds like.
Also, great post, I love the pasta-cooking analysis.
Another reason the pasta terminology is bad is that I bet a reasonable fraction of the population have always believed that the salt is for taste, and have never heard any other justification. For them, “salt in pasta water fallacy” would be a pretty confusing term. I like “epsilon fallacy”.
I am in that subset.
I had never heard about the salt making pasta cook faster. I know that some people only add salt when the water is on the point of boiling because this makes the boiling faster (which is also true but a negligibly tiny effect: adding salt before just increases the boiling point, meanwhile adding it when the past is already about to boil breaks surface tension and adds nucleation centres which precipitate the formation of bubbles).
Sounds like those people are victim of a salt-in-pasta-water fallacy.
Or the “every little helps” error.
I read the epsilon fallacy and verified that it was good. Then I went to the fallacy tag, opened the list of all the articles with that tag, found the “epsilon” article, and upvoted the tag association itself! That small action was enough to make your old article show up on the first page, and rank just above the genetic fallacy. Hopefully this small action is very effective and making the (apparently best?) name for this issue more salient, for more people, as time progresses :-)