Baby surgeon, washed-up gamer, centrist logic-bro, sourdough mum, hack guitarist, hillbilly mechanic, honorary Asian and fair-weather street-racer
Mr Valmonty
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Is this not just an alternative way of describing a red herring argument? If not, I would be interested to see what nuance I’m missing.
I find this classically in the abortion discussion. Pro-abortionists will bring up valid-at-face-value concerns regarding rape and incest. But if you grant that victims of rape/incest can retain full access to abortions, the pro-abortionist will not suddenly agree with criminalisation of abortion in the non-rape/incest group. Why? Because the rape/incest point was a red herring argument
I wonder whether a cost judgement plays a part in these examples. Saving 2000 birds will have low effort cost and the risk of failure is less significant—trending towards ‘there’s nothing to lose’. Meanwhile, and attempt to save 200,000 birds (on its face) appears to entail a higher effort costs and the repercussions of failure would be more severe. Where faced with a situation where the default state is a negative outcome, people are often reluctant to invest their resources.