“EFA” is a lousy term. The “FA” is unnecessary, even adding its own ad hominym fallacy, presuming that how the choices were arrived at matters. It doesn’t matter if the choices considered are created by Free Association or by careful selection, for which we already have the fallacy known as Cherry Picking, a.k.a. Incomplete Evidence, a.k.a. Suppressing Evidence. Perhaps a better name for this is the Fallacy of False Alternatives.
The proper argument would be a sound Argument by Case (or Proof By Case). When done poorly for two cases, either because the cases aren’t mutually exclusive or because they don’t span the whole domain, this is called a False Dichotomy or False Dilemma. For more cases, this is an Incomplete Case Analysis or an Incomplete Case Analysis (or in math, an Invalid Proof by Cases). I think a term like Incomplete Categories would be more accurate, or False Categories if the choice of categories is poor...
No matter how you slice it, EFA is a lousy term.
RandStrauss
Karma: −7
Or reply, “But it would be conscious (if it were alive).”
“If you want to coordinate thousands of people… You have about five words.”
It depends what “coordinate” means. Give them a list of essays of increasing size and yes, some won’t get past the first 5 words. Some will make it all the way through. Often “coordinate” means different people doing different things, so having people at varying levels of dexterity works.
I suggest you take a look at why politics is so dysfunctional.
Why? Because minds like yours ignore it.
See PeopleCount.org and the links at the end to discover how to fix it.
In short, people assumed voting for representatives would elect people who were representative. Recent events have proven that to be false.
What foundation does a well-functioning democracy require? (Hint: free & fair elections isn’t sufficient.)
What would empower voters?
What would influence voters to be more responsible with their votes?
What would enable representatives to actually represent voters?
What would enable representatives to be free from the influence of wealthy donors? (Hint: It’s not limits on donations or public financing of campaigns.)
What would pressure representatives to be free from the influence of wealthy donors?
Why don’t political reform efforts help?
All of these questions have answers. But it takes actual thinking to understand them. Hearing the answers doesn’t make sense because they conflict with the myths about democracy our culture feeds us.