Perfectionist
Also: Perfect Solution Fallacy, Nirvana Fallacy, Fallacy Fallacy,
Nitpicking, Never Good Enough, Character Assassination
Class: Distort > Exaggerate > Black or White
Nitpicking, Never Good Enough, Character Assassination
Class: Distort > Exaggerate > Black or White
Assuming any imperfection or past mistake means the whole thing/person is bad.
As if you can poke a tiny hole to pop the whole balloon.
Banning guns won’t prevent all murders, so vote no!
No solution can prevent all murders. Why wouldn’t you want to reduce them?
First he said the storm wouldn’t hit here, then he flip-flopped and said it would. Why should we believe him now?!
He changed his forecast when he got new data. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
When she was mayor, city spending ran over-budget, so she would be a terrible governor!
That was twenty years ago. No candidate has a perfect record.
Speed limits don’t work because people still crash at 60 mph. No more speed limits!
Foolacy vs. Fallacy
This covers the Nirvana Fallacy and Perfect Solution Fallacy, where you object to a solution because it is not perfect.
More broadly it’s a Black or White argument that if something is not perfect it should be rejected entirely. This includes the imperfections of one’s past, like past mistakes or if early guesses turned out to be wrong. This also covers:Ad Hominem, Poisoning the Well: A person has no credibility because they were imperfect.Fallacy Fallacy: The whole idea must be wrong if any part of the argument contains a fallacy.Genetic Fallacy: An idea must be wrong if it in any way originated from a person or group who was bad.