The Full Quote Says...
This is a dumb topic for a post but it keeps bothering me and I want there to be a canonical link explaining this fallacy.
Here's my latest example: someone online referenced the Latin quote Vox populi, vox Dei – "the voice of the people is the voice of God."
Another person replied that in fact the full quote says the opposite:
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. |
And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. |
I see this kind of thing and think, "oh, how interesting!" – it scratches a kind of puzzle-itch in my brain, there is something magnetic about reversals. I think other people feel the same, because the Full Quote Dunk gets a billion reposts.
But then I look up the source and discover I've been lied to: that longer text is in no sense The Full Quote, it's simply one guy's critique of an existing popular phrase. Vox populi, vox Dei was a well-known saying; someone felt that it was incorrect; in order to talk about it he inevitably had to write it out; but the fact that his quote-plus-criticism is longer doesn't make it Full.
Now, Full Quotes don't have some magical truth status; it may well be that the original saying is wrong and the critique is right. In this case the guy doing the critiquing is Alcuin of York, advisor to Charlemagne and "the most learned man anywhere to be found" in the 700s. I am not even the most learned man to be found on this blog, so who am I to say whose vox is whose?
But the people dunking don't actually believe X or not-X based on what the Full Quote says; they just believe not-X for separate reasons,1 and then repost anything that agrees with their preexisting beliefs, especially if it's in Latin and makes them feel smart (but I repeat myself).
Populi: this is bad! Bad arguments are still bad even if the thing they argue for is correct. As the great Alcuin of York said, those people should not be listened to.
[^1]: most likely reason being that their opponents believe X, of course.