Talk:Hasty generalization

Older comments
I'm redirecting this to 'faulty generalization'. The various examples can be put there in their respective places. Cimon avaro 02:52 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is the last, long example nonsensical? It merely makes the (correct) argument that (most) all people have the ability to murder, describing them as "potential murderers". It couples this with the assertion that they should be sanctioned. Nowhere in the argument do I see a hasty generalization. Am I missing something?

The last two examples (drugs and radical feminism) seem to be there more for the purpose of advancing the author's political agendas than illustrating the fallacy in question. I happen to agree with the agendas, but I still found the political stuff distracting. btobin 11 Oct 2005

Bad example
1 is not a prime number. --93.128.206.93 (talk) 18:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

"George W. Bush received more votes than any other candidate. Therefore he is the best suited for the job." How can this be a "hasty generalization"? Which property is generalized from a small sample to a large population? I would say it is another kind of logical error. Apus 11:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * That's argumentum ad populum. --WikiSlasher 05:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

And this: "I got into a fight with a bunch of Asians today. They all knew 10 Animal Huo style Kung Fu. This means that all Asians know 10 Animal Huo style Kung Fu."

is just waiting for someone to call "racist"... 129.78.64.102 01:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

What about scientific study?
The definition of a hasty generalization would seem to preclude scientific study. For instance, the Polya conjecture example seems to indicate that a generalization is hasty if it holds for 906150256 entities, but not the 906150257th, even if the 906150257th hasn't been discovered yet. This would indicate that we can reasonably make no conclusions, for instance, in the evolutionary biology, because the 906150257th fossil might be a human skeleton in Jurassic rock.

^ That's actually a good point. One issue with "hasty generalization" is that we have to be careful to not use it to simply outlaw all knowledge. Ex: 1. All A have B, 2. X is an A, 3. Therefore X has B. Technically, this can't prove #2, because unless #2 is known first, #1 can't be known to be truly universal. The Polya conjecture is a pretty good example. There is an idea out there that this sort of thing really means "Humans know nothing" or "Nothing can ever be proven", for example, not even gravity, because we haven't observed every piece of matter that ever existed and therefore can't say for sure that every single one of them followed the laws of gravity. Is there a name for this idea and does Wikipedia have an article for it? If so, this article should link it just like it links Problem of induction. Statalyzer (talk) 08:08, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

This is probably not what the article intends to state. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.80.108.53 (talk) 13:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, contradicts scientific induction. Rich Farmbrough, 13:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC).


 * OK I patched up the Poly example but none of the examples seem very good to me. Rich Farmbrough, 13:52, 10 June 2009 (UTC).

Article should go into a bit more of the psychology
The whole point of cognitive biases is that they are usually true in real life. That's why people use them as rules of thumb, heuristics, or mental shortcuts. It's the areas in which they are not true that make them interesting for study.

The article strongly implies that hasty generalizations are mostly wrong. In day-to-day life, however, they are mostly (though far from always) right, which is how they are a type of cognitive bias. Hanxu9 (talk) 10:57, 17 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Many of Wikipedia's pseudoscience pages are. . .um. . .pessimistic. They focus on verifying the article's topic's bad logic, evidence, etc. The term "hasty generalization" inherently would portray them derogatorily, if you don't like that find Generalizations. Mr. Guye (talk) 00:15, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Relationship with Strong Generalization?
is "Hasty Generalization" the same as Strong Generalization? I learned this term in my mathematic logics course, to mean "exist A that A->B therefore all A->B". Sounds pretty much the same as what's on this page, but I couldn't find a wikipedia page (or redirection) for this term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.48.228.111 (talk) 00:21, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

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