Several weeks ago, I started having some dangerously tall trees around the house taken down. These are those trees that were lovely little pines early on that look great with winter snow on them but many years later are over 50 feet tall. To worsen matters their root structure is shallow which high winds and heavy snows can bring them down. When they were planted 10 feet from your house and near power lines that’s a looming disaster.
Now that some of them are down, areas that were too shaded or covered in pine needles to grow grass are now open and ready for a lawn. This was an area prone to wash out so having some grass to hold the soil is a great idea. I still have roots to work around but those will rot and get pulled out later. So, we got some seed, loosened up the soil, put down some fertilizer, spread the seed, covered with hay, watered and waited. After a few days we had some torrential rains that washed the seed away, so we did it all again. And waited. This time we had no more heavy rains and the seed sprouted. Several more days and a lovely green fuzz started to cover the area.
That got me to thinking, when do I go from just growing grass to having a lawn? Certainly if a few seeds have just sprouted that’s not enough. Maybe when there are some patches at least a few inches high? No, that doesn’t seem like enough either. I know it will eventually reach “lawn” status, but if one blade of grass doesn’t do it, two doesn’t, three doesn’t then it follows that continuing to add more will never get there. So how do I eventually get a lawn? As it turns out, we’re trapped in a fallacy – the beard fallacy!
I love this fallacy, mainly because of the name. Beard fallacy. It’s just fun. What does it mean? The fallacy originates in the thought that if one hair doesn’t make a beard, and two hairs doesn’t, and three hairs doesn’t then it’s impossible to ever have a beard. Having a beard and growing grass are things that exist on a continuum that don’t have clear points of delineation. We can certainly point out someone who has a beard and who doesn’t, where there is and isn’t a lawn. There isn’t a need to count hairs or measure grass. These are more subjective than objective distinctions.
As an example, can you tell me when someone reaches adulthood? In the US, high school graduation is at age 18 and some see that as becoming an adult. But then there’s graduating from college at 24-25 yrs old which is maybe adulthood. What if a 16 year old has after school jobs and shows a lot of responsibility? Could we consider that person an adult? Adulthood is a continuum, not a specific point. There is no one thing we can point to about a person’s life that makes them an adult. Instead its more implied, a collection of events and passage of time that informs us. If it was just the passage of time, we would not notice that some people aged 30, 40, 50 or more don’t seem to posses what we consider are the qualities of adulthood.
Do you know anyone who is a master of some craft? When did that person attain the distinction of “master”? Was it a certain amount of time spent, such as the supposed 10,000 hours or was it the completion of some particular challenge. Perhaps it was by doing something only a master could do (if you “huh?” there, that’s good, this is another fallacy we’ll look at another time). Mastery is another continuum based activity. We don’t always know what it takes to be a master, but we seem able to recognize one. We can also recognize when someone calls themselves a master but they really aren’t
The realm of medical diagnosis is much more based on a continuum than we might like it to be. I’m sure you’ve been sick at some time before. What did it take to think of yourself as “sick”? Did you have a head cold, flu symptoms, fever, aches or did you have a doctor perform tests and make a diagnosis first? “Being sick” is likely different from person to person. Cancers, as dangerous as they are, can be slow or aggressive with some deadly, others treatable and a rare few not a problem at all. Pain is very subjective and can vary wildly from person to person. It is often looked at in conjunction with other symptoms or complaints.
There are some common forms of this where a hard line is turned into a continuum, like someone who is 20 years and 364 saying they are only one day away from 21 so why can’t they have alcohol (if in the US, where 21 is the legal drinking age). And if 20 yrs. and 364 days is OK, is 363, or 362, or why not just 19 yrs. old? However, the legal drinking age really is a hard line. If something costs $29.99 you could easily say that 29.98 is only 1 cent away and that’s not big deal, 29.97 is only one cent less than that and you could keep going, but the price is $29.99. It’s not a continuum.
I like this fallacy because it really makes us think about a lot of common things around us and ensure we consider them correctly. We do, as humans, like to put delineations where none exist, and to remove them when they do (we’re funny that way). It is important to know the difference – a doctor will see you if feel a little sick, but the local bar won’t server you if you are slightly less than 21 yrs. old. Now I wonder if shaving is the best way to get out of this fallacy?