zmVault/ambiguity.md

id, aliases, title, tags

id	aliases	title	tags
		Ambiguity	authorship/original destiny/permanent status/incomplete topic/ambiguity type/encyclopedia-entry

Ambiguity

Not to be confused with uncertainty.

Common Fallacies

Reification Fallacy

[!quote] Reification Reification ... is a fallacy of ambiguity, ...it is the error of treating something that is not concrete... as a concrete thing.

See "the map is not the territory".

[!aside] This one is very common among my peers in estimating. The problem with fallacies, of course, is that you can't simply say "Reification fallacy, booyah". If some one is overgeneralizing, they likely just have a different understanding of the term. Certainty of definition only occurs with some quorum, and I'd argue most of construction-estimating don't meet it, and that the choice of any term over another ought to be based on utility.

Note also that a term's definition can be certain on some axis, but ambiguous on another. See "I know it when I see it" which, as far as I'm concerned, is a perfectly legitimate definition.

Equivocation Fallacy

Equivocation

The misleading use of a word with more than one meaning

Composition Fallacy

Composition

Assuming a whole has a property because its parts have that property

Division Fallacy

Division

Assuming parts have a property because the whole has that property

Category Mistake

[!quote] Category mistake An example is a person learning that the game of cricket involves team spirit, and after being given a demonstration of each player's role, asking which player performs the "team spirit".

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

Overgeneralization via Hyperspecification

Or "inappropriate synecdoche¹ "

Much of my issue with terminology can be blamed on overgeneralization via hyperspecification,

Proprietary eponyms (synonym: genericized trademark) are usually² an example of such, and are prominent in electrical construction.³

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1. synecdoche: Using the name of a part to refer to the whole, or vice versa. ↩︎

2. I'm not a complete pedant, Cadweld is a perfectly unambiguous substitution. "Caddy", "Hilti", and "Vitalink" are my real complaints, where the word only gets me marginally closer to creating a concrete image in my head.

   The general acceptance of "band-aid" compared to the rejection of "coke" may be related. ↩︎

3. See Database of American Proprietary Eponyms for examples. ↩︎