How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

120 How to Win Every Argument

If ideas were decided by numbers, no new ones would ever be
admitted. Every new idea starts out as a minority viewpoint and
gains acceptance only if the evidence for it wins converts over
from the prevailing view. If numbers are the test, then Giordano
Bruno was wrong when he said the earth moved around the sun,
and the authorities were right to burn him at the stake.

We have to give him a fair trial before we string him up. All those who

say he did it shout 'aye!'

(Amazing proof! Sounds kinda unanimous to me.)

The ad numeram provides an excellent defence of established
attitudes.

If it's not true, then why have so many millions of people believed in it for

so many centuries?

(Easy. We all make mistakes.)

The ad numeram is the special fallacy of the demagogue and
the mob orator. Those who govern us tend to form a special class
whose outlook and assumptions are not commonly shared. They
often come from a milieu in which the pressures of poverty,
overcrowding and crime bear rather less upon them than they
do upon most. This gives the demagogue the opportunity to
appeal to numbers in support of ideas which find little echo in
government. On subjects such as capital punishment or race
relations, he can appeal to the agreement of large numbers on
his side as evidence of a conspiracy of silence by the governing
elite.

Every opinion poll shows that public whipping is the best remedy for

those who commit crimes of violence.