Personal incredulity

Informal fallacies → Cause

Personal incredulity is when you say that because you can't imagine or understand how something could be true, it must be false. Your own lack of imagination or expertise isn't evidence. Many things are true that are hard to picture or that require specialist knowledge. The fallacy is to treat "I don't see how" as "it can't be so." The right response to confusion is to ask for explanation or evidence, not to conclude it's false.

Examples

  • I can't see how evolution could make something that complex, so it can't be right.

  • I don't understand how the vaccine works in a week, so it must be unsafe.

  • I can't imagine how the earth is billions of years old, so it must be young.

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