Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 March 18

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March 18

Is there a name for the "poisoned candy" argument?

I know that many arguments have names such as the No true Scotsman and the Straw man, as well as Latin names. Is there a name for the argument made by Donald Trump Jr that suggested Americans have to be wary that any refugee could be the one dangerous one, an argument that was made by others in a different context before him. Recently I have seen this which openly says that generalisations save lives.

Please note I am not looking for a debate on whether any of these arguments are right, wrong or depend on circumstance. I was only looking if the argument had a name, and if it did, whether there would be enough resources to make an article on it like on other arguments. Unknown Temptation (talk) 13:19, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

A type of representativeness heuristic? ---Sluzzelin talk 13:41, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. That looks exactly like what I was looking for. Saves me having to write an article with the Trump family all over it. I had thought the argument could be cherry picking, as it ignores the vast amounts of each group who are not dangerous, but what you linked me to is far more specific. Unknown Temptation (talk) 13:56, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Cherry picking? You won't find any cherries in this box of poisoned candy. (But I agree with Sluzzelin). Martinevans123 (talk) 14:09, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Availability heuristic might interest you as well, and poisoned candy myths are given as examples of the availability cascade. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:20, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for those. Certainly the media section on "availability heuristic" lines up with what I was thinking about, how people think that rare events such as terrorism or murder by a stranger are common because they dominate the news and cause vivid and strong memories, even when the possibility is low and ever falling. Unknown Temptation (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

One could do worse than read Kahneman and Tversky when confuzzled by what's going on. They're on the mark to this day (and, luckily, Kahneman is still among us and still publishing). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:24, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

House of Habsburg-Lorraine question

Does anyone here know why exactly women are still not allowed to become the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine even nowadays? Is it because the rules in regards to this have traditionally excluded women and this house doesn't actually see a pressing need to change these rules until and unless either the Austrian monarchy or the Hungarian monarchy will ever actually get restored (which isn't very likely, by the way)? Futurist110 (talk) 20:01, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Does this entity have any real political power? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:48, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

No, not to my knowledge. But this hasn't prevented some other royal families, such as the main branch of the House of Savoy, from attempting to change their house's succession laws in order to make them sex-neutral/gender-neutral (suffice to say that these changes were NOT universally accepted by Italian monarchists, in this specific case; some Italian monarchists support the claims of the Savoy-Aosta branch to the defunct Italian throne, after all). Futurist110 (talk) 04:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

What percentage of those monarchists are under the age of 70 or so? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 04:46, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Interesting question. My guess would be that about 5-15% of the younger generation of Italians are indeed monarchists. So, not that much, but not nothing either. Futurist110 (talk) 20:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Futurist110 -- I don't know the specifics of that particular case, but in a number of cases the inheritors to deposed monarchies haven't felt free to change the succession rules that were in place when they were deposed... AnonMoos (talk) 02:52, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Archduke Sigismund of Austria (born 1966) married the daughter of a Scottish baronet who would almost certainly be considered old "untitled nobility" in the German-Austrian tradition, in an attempt to respect the traditional marriage equality rules of his dynastic house... AnonMoos (talk) 02:56, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Were untitled nobility a bad thing in Austria-Hungary? Futurist110 (talk) 04:21, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand why they would be considered worse or better than the rest of the aristocratic system, but they were often very old families who looked down on those who had been more recently elevated to the nobility. I was just trying to provide a brief explanation of why she would be considered a suitable dynastic spouse from the Habsburg point of view. Just being the daughter of a baronet might not count for much, but her family has ancient royal connections... AnonMoos (talk) 04:36, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

A Scottish baronet is almost certainly not "old untitled nobility", though; if her father were a baron, sure, but a baronet is not a nobleman like an earl or baron would be. (Baronetcies are basically hereditary knighthoods, originally purchased from the Crown.) --24.76.103.169 (talk) 18:32, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

You appear to have very little idea what the concept of "untitled nobility" means (there doesn't appear to be a separate Wikipedia article on it), and in any case, I made it clear above that her family was somewhat analogous to central European untitled nobility due to their family history -- not just the baraonetcy. AnonMoos (talk) 18:52, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The old rules called for more than any old nobility; the bride had to be of a reigning house (or a mediatized ex-reigning house). --Tamfang (talk) 00:24, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

A non-ruling "house" is effectively a powerless self-governing family club, and so it doesn't really matter to the rest of the world what its rules are. I could declare my family the "House of [My Surname]", award whatever house "orders" I liked, and declare the succession rules to the "headship" of my "house" to be whatever I wanted, and it would have essentially as much legal and practical meaning. In the unlikely event that any republic does decide to restore its monarchy, then it'll be that country that decides who to make its monarch and what the rules of succession will be, not the former ruling "house". Proteus (Talk) 14:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

The rulers of Sealand probably have more authority than those old "houses" do. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

"Does anyone here know why exactly women are still not allowed to become the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine even nowadays?" Because the succession laws of Austria-Hungary were based on Salic law, requiring Agnatic succession. There have been three heads-of-house since the end of World War I, and (to my knowledge) they have never changed the order of succession. Dimadick (talk) 05:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

It was not just succession law of the state of Austria but also family contracts, the constitution of the family trust etc. For details and weblinks to the regulations especially of 1861 and 1839 here's the German wikipedia article: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_%C3%B6sterreichisches_Familienstatut 2003:C4:AF2E:D601:999F:49B0:3C2B:75E1 (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2021 (UTC)