Re:Microsoft Censors Pirate Bay Links in Windows Live Messenger
by anthuswilliams on Saturday March 24, 2012 @10:39PM
(#3751532)
It's called the ecological fallacy -- the idea that a phenomenon which is observed (or in the GP's case, totally made up) at the population level can be automatically assumed to apply at the individual level. Stereotypes are a common example of this fallacy.
This is clearly fallacious, I don't know why people keep using this technique, and we really should give it a name so that it can be referred to by shorthand. (Any suggestions?)
If you happen to find a person in the set A intersect B, then you've got a case against that individual. But nobody seems to go to that much effort.