Thomas S. Jones

“Here is the short version of the Kool-Aid Fallacy: Cult … therefore Jim Jones … therefore mass suicide … therefore Kool-Aid. It’s astonishing how much of social media now revolves around simple word association sequences. Absolutely no thought goes into anything. No one ever delivers an actual argument. If they ever do attempt an argument, their punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic and general education are not up to the task, and soon dissolve into meaningless mush. But usually they just hurry on to the insults and ad hominem attacks, which is the part they love. Before long, the Kool-Aid fallacy is eagerly applied. Every argument should have a Dunning-Kruger quotient associated with it. Most people are 100% on the Dunning-Kruger scale. They imagine themselves geniuses, and geniuses dunces. As ever, they have inverted reality.””

“Sometimes it’s not worth questioning authority because it usually won’t know the answer.””

“It’s time to introduce a new fallacy that we have coined the Kool-Aid Fallacy. It goes like this: “You disagree with me and I’m in the majority while you’re in the minority. Therefore you’re a cult. Jim Jones led a cult and all of his followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid. Therefore, you’re a suicide cult and I am entitled to say, ‘Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.’” It’s unbelievable how many times this fallacy appears on social media. It is now so common that we can validly refer to a Kool-Aid version of Godwin’s Law. Any strong-minded minority with ideas that challenge the common herd will automatically be called a cult and then it is inevitable that Kool-Aid will be mentioned. Whenever any troll refers to “drinking the Kool-Aid”, they should immediately be labeled as having committed the Kool-Aid fallacy.””