How to Abuse an Illicit Minor

Assume the following to be true:

All members of Warrior Forum are, to a greater or lesser degree, intelligent people. All members of Warrior Forum are serious internet marketers.

It follows, therefore, that all serious internet marketers are intelligent people.

Right?

Wrong. You've just succumbed to the fallacious temptations of the Illicit Minor, a categorical syllogism wherein the minor premise (second statement) is falsely assumed reversible.

Logical fallacies are a little hobby/obsession of mine. Even though it hadn't really occurred to me to use them in my sales letters until very recently, I imagine they will prove themselves useful when trying to inoculate against highly logical objections.

Here's another example - one in which the pseudo-logic is much more apparent:

1. A carrot is orange.
2. A carrot is edible.
Therefore, anything that is edible is orange.

Ridiculous - and, yet, the exact same logic that led you to believe that all serious internet marketers are intelligent.

So how do you successfully pull an Illicit Minor? How do you go from "obvious disconnect" to "silk-smooth elegance"? In my opinion, only two things are necessary:

1) The conclusion should feel logical. If it makes sense intuitively, there is a smaller chance the logical structure will be closely analysed. It will therefore work its magic without interfering with the "slippery slide".

and

2) Added layers to mask the structure.

All members of Warrior Forum are intelligent. All members of Warrior Forum are internet marketers.
Therefore, all internet marketers are intelligent.

This argument is much less effective than the one with which I opened this post. It's all too easy to point out, "but wait - some internet marketers aren't members of WF!"

The "red herring" factor required to make this flow naturally is almost pathetically childish. Just by prefixing "serious" to "internet marketers", I change the emphasis entirely.

It now becomes "serious internet marketers" (and not the plain old "internet marketers") who are members of Warrior Forum. Because I am making the unspoken comparison between the two classes of internet marketers, and then throwing in the Warrior Forum association, it is much easier to assume the minor premise reversible.

(i.e. Serious internet marketers are members of WF. Internet marketers who aren't serious are not.)

Once the minor premise has been assumed reversible, the logic is indeed valid. When that happens, your reader will accept your implanted conclusion without a second thought. All you need to do to lubricate this process is add a qualifier to your minor premise.

Closing notes:

The main use of the Illicit Minor is to create a correlation between two categories of things or attribute a particular characteristic to a certain category of things. As such, its use in sales-related persuasion is limited. I still think it's worth talking about as it can be useful in certain situations.

Plus, it makes for an intriguing title.

In the future I'll try to write about logical fallacies that are even easier to use can implant more direct conclusions - conclusions about specifics, not categories.

Gil-Ad

P.S. Obviously, I add as an afterthought, I do not condone any unethical use of these techniques. They're for pure-hearted persuasion only.