I can’t disagree with any of that. Really. I am not an idiot, nor are you a fool.
I saw a logical fallacy, and I jumped on it because, well, I guess I was in the mood. As a smoker, I am getting tired of getting the shaft from smoking Nazis.
The fallacy is “Correlation <> Causation.” I may very well be an outlier, and I confess I’ve been called a lot worse in the decades I’ve darkened the Earth.
Peace.
Age + observation = wisdom. Knocking down anecdotes from those with experience is folly.
The biggest of all foolishness with logical argument is to claim, ahead of time, that the results are known. You led off that way, when you preemptively discounted all anecdote, or my or anyone’s experience, no matter how refined or tested that experience.
What good is any study that is not backed with wisdom, and where does wisdom come from?
There’s no fallacy to say that because there is a correlation that suggests or even strongly implies causation a person a bit older than greenhorn informs his or her words before saying them with the wisdom of age that has already accounted for that distinction.
The kind of personality that fits a heavy smoker is also the kind of personality that drives cars hard, and with lack of care. But that’s their choice to do so. A smoker drives a car into the ground, a smoker’s vehicle doesn’t make for a good value buy.
These are my observations.
It may be that there are smokers with refinement who don’t leave butts to smolder out at all reachable points from the driver’s seat, or leave layers of smoke on every surface in the car. I’m talking about smokers who leave a obvious spoor.