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December 2007

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Dec. 13th, 2007

Standard headshot with now absent hair

Only China has lead paint?

I've been hearing a pattern in a few commercials in the past week - advertisements regarding toys for holiday gifts. It would seem that a popular tag line is becoming, "And it's not made in China, so there's no risk of lead paint!!" (Word-for-word...no lie).

Now, I'm fuzzy on how "not being made in China" is an equivalence class to "no lead paint."

If we accept the truth claim that "If a toy was made in China, then it has lead paint" (A -> B), then it is a logical fallacy to state ¬A -> ¬B (If a toy was not made in China, then it does not have lead paint).

What we CAN say, is ¬B -> ¬A, or "If there is no lead paint, then it was not made in China" (which is probably not true either in actuality, but work with me here.)

Modus tollendo tolens works. Maybe the advertising world should take an introductory logic course.