Is this a logical fallacy?

[Cycloneman]

It really seems like it should be one, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Basically, the argument goes like this:
Person A: "Acheiving equality for women under the US system is important."
Person B: "But what about countries where the gender-based inequality is even greater? Why bother trying to fix the US when Iran is so much worse?"

or

Person A: "We need to reduce the amount of people who are starving in the United States."
Person B: "But what about countries where there are far more starving people? Why bother trying to fix the US when africa is so much worse?"

Is it a logical fallacy? If so, what name does it go by?

[Masami von Weizegger]

I'm no expert on fallacies and there's probably already a well-recognised term for this, but it seems to me to be the opposite of the old "guilt by association" fallacy. In other words, "innocent by association".

[mr friendly guy]

Depending on how you look at it, it could either be

a) red herring (since how other countries perform in a certain area is irrelevant to how the US performs in that same area)

b) false dilemna - where he artificially restricts the choices to a) total equality (in the whole world) or b) the status quo.

His argument goes along the lines of since a) is unreachable lets stick with b). Unfortunately they forget option c) where you improve equality for women but you may not get 100% in the whole world.

[Szass Tam]

That's called a tu quoque, or "you, also," fallacy.

[Darth Wong]

That's called a tu quoque, or "you, also," fallacy.

Not exactly. This would be a tu quoque:

America needs to do something about child poverty in its inner cities.

What country are you from? Britain? You have child poverty too, so shut up.

In the examples given, the fallacy is more along the lines of a red herring, because the rebuttal is couched in general terms rather than aiming at the speaker. The fact that there is child poverty elsewhere in the world has no bearing on the question of whether America should do something about its own problems.

[Surlethe]

I don't recall a specific name for that fallacy, but the logic is essentially "Y is worse than X, so X is okay." You can see the flaw much more clearly when Y is "serial murderes" and X is "child abusers".

Of course, that's not exactly what the argument in the OP is. It's more for some sort of international triage than anything else; so it fails because international help on that sort of scale is practically impossible.

[Cycloneman]

I don't recall a specific name for that fallacy, but the logic is essentially "Y is worse than X, so X is okay." You can see the flaw much more clearly when Y is "serial murderes" and X is "child abusers".

Of course, that's not exactly what the argument in the OP is. It's more for some sort of international triage than anything else; so it fails because international help on that sort of scale is practically impossible.

It's not necessarily regarding other countries - it is that, "Y is worse than X, so we shouldn't bother trying to fix X". The fact that my two examples both involved international triage is an unfortunate result of my lackluster imagination of unique uses for the basic idea.

Another example would be that we shouldn't bother trying to fix the problem of child abuse, because gangs cause so much more pain and suffering.

[Cycloneman]

Ghetto Edit: But it's just a red herring fallacy and not any particularly unique fallacy.

Thanks for taking the time.

[Darth Servo]

I'm no expert on fallacies and there's probably already a well-recognised term for this, but it seems to me to be the opposite of the old "guilt by association" fallacy. In other words, "innocent by association".

No, the "innocent by association" fallacy is where you try and say something isn't bad because some otherwise good person engages in it.



And unless someone can point to an earlier usage of the term, it was coined by your's truly