Nausea at Midnight

The argument Ad Nauseum is not that abdominal discomfort that often accompanies watching commercial television--but it's close. It is a strategy that involves repeating a conclusion many times to urge its acceptance rather than offering proof. 

The term Ad Nauseum means surfeit to the point of sickness. For some of us, it calls to mind, unpleasantly, eating too much theater popcorn and before watching the owl attack scene in the movie Thrice Midnight. With such associations, how is anyone sold on this fallacy? 

I've encountered Ad Nauseum in three flavors:

First, a brute pummeling of repetition, a.k.a. the supersoaker approach. Here I refer to your filibuster, your parental injunctions to pack an umbrella, and yes, your Hulu commercials that might, through sheer persistence, convince you to back up your files on Mozy.

Second, the subliminal approach. Conclusions may sneak in regularly through a subconscious backdoor. Usually, this happens when they are woven into some other medium, often language, image, or video. To get a bit Orwellian, vocabulary is replete with hidden arguments and attitudes. Any word, thought, or image that floats through grey matter often enough, and with little enough scrutiny, can shape the mental continents. My parents often reminded me of these subtle influences, Ad Nauseum, while discouraging me from watching films like Thrice Midnight.

Third, the attack from many directions. When several different sources repeat the same conclusion, pieces seem to triangulate, to fit together into a coherent picture. Corroboration can lend an idea a certain gravitas. Digg founder Kevin Rose once theorized that people need to hear about an item (say, a viral video) three times from different sources in order to recognize it as a "thing" and act in its direction. The first time, we brush it off. The second time, we've heard of it somehwere. The third time, we sit down and watch the kung-fu bear on YouTube. I'm brushing up against another fallacy here, Appeal to the Masses, but both fallacies deal with the facade of reality, of "thingness" made from quantity rather than quality.

Through its trifecta of force, subterfuge, or popularity, Ad Nauseum can be a surprisingly effective argument for spurring action, but that does not make it valid. Ad Nauseum rains down conclusions without premises. The conclusion may be true (the umbrella usually comes in handy) or false; there's no way to tell, because an Ad Nauseum approach offers abundance rather than evaluation. It's a bit ironic, Alanis Morisette-style; you have ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife, or in this case, an escargot crusher.

In my illustration this week I have made the shells slightly transparent to suggest that they are insubstantial, like the Ad Nauseum argument. A beach full of empty or at least impenetrable shells will not feed the hungry seagull. Alternatively, one could also interpret that the seagull has eaten all of the snails from within shells because the snails were trying to convince him not to watch Thrice Midnight.  This is unlikely, though, because the film Thrice Midnight doesn't really exist. In spite of repetition, is not really a thing.