The Likeness Fallacy
There is a weird, yet apparently natural, tendency of humans to anthropomorphize anything. That is the biggest implication of the likeness fallacy. An even more common instantiation is that we think other individuals are like us.
A fallacy is by definition faulty reasoning. In this case, the image we have of ourselves gets projected onto other organisms and even non-physical things. A famous example for that is the anthropomorphizing of God/Allah/YHWH (From hereon out abbreviated as Gay, see: A preliminary introduction to Neopantheism). While the ten commandments explicitly state that there should be made no image of Gay, a popular interpretation of “Man was created in the image of Gay” is its inversion. Men, in their imagination, created Gay to be literally congruent with man’s physical appearance.
A more recent expression of this fallacy can be found in the imagination of how extraterrestrials might look like and behave. And what an Artificial General Intelligence might go about doing, once it is created. Both of these instances are very telling about the image humans have of themselves. It is assumed that extraterrestrial species would probably be hostile imperialists. And a computer-based superintelligence would as one of its first actions wipe out humanity. While those are certainly possibilities, they are far from certain. They are merely a reflection of human nature projected on instances of existence that are far from human and the assumption that it is going to be being equally expressed by these.
But one does not have to look to Gay, ETs or AI to find expressions of the likeness fallacy. Between humans it happens often as well, sometimes in relatively subtle ways. We assume others would appreciate what we appreciate or hate what we hate. This varies in intensity. Some are more prone to this sort of faulty reasoning. Others are more open to other beings’ differences. But to some it is unimaginable that another person could perceive or value a fact in a way deviating from theirs.
This fallacy is most probably based on the curiosity that humans can simulate behavior in their imagination. The discovery of mirror-neurons was a scientific breakthrough, finally providing one more important explanation as to how humans learn. The function of these specialized neurons is the biological mechanism of how imitation works as a source of learning, not just genetically predetermined instincts or trial and error. The observation of a behavior gets replicated in the observer’s brain, activating neurons in close proximity to the ones that would be active if the observer were to perform this behavior himself. For that to work, a similar anatomical basis has to exist though. A person born without arms can probably not simulate what it’s like to throw a ball. And no human can imagine what it would feel like to give off sounds in the manner a cricket does. Extreme human behavioral tendencies are comparably difficult to imagine when one is sufficiently distant on the spectrum of personality. A psychopath can most likely not comprehend why Ghandi has acted the way he did, and vice versa.
The assumption of likeness is only a heuristic. It cannot accurately predict the internal processes of another person or being, let alone those of non-biological instances of reality. For interpersonal relationships, it can in many cases be good enough when there are plenty of similarities. But as a rule of thumb, a rational person should always allow for a generous margin of error.