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Previous logical fallacies blog post:
Why Emotions Don’t Hold Up In An Argument
This week’s notes:
- Don’t confuse a claim with an actual argument
- Watch out for arguments appealing to anger, fear, pride, or the desire to be liked
- Appeal to popularity (if a lot of people believe something, that means it must be true)
- Appeal to common practice (Everyone does it this way, that means it’s right/the only way/shouldn’t be changed)
- Appeal to tradition (This is the way it’s always been done, so it shouldn’t be changed)
- Two wrongs make a right (if someone else does x, that makes it okay, etc)
- Red herring (misdirection, doesn’t have anything to do with an actual reason)
- Talking too fast/making too many “points” at a time so that you don’t have enough time to actually understand what was being said.
- Straw man arguments (if you’re for abortion you want to kill all babies)
- An attack on the person (he’s ugly, what does he know?)
- Slippery slope, if A happens, then b, then c, etc. Only one of these premises has to be false to make the argument bad. If all are true, then it’s probably a good argument
- Be aware of false dilemmas, “
either or ” arguments. They might be trying to steer you towards one when there is a third or even fourth option. - Perfectionism is a form of false dilemma (either something is perfect or it shouldn’t exist at all.)
- Circular argument, saying the same thing twice, but in different ways (God is
real, because the Bible says so) Burden of proof, if you can’t prove it’s not true, therefore it is and vice versa
A master list of logical fallacies.
Audio credits to https://www.bensound.com