
Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly - Leepic
http://plover.net/~bonds/bdksucks.html
======
mindcrime
_Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis.
In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances
rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than
modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a
conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history,
their shared knowledge and confidences, the feelers they lay out to establish
mutual trust and rapport. Poking into this with your ad hominem stick betrays
an ignorance of the way people actually communicate, and ignorance in
general._

Well said. And it's a lack of awareness of this point that often frustrates me
about discussions here on HN. I understand that most of us try to be mostly
rational, most of the time, and that we want a high level of discourse here.
But too often, you see people acting like every discussion is high-school
debate-club practice, and they start slinging "ad hominem" and "fallacy of the
excluded middle" around like a high-school kid with a brand new super-soaker,
eager to spray anyone in range.

But not everything that is said here needs to be treated like it was uttered
as part of a debate. Sometimes opinions are just opinions, sometimes anecdotes
are enlightening, and sometimes generalizations, metaphors, analogies and
other abstractions come into play.

~~~
hacker789
I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too
generous in your interpretation of the author's point.

Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want
avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to
make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting
any substance.

At the same time, some people employ logical fallacies to push an agenda and
make it effectively impossible to respond without dismantling their entire
argument... _by pointing out the logical fallacies_. Hmmm.

Unsurprisingly, the author of this piece is a dishonest shill who wants free
reign to use logical fallacies to advance his agenda.

When I clicked the link, I was _certain_ the author would find a way to push
his radical, post-modern feminism. As @realtalker has pointed out, the author
almost certainly wrote this in response to the stinging criticism he received
for this piece the Islamaphobia section in particular):
<http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html#islamophobia>

Radical, post-modern feminists like the author do not pepper their otherwise-
reasoned arguments with logical fallacies; their arguments are _based_ upon
logical fallacies. As I said, the only way to respond to inherently dishonest
arguments like that is to point how the arguments are dishonest.

The author wants full immunity.

[And to be abundantly clear, by "author" I don't mean @mindcrime. I mean the
author of the linked piece.]

~~~
EthanHeilman
hacker789 previous comments have an anti-feminist bent (see
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5573103>) so I would suggest that it is
coloring hacker789's judgement of this piece. This is probably why hacker789
talks about the authors motivations or secret intentions (similar to what I am
doing to hacker789 now).

~~~
lucisferre
Using ad hominem against the ad hominem of a response to a piece about the use
of logical fallacies. This. Is. So. Meta.

Love it.

------
JasonFruit

        Far too often, logical fallacies are invoked in order to run away from an argument.
    

I think this is the core point: the fallacy-lobbers are often looking to
dismiss the entire conversation rather than trying to participate in it.
There's no counter-argument; instead, the message is, "You're too dumb to
bother with." That may sometimes be true, but it's never conducive to
enlightening discussion.

~~~
Nursie
I totally agree with his assessment of the misuse of the term ad-hominem too.

An ad-hom fallacy is "your argument is wrong because you're an immoral moron",
not "your argument is wrong for these reasons, you immoral moron".

The latter is not very nice and probably shouldn't be encouraged, but it's not
an ad-hominem because the insult is not part of the argument, just an
unpleasant aside.

~~~
bjhoops1
Also, there is nothing illogical about saying "this person or source of
information has a reputation for being wrong or deceitful, therefore I will
not be spending my time examining their claims." This is not really an ad
hominem, just saying that due to the unlikelihood of an individual having
anything to contribute, you are choosing to not engage their argument. I
suppose this falls under "running away from the argument".

~~~
JasonFruit
Very true — it's not illogical to think that, or to use it as a reason to
ignore the discussion. Responding to someone by pointing that reasoning out,
however, is very seldom going to lead to productive discussion. It's usually
best left unsaid.

------
aethertap
For me, fallacies are a great tool for _recognizing_ bad reasoning, which then
provides pointers about how to expose it as such using a real argument. The
fallacy itself doesn't constitute a counter argument. In a good debate, the
fallacies themselves never come up but you can see how they have influenced
the flow of argument.

I really liked how it was put in the book Logical Self-Defense: To be valid,
an argument has to be relevant, sufficient, and acceptable. All of the
fallacies (that I know of) fail on at least one of those properties.
Recognizing the fallacy tells you how to go about attacking or shoring-up the
argument (depending on which side of it you're on).

~~~
Alex3917
"The fallacy itself doesn't constitute a counter argument."

Why not? It doesn't prove that what the other person believes is false, but it
does show that their reasons/evidence for their view are wrong. (Assuming the
logical fallacy isn't itself a straw man against some minor point in the other
person's argument.) And it's usually it's not necessary (or even possible) to
prove that x is false, only that there's no rational reason to believe x.

E.g. even Richard Dawkins doesn't claim that it's impossible that there is a
god.

~~~
bengillies
> Why not?

Because, while it's a perfectly valid argument to make, technically winning an
argument is different to actually winning an argument.

If most people don't know what a logical fallacy is, then you may as well be
referring to the argument from magic pixies and fairy dust fallacy: they won't
care or understand what you're saying. At worst, they'll assume you have an
unwelcome air superiority about you and they'll start to ignore everything
else you say as well.

The sad fact is that people listen to emotions because they can relate to them
and, however invalid such an argument is, it's often the argument that wins.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If most people don't know what a logical fallacy is, then you may as well be
> referring to the argument from magic pixies and fairy dust fallacy: they
> won't care or understand what you're saying. At worst, they'll assume you
> have an unwelcome air superiority about you and they'll start to ignore
> everything else you say as well.

That's important, if your concern is convincing general-audience third
parties.

In a forum like Hacker News (and, in fact, most internet fora I participate
in), I'm usually more interested in connecting to a fairly educated audience
and, more than convincing third parties that I am right, eliciting the best
possible arguments for a position I don't already agree with, as, even if it
doesn't change my mind to the opposing position, that's the best way to grow
my understanding of the subject area.

As a result, I'm a lot less concerned about what might win accolades of "most
people", and a lot more concerned with what will get someone who is interested
in and capable of putting forth a strong argument to do so.

~~~
aethertap
Another simple reason I prefer not to name fallacies is that it leaves an
unsupported assertion out there (namely, that whatever it was is in fact a
fallacy). I usually engage in a debate mostly for my own benefit, to improve
my thinking on something. I find that chasing down and understanding exactly
why something does or does not qualify as an instance of a given fallacy is
beneficial for that end, and it keeps me from making hasty judgments about
what really is a fallacy in a given context.

------
nileshtrivedi
I'm surprised that neither the article nor the comments here mention the
"principle of charity". I read about this early in my study of logic and
philosophy.

It basically says that, if your objective is to discover truth rather than to
win a debate, you ought to grant the best possible interpretation of the
speaker's statement instead of focusing on narrow and literal interpretations
which contain obvious logical fallacies.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity>

~~~
jonnathanson
Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't
win an argument on the internet. It doesn't matter how cogent, how thought-
provoking, how thoroughly researched and meticulously cited your position may
be. You're not convincing the other side of anything. At best you can "win the
crowd" in the _Gladiator_ sense of the term.

And this is what encourages most of the fallacy-citing, semantics nitpicking,
and prosaic grandstanding seen in pseudo-sophisticated internet arguments.
People aren't trying to convince the other side of anything in particular;
they're trying to convince the audience -- oftentimes, more imagined than
actual -- of their intellectual superiority.

People these days join conversations, by default, in fight-or-flight mode.
They presume hostility is lurking in every response, or, conversely, that
responding to a post necessitates correcting it in some way. If more of them
assumed good intent until proven otherwise, they wouldn't rush headlong into
internet arguments.

~~~
MartinCron
_Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't
win an argument on the internet_

I should be spending more time in whatever corners of the Internet where you
are.

~~~
EvanKelly
Maybe not... his point is that this premise causes internet arguers to play to
the crowd, rather than to engage in meaningful discourse with the person they
are arguing with.

There are alternatives to winning an argument. A very positive one would be
coming to an understanding of why your opponent holds their view, but
continuing to disagree because what you value is different.

------
msg
Arguments are about core issues, not peripheral issues.

The only way to convict your opponent is on their ground, not your own.

Taking an argument seriously, as if it were the best representation of itself,
is the only way to defeat it.

In order to truly disagree, you must discover how much you already agree.

=

I know these sound a little fatuous. Can I just lampshade by saying they're
all very true? :/

~~~
JasonFruit
Those aren't fatuous at all. I think Solomon put it well:

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

------
realtalker
This seems to have been prompted by the criticism he recieved for this
appalling piece of work:
<http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html#islamophobia>

~~~
MetaCosm
That link clears a lot up. I can stop wasting my time. _yawn_

------
snowwrestler
Deductive logical systems cannot reliably find truth. That is the lesson of
the scientific revolution and the revolution in mathematics that is most
closely associated with Godel.

Yet when people invoke "logical fallacies" they are almost always fallacies in
deductive logic. Hey Internet--how about catching up to the 19th century and
employing some inductive reasoning in your arguments?

The problem with that, though, is that the starting point is facts. The arguer
actually needs to possess domain knowledge/experience. It's so much more
convenient to mock an inferred deductive structure...no real facts required!

~~~
GalacticDomin8r
> Deductive logical systems cannot reliably find truth.

Don't you mean inductive.

> That is the lesson of the scientific revolution and the revolution in
> mathematics that is most closely associated with Godel.

A lesson which hasn't permeated the "scientific revolution" perhaps with good
reason.

~~~
snowwrestler
Prior to the scientific revolution, philosophers attempted to deduce truth
from first principles. Their record was mixed to say the least.

The revolution of science was to say we don't need Truth, we just need to look
systematically at real facts, and come up with provisional theories that
provide testable predictions about them. It has pulled humanity's collective
head out of the clouds and created useful, practical, actionable knowledge.

~~~
GalacticDomin8r
> Their record was mixed to say the least.

As is post-"scientific revolution", whatever that means.

> The revolution of science was to say we don't need Truth

Do you have anything real to say?

------
kmm
First, I just knew this was going to be about sexism. It's not because your
feelings are hurt, that you receive intellectual immunity. If you are making a
generalisation about an entire community, consisting of thousands to millions
of people, you're going to need to justify that! You're free to say you've
encountered some sexist people and I sympathise with that, sexism is terrible.
But do not accuse _me_ of being sexist.

Secondly, although I believe logic is the only way to have a real argument,
we're all human beings and thus my judgement will be influenced by the colour
of your argument. If you have a perfectly logical argument, yet call me a
slur, unconsciously you're going to have a way harder time convincing me.

~~~
zorpner
> But do not accuse me of being sexist.

But you are. So am I -- we all are. Our culture and society are so riddled
with pervasive sexism that we all exhibit sexist behavior at baseline, and the
responsible thing to do is try and identify it within ourselves so that we can
determine how best to negate it. If someone were truly lacking sexism, that
would be an extraordinary claim, and would require extraordinary evidence to
demonstrate. And if you'll forgive me for saying so -- that's not about to
come from someone who says things like "I just knew this was going to be about
sexism."

~~~
kmm
There's a big difference between acknowledging the sexist baseline that exists
in society, something which we should __all __strive to improve, and saying a
certain subset is fundamentally (more) sexist, which is quite discriminatory
and unfair towards that subset.

> And if you'll forgive me for saying so -- that's not about to come from
> someone who says things like "I just knew this was going to be about
> sexism."

No, I don't forgive you. This is a completely uncalled for.

~~~
Avshalom
Okay so to review: you do admit that you're sexist because you exist in
society but don't want to be accused of being sexist?

Also zorpner was not asking for forgiveness, that was a rhetorical flourish.

Which is actually a big part of what the article is talking about: the
apparent inability of some people to accept that humans don't speak in
Z-notation or something.

~~~
kmm
Uhm, I was trying to be funny. You're assuming I have the social skills of a
potato.

I suppose what I've said is pretty clear. I'm no saint and I'm sure I am in
some ways a little sexist (although I hope less than average). Yet I don't
want to be called especially sexist, or have a group I might be part of be
accused of being fundamentally sexist. Sexism is a spectrum.

------
rayiner
People often fail to make the distinction between a logical argument and a
persuasive one. The qualifications of the speaker, for example, are irrelevant
when analyzing a logical argument, but are quite relevant when analyzing a
persuasive one (why should I trust this doctor's opinion?)

I've always felt that a better set of rules for internet arguments would be
the Federal Rules of Evidence, which are explicitly rooted in the mechanics of
persuasion.

------
Symmetry
And given the topic, there's neccesarily a relevant Less Wrong link:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/)

 _Once upon a time I tried to tell my mother about the problem of expert
calibration, saying: "So when an expert says they're 99% confident, it only
happens about 70% of the time." Then there was a pause as, suddenly, I
realized I was talking to my mother, and I hastily added: "Of course, you've
got to make sure to apply that skepticism evenhandedly, including to yourself,
rather than just using it to argue against anything you disagree with—"

And my mother said: "Are you kidding? This is great! I'm going to use it all
the time!"_

~~~
arsen1k
the author of TFA also has bad things to say about less wrong:
<http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html>

~~~
Symmetry
Wow, he certainly does. There were some bits in there I'll have to think
about, but mostly it was pretty hilarious. Accusations of sexual deviancy?
Tarring by association with Skype? Really?

------
khyryk
> And then suppose you encounter a woman who tells you that because of the
> insults she has received from guys in the skeptic community, _she has
> decided that the skeptic movement is fundamentally sexist_. (Emphasis mine.)

And later:

> This woman has confided her experiences and concerns; in these responses,
> you are insultingly and condescendingly attempting to diminish them, by
> portraying her experiences as irrelevant and her concerns as illogical.

There are better ways to confide experiences and concerns, and assuming
intellectual immunity after calling an entire movement sexist isn't one of
them. Both "sides" should be held to the same standards.

~~~
MDCore
You've fallen into the trap the article talks about, in expecting the woman in
the story to be talking logically and therefore held to a high standard of
discourse.

People say over-the-top, outrageous things out of emotionality, when they may
mean something far less or completely different.

Instead of seeing the woman's statements as a logical argument, one should see
them as the expressions of emotion that they are, and try to engage in talk
that connects to the emotions and experiences underneath.

~~~
dragonwriter
> People say over-the-top, outrageous things out of emotionality, when they
> may mean something far less or completely different.

Yeah, but that's useless for communication of information (its useful for --
socially important -- request for and reception of sympathy, etc., especially
from people with a shared emotional context.)

OTOH, when presented in a context where the intent is to get people who
_don't_ share the emotional context, especially in a context which asks for
people to accept your position on a fact claim, change behavior, or support
some kind of policy proposition, it is not useful, and it is appropriate to
point out its deficiencies for that context and call on the speaker to recast
it in a manner appropriate to the context.

~~~
sageikosa
Gotta agree on this one. Appeals to emotion are for persuasive argumentation,
and best applied against audiences for whom sympathy to your narrative is
likely. Skeptics aren't that audience.

------
Arguggi
Am I the only one troubled by the last example?

 _And then suppose you encounter a woman who tells you that because of the
insults she has received from guys in the skeptic community, she has decided
that the skeptic movement is fundamentally sexist._

Receiving insults from men that identify as skeptics does not mean that the
skeptic movement is _fundamentally_ sexist.

Telling her she just committed a fallacy doesn't seem so wrong to me.

~~~
msg
She may have just committed a fallacy in truth.

That doesn't mean telling her so is the right choice.

If you don't address her experience, you're missing the point.

You can "believe" all kinds of things without feeling them and living them
out.

In her case, skeptics may believe they are not fundamentally sexist. But her
observation would then be that this belief is only skin deep. It should
trouble the skeptic that an observer finds their community sexist, and trigger
a crisis in the belief.

~~~
vacri
In that example, the author makes his own fallacy. Apparently the _speaker's_
experiences are the only valid ones, and the _responder_ has no right to share
his experience - which some of his "I hope it should be clear that none of
these are appropriate responses" are doing.

Some of his examples are condescending, which is the basis of what he's trying
to get at, others are only condescending if you wilfully choose to take them
that way. The problem isn't in pointing out the fallacy, it's with the tone of
the commentary. The simple fact that you _name_ a fallacy while exposing it
does not mean you're a lazy debater.

------
swombat
News at 10: not all of human thinking and interaction can be analysed by
logic. Logic is a limited tool (though powerful when applied properly).

~~~
jerf
As one of the greatest logicians of the 20th century once said: Logic is a
little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers
which smell _bad_. Are you sure your circuits are registering correctly? Your
ears are green.

------
leoc
The impression I keep getting is that (with due respect to "the power of the
context" <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf>) teaching someone about
fallacies automatically makes them about 15 IQ stupider.

------
ianstallings
I don't care if it falls under a logical fallacy or not. If you insult me, the
conversation is over.

~~~
Torgo
Try saying that on any of the "freethought" or skeptic blogs and you will be
mocked, banned, comments deleted, in that order as a "tone troll." On the
other hand, if you insult (or insult back!) one of them, you are deemed a
regular "troll". Leave without further comment and you are a "drive-by troll."

~~~
Tangaroa
If he gets banned, the conversation is indeed over so his point stands, eh?

A funny thing about this "tone troll" business is that PZ bans people for
asking for more civility in discussions, and he banned Thunderf00t for being
incivil. Go figure.

------
tokenadult
Rayiner mentions the Federal Rules of Evidence in his comment. Also writing
from a lawyer's perspective, I'll mention the elaboration of rules of evidence
that has developed both in formal rules like the federal rules and in
centuries of common-law tradition in deciding cases. Presentation of evidence
at trial is about letting the fact-finder (sometimes a jury, sometimes a
judge) hear from both sides in an adversary proceeding about what happened,
and why what happened matters. Some forms of evidence are "prejudicial"--that
is, they are excluded from even being mentioned at trial because they trigger
known human cognitive biases. Other forms of evidence are "irrelevant"--even
if they are completely truthful, they bear no legal or logical relationship to
how the case will be decided based on the other evidence at trial. Unlike
Internet arguments, court trials also exclude some forms of highly relevant
evidence to protect other social goals, for example by reducing incentives to
police misconduct or violations of privacy.

In law, there is a well developed body of precedent and rule on evaluating the
credibility of witnesses. To show evidence that a witness has reason to lie
(not just that the witness is directly contradicted by someone else's
testimony) is highly relevant in most trials. If you are a lawyer who has ever
read a case transcript, you will have no trouble believing that some witnesses
testify in court under oath and penalty of perjury, with cross-examination by
the other side, and yet still lie. This happens every day. To put some balance
into a system in which any witness might have an incentive to lie, the rules
of evidence at trial allow introduction of evidence that the witness is, for
example, someone who has been convicted of "crimes involving dishonesty," or
has a financial interest in a factual issue under dispute, or so on. Some
statements about a witness are plainly irrelevant, even under that principle.
It will not do to say "The witness was convicted of jaywalking," because
jaywalking is not regarded as a crime that shows a tendency to be untruthful.

Another aspect of the law of evidence that has heavily influenced my thinking
about what people know and how they know it, and thus influenced my behavior
in online discussion, is "basis of knowledge" considerations. (I sometimes
explicitly mention my basis of knowledge when commenting in some threads. Here
my basis of knowledge is having studied the law of evidence with a professor
who literally wrote the book on the subject

<http://www.evidencecasebook.com/author2.asp>

when I was in law school.) If a witness testifies, "I saw him shoot the
victim," and you can show that it was dark on that occasion, and the witness
has bad myopia and wasn't wearing his eyeglasses, you are a long way toward
undermining the witness's testimony on completely legitimate grounds. I am
often puzzled why many Hacker News readers are so credulous about stories when
it is plain that the person writing the story has no basis of knowledge
adequate for making the extraordinary claims submitted with the story.
(University press office hype about the future implications of preliminary
research findings frequently has this weakness,

<http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174>

as is well known in the scientific community but still too little known here
on HN, much less Reddit.)

When a Hacker News commenter suggests that someone has either bias (perhaps as
an investor in a company) or insufficient basis of knowledge (perhaps as a
rookie investigator before peer review and replication has happened),
altogether too many HN replies will accuse the commenter of an "ad hominem"
argument. They don't notice that arguments about bias and about lack of
sufficient knowledge are even completely legitimate aids to truth-finding on
controversial issues. Yes, don't rely on a list of fallacies (at least, not on
the list alone) to guide your thinking, but also on deep thinking about the
structure of the argument and adequacy and impartiality of the data.

(All of the above said, I like the late Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit on
the whole, and think applying it to more Hacker News threads would raise the
level of discussion here. See also Paul Graham's essay "How to Disagree"

<http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

for more suggestions about how to disagree thoughtfully and productively.)

------
gottasayit
I really like this author's writing style. The prose flows and is fairly tight
yet colorful.

That said, his angst seems to be misplaced.

When younger, he seized upon Sagan's rules as though they were The Way(tm)...
and now he's disillusioned that they haven't made him invincible. Then he
tries to use mostly logical argumentation to explain how the Baloney Detector
Kit is flawed. That's ironic.

Looking at his other blog posts, you can see similar angst at a lack of
comfort being completely absorbed in a specific ideology:
<http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html#jump>

I guess he has a brain that wants really badly to see everything in black and
white - but at least he's smart enough to reason past that.

I would argue that the baloney detector kit, his skepticism, and similar
logical mechanisms are all that has kept this individual from going over the
ideological cliff into unshakable belief syndrome.

------
Fomite
"You're confusing correlation and causation" & "You're drawing conclusions
from an insufficient sample size."

Those are the two that drive me nuts. They're _statistical_ arguments, not
ones you can just toss out. All causal relationships are also correlated
relationships - if you're asserting a correlation isn't the result of
causation, it would behoove you to at least have some notion of what might be
confounding it.

The same thing with sample size. "Well, their sample size is small..." gets
trotted out. How do you know that? If you want to bring statistical power into
an argument, come prepared to show your work.

------
petercooper
No _true_ citation would be incorrect.

~~~
ionforce
I'm sure there's a Scotsman somewhere that would like to speak to you.

------
bbanyc
The only point I get from this post is that too much self-congratulatory
navel-gazing harms one's ability to engage in any sort of discussion. This
goes for both the logic-in-all-things capital-S Skepticism the post argues
against and the post itself.

What we've got here is...failure to communicate.

------
inopinatus
The most constructive use of logical fallacies is in finding weaknesses in
_your own_ argument, not those of others.

------
ionforce
Why does the victim in the article have to be a woman? Why can't it just be a
random, genderless Internet denizen?

~~~
guizzy
Because the whole article (and most of his site) is about defending poor
defenseless women against hordes of oppressing logic wielding monsters.

------
hawleyal
A little off on the ad hominem thing.

------
6d0debc071
It seems to me that the logical fallacies aren't really at fault here. If
you're the one who wants to change someone's mind, then you're the one who has
to engage on grounds they're going to find persuasive. The buyer; _the person
who wants something_ ; pays - in discussion as much as in any other area of
life. What are you shared objectives? What do you stand to lose if you don't
change your mind? What do you stand to gain if you do?

Complaining about the standard of dialogue seems likely to be unproductive.
Sceptics have been doing that with regard to Christians for years and it
doesn't really seem to have gotten them anywhere - there's little incentive.

So, that in mind, it seems that you'd do better working the argument in the
author's piece in reverse: Someone tries to appeal to emotion, gets a logical
fallacy claim back in return. If you assume that there are many different
types of speech, and that you're not really in a logical argument, then what
does that tell you about _them?_

Well, the first thing it tells you is that that person cares very strongly
about a consistency principle - or at least the outward appearance of one -
that they probably want to appear reasonable. What can you think of that's
likely to be in their personal life that they're going to feel the same way as
you do that a consistency principle is going to work in favour of?

What's the obvious pickup with a lot of sexism? 'Would you want someone
talking like that to your mother or sister?'

Of course, that sort of pattern - consistency response to an emotional appeal
- is going to come up in areas where people just don't care about very much
other than appearing reasonable fairly frequently. I seem to recall one
description of debating with Christians that went something along the line of
'Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy-cows with high-
powered sniper rifles.'

We all get a cheap laugh from it, probably, but is hunting dairy cows really a
productive activity for a smart person? IME people with stuff to do don't
spend a lot of time on such things - it seems unlikely that scepticism would
be a large part of their identity.

#

However, If you're getting that response a lot wherever you go, maybe the
problem's you.

#

A good example of this is, in fact, that piece above. What's the _actual_
prevalence of people being unreasonably called out on logical fallacies? I've
not seen it a lot. That may just be because I'm one of the people who does it
and most of us seem to tend to appear reasonable from the inside. But equally
it may be because the prevalence is actually low. So, the basic premise on
which the author is attempting to appeal, the supposed shared experience? I'm
not going to find that convincing on an emotional level or a consistency based
one.

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taktix
It's nice to see the word baloney in lieu of #@%! A nice change of pace.

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Kudzu_Bob
“Most fallacies are like that - they're heuristics which work most of the
time. For example, if you see people running in terror in one direction, and
you join them, you've committed the bandwagon fallacy, but you're probably
right. If you refuse to invest in someone's business because they've been
convicted of fraud, that's ad hominem, but you're probably right.”

[http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2012/11/slippery-
slope...](http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2012/11/slippery-slope-
logical-fallacy-but.html?showComment=1354462371905#c3584621246281099294)

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Tangaroa
This is wrong on so many levels that it's difficult to keep track of them all.
Let's start with the introduction:

<blockquote>Why did people who deployed these [critical thinking] terms always
look so rigid, so predictable, so feeble? Why did people who avoided them look
so confident in comparison, so much more in command of their resources, so
much more mature? Their arguments seemed to possess an inner strength; the
baloney detectors, by contrast, only had strength in numbers.</blockquote>

Translation: Some people never shut up after they have been proven wrong,
<em>and the author values this assertiveness over whether their arguments are
logically sound</em>. He concludes that the most assertive arguer is
automatically <em>correct</em>. He calls for the total abandonment of logic
and reason and to respect force and effect in their stead.

His justification is the presumption that any person would quit an argument
after being proved wrong; this is a false premise, as evidenced by the
existence of liars, fanatics, and human choice. He applies this false premise
to the whole of reason in order to condemn it; this is a strawman argument, a
form of false premise, as reason has never presumed that its methods would
lead to this result, but holds that its methods enable a witness to more
accurately judge whose arguments are more likely to be correct. From there he
reaches the conclusion that critical analysis is worthless. In an irony, he is
himself attempting to use critical analysis to debunk critical analysis
itself, but his foundation is so rotten that his argument is easily shown to
be unjustified.

Next the author tries to declare certain forms of arguments as being off-
limits to critical analysis, like emotional appeals. An emotional appeal is
irrelevant to whether the stated facts are likely to be true or false. The
dismissal of an argument for its emotional appeal is shorthand for saying that
the argument has not justified its claims, but is trying to trick witnesses
into believing its claims by appealing to their emotions instead of reason. If
an argument truly has nothing behind it other than its appeal to emotion, then
its dismissal as an appeal to the emotions is fully justified. He also applies
the same protection to the Rush Limbaugh defense of people saying their lies,
initially presented as serious factual claims, were meant to be taken as
"comedy" when disproven, or as "irony, hyperbole, understatement, whimsy,
counterfactual conjecture, or any other of the wonders of figurative language
that defy semantic nit-picking". Contrary to having "nothing to contribute",
"semantic nit-picking" tears these turns of phrase apart and exposes the
argument being made.

Next he says that the correct identification of a logical error does not imply
incorrectness of the argument. No comment is needed.

Finally, we get to the root cause. The author has constructed this framework
of deliberate mental incompetence to justify supporting Rebecca Watson's claim
that <strong>all Atheist men are sexist</strong>, with the implication being
that Atheist men are sexist to such a degree that all of them are rapists-in-
waiting. A supporting argument is laid out in a similar manner to the classic
form, simplified as such:

Thesis: All Atheist men are sexist. 1\. Z is an atheist man. 2\. Z is not
sexist. (Points 1 and 2 are repeated for a dozen more Zs)

It takes the complete abandonment of logic to conclude, as the author does,
that the thesis is upheld and indeed strengthened by these arguments. As we
have seen, the complete abandonment of logic is the author's goal. He wants
you to believe that you should stop thinking logically because he writes so
strongly and forcefully for it.

~~~
coldtea
I suggest you go and re-read TFA. All your points showcase extreme naivety and
prejudice.

Just two examples upon many:

> _Translation: Some people never shut up after they have been proven wrong,
> <em>and the author values this assertiveness over whether their arguments
> are logically sound</em>. He concludes that the most assertive arguer is
> automatically <em>correct</em>. He calls for the total abandonment of logic
> and reason and to respect force and effect in their stead._

Very bad translation. He does not say, or even suggest, that he values the
assertiveness. He ACCESSES the baloney detectors not as less assertive, but as
less persuasive, and their argumentation of lower quality. He judges, in the
VERY quote you mis-translate, the worth of their argument --not of their
assertiveness: "their arguments seemed to possess an inner strength".

You choose to interpret that strength as they believing strongly in it, but
his argument makes clear he says it's strong because it's less "feeble", more
in "command of their resources", and "much more mature".

If anything, the baloney detectors are equally assertive ("rigid"), stubborn
and utterly convinced for their reasoning superiority.

> _Next he says that the correct identification of a logical error does not
> imply incorrectness of the argument. No comment is needed._

Actually comment very much needed. In real human conversation, as opposed to
medieval formal argumentation, the correct identification of a logical error
does not prove any incorrectness of the whole argument. It's not some
axiomatic system or a formal proof, so that everything relies on a single,
unified, core. Arguments in actual human conversation are multifaceted,
nuanced and complicated. One --or even a bunch-- of logical errors in them do
not suffice to invalidate them.

~~~
Tangaroa
Reread it yourself. He does in fact uphold forcefulness ("confidence",
"command", "outmaneuver", not "feeble") and rhetoric ("inner strength",
"emotion") as superior to logical thought ("predictable", "rigid"). It's like
he just discovered that street-level debates don't follow Oxford rules, that
some people cannot be persuaded by logic, and that other people can be
persuaded by illogical means, so he denounces the use of logic and stands by
the illogical means as the path to deducing correctness. He views rhetoric as
persuasiveness as correctness. His examples all reinforce this analysis.

And let's consider that "inner strength". It is not the actual strength of the
argument since that is what the logic-users would see and support. If the
argument had outer strength, the baloney detectors would not have called it
out in the first place. This "inner strength" is a feeling he gets from the
argument. It is an emotional uplift. It is irrelevant to the actual strength
of the argument.

When the baloney detectors are correct, they very well ought to be assertive,
stubborn, and convinced of their own correctness. Why should they accept their
opponent's views as fact after they have proved it insufficiently justified or
logically false?

And yes, conversations can be multifaceted. I'm sorry to have to inform you
that serious logical flaws and mistakes of fact in one facet of a multifaceted
conversation do in fact invalidate that one facet of the conversation.

And please refrain from the insults, although it was nice to learn that I am
both young and old at the same time, and also a racist.

~~~
coldtea
> _And let 's consider that "inner strength". It is not the actual strength of
> the argument since that is what the logic-users would see and support._

A circular argument, if I ever met one. No, it's the actual strength of the
argument, since, what the logic-users would "see and support" (the mere
logical consistency of the argument) is far from the essence of human
argumentation. Except if you argue with Aristotle or Medieval Philosophers.

> _And yes, conversations can be multifaceted. I 'm sorry to have to inform
> you that serious logical flaws and mistakes of fact in one facet of a
> multifaceted conversation do in fact invalidate that one facet of the
> conversation._

For one, you misunderstood me. Badly.

I said that real world arguments are multifaceted, and thus, spotting a
"serious logical flaw" in one, doesn't mean the whole argument is invalidated.
And you reply to me that ...it would invalidate just that facet? Well, you
don't say!

This repeating of what I told as if it was some novel information tells me you
are incapable of evaluating even my simple arguments in context.

> _And please refrain from the insults, although it was nice to learn that I
> am both young and old at the same time, and also a racist._

Where you gathered that from my reply, I can't even fathom. If my guess is
right, you think "naive" also implies "young", and "prejudiced" implies
racism. I don't know about "baloney detection", but my extreme reading
comprehension issues detector started beeping wildly.

