

Your Logical Fallacy Is: - kposehn
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

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coldtea
"Your Logical Fallacy Is" giving too much credit to "logical fallacies".

Conversations are not formal proof, in pure logic.

And logical fallacies are not pure logic either. More like guidelines.

In the real world, where you don't have all the information at hand, and you
have trust levels and possibilities and resource limits, a "logical fallacy"
can be more beneficial (statistically) than not.

Case in point: "appeal to authority". If I'm sick, I'd rather trust my doctor,
than a non-doctor guy, just for the fact that the doctor has a MD and he does
not. I don't have time to study medicine and examine both approaches (e.g I
could be bleeding to death). So the more rational thing to do here is listen
to the authority, not the random guy.

Similar issues can be found for most of the other fallacies, from ad hominem
to no-true-scotchman and beyond.

Nice guidelines, but by no means complete and by no means appropriate for all
real life situations.

Like Occam's Razor. It's just a guideline too. Sometimes the MORE complex
story, with the more entities involved in it, is the one that actually
happened. E.g in police cases. There is often a clean-cut explanation that
might seem obvious but is wrong, and a more involved story that is what
actually happened. Lots of innocent have fell prey to the "obvious" and
"simple" explanation, only to be proven innocent many years later.

Think of the movie "Arlington Road". What would most people think of the
events, not knowing the whole story? "But most real cases are not like
Arlington Road!" My point exactly. Most, not all. Occam's razor is a
guideline, not a logical necessity.

~~~
itafroma
A large problem with using "cheat sheet" lists of fallacies is that they lack
the nuance of the actual fallacies they cite. An argument from authority is
fallacious if, and only if, the authority cited is not an unbiased expert in
the matter _or_ there is no expert consensus on the matter. Trusting your
doctor when you are sick is not an instance of fallacious reasoning.

While I'm here, another problem with things like this is the tendency for
people to use them as an argument-refuter-o-matic. Indicating an argument is
fallacious is _not_ a rebuttal of the argument: it's merely an indicator that
the argument is incomplete. Using fallacies to rebut an argument is, somewhat
ironically, itself a fallacy.

~~~
Clotho
"Trusting your doctor when you are sick is not an instance of fallacious
reasoning."

Nor is it an argument. It's an action based on a personal risk assessment.

If you said "The cancer studies are trash because my doctor says they are."
Then you would be making a fallacious argument. Authority is only rational as
a screening tool in the evaluation of large amounts of after information. It
most definitely is not a proof.

~~~
itafroma
> Nor is it an argument. It's an action based on a personal risk assessment.

Concluding that something is the best course of action because an expert
authority is, in fact, an example of the results of an inductive argument.

    
    
        P1: I am sick.
        P2: I have no knowledge of how to treat my sickness.
        P3: Knowing how to treat my sickness requires expert-level knowledge.
        P4: My doctor says I should take X to treat my sickness.
        P5: If my doctor is an unbiased expert whose opinion is representative
            of the medical community on my sickness, then what my doctor is
            prescribing is likely correct.
        P6: I have no reason to believe my doctor is not an unbiased expert
            whose opinion is representative of the medical community on my
            sickness.
        ------------------------------
        C:  If I follow my doctor's prescription, my sickness will most
            likely be treated correctly.
    

This is a valid argument, and not an appeal to or argument from authority. The
conclusion is justified based on the premises provided.

One could, of course, discount any of the premises provided: for example, I
could later find out that my doctor is a hack. If I do not then revise my
conclusion or introduce new evidence to, then the conclusion would no longer
be justified and the argument would become invalid.

> If you said "The cancer studies are trash because my doctor says they are."
> Then you would be making a fallacious argument.

If you make the claim that certain cancer studies are trash because your
doctor says they are _despite_ expert consensus indicating that they are, in
fact, conclusive, then yes, your argument would be fallacious.

If, on the other hand, you make the claim that certain cancer studies are
trash because your doctor says they are _and_ it so happens that your doctor's
position is representative of the oncology community as a whole, your argument
would not be fallacious (or, rather, it would not be fallacious merely on the
basis of an argument from authority).

> It most definitely is not a proof.

Informal fallacies, like the argument from authority, are indications of
faults in an argument: they are not proof-enders, nor do they apply to proofs.
So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by saying an inductive
argument is not a proof. No one could, or should, dispute that.

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rtpg
I think this has been discussed before here.

Some guy made a comment along the lines that, on some sort of meta level,
these arguments have some validity because ultimately we are talking about
humans.

Someone might remember the point better than me, it was convincing when I read
it

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El_Mariachi
Remember, not all arguments/debates are exercises in formal logic. A Slippery
Slope argument, for instance, might be perfectly valid in a legal context
where precedent carries weight.

Also, Ad Hominem is not a synonym for “insult.”

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Samuel_Michon
Be aware that while the site lists 24 common fallacies, many more exist:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies>

~~~
itafroma
For a comprehensive list complete with formal definitions, explanations, and
examples, I prefer the Fallacy Files: <http://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html>

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markdown
Interesting choice to use https when it clearly isn't necessary.

~~~
iceron
Probably to unmask 'not provided' search referrals.

