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.
Logical fallacies can be misused. They can be applied incorrectly, or used to shut down discussion. I therefore sympathise with the point that the OP is trying to make. However, does it then follow that logical errors should be given a pass? Does this somehow make muddled thinking valid or persuasive?
The correct course of action is to raise standards on all sides. If a logical fallacy is incorrectly used, then the criticism should be criticized. Mutual progress comes from refining thought on both sides, not allowing errors to go unchecked.
One of the core points of the article and the parent comment is that many instances of "muddled thinking" are actually mis-communication due to the nuances of real human language, or interpreting sentences too literally.
A sentence "all skeptics are assholes" does not mean that the speaker literally asserts that the conditional statement "you are a skeptic → you are an asshole" is true. Someone saying "you are an idiot" to me does not mean that they literally assert that I have been medically diagnosed with IQ less than 30.
In both cases, it is more likely that the true meaning of the sentence is an subjective expression of frustration at some behaviour they experienced.
There is no useful place for pointing out logical fallacies by name in a real discussion among people. Instead of rejecting "arguments", a good discussion requires asking questions to understand each others' viewpoints, empathising with each others' concerns, trying to convince the other party of your viewpoints in a persuasive way, and being open to changing your own viewpoint. Pointing out a logical fallacy by name will not persuade the other party, any other readers/listeners, nor help you learn anything about their actual views.
If somebody says "you are an idiot", the interesting topics of discussion are: what did I do, and whether what I did was wrong. Debating the logical truth of the literal sentence is completely pointless, because the literal interpretation of the sentence is wrong.
I agree with your points, but since this discussion has tended towards behavior on internet forums (like HN) the difference between spoken conversation and published written word come into play.
I'm guilty of not thinking before I speak most of the time, but when I post on HN or Reddit, or even Facebook, I take care to say what I mean. On the otherhand, interpretation of intent and meaning can be much more difficult from written word, especially when you don't have a prior relationship with your conversation partner.
No, it simply means know what you're talking about. If you disagree with someone, argue and debate, don't resort to (GP, come on) shitty debate tactics of someone with their back against the wall --- it happens here, on reddit, in real life. If you're adamant about your position and the other person can't formulate a coherent or relevant response then you should be prepared to be accused of "being madbro." or have "Ad hominem" or "Straw man!!!" shouted at you as the other person uses that to "win" and exit the conversation.
>>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.
True! But I also think that the intent to immediately jump to logical fallacies is a sign of weakness. If you can't dispute the premises (or even understand them) you can jump right to an area that allows a) total victory, he used a fallacy somehow somewhere! or b) the argument breaks down into a subjective analysis of whether someone committed a fallacy thus allowing the argument to continue without having to face the other persons argument.
Maybe it is just me, but I find that even the (few) people without any critical thinking skills don't really commit classical logical fallacies. The problem isn't the surface argument but rather the evidence or the premises that is usually the issue.
I've rarely seen well articulated, highly subjective opinions teared into pieces, at least on HN. Usually the provocative, flaming comments get the predictable "you're wrong by definition" responses.
Sometimes opinions are just opinions, sometimes anecdotes are enlightening, and sometimes generalizations, metaphors, analogies and other abstractions come into play.
Opinions are opinions. They should be stated and treated as such. If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate. Sure, it's just an opinion; that's fine. Just don't expect anyone else to take it as a fact or agree that it's at all meaningful outside of your own head.
I don't agree with this assessment of the problem. Some people want to participate in discussions about how things are or how things work or why things were done or what actually happened -- discussions of fact and logic -- yet they want to inject anecdotes, generalizations, metaphors, analogies, and other abstractions.
It's irritating and intellectually backwards. But it's not going to stop, because most people less interested in what a discussion is about than they are about making sure people pay attention to their contribution, whether it's valuable, on topic, or other.
I used to start a lot of my sentences with "I think...", "In my opinion...", or "To me it looks like..." and I noticed my emails would commonly go unresponded to, or worse: the conversation would go directly opposite of the point I was trying to make.
Lately I've been experimenting with just saying "x is y" or "x is broken the fix is y". Things seem to be working out better for me that way. It keeps my emails from getting cluttered and the words are obviously my own perspective and opinions, which I will sometimes make explicit at the end.
It is irritating that facts and opinions and everything else can't be kept separate from technical discussions, but that's just how many people communicate and there's not a lot that can be done if you want to include them in the conversation.
To be ironic means to speak in contrast to what you really mean. Usually, people are expected to pick up on it by tone of voice.
Irony is what most people think is called sarcasm. It is a form of intentional wordplay, derived from the behavior of the Eiron, a feature of greek theater. (Sarcasm is irony which is meant to hurt feelings.)
Irony is not what Nelson from The Simpsons would laugh at, and is never unintentional.
If a safety worker botches the installation of a safety device which later gets them killed, that is not irony. When someone leans over the rail and yells "good job keeping people safe," that is irony (and since it's mean, it's also sarcasm.)
Opinions are opinions. They should be stated and treated as such.
Let's not generalize and remind to ourselves that there's a difference between a well-formed opinion and an uninformed opinion and those two are not equal just because they are opinions.
> If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate.
I don't think that's true. Some examples:
"That place smells bad."
"Red is too bright a color for a car."
"Lost is a terrible TV show."
Those are all opinions and it's obvious that they're opinions. You could prepend "In my opinion" to each one and no one would complain, but it's unnecessary, and people say stuff like this all the time with full knowledge that they're opinions. Their status as opinions isn't contingent on anyone stating that they are; they're just opinions because they're value judgements or statements of preference.
I've found that it's generally easy to separate opinions from statements of fact, and so it's not required that anyone be the "that's just your opinion!" police. Of course it's their opinion; that's why they said it. The weird thing about complaining that opinions should be explicitly demarcated is that is suggests that either a) you have trouble telling the difference between fact and opinion or b) you assume the person saying them doesn't know the difference. Both of those are bad.
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.]
Nope. I certainly used ad hominem, but it wasn't central to my argument. To ignore the rest of my post would be an example of the following:
> 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.
>Radical, post-modern feminists like the author do not pepper their otherwise-reasoned arguments with logical fallacies; their arguments are based upon logical fallacies.
What evidence do you have the author is post-modern? I looked around on the authors blog and didn't see anything post-modern.
You are dismissing a large number of thinkers, this is all radical post-modern feminists, out of hand. I don't understand why or what that has to do with your other claims.
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).
"Feminist" is such a broad brush that labeling something "anti-feminist" isn't very useful.
But you're still right—like anyone, my biases can color my judgement of things, often causing me to prejudge a written piece based on its author. This time, I was right; often, I am not.
I firmly feel there's nothing wrong with asking someone in an elevator whether they'd like to get coffee.
That said, to answer your question, my answer is no. Someone responding to "guys, elevator come-ons are not such a good idea" with "fair enough" doesn't remotely make someone a radical, post-modern feminist.
Nice. Feminist bullies use the same tactics and insults that kids use in middle school.
What's so wrong with asking someone in an elevator? I'm all ears. Is it because you think women will cower in terror because they're an enclosed box with a man?
> What's so wrong with asking someone in an elevator? I'm all ears.
If the request makes them uncomfortable, the closed nature of the space makes it difficult for them to make a polite exit. The same applies to other locations where someone is temporarily unable to leave.
This also isn't really so much about dating or gender. Equally inappropriate would be uninvited political or religious commentary, bleak comedy, reference to recent very sad topics (violence, disease, natural disaster, abuse scandal,) or other topics with an unusual likelihood of creating distress.
The general idea is, just wait for the elevator to open, and ask once they have stepped outside; thirty seconds isn't going to kill you.
There's nothing insulting about having a mental illness. However, having such blatant disregard for others' feelings and established societal norms can land you in jail. While you may be incapable of empathy on your own, therapy can help you find ways to make the effects of empathy beneficial to you (usually by some form of quantification of results based on emulation of empathy).
You've both diagnosed me with autism and insinuated it could land me in jail if left untreated? You're lovely.
I'll ask you again. What's so wrong with calmly asking someone in an elevator for coffee? I remember these discussions after Rebecca Watson publicly complained about it—the vast majority of people felt she was vastly overreacting. So it's definitely not an "established societal norm".
Despite their rhetoric, radical feminists love infantilizing women. They treat women as fragile, triggerable, sensitive creatures who won't feel safe unless they're handled with kid gloves.
Would you feel uncomfortable if a fat, ugly woman with an annoying nasal voice opened conversation at the beginning of a 30-floor elevator ride by asking you out for coffee?
"Can I get a coffee with you mister? You're so handsome."
"Er, no, sorry, I'm busy."
45 seconds of lift going up in embarrassed silence
I'm sure anyone can handle it, but it's definitely uncomfortable.
Now imagine if this happened every day, because if it's socially acceptable and you are handsome and working in a tall building, it probably will.
That would be an uncomfortable question to ask at the beginning of a long elevator ride, but it's no more uncomfortable than the following common and socially acceptable situation:
I'm at a fairly small club downtown. A woman is walking toward me, so I make eye contact and say "hi!".
She sits down next to me, and we begin to talk. She's very nice, but after a few minutes of conversation, I'm not attracted to her at all, and it's clear we have very little in common.
"Hacker789, you have a really cute smile. I'd love to get your number."
"Ah..."
I look down, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her nervously twisting her hair in her fingers.
I cringe just thinking about that, because it's happened to me before! But I would never shame her for asking me, and I would never charge her with making me feel "unsafe". That would make me into a villain.
And let's be clear—it can be dreadfully awkward to leave the table at a small club, often taking more than a minute to politely finish the task without hurting the other person's feelings too badly. It's even worse if your friend is at the table, happily talking to an acquaintance of the person you just rejected!
At least in an elevator, you're automatically free after the doors open.
Would I ever ask someone at the beginning of a long elevator ride a question that might make them uncomfortable? No, not if I could avoid it. In fact, I wouldn't ask anyone an uncomfortable question at the beginning of a long bus or train ride, either. But not every situation that has the potential to create discomfort is socially unacceptable; part of being a social creature is to take minor discomfort in stride, giving the other person the benefit of the doubt.
And the more frequently an uncomfortable situation happens to you, the better you get at handling it.
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.
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.
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".
Exactly. Which is why it would be an ad hominem (or really, ad feminum) to say "How can we possibly trust you as our CFO? You're a woman!" since there is no pertinent relationship between gender and the job's requirements. However, there's nothing illogical about saying "How can we possibly trust you as our CFO? You're a convicted embezzler!"
Indeed, if the personal considerations are this relevant, it would quite illogical not to consider them. Likewise, I someone has established a general reputation for idiocy, slop, and other crimes against lucidity, it's perfectly reasonable to flag their remarks as dubious until proven otherwise. It's actually a perfectly rational conservation of time and energy.
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.
Ad-hom is often invoked against arguments of the form "So-and-so advocated that position and look what happened". This is actually argument from consequence and is useful, Godwin be damned.
While we are on the topic, the whole "Godwin" shit drives me batty. Yes, I get that "You won't let me go to the dance with Timmy? You are Hitler!" is not cool, but for the most part in mature discussion that is not what is happening right before somebody starts hysterically screaming "GODWIN!"
If history is to be considered important, it is because we think we can learn from it. However our ability to do so is cut short if we reject any allusion to history in which magnitude and severity are mismatched.
For example: If you kick a small village of several dozen in Africa out of their homes to make room for a pipeline, that is not equivalent to the 'Trail of Tears', but there sure as hell are valid comparisons to be made nevertheless. However the overly enthusiastic "Godwinists" would have us believe any comparison between the two would be uncalled for.
It colours the argument and tries to make the other party sounds bad. Obviously this is done with the intent to "win" the argument. And thus "your argument is wrong for these reasons, you immoral moron" is a disingenuous way to reason, which comes close to a fallacy in my opinion.
Oh, and I sometimes see ad-hominem used to refer to the whole of slurs, condescension and things that are said to make me feel/look bad, regardless of whether an argument is going on.
While I agree with you for the most part, the context and nature of the debate is important. In a casual conversation that happens to be an argument, there's (usually) some semblance of a logical argument that can be teased out from a large amount of non-logical communication. In that context, picking on any of that non-logical communication and calling it a fallacy is silly.
In the context of a real debate, however, when each party has the goal of arguing a side, and an audience is there to hear and evaluate each party's words in the context of the argument, I think a phrase like "you immoral moron" is indeed to be taken as an ad-hominum. In that situation every statement is assumed to be part of your argument.
It can be taken as a sign of weakness of argument, of bad technique and of uncivility, certainly. Even grounds for disqualification from a formal debate.
I don't agree with this. I think the root problem in many "arguments" is that the two parties are speaking completely different languages or using two different rule sets. One side will use logical sounding arguments that aren't really logical, and the other side will actually use logic. The logical side isn't "running away" from this argument. They are taking it head on, as an argument should be taken.
Or, you both need to admit to yourselves that what is going on is just political theater and not really argumentation. Which is fine, but just different.
But let's not throw away all of our logical tools because some idiot doesn't know how to use them.
In my opinion the root problem is a lack of recognition on what the assumptions and intentions are on either side. You can correctly apply logic to flawed assumptions and end up in some weird places. Similarly you can take the same set of facts and use different intentions to construct seemingly rational arguments out of them which end up at incompatible outcomes. Real world facts tend to be vague and messy, and are largely unsuitable for reasoning with.
It's called getting tired of wasting your time with someone who has no intention of changing their mind. If you point out that an argument is flawed and they say something like your quoted text, I'm going to ignore that person.
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).
Actually, in a good debate, the fallacies are taken as (Bayesian) evidence, even if obviously imperfect.
Appeal to authority/experts: The fact that experts believe something is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).
Appeal to tradition: The fact that things have historically been done a certain way, in a highly immodular system with complex dependencies, without catastrophic failure is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).
Appeal/reduction to absurdity: Absurd ideas are usually false, even if the presumption can be overridden.
Genetic fallacy: Actually, the reason a conclusion was reached is exactly how you should judge it. (The true fallacy is thinking that you can pick an arbitrary reason a conclusion was reached -- e.g. snake dreams and Benzene -- rather than the best reason -- the later empirical confirmation of the model's predictive power.)
And so on.
Generally, the "Fallacy fallacy" is to jump from
"Hey, this piece of evidence isn't perfect (i.e. an infinite likelihood ratio, which is impossible anyway)"
> Actually, in a good debate, the fallacies are taken as (Bayesian) evidence, even if obviously imperfect.
I don't believe there is any reasonable definition of "good" where this is true. I think this characterization must rest on a misunderstanding of what the fallacies actually are.
> Appeal to authority/experts: The fact that experts believe something is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).
Yes, but where that's true its not the fallacy of appeal to authority; the fallacy of appeal to authority is making an appeal to an authority where:
1. The cited authority is not actually an authority in the appropriate domain, or
2. The cited position is not the consensus of experts in the appropriate domain, or
3. In the context of deductive, rather than inductive, argument.
(Similar problems exist with your other arguments about fallacies as evidence).
Finally, your description of the "fallacy fallacy" is incorrect; it is not the (non-)fallacy of rejecting an argument because it is fallacious, it is the formal fallacy of affirming the negation of a claim because an argument containing a fallacy is offered in support of the claim.
>In the context of deductive, rather than inductive, argument.
The very context that you should never use, in other words, which was exactly my point! If you're going to require all evidence deductively imply a conclusion (i.e. have an infinite likelihood ratio), then you're excluding all real-world evidence, and making the very fallacy I described (which I didn't realize was claimed for something else).
So it seems you essentially agree with using the "appeal to authority" fallacy in exactly the way I warned against. And that you generally endorse (the genuine fallacy of) rejecting evidence simply because it doesn't guarantee a conclusion.
Whatever it is, that's not good debate, I'm afraid.
> The very context that you should never use, in other words
No, that's not other words for what I said.
> which was exactly my point!
Yes, that you should never use deductive reasoning was one of your points (and a ludicrous one). No, that point isn't an "in other words" of anything in my response.
> If you're going to require all evidence deductively imply a conclusion
Having some contexts within which deductive reasoning is used (what you are arguing against categorically) is not equivalent to requiring all evidence to deductively imply a conclusion. This is the fallacy of the excluded middle, arguing that if you aren't exclusively using inductive reasoning, then you must be exclusively using deductive reasoning.
> (i.e. have an infinite likelihood ratio)
Deductive implication isn't equivalent to having an "infinite likelihood ratio". First, because deductive reasoning is about necessary (logical) rather than probabilistic implication, so talking about likelihood ratios for it is misplaced, and second, because, insofar as it might make sense to talk about a "likelihood ratio" for deductive logic, the ratio would be 1, which is very much finite.
> then you're excluding all real-world evidence
Well, yeah, real world evidence is prior to a deductive argument, not part of it; insofar as it contributes to a deductive argument, it does so as part of an inductive justification for the premises of a deductive argument.
> and making the very fallacy I described (which I didn't realize was claimed for something else).
The thing you described is not a fallacy.
> So it seems you essentially agree with using the "appeal to authority" fallacy in exactly the way I warned against.
You didn't warn against using the appeal to authority fallacy, you endorsed (not "warned against) using something you called the "the appeal to authority fallacy", and then defined that as something that is not what the "appeal to authority fallacy" actually refers to.
> And that you generally endorse (the genuine fallacy of) rejecting evidence simply because it doesn't guarantee a conclusion.
No, I don't, and nothing in my post stated that, or supports your claim that I endorse that. That's just something you invented.
>Having some contexts within which deductive reasoning is used ...
Okay, you object to my claim that there are no contexts in which to use deductive reasoning. Point taken, I wasn't entirely clear about that. I was speaking in the context of the discussion, which was about the set of exchanges in which fallacies are brought up. This is basically the realm of policy debate and empirical claims.
It is there that I claim you shouldn't be invoking fallacies only applicable to deductive reasoning, because there are almost never situations where the crucial issue hinges on a disagreement about a deduction.
>Deductive implication isn't equivalent to having an "infinite likelihood ratio". ...
It's not clear you are using the term correctly. I mean this value:
Saying that a piece of evidence necessarily entails a conclusion is indeed equivalent to an infinite (as much as the term is meaningful) likelihood ratio, as that is what is necessary to make your confidence in the conclusion equal to 100% and thus reduce to the case of Aristotelian deductive logic. (Probabilistic inference is such logic generalized to the cover uncertainty.)
>Well, yeah, real world evidence is prior to a deductive argument, not part of it; insofar as it contributes to a deductive argument, it does so as part of an inductive justification for the premises of a deductive argument.
As above, that "deductive argument" generally is not going to be a deduction. Your induction-based premise is only going to get you e.g. "this policy probably will save money in the long run", which means your supposedly deductive continuation is tainted with the same uncertainty.
To the extent that there is a pure syllogism in there ("we should do that that will probably save money; this will probably save money; therefore we should do that") the debate is rarely about its validity, but rather, about the degree to which those things really all probable. And in that case, the fact that experts are sometimes wrong is not a reason to reject the evidential value of their opinions. (Like I said the first time around.)
>You didn't warn against using the appeal to authority fallacy, you endorsed (not "warned against) using something you called the "the appeal to authority fallacy",
I most certainly did warn against using "appeal to authority is a fallacy" to ignore the evidential value of exper opinions; read the comment again. That is how fallacy invokers use it in practice, and why it is, well, bad reasoning.
>and then defined that as something that is not what the "appeal to authority fallacy" actually refers to.
Not if your own words are to be believed: you said the real "appeal to authority fallacy" was an OR of three situations, the last of which was exactly what I said it was: the notion that authorities are only probabilistic evidence. My point is that it's called a fallacy despite the authority only being used as probabilistic evidence in the first place!
>> And that you generally endorse (the genuine fallacy of) rejecting evidence simply because it doesn't guarantee a conclusion.
>No, I don't, and nothing in my post stated that, or supports your claim that I endorse that. That's just something you invented.
Yes you did: you claimed that the debates we're referring to crucially involve deductive rather than inductive logic. You claimed that the appeal to authority fallacy is relevant. But it's only relelvant to deductive claims thereon, which means that all of its invocations in this context are invalid arguments -- nobody is trying to claim that the authorities' endorsement guarantees the conclusion.
> Okay, you object to my claim that there are no contexts in which to use deductive reasoning. Point taken, I wasn't entirely clear about that. I was speaking in the context of the discussion, which was about the set of exchanges in which fallacies are brought up. This is basically the realm of policy debate and empirical claims.
First, deductive reasoning has a role there, though obviously it is combined with inductive reasoning. I've directly addressed how the two interact in my prior post, so I don't feel the need to repeat it.
Second, while there are a class of fallacies that are relevant only to deductive arguments, and certain named fallacies that have different applications in deductive contexts, many named fallacies are specific to inductive arguments, or have specific application to them. Including, as it is actually defined (versus how you have mispresented it) the fallacy of appeal to authority.
> As above, that "deductive argument" generally is not going to be a deduction.
Yes, it will.
> Your induction-based premise is only going to get you e.g. "this policy probably will save money in the long run",
The following is a valid syllogism where the major premise states a decision rule, the minor premise states a probabilistic characterization on an issue of fact of the type that would be an natural conclusion of inductive reasoning, and the conclusion follows of necessity from the premises and is not, itself, probabilistic:
P1. If more probable than not that a person has committed a tort against another, they should be pay damages
P2. It is more probable than not X commit the tort of trespass to chattels against Y,
C. Therefore, X should pay damages to Y.
Obviously, there are syllogisms where one of the premises is inductively defined where the conclusions would involve a probabilistic statement, but this is not necessary.
> To the extent that there is a pure syllogism in there ("we should do that that will probably save money; this will probably save money; therefore we should do that") the debate is rarely about its validity
When the syllogism is explicitly stated and structured as a syllogism, there is rarely a debate about its validity, because people rarely explicitly lay out invalid syllogisms. OTOH, in practice, the elements that are presented are only those of an invalid syllogism and that is challenged.
> I most certainly did warn against using "appeal to authority is a fallacy" to ignore the evidential value of exper opinions
Which, is a reference to the fallacy, not a use of the fallacy, first, and second, not something I endorsed, so the fact that you warned against that does not support your claim that I endorsed the use to the fallacy that you warned against, and, finally, the thing you described actually wasn't the fallacy by that name.
OTOH, you endorsed the use of (not reference to) what you explicitly (and inaccurately) described as the fallacy of appeal to authority to support claims.
> That is how fallacy invokers use it in practice
To the extent that thing that you mistakenly describe as the fallacy of appeal to authority is something people reference as the fallacy of appeal to authority for the purpose you suggest, it is an inaccurate and, as such, inappropriate reference to the fallacy. Its also not exclusively how it is invoked in practice, though certainly for every fallacy there is some set of the actual references to it which are incorrect in this way.
> you said the real "appeal to authority fallacy" was an OR of three situations, the last of which was exactly what I said it was: the notion that authorities are only probabilistic evidence.
Actually, no, the last was that the appeal was made in a deductive context, not "the notion that authorities are only probabilistic evidence".
> My point is that it's called a fallacy despite the authority only being used as probabilistic evidence in the first place!
And my point is that (in addition to misusing language in attempting to say this) you are fabricating things when you claim that I have endorsed this.
> Yes you did: you claimed that the debates we're referring to crucially involve deductive rather than inductive logic.
No, I didn't. I said that appeals to authority in a deductive context are fallacious. I did not make the generalization you make here about "the debates we're referring to", nor do I even have any idea what specific debates you think we are referring to.
"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Perhaps its clearer to say that pointing out a fallacy is an argument against their argument, but not an argument against their claim. When you dismantle an argument as fallacious, you're just leveling the playing field; you can't actually refute a claim that way.
Because failure to present a proof does not constitute contradiction. This is the so called fallacy fallacy, as I learned earlier today, on reddit of all places.
> The fallacy itself doesn't constitute a counter argument.
It isn't a reason to believe that the position argued for is false, but it is a reason for rejecting the offered argument as a basis for believing that the positioned argued for is true.
I've heard "counter-argument" used both to mean "argument for rejecting the offered argument" (which this satisfies) and "argument for the negation of the position the offered argument supports" (which this does not satisfy.)
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.
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.
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.
The principle of charity is important but also can be dangerous if taken too far, particularly, it can avoid productive discussion by what amounts to a version of the strawman fallacy where instead of inventing something that the other person didn't say shaped by one's own preconceptions to argue against, you are inventing something that the other person didn't say shaped by one's own preconceptions to agree with, which is clearly an impediment, rather than a boon, to the productive interchange of ideas.
Beyond deciding how to resolve obvious ambiguities where it can readily provide a best interpretation which it is most likely was actually intended by the speaker (the Caesar example in the Wikipedia article is a good one for this), the principle of charity is best applied cautiously to form a hypothesis of what the other speaker may have intended that can be verified through a clarification request.
Wow. Apart from how terrible that is, I am pretty impressed at the hypocrisy. "Stop using logic to try to shut down discussion. On an unrelated note, stop talking because misogyny/islamophobia/SJW nonsense."
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!
Furthermore, many deductive fallacies can turn into inductive, probabilistic theorems simply by moving to evidence-backed arguments instead of proof-backed arguments. (Authoritative claims can be evidence for a shift in probability, correlation is evidence of causation, absence of evidence is evidence of absence... How much that evidence is worth, of course, depends on the context.)
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Really? Because you perceive "our" culture and society to be "riddled with pervasive sexism," it follows that we all "exhibit sexist behavior at baseline?" And if the GP believes contrary to your claim, it'll "require extraordinary evidence to demonstrate?"
Ridiculous. Call yourself sexist if you'd like. And if the day comes when the Singularity puts us all closely in touch with each other's psyches, then you're free to tell us how sexist we've all been and we'll cry about it over a collective mug of chai.
Until then, perhaps you should go apologize to some women on behalf of the detriment all of us that have had on their lives today. I'll go let my girlfriend know what a pig I am (after I'm done cooking her dinner).
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.
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!"
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?
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Sorry, I don't think I'm going to be afforded the same courtesy if I start ranting about how all Valley girls are sluts because of my few experiences, for instance, even if it happens to be my genuine expression of emotion. Hoping that everyone's interpretation of certain emotions converges on something similar (and civil) is just asking for a clusterfuck.
Turns out you don't live in a vacuum ¡social context!
That said you can rest easily knowing that people would probably not attempt to convince you valley girls were not sluts by pointing out your logical fallacies.
> Turns out you don't live in a vacuum ¡social context!
Is that social context that women are considered purely emotional creatures incapable of logical thought? I ask because you seem to be suggesting that women should get a pass for emotionally-charged reasoning whereas men shouldn't.
I do hold women to high standard of discourse (GP's term) and I find that they meet it with the same frequency as men.
Am I immune to any challenge by saying my slander is an expression of emotion?
She didn't say something of the sort of "I was treated in a sexist way". She said something more like "The skeptics movement is fundamentally sceptic". That is not an expression of emotion, but slander. And even if it were, it shouldn't be allowed.
> 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.
Why not afford to the men and women who respond to her that same privilege?
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.
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.
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.
I agree that only answering "You just committed a fallacy, goodbye" would not be the right choice, but at least mentioning it and then try to explain why I think it's relevant doesn't seem so wrong.
I think the real lesson is that humans aren't always (or even often) rational. A logical argument that assumes humans are always rational is incorrect. But if you have a good model of human thought and interaction that includes all the irrational parts, using logic to analyze it can work great.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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,
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"
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.