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Carrion Luggage #1088392 added April 30, 2025 at 10:09am
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Fallacy Falls
I suppose this article from Mental Floss could be described as calling out the fallacy of fallacy. Meta-fallacy, as it were.
In simple terms, a logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning that weakens your argument; you’ve drawn a conclusion based on illogical, irrelevant, deceptive, or otherwise faulty evidence.
There's a link to a page with several examples of common logical fallacies. I'll reproduce it here. 
But the article is more specific, focusing on terms that mean something different in ordinary discussion than they do in formal settings. This is, I think, akin to how the ordinary definition of "theory" is very different from the scientific definition, which leads to quite a bit of confusion sometimes.
There's only five examples. I feel like there could probably be more, but I'm no expert. Here's a couple of highlights:
Begging the question
Begging the question is a fallacy whose premise assumes the conclusion is true without actually proving it.
This is one I see a lot. People use "beg the question" when what they really mean is "There's another obvious question to ask now."
Thing is, it's not wrong. The meaning should be able to be deduced from context. But I think it helps to know that there are at least two meanings, as with "theory," to help avoid confusion.
This second sense is so at odds with its Aristotelian source material that some people think it’s just plain wrong—but it’s by far the most common way we use the phrase today.
On the other talon, the article just pointed out the bandwagon fallacy, which is that if enough people think something, then it must be right. I think this is an example of irony; that's still a little fuzzy to me.
But here's the one that gets misused a lot, in my view:
Slippery slope
A slippery slope fallacy involves arguing against an initial action on the basis that it will lead to a succession of undesirable consequences—but without any significant evidence to support that the series of events will actually occur...
If you describe something as a slippery slope in any casual context, though, you probably aren’t implying that it’s a fallacious argument. More likely, you mean an action truly will lead you down a bad road.
I'm not sure these are incompatible definitions. I am pretty sure that people who like to invoke the "slippery slope" metaphor in politics are doing it to avoid compromise.
Wishful thinking
As a logical fallacy, wishful thinking doesn’t necessarily involve the future, either. In fact, it frequently involves the present: Instead of “I want it to come true, so it will come true,” it’s often a case of “It ought to be true, so it is true.” It’s even sometimes called the “ought-is fallacy” (not to be confused with the is-ought fallacy, wherein you argue that something ought to keep being a certain way because it already is that way).
Yeah, well, I want to understand this stuff better, so I will understand this stuff better. |
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