Topic: Be Reasonable. Please! Or About Logical Fallacies. (Read 9907 times)

And that's where the moderators come in.

Unfortunately, I don't suspect anyone would ever put their threads in a "Let's Dribble BS" board. Most people consider themselves logical, whether they are or not.

It's nice to see that there are people who value logic and reason in an 'everyday' context. I feel such values can only benefit the community (or any community for that matter).

To aid this cause, I've noticed that appreciate a certain look and feel of websites, so I submit http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

This.

This has nothing to do with a higher level of discourse. Any forum member who makes some kind of earnest claim should expect to defend that claim.

Just my preference, but I'd rather have "Let's dribble bullshit" boards, and try to keep the rest of the forum discussions.

It would be nice to have some means of keeping the logical discussions separate from the threads where people really just want to vent or ramble, though.  As in real life, not all conversations need to have some higher purpose or be intellectual - it would just be nice if those discussions where people do want a higher level of discourse didn't get derailed by people who just want to dribble bullshit.

I would hope that a formal debate board wasn't necessary to have a logical conversation with someone.

It is the only possibility known that explains all the available evidence. If you know of another possible explanation, please tell us what it is.

When you have a set of facts, one explanation that covers them perfectly, that has always been the correct explanation for that set of facts, no other explanation is known, and people who would know another explanation if there is one refuse to provide one, that is sufficient to accept the explanation.

I turn on my light switch and my light comes on. I accept the explanation that electricity from the power company made it come on. That has always been the explanation before. And that case is even weaker, because I can think of other possible explanations. Someone might have disconnected by house from the grid and powered it by generator. Of course, nobody has any reason to do that. Nobody has done that before.

This is logical reasoning and common sense. It is more than sufficient for accepting an explanation under ordinary circumstances. (Those where nobody has a vested interest in convincing others or themselves that the obviously true is not true.)

I'll try not to respond further about this in this thread, since there are already 800 threads about that and this thread is about something else.

Isn't that what the Politics forum is for?

While I don't disagree with your observations, this isn't a formal debate forum and people posting here aren't writing a thesis to be challenged or peer reviewed. I wonder whether there'd be any interest in a formal debate sub-forum.  Internet Infidels used to have one and it reduced a lot of frustration for everyone.

That's a command, not an argument. The arguments (if any) accompanying such a command are usually fallacious (but not always - there are more than a few members of this forum who enjoy hurling abuse and sound logic in equal measure, which is always entertaining to watch).

Burden of proof on Pirate I agree with. (Side note: I hadn't heard of the "celestial teapot", thanks, that's quite intriguing!)

Mostly, I strongly object to the term "common sense" as I have yet to see it used in any way not effectively synonymous to "This is obvious, and if you don't see it, you're {wrong,stupid}". Serious subjective bias creeping in on my part, probably, but regardless, I don't think the term "common sense" can really be used objectively.


Fair enough, the whole Pirate controversy is quite the poster child for everything you mentioned, that I cannot debate. I probably responded more spitefully than necessary. I'm just tired of all the Pirate threads, regardless of what side they're arguing for.

"losing".

what category the "go .... yourself" argument belongs to?

@BinaryMage: all good points.



I understand it was mostly use of Occam's razor and "celectial teapot" argument that effectively shifted burden of proof to pirate et al. Until such proof is provided it seems to be reasonable to treat the scheme as a poinzi.


This obviously spices up the thread and takes away some purity. On the other hand, simply quoting usual examples, would make my post a trivial restatement of usual sources. The post itself was based on argument posted elsewhere about the pirate affair, and we can squarely blame my laziness and corners cutting for not coming up with pure and abstract post.

Although your post is unnecessarily biased and focused on one particular incident (some of the examples are in and of themselves borderline straw man fallacies or anecdotal evidence), the points are mostly reasonable and at least intelligently stated, so I thank you.
Hopefully this can motivate everyone, regardless of their views on any one particular subject, to reason more logically.

However, I have a few gripes.


Please explain to me how this statement is remotely objective in any sense whatsoever. "reasonably"? "common sense"?

In general, I fail to understand how using specific examples, most of which are (albeit in my opinion) extreme cases, from one particular incident lends credibility to your points; I would postulate that it does the opposite through alienating those pro-Pirate and causing those anti-Pirate to be motivated to agree with you for reasons related to the political leaning of your post rather than the legitimacy of logical fallacies presented therein. What is the goal here: more objective debates, or another pro/anti Pirate battleground thread?


Anecdotal evidence is a highly subjective term, and not clearly or uniformly defined. The point relating to "Meet A Pirate" could perhaps be more accurately argued to be a case of subjective validation. In either case, categorizing this as anecdotal or subjective validation without further explanation or proof of such is meaningless.

All in all, please do not forget to remember that all generalizations are false.

I agree that many of the points made by Pirate supporters are logical fallacies. The same can be said about points made by Pirate opponents. The same can be said about half the posts in this forum. The fact that some proponents of a certain viewpoint utilize logically flawed methodologies of debate does not in any way whatsoever invalidate that viewpoint.

It would be great if someone posted a Top 10 users to ignore list, stochastic. Just sayin'.

I have ignored most of the idiots and trolls on the forum.  It is a great place now.

To bring up a very small point in Vladimir's otherwise very handy post, I think there is very little actual abuse of logical fallacies. Most people using logically fallacious arguments are unaware that they are doing so, and I think this is the root cause of most fallacious arguments on this forum.

Some people may be using logical fallacies on purpose to further an agenda - for example in religious arguments or when a large amount of pirated money is at stake. However, most of the time I think most people involved in presenting illogical arguments here are unaware that they are not arguing logically (or rationally). Hence the importance of Vlad's summary of logical fallacies. This should be a sticky in several boards I can think of. As well as some politeness rules.

I'd just like to point out that a personal attack is only argumentum ad hominem when it is used as the premise of an argument. e.g. "You are an idiot, therefore you are wrong" is an ad hominem argument, but "You are wrong, therefore you are an idiot" is not an ad hominem argument (though it is still abusive). This is one of those things that just irritates me when people get it wrong.

I agree on all other points though.