Common Fallacies
Circular reasoning: JW’s argue that blood transfusions are cannibalism because if a doctor told you that a chemical substance was harmful for you, it means it can’t be in your body in any capacity. It usually presents itself as someone making an argument which requires that their conclusion is already true. Or atheists saying “science will figure it out”, they say this because they don’t even posit the chance of the meta-physical.
Hasty generalization: sweeping statement without all the facts. Discrimination, prejudice.
Slippery slope: saying A will lead to Z, based on extreme hypotheticals.
Strawman: distorting opponents claim so its easier to refute.
Special pleading: it works for me but not for you.
Ad hominem: attack of opponent’s character or personal attributes to discredit argument. Like a mother not trusting a doctor because he’s never been a mother.
False dichotomy: argument presents 2 options that disregards other options in order to favor their conclusion.
Appeal to emotion: using emotion-based language to persuade opponent. Think of how happy/sad it would be for this to be true. Feelings (especially those of justice) aren’t relevant.
Equivocation: argument presented ambiguously and double sided to be misleading. Maybe using a word in two different ways.
Bandwagon appeal: presents thoughts of a group of people to persuade someone to think the same way.
False analogy: two unalike things being compared on trivial similarity.
Ad hoc: make something up just for the sake of the argument. It translates to “for this”
Appeal to authority: quoting an expert outside of their field.
Anecdotal: Pretty obvious
Appeal to nature: If it's natural it must be better
Argument from ignorance: Saying something is true because we cant assume its not.
False Cause: Confusing correlation with causation
Red Herring: Bringing in irrelevant issues to sidetrack and distract.
All you need for a decent argument is premises that are more likely true then false.
Common Biases
Confirmation: only focusing on and agreeing with things that support your beliefs.
Hindsight: tendency to see events as more predictable than they are. “I knew it all along”. Saying you knew the correct outcome after the outcome has occurred. In a survey, 58% of people thought Clarence Thomas would win, once he did win and they were surveyed again, 78% said they thought X would win.
Anchoring: Holding on too tightly to the first bit of information we receive about something.
Misinformation effect: Memory of something being distorted by things like being asked about the event, watching news coverage, hearing others talk about it.
Actor-observer bias: Attributing our past actions to external forces (Jet Lag, someone else’s fault) and attribute other people’s actions to internal forces (lazy, incompetent, dumb).
False Consensus effect: Thinking more people agree with you than what they do.
The Halo Effect: The tendency for initial impression to influence overall view.
The Self-serving Bias: When things go well it was because of you but when they go bad it was some other reason.
The Availability Heuristic: Estimating the probability of something happening based on how many examples readily come to mind. The news may distort your view of crime rates if all they ever show is crime.
Which causes optimism bias: Believing negative things won’t happen to us while positive things will.
Dunning-Kruger Effect: The more you know the more you realise how little you know. If you only know little about something, you have a simplistic view and may be lead you to assume it is a simple topic because your understanding is simple.
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