Show Notes This is more accurately called the Argument from Improper or False Authority. After all, it’s entirely valid to support your argument by invoking a relevant authority like, say, climate scientists' opinions on climate change. However, when the authority you invoke is not an authority on the subject at hand, or...
Show Notes Latin for ‘after this, therefore because of this’, this fallacy is committed when people confuse correlation for causation and assume that because one event followed another, the former was caused by the latter. Of course, while this may be the case, it is by no means certain. The two...
Show Notes Conspiracy theorists often create unfalsifiable arguments, using a combination of goalpost moving, arguments from ignorance and circular logic. Trump We started out with Trump talking about the rigged election: We followed that with this Trump tweet: How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash...
Show Notes The Slippery Slope fallacy is committed when a person assumes if one bad thing happens, then more, and often worse, bad things will inevitably follow. It is often applied to changes in the law that some groups are campaigning for, and others find distasteful. It is fallacious because to accept...
Show Notes Moving the Goalposts is such a common tactic that I’m sure everyone has come across it at some point. When someone makes an argument; you refute that argument with valid logic; and then they move on to a different argument without acknowledging that their first one failed, they’ve just moved...
Show Notes When supporting your claims by comparing two things, it's important to be consistent in terms of what you're actually comparing. By doing so you can ensure it is a fair comparison and your point can be supported. If you are not fair when setting up the parameters, and you...
Show Notes Non Sequitur is Latin for ‘does not follow’. Colloquially, non-sequitur tends to be used to mean a sentence which has no relation to the previous one, but in logical fallacy terms, that would more likely be a Red Herring fallacy. For our purposes, Non-Sequitur describes a situation where the conclusion...
Show Notes The fallacy of Moral Equivalence is committed when someone argues that because the actions of two people or groups are morally equivalent (whether they are or not), those people or groups are just as bad as each other. Trump We started out with these three clips of Trump talking about the...
Show Notes When someone makes a strong argument that’s hard to refute, don’t despair. Simply pretend they made a different argument, that’s easier to knock down - you could massively oversimplify what they said, misrepresent the point of their argument, or just put words in their mouth. Congratulations! You’ve just constructed...