Show Notes The Broken Window Fallacy is committed when someone tries to claim when a bad thing happens, that good things will result from it, which makes it OK. Trump We started out with this clip of Trump claiming tariffs, which raise prices for US consumers, will make the US a richer nation: We...
Show Notes The Appeal to Anonymous Authority is committed when someone cites an authority to back up a claim, but the authority is unnamed, vague or similarly uncheckable. Trump We started out by talking about this clip of Trump claiming the best analysts predicted a stock market crash if Biden was elected Then we...
Show Notes The Failing Occam's Razor Fallacy is committed when someone ignores an obvious or simple explanation for something and chooses a far-fetched hypothesis instead. Trump We started out by talking about this tweet from Trump: and then we discussed this clip where Lou Dobbs almost figured it out, but not quite: Mark's British Politics...
Show Notes The Ad Hoc Fallacy is committed when someone makes stuff up in order to avoid accepting evidence against their belief. Trump We started out with these three Tweets from Trump, which are representative of the many many lies he has told on Twitter since losing the election, almost all of which...
Show Notes The Ambiguity Fallacy is committed when someone is deliberately vague or ambiguous to make their point or avoid answering a question. Trump We started out with this clip of Trump vaguely promising that COVID will just go away at some point: Then we talked about this tweet from Don Jr which uses...
Show Notes The No True Scotsman Fallacy is committed when your existing definition of a particular group is challenged by a member who doesn't fit the criteria. Rather than adjust the definition, the offending group member is redefined as a non-member of the group. The name comes from an example given in...
Show Notes Begging the Question is one of those phrases that has come to mean something different over time. Colloquially, it is used to mean ‘raising the question’, but the original meaning is the one invoked by this fallacy, and it’s fun to point out that people are using the phrase...
Show Notes People often make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, so appealing to that emotion can be a very useful technique when you're trying to persuade someone. However, to be part of an effective logical argument emotion has to be used to back up the argument, rather than form...
Show Notes A Red Herring is a distraction, anything that sends a conversation off on a tangent and away from the original point. When someone completely avoids a question by bringing up another issue entirely, they are committing a Red Herring fallacy. We started out with this excerpt from the the 2nd...
Show Notes Kettle Logic is when multiple arguments are presented at once, often overlapping or contradicting each other, without acknowledging the contradictions. We started out with the Donald tweeting this excuse for committing tax fraud or possibly losing a billion dollars: ...