Show Notes The Ad Hominem Circumstantial Fallacy is committed when, instead of addressing someone's argument, you question the reason that they are making the argument, often suggesting that their circumstances mean that they benefit in some way from such an argument. Trump We started out with this tweet from Donald dismissing John Bolton's...
Show Notes This is a special episode inspired by a Twitter conversation. It's only 20 minutes and has none of the usual sections, so the notes below are simply links to things I talked about in the episode. The twitter conversation that inspire this bonus episode. Trump's tweet about executing babies: Senate Democrats just...
Show Notes Cherry Picking is a logical fallacy in which the arguer ignores a large amount of evidence which casts doubt on their claim, carefully selecting only the parts which make their claim sound plausible. Where there is controversy on an issue, data to support both sides, or ambiguous reports which...
Show Notes The Argument from Ignorance fallacy describes a situation where someone claims a proposition to be true simply because it has not yet been proven to be false. Obviously if an outlandish claim is made and it cannot immediately be proven to be false that does not mean it should...
Show Notes The Association Fallacy occurs when a person or information source is dismissed because of their connection to, or their similarity to another person or source which is already viewed negatively for some established reason. Trump We started out with Trump talking about NAFTA: We followed that with this tweet from Don Jr: Mark's...
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 The Ad Nauseam logical fallacy refers to a situation where someone asserts a claim repeatedly, often even after the claim has been debunked, in the hope that people will start to believe it through sheer repetition and that people will get sick of trying to refute it so they...
Show Notes The fallacy of Hasty Generalization is committed when an assumption is made based on too little information. It may, for example, be that a small sample of a large group has been observed, and the properties of this sample are assumed to be present in the larger group. This is...
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 Tu Quoque is another Latin one - it literally means “You too.” It’s a particular type of Red Herring fallacy where the speaker avoids responding to a criticism by distracting the listener with claims that other people (ideally the one doing the criticizing) have also done similar bad things. It...