How do I learn to detect logical fallacies in a conversation?

It is difficult for me to ascertain when the person I am communicating is using a logical fallacy to trick me into believing him or doubting my judgement, even when I realise it hours after the argument.

I have seen countless arguments in Reddit threads and I couldn’t figure out who was in the right or wrong unless I looked at the upvote counts. Even if the person is uttering a blatant lie, they somehow make it sound in a way that is completely believable to me. If it weren’t for those people that could exactly point out the irrationality behind these arguments, my mind would have been lobotomised long ago.

I do want to learn these critical thinking skills but I don’t know where to begin from. I could have all these tips and strategies memorised in theory, but they would be essentially useless if I am not able to think properly or remember them at the heat of the moment.

There could be many situations I could be unprepared for, like when the other person brings up a fact or statistic to support their claim and I have no way to verify it at the moment, or when someone I know personally to be wise or well-informed bring up about such fallacies, perhaps about a topic they are not well-versed with or misinformed of by some other unreliable source, and I don’t know whether to believe them or myself.

Could someone help me in this? I find this skill of distinguishing fallacies from facts to be an extremely important thing to have in this age of misinformation and would really wish to learn it well if possible. Maybe I could take inspiration from how you came about learning these critical thinking skills by your own.

Edit: I do not blindly trust the upvote count in a comment thread to determine who is right or wrong. It just helps me inform that the original opinion is not inherently acceptable by everyone. It is up to me decide who is actually correct or not, which I can do at my leisure unlike in a live conversation with someone where I don’t get the time to think rationally about what the other person is saying.

anotherlemmyuser,

I’m genuinely curious here, why is learning to identify logical fallacy at the point of conversation that important to you? Just research yourself afterwards, otherwise how would you know what is wrong unless you have already decided or learnt it is wrong to begin with. In my opinion, it is not that important unless you are engaged in professional persuasion or your opinion at the very moment holds a lot of weight. You could maybe identify inconsistency or twist their words until they contradict themselves? Otherwise, the best approach if you are not sure is to find out later. At the end of the day what matters to me most is my opinion, I do not care if I disagree with the person I am interacting with, or if the person disagrees with me. Maybe cause I’m not a politician. ;-)

HelixDab,

That seems like a dangerous approach to not care if you disagree with people. Shouldn't you know if your disagreement with them is based on sound reasoning?

anotherlemmyuser,

Oh, what I meant is that I wouldn’t care to argue for long if I disagree with the person I am interacting with. I did not mean being stubborn and sticking with the same opinion. I just take into consideration what the person has said, and think or research about it afterwards. Apologies for my unnatural English.

anotherlemmyuser,

Oops, I have no idea why the comment is reposted many times. I shall try to delete.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Note that a fallacy is a reasoning flaw; sometimes the goal might be to trick you, indeed. But sometimes it’s just a brainfart… or you might be dealing with something worse, like sheer irrationality. That said:

  • look for the conclusion. What is the point that the writer is delivering? (Note: you might find multiple conclusions. That’s OK.)
  • look at what’s being used to support that conclusion. What is the core argument?
  • look for the arguments used to feed premises into the core argument. Which are they?

Then try to formalise the arguments that you found into “premise 1, premise 2, conclusion” in your head or in a text editor. Are the premises solid? Do you actually agree with them? And do they actually lead into the conclusion? If something smells fishy, you probably got a fallacy.

Get used to at least a few “big” types of fallacies. There are lists across the internet, do read a few of them; you don’t need to memorise names, just to understand what is wrong with that fallacious reasoning. This pic has a few of them, I think that it’s good reference material, specially at the start:

https://www.pesec.no/content/images/size/w1460/2020/03/School-Of-Thought---Fallacies-Poster.png

In special I’ve noticed that a few types of fallacy are really common on the internet:

  • genetic fallacy - claiming that an argument is true or false because of its origin. Includes ad hominem, appeal to nature, appeal to authority, ad populum, etc.
  • red herring - bringing irrelevant shit up as if it supported the conclusion, when it doesn’t matter. In special, I see appeal to emotion (claiming that something is false/true because it makes you feel really bad/good) all the time.
  • oversimplification - disregarding key details that either stain the premises or show that they don’t necessarily lead to conclusion. False dichotomy (“if X is true, Y is false” in situations where both can be true or false) is a specially common type of oversimplification.
  • strawman - distortion of an opposing argument into a way that is easier to beat. Again, notice that “intention” doesn’t matter; only that the opposing argument isn’t being addressed.
  • moving goalposts - when you counter an argument, the person plops another in its place, without acknowledging that it’s a new argument. Often relies heavily on ad hoc (making stuff up on the spot to shield an argument)
  • four terms - exploiting multiple meanings associated with the same word to create an argument like “A is B¹, B² is C, thus A is C”.

There are also some “markers” that smell fallacy for me from a distance. You should not trust them (as they might be present where there’s no fallacy, or they might be absent even when the associated fallacy pops up); however, if you find those you should look for the associated fallacy:

  • “As a” at the start of a text - genetic fallacy, specially appeal to authority
  • "Trust me" - red herring, specially appeal to emotion (once you contradict the argument there’s a good chance that the other will create drama because you didn’t blindly trust them, so the whole thing boils down to “accept this as true otherwise you’ll hear my meltdown”).
  • “I don’t understand” followed by a counter-argument - strawman. Specially common in Reddit.
  • “Actually” - red herring through trivia that is completely irrelevant in the context.
bouh,

The very first step is to know the fallacies. Find a list.

The second step is to familiarise yourself with them. Learn the fallacies. It can also be called sophism in some languages. Familiarising yourself with them will allow you to recognise them.

Third is to be vigilant during a conversation to detect them. Sometimes you will be the one to use them.

The easiest, and amont the most common, are fallacies tied to reputation: when you consider something right or wrong because of who made the statement. It’s sketchy because it can be used as a shortcut in conversation, but by itself the truth or wrongness of the argument doesn’t depend on who said it, never. But some people have demonstrated expertise or they habit of lying or manipulating. Other fallacies usually involve the language or the logic, so it’s harder to detect, but it’s a great mental exercise.

bionicjoey, (edited )

Generally a good approach is to try learning the rules of logic. Logic is all about proving things to be true using only facts. It can also be helpful to try some logic puzzles or riddles which can only be solved using hard logic. Note that this won’t automatically make you a better critical thinker, but it will help you exercise that muscle.

Also, it’s helpful to play devil’s advocate. If you hear someone making an argument, try to imagine how you would dispute that argument if you disagreed with it. It doesn’t matter if you actually agree or not, just imagine you did and think about what your counter argument would be. This is what high school debate teams have to do; they are given a topic and a position and have to defend their position.

It always helps to be aware of the facts, or at least of how to find facts. If you see a debate happening where you can’t tell who is right, do your own research on a site like Wikipedia and try to see what the truth is for yourself. Not every argument has a correct answer, but you will at least be able to see where each side is coming from.

NewNewAccount, (edited )

Logic is all about pricing things to be true using only facts.

I know it’s nit-picky but logic can be (and often is) decoupled from facts and truth. An argument can be logically valid and still untrue. For example:

  • all dogs are cats
  • this animal is a dog
  • therefore, this animal is a cat

An argument can be said to be sound when truth is factored in. Only both a valid and true argument is considered to be sound.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

An argument can be logically valid and still untrue.

Only if at least one premise is untrue. If however the premises are true and the argument is logically valid, the conclusion is also true.

Interesting to note that the opposite is not necessarily true - flawed premises and/or a flawed argument do not imply an untrue conclusion. Easy to show with an example:

  • P1 - whales are fish (wrong - they’re mammals)
  • P2 - fish live only in the sea (wrong - freshwater fish exist)
  • C - whales live only in the sea (true conclusion from bullshit premises)

…which leads to the “fallacy of fallacy” - "the proposition is backed up by a fallacious argument, thus it is false is on itself fallacious.

thanevim,

Posts like this have me longing for a Save feature...

Steve,

There is a save feature.

subignition,
@subignition@kbin.social avatar

Not yet on kbin.social which is where that user is participating from.

Though there's always the good old bookmark.

Duamerthrax,

Just bookmark in your browser.

Freeman, (edited )

What helped me: “Rationality Rules” on youtube had a video series (and even a tabletop game) about types of logical fallacies with the focus on religious apologetics.

And as you said: Upvotecount show whose opinion/argument is popular with the viewership. There can be a correlation with how sound the argument is logically.

prole,

I know it sounds dismissive, but I would get an Introduction to Logic and Reasoning textbook, and read it and attempt the problems. The internet is great, and you can get a lot from wikis, but you’re not going to beat the amount of useful info condensed into a book like that. The problems will also help you apply the knowledge. Also, since logic doesn’t generally change much over time, you don’t need to worry about getting the most up to date edition.

The only way to really get good at detecting fallacious arguments is practice.

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

In my sophomore year at college I needed to add a “filler” class to have something to do in campus between my two “real” classes. I chose to take Logic and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Not only was it interesting, it helped me think and analyze arguments. I am pretty sure there are universities that give you free access to the course but it wouldn’t surprise me if you can find logic courses for free on YouTube as well.

Wojwo,

Same here. I write software for a living, but my philosophy logic course was gave me a huge lead as the ability to deconstructe what people say into logic blocks is the first step of writing code.

GONADS125,

My recommendation is to take a Critical Thinking and/or other philosophy classes at your local community college (granted one exists near you).

Azzu,

lesswrong.com/rationality is good to help you to think more rationally

Duamerthrax,

The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Any other advice I might have given has already been said. There’s also the audio book version read by Sagan.

nave,
@nave@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

This is a great (free) illustrated book about logical fallacies:

https://bookofbadarguments.com/

Xylight,
@Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev avatar

This was a great read. Thanks!

hoodlem,

Taking a logic course at a university would help.

teawrecks,

Probably learn first order logic (aka boolean algebra). But something important to keep in mind is: just because an argument contains a fallacy doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong. There might be another logical argument that proves the same conclusion without using a fallacy. So it’s actually a fallacy to assume Fallacy -> Falsehood.

JoeClu,
@JoeClu@lemmy.world avatar

We learned to recognize a lot of them in college Philosophy 101.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •