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.

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.

foosel,
@foosel@feddit.de avatar

Maybe this helps, it has some good examples on what the various fallacies look like, and combining that knowledge with a hunch of “something here sounds fishy” is basically what I do I think.

youtu.be/Qf03U04rqGQ

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.

cinaed666,
@cinaed666@kbin.social avatar

It doesn't look like it has been mentioned here yet: https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533
This book goes really deep into every different kind of logical fallacy.

XiELEd,

Mostly Informal fallacies, but I liked that book too!

XiELEd,

I’m a bit new to self-studying logic (and rhetoric) but I think you should learn about “Formal fallacies” and “Informal fallacies”. Formal fallacies are those that arguments that are systematically false, like all A is B, some C is A, some C is not B, therefore all C is A. But in real arguments you have to convert those organic arguments into these terms (which could be the hardest part), and then you find out if it is a fallacy… I remember there was a way to find out if arguments are valid based on adding stars, I’ll probably send it later… But be warned, an argument can be “valid”, but still have the wrong premises! You can say, All cats are on fire, therefore some things on fire are cats… and the argument would still be valid, but rest on false premises… Informal fallacies, I think, are somewhat out of the scope of formal logic, but they are still considered faulty arguments, like Strawman…

Viking_Hippie,

I recommend using your fallacy is as both a handy reference and a shortcut for explaining it to the person committing one of the most common fallacies as well as anyone else reading.

By using that, you’ll be able to spot a lot of bullshit you might otherwise miss and eventually get to the point where you’re able to spot the ones you come across most often without looking it up 🙂

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.

Breno,
@Breno@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

Probably not entirely related but I like Judge Judy’s comment: If something doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t true.

001100010010,
@001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Well, Time Dilation doesn’t fucking make sense to me. How can time be different based on velocity and gravity? Einstein must be a liar.

/s

Breno,
@Breno@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

Lol I get your point. Again, the context of the quote probably isn’t relevant but it was the first thing I thought of. Time dilation makes sense to me after much research. There was certainly an aha! moment with that one.

C4d,

Ditto magnets. How do they work?

AnalogyAddict,

Human behavior isn’t nearly as complicated as time dilation. And not making sense TO YOU doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense to someone with over 30 years in the relevant field.

masterspace,

Human behavior isn’t nearly as complicated as time dilation

Human behaviour is far more complicated than time dilation. Time dilation is one weird phenomena that can be described and predicted with a handful of equations, human behaviour is inherently complex to the point of being chaotically unpredictable

AnalogyAddict,

I used to think human behavior was complex, too, but it’s really not. Definitely not in the sense of small claims court.

masterspace,

The problem with Judge Judy’s quote though is that time dilation doesn’t make sense to most people, that doesn’t mean most people should live lives assuming it’s not true. Conversely if it just means that it has to make sense to someone but not you then it’s meaningless because there’s someone crazy enough to believe everything.

bionicjoey,

Science is a liar sometimes

JoeClu,
@JoeClu@lemmy.world avatar

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

hoodlem,

Taking a logic course at a university would help.

Azzu,

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

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.

C4d,

There used to be poster you could buy / wallpaper you could download that essentially summarised this Wikipedia page:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Otherwise it’s practice (eg critical appraisal training).

NeoLikesLemmy,

Read some of the old “Miss Marple” Stories, then some “Hercule Poirot” Stories.

C4d,

Ah yes. The little grey cells.

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.

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