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[Africa]

Preface to this thread: I'm kind of stoned on anti-sinus-infection meds and find everything pretty hilarious. Including the word hilarious. Anyway, I wanted to share my favorite logical fallacy, which is "No True Scotsman," mainly because of the hilarious story where it gets its name.

The story goes that this grizzled old Scotsman is sitting at the kitchen table and his wizened old wife, whose voice sounds like a Monty Python grandma impression, is reading the paper.

She pipes up: "Oh, George! This is awful. A man in Manchester (that's in England if you're clueless) was found guilty of [insert atrocity here. I'm gonna go with, "snorting babies"]! How dreadful!"

George McScotsman says in his gruff but ultimately revealing of a soft heart voice, "Hmph! No Scotsman would do such a thing!"

Georgina McScotslass goes on: "But George, it says here the man's from here in Edinburgh!"

Without missing a beat, George says: "Hmph! No true Scotsman would do such a thing!"

(I wanted to do ridiculously overblown stereotypical Scottish accents, but damn if I can remember how one sounds, much less type a funny version if it)

Anyway, the fallacy is the one our loveable protagonist is committing, which is trying to patch up an already ridiculous (or at least wrong) blanket assertion with arbitrary modifications that ring hollow and show signs of having been pulled out your butt.

Anyone else have a favorite fallacy? Tell a funny story with it to entertain the sick and bored.

[Bauglir]

Myself, I'm a fan of whatever that one is where people assume the presence (or apparent presence) of a fallacy necessitates that the conclusion be false. Like whenever someone counters an argument that includes, in any capacity, a mention of correlation with "Correlation does not equal causation, therefore you're wrong." I think at least part of it is a false dichotomy ("either you're right or I am"), but there's also a failure to recognize the distinction between validity and truth.

I'm just a huge meta fan.

[Darvi]

The "true Scotsman" fallacy :V Heh. Was gonna post that, because, well...

[Cthulhu]

Not necessarily my favorite, but I butt heads with conspiracy theorists a lot and I get two common fallacies.  I only know the name of one, not sure if the second would even count as a fallacy, or something else.

One is moving the goalposts.  Conspiracy theorists are really bad about this.  Most arguments with one go back and forth:  They present an assertion, you shoot it down, they ignore your rebuttal and make another assertion, you rebutt, rinse and repeat.  They spend the whole fight backpedaling.  If you don't realize what they're doing you'll just go in circles all day.  If you know what you're doing you can ask them why they won't prove any of your arguments wrong, and ask how many arguments you have to disprove before their theory is no longer viable.  That's when they pull out the tried and true "Why do you take what the government says at face value?" fallback.  Once they trot that one out you know the arguments pretty much over.

The other one, and I'm not sure if it's a logical fallacy or just an failure to understand the word "evidence."  This thing: "I'm just saying, Bush had everything to gain by staging 9/11"  I suppose if being widely called the worst President ever and starting two unwinnable wars is desirable, sure.  Then again, I had everything to gain and nothing to lose from Osama Bin Laden's death.  That doesn't mean I killed him. Conspiracy theorists like to pretend that a motive is more than weak circumstantial evidence.

Also, I'm pretty sure "Why do you take what hte government says at face value" is a logical fallacy too.

[Leafsnail]

Also, I'm pretty sure "Why do you take what hte government says at face value" is a logical fallacy too.

Some kind of Appeal to Emotion?  "Damnit you're just another part of the SHEEPLE if you take what the government says at face value".  Or a reverse appeal to authority maybe.

[Darvi]

Appeal to Emotion?

Ayup.

Oooh, and also those. Hate them.

[Lord Shonus]

I've always found Appeal to Moderation amusing.

[Africa]

Myself, I'm a fan of whatever that one is where people assume the presence (or apparent presence) of a fallacy necessitates that the conclusion be false. Like whenever someone counters an argument that includes, in any capacity, a mention of correlation with "Correlation does not equal causation, therefore you're wrong." I think at least part of it is a false dichotomy ("either you're right or I am"), but there's also a failure to recognize the distinction between validity and truth.

I'm just a huge meta fan.

yeah, those are good. Which reminds me of the Encyclopedia Brown stories where he went around like a little arrogant fuck "solving mysteries", which he did by finding one tiny inconsistent detail in somebody's stories, from which he concluded their entire story was false, and from that he concluded that they were the one that did the bad thing. What the hell was that teaching kids?

That in turn reminds me of the Great Brain stories which were similar, only set in the Utah frontier and the kid genius spent half the stories solving real problems and the other half being a REAL little shit and figuring out genius ways to cheat the other kids out of valuables like air rifles, pocket knives, and nickels. It was usually by setting up bets they couldn't win, if I remember from 15 years ago or whatever. Or blackmail. Like, his parents sent him off to a Jesuit school to cure him of being such an insufferable sociopath, and he came back and instantly reverted to his old ways, and his little brother (the narrator) made some remark about "not even the Jesuits could make a Christian out of you" whereupon he was like "give me your [insert prized kid possession here] or I'm telling mom and dad you said that" which would mean an ass-whooping was in play. Awesome. This is like a 10 year old kid.

[Strife26]

http://skippyslist.com/list/ Is a fun list of things that a certain guy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army.

I've been slowly accumulating a list of my own, got a few new ones today for it.


No building a personal fort out of anything explosive or radioactive
For the intents of this list, an igloo is considered a type of fort

May not move a dumpster at high speeds, then jump in.
May not get out of helping move a dumpster by volunteering to ground guide it.
May not push the dumpster into the mechanic's bay for QAQC's and PMCS (various maintence things to be done on vehicles)

May not attempt to steal a wrecker.
Fellow privates who are regular weight lifters do *not* require a ground guide for being "over 2.5 tons"

Not allowed to play with two wheeled carts unless I'm currently being recorded
I am not allowed to urgently call out for a medic, just because I need someone to go to the PX with
Not allowed to go shopping without a responsible chaperon and specific list of items to buy (this one isn't actually new, but it got reaffirmed today)
Cases of Mtn Dew for cheap are all fine and good, buying more than I can carry isn't.

[Vector]

-snip-

My god, that's my entire childhood right there.

Plus the "Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club" series.

[Africa]

I read a bunch of Bruce Coville as a kid, which for like 4 years I've been saying I'm going to go back to the library to have a nostalgia kick on, but never gotten around to it.

[Vattic]

I have also found myself arguing with conspiracy theorists a lot. It happened frequently because I was regularly seeing family who both held and preached to me about these beliefs. These days I just avoid the argument entirely but recently fell into the old trap. When I was much younger I watched a documentary with an adult family member and it had a huge impact on the both of us. It claimed the moon landings were a hoax. Since then I've looked into it found all the claims to be rubbish. Last weekend I got into an argument over the documentary with the person I watched it with, he still believes in it. He seemed genuinely interested and repeated much of the documentary's claims and so I provided the answers to his questions. By the end he said it was just a gut feeling that made him disbelieve the official story. It's kind of worrying that even after the cause of the doubt has been removed the doubt still remains.

[Africa]

I think This American Life did some interesting episode on conspiracy theorists.

I think the sentence above can be true with almost anything in place of "conspiracy theorists."

[Lord Shonus]

Myself, I'm a fan of whatever that one is where people assume the presence (or apparent presence) of a fallacy necessitates that the conclusion be false. Like whenever someone counters an argument that includes, in any capacity, a mention of correlation with "Correlation does not equal causation, therefore you're wrong." I think at least part of it is a false dichotomy ("either you're right or I am"), but there's also a failure to recognize the distinction between validity and truth.

I'm just a huge meta fan.

yeah, those are good. Which reminds me of the Encyclopedia Brown stories where he went around like a little arrogant fuck "solving mysteries", which he did by finding one tiny inconsistent detail in somebody's stories, from which he concluded their entire story was false, and from that he concluded that they were the one that did the bad thing. What the hell was that teaching kids?

That in turn reminds me of the Great Brain stories which were similar, only set in the Utah frontier and the kid genius spent half the stories solving real problems and the other half being a REAL little shit and figuring out genius ways to cheat the other kids out of valuables like air rifles, pocket knives, and nickels. It was usually by setting up bets they couldn't win, if I remember from 15 years ago or whatever. Or blackmail. Like, his parents sent him off to a Jesuit school to cure him of being such an insufferable sociopath, and he came back and instantly reverted to his old ways, and his little brother (the narrator) made some remark about "not even the Jesuits could make a Christian out of you" whereupon he was like "give me your [insert prized kid possession here] or I'm telling mom and dad you said that" which would mean an ass-whooping was in play. Awesome. This is like a 10 year old kid.

I don't remember anything that overtly threatening from the Great Brain books. What I remember most is that the guy was extremely rich and a local hero by the second or third book, but kept up the con games out of boredom.

[ToonyMan]

Also, I'm pretty sure "Why do you take what hte government says at face value" is a logical fallacy too.

Some kind of Appeal to Emotion?  "Damnit you're just another part of the SHEEPLE if you take what the government says at face value".  Or a reverse appeal to authority maybe.

Removing the H and P gives you SEELE for the acronym which means Hewlett-Packard caused the end of the world.