Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly • Hacker News Board

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#101

Post by hacker789 » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:10 PM UTC

EthanHeilman wrote: post #96

hacker789 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

hacker789 previous comments have an anti-feminist bent (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5573103 ) so I would suggest that it is coloring hacker789's judgement of this piece. This is probably why hacker789 talks about the authors motivations or secret intentions (similar to what I am doing to hacker789 now).

"Feminist" is such a broad brush that labeling something "anti-feminist" isn't very useful.

But you're still right—like anyone, my biases can color my judgement of things, often causing me to prejudge a written piece based on its author. This time, I was right; often, I am not.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#102

Post by kmm » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:19 PM UTC

MDCore wrote: post #34

khyryk wrote: post #25

> And then suppose you encounter a woman who tells you that because of the insults she has received from guys in the skeptic community, she has decided that the skeptic movement is fundamentally sexist . (Emphasis mine.) And later: > This woman has confided her experiences and concerns; in these responses, you are insultingly and condescendingly attempting to diminish them, by portraying her experiences as irrelevant…

You've fallen into the trap the article talks about, in expecting the woman in the story to be talking logically and therefore held to a high standard of discourse. People say over-the-top, outrageous things out of emotionality, when they may mean something far less or completely different. Instead of seeing the woman's statements as a logical argument, one should see them as the expressions of emotion that they are,…

Am I immune to any challenge by saying my slander is an expression of emotion?

She didn't say something of the sort of "I was treated in a sexist way". She said something more like "The skeptics movement is fundamentally sceptic". That is not an expression of emotion, but slander. And even if it were, it shouldn't be allowed.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#103

Post by icambron » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

obviouslygreen wrote: post #63

mindcrime wrote: post #11

Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis. In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history, their shared knowledge and confidences, the fee…

Sometimes opinions are just opinions, sometimes anecdotes are enlightening, and sometimes generalizations, metaphors, analogies and other abstractions come into play. Opinions are opinions. They should be stated and treated as such. If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate. Sure, it's just an opinion; that's fine. Just don'…

> If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate.

I don't think that's true. Some examples:

"That place smells bad."

"Red is too bright a color for a car."

"Lost is a terrible TV show."

Those are all opinions and it's obvious that they're opinions. You could prepend "In my opinion" to each one and no one would complain, but it's unnecessary, and people say stuff like this all the time with full knowledge that they're opinions. Their status as opinions isn't contingent on anyone stating that they are; they're just opinions because they're value judgements or statements of preference.

I've found that it's generally easy to separate opinions from statements of fact, and so it's not required that anyone be the "that's just your opinion!" police. Of course it's their opinion; that's why they said it. The weird thing about complaining that opinions should be explicitly demarcated is that is suggests that either a) you have trouble telling the difference between fact and opinion or b) you assume the person saying them doesn't know the difference. Both of those are bad.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#104

Post by lucisferre » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:37 PM UTC

EthanHeilman wrote: post #96

hacker789 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

hacker789 previous comments have an anti-feminist bent (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5573103 ) so I would suggest that it is coloring hacker789's judgement of this piece. This is probably why hacker789 talks about the authors motivations or secret intentions (similar to what I am doing to hacker789 now).

Using ad hominem against the ad hominem of a response to a piece about the use of logical fallacies. This. Is. So. Meta.

Love it.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#105

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #84

mindcrime wrote: post #11

Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis. In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history, their shared knowledge and confidences, the fee…

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

This comment is a joke, right? You're trying to provide an example of what an irrelevant invocation of "ad hominem" actually looks like, right?

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#106

Post by EvanKelly » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 11:14 PM UTC

ProblemFactory wrote: post #87

rwj wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logical fallacies can be misused. They can be applied incorrectly, or used to shut down discussion. I therefore sympathise with the point that the OP is trying to make. However, does it then follow that logical errors should be given a pass? Does this somehow make muddled thinking valid or persuasive? The correct course of action is to raise standards on all sides. If a logical fallacy is incorrectly used, then the c…

One of the core points of the article and the parent comment is that many instances of "muddled thinking" are actually mis-communication due to the nuances of real human language, or interpreting sentences too literally. A sentence "all skeptics are assholes" does not mean that the speaker literally asserts that the conditional statement "you are a skeptic → you are an asshole" is true. Someone saying "you are an idi…

I agree with your points, but since this discussion has tended towards behavior on internet forums (like HN) the difference between spoken conversation and published written word come into play.

I'm guilty of not thinking before I speak most of the time, but when I post on HN or Reddit, or even Facebook, I take care to say what I mean. On the otherhand, interpretation of intent and meaning can be much more difficult from written word, especially when you don't have a prior relationship with your conversation partner.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#107

Post by Nursie » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

abraininavat wrote: post #40

Nursie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with his assessment of the misuse of the term ad-hominem too. An ad-hom fallacy is "your argument is wrong because you're an immoral moron", not "your argument is wrong for these reasons, you immoral moron". The latter is not very nice and probably shouldn't be encouraged, but it's not an ad-hominem because the insult is not part of the argument, just an unpleasant aside.

While I agree with you for the most part, the context and nature of the debate is important. In a casual conversation that happens to be an argument, there's (usually) some semblance of a logical argument that can be teased out from a large amount of non-logical communication. In that context, picking on any of that non-logical communication and calling it a fallacy is silly. In the context of a real debate, however,…

It can be taken as a sign of weakness of argument, of bad technique and of uncivility, certainly. Even grounds for disqualification from a formal debate.

It's not an ad-hominem fallacy though.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#108

Post by 6d0debc071 » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 11:16 PM UTC

It seems to me that the logical fallacies aren't really at fault here. If you're the one who wants to change someone's mind, then you're the one who has to engage on grounds they're going to find persuasive. The buyer; the person who wants something; pays - in discussion as much as in any other area of life. What are you shared objectives? What do you stand to lose if you don't change your mind? What do you stand to gain if you do?

Complaining about the standard of dialogue seems likely to be unproductive. Sceptics have been doing that with regard to Christians for years and it doesn't really seem to have gotten them anywhere - there's little incentive.

So, that in mind, it seems that you'd do better working the argument in the author's piece in reverse: Someone tries to appeal to emotion, gets a logical fallacy claim back in return. If you assume that there are many different types of speech, and that you're not really in a logical argument, then what does that tell you about them?

Well, the first thing it tells you is that that person cares very strongly about a consistency principle - or at least the outward appearance of one - that they probably want to appear reasonable. What can you think of that's likely to be in their personal life that they're going to feel the same way as you do that a consistency principle is going to work in favour of?

What's the obvious pickup with a lot of sexism? 'Would you want someone talking like that to your mother or sister?'

Of course, that sort of pattern - consistency response to an emotional appeal - is going to come up in areas where people just don't care about very much other than appearing reasonable fairly frequently. I seem to recall one description of debating with Christians that went something along the line of 'Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy-cows with high-powered sniper rifles.'

We all get a cheap laugh from it, probably, but is hunting dairy cows really a productive activity for a smart person? IME people with stuff to do don't spend a lot of time on such things - it seems unlikely that scepticism would be a large part of their identity.

#

However, If you're getting that response a lot wherever you go, maybe the problem's you.

#

A good example of this is, in fact, that piece above. What's the actual prevalence of people being unreasonably called out on logical fallacies? I've not seen it a lot. That may just be because I'm one of the people who does it and most of us seem to tend to appear reasonable from the inside. But equally it may be because the prevalence is actually low. So, the basic premise on which the author is attempting to appeal, the supposed shared experience? I'm not going to find that convincing on an emotional level or a consistency based one.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#109

Post by EvanKelly » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 11:17 PM UTC

Leepic wrote: post #69

obviouslygreen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes opinions are just opinions, sometimes anecdotes are enlightening, and sometimes generalizations, metaphors, analogies and other abstractions come into play. Opinions are opinions. They should be stated and treated as such. If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate. Sure, it's just an opinion; that's fine. Just don'…

Opinions are opinions. They should be stated and treated as such. Let's not generalize and remind to ourselves that there's a difference between a well-formed opinion and an uninformed opinion and those two are not equal just because they are opinions.

This coincides with what rayiner and tokenadult have posted regarding basis of knowledge.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#110

Post by EvanKelly » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 11:23 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #78

jonnathanson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't win an argument on the internet. It doesn't matter how cogent, how thought-provoking, how thoroughly researched and meticulously cited your position may be. You're not convincing the other side of anything. At best you can "win the crowd" in the Gladiator sense of the term. And this is what encourages most of the fallacy-citing, semantics ni…

Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't win an argument on the internet I should be spending more time in whatever corners of the Internet where you are.

Maybe not... his point is that this premise causes internet arguers to play to the crowd, rather than to engage in meaningful discourse with the person they are arguing with.

There are alternatives to winning an argument. A very positive one would be coming to an understanding of why your opponent holds their view, but continuing to disagree because what you value is different.