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8 Logical Fallacies that Mess Us All Up | Mark Manson
False Dichotomies
“You are either with us or against us!” Oversimplification of options, due to selectively providing a limited set of options and not encompassing other potential options creates a false dichotomy.
Example: Either your name is Ron or your name isn’t Ron is a true dichotomy, as it has two legitimate options. But saying that either your name is Ron, or you are an idiot is a false dichotomy.
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16
Key Ideas
Convince Them With Confidence
- Speak confidently, be concise, and try not to repeat yourself.
- Give the appearance that you truly know what’s right from the beginning, even if you don’t have all o...
Avoid Common Argument Fallacies
Winning an argument often comes down to who can go the longest without contradicting themselves and keeping sound logic, not direct persuasion of the other party.
Anecdotal Fallacy
Using a single personal experience as the foundation of your argument or your big piece of evidence.
For example, your phone may have broken right after you bought it, but you can’t use that to argue that those phones are not worth the purchase for others.
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Key Ideas
Fallacies
A fallacy is the use of faulty reasoning in an argument.
There are formal and informal fallacies:
- A formal fallacy describes a flaw in the construction of a deductive ar...
Appeal to privacy
In this fallacy, someone behaves in a way that negatively affects others but then gets upset when others criticize their behavior. They will reply with a "mind your own business."
For instance, someone who doesn't see a reason to bathe, but then boards a full 10-hour flight.
Sunk cost fallacy
It happens when someone continues in a course of action, even if evidence shows that it's a mistake.
Common phrase: "We've always done it this way, so we'll keep doing it this way." "I've already invested so much..."
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Key Ideas
False equivalence
It is a logical fallacy and it occurs when someone incorrectly asserts that two or more things are equal because they share some characteristics, regardless of the notable differences...
The problem with false equivalence
- The equivalence exaggerates the degree of similarity. I.e, stating that two people share a specific personality trait, but ignoring that they differ in other aspects of this trait.
- The equivalence exaggerates the importance of the similarity. I.e, focusing on a personality trait that two people share while ignoring that many other people also share this trait.
- The equivalence ignores important differences.
- The equivalence ignores differences in orders of magnitude.
Responding to a false equivalence
- Show that the similarities between the things being equated are exaggerated, overemphasized, or oversimplified.
- Highlight the differences between the things being equated.
- Explain why these differences are more significant than related similarities.
- Provide counterexamples.
- Ask your opponent to justify why they believe that their equivalence is valid, and then demonstrate the issues with the reasoning they provide.