Five Fallacies | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

here's a few ideas about how to argue better on the internet and also off the [Music] internet there is a lot of arguing on the internet there's a lot of arguing everywhere but sometimes it feels like the internet is a place that people go specifically to argue and that's great heated debate is how we move issues forward generate knowledge and reach understanding because that's the point of arguing right to reach and understanding right right why are you looking at me like that anyway for obvious reasons we here at idea Channel want everybody arguing at their

full capacity all the time so what follows is a kind of oton field guide for bad arguments a list of some of the most common fallacies flaws in logic that can appear airtight even though they're not sometimes they're used intentionally to distract derail deflate but lots of times even the ones called intentional fallacies are deployed because by their very nature they seem appropriate when an interlocutor feels as though they are out of logical Road they sometimes Veer onto the less than solid fallacy shoulder the following are not nearly all or the most interesting fallacies but

rather the ones that I see the most often the goal of this video is to assist you in assisting your fellow conversationalists and identifying their unintentionally faulty logic this is one long video but in the dooblydoo and in a playlist on idea Channel's Channel page you will find one video for each fallacy this way when you do locate a fallacy out in the wild you can direct the person who's deployed it to a source letting them know the faultiness of their ways and encouraging them to do better because we know that they are capable we

believe in them so with that being said on with the fallacies the straw man fallacy contrary to what many people would have us believe a straw man is not simply an argument that you dislike or find inconvenient rather it is a version of an argument that is misrepresented simplified so that it is easier to knock over just as an actual manmade of straw is a less solid version of a man made of Flesh a straw man argument is a less solid version of a fully fleshed out argument a straw man replaces or represents whatever actual

argument is being made straw menning can come in many different forms it's not even always intentional you might accidentally construct a straw man if you don't fully understand the depth of an argument and that is fine it happens to the best of us however to intentionally misread or misrepresent an argument to simplify the process of discrediting it that's a little bit less forgivable to take nuanced points out of context to ignore crucial information to even exaggerate claims to the point of absurdity which is then easier to refute these are all straw man tactics for example

Mike and straw Mike are having a conversation about how to responsibly depict awful stuff in media I don't think it's too much to ask that when a media Creator wants to show heinous or awful stuff they do so in a context TT that shows that that stuff is heinous and awful oh so now we're not allowed to show violent or terrible things unless we include some long-winded sermon about how bad things are bad I think creators should be able to show or do whatever they want the original argument States a preference for what Mike thinks

constitutes the responsible use of media the strawman argument recasts this as something much simpler and easier to agree with freedom is good censorship is bad but now Mike and straw Mike are no longer arguing about the same point and so the conversation will quickly become unfocused and aggressive which is never fun if you're going to win an argument you want to win against what the other side actually thinks don't you a straw man argument keeps that from happening I hope this description of the straw man fallacy has been helpful happy conversing the ad homonym attack

ad homonym criticism is where instead of criticizing the argument or ideas of the person with whom you are conversing you criticize the person themselves and in so doing claim you have also criticized their argument and boy is this one popular ad homonym criticisms are not always but are very frequently fallacious unless the character or actions of the person making an argument are directly related to the matter at hand criticizing them and not their ideas is a fallacy ad homonym attacks are the bread and butter of political advertising criticizing a candidate and saying that because their

character is bad their ideas and policies are also Bad John Smith literally hates little children and so his ideas about salmon fishery safety regulations are wrong dead wrong a related fallacy is two ququ where it is argued that a person making an argument has behaved in a way inconsistent with that argument their behavior might be inconsistent but it doesn't necessarily make their argument wrong for example it's really important for fast food restaurants to be clear about the salt fat and sugar content of their food doubly so because of how cheap it is obesity is a

real problem in America what business do you have asking companies to disclose this stuff I saw you eat two Big Macs and drink 34 oun of high SE orange lava burst yesterday this is an ad homonym tuqui attack Mike argues for the presence of certain dietary information and STW Mike says that based on his behavior he lacks the authority to do so STW Mike's response doesn't at all approach the point Mike is making though Mike is arguing that if certain dietary information were widely available it's possible that an effect on Obesity would occur ad homonym

attacks make it so the person being attacked suddenly has to defend their character and not their ideas when in fact their character has no bearing on the conversation whatsoever and also it's mean you seem like a nice person no need for insults I hope this description of the ad homonym attack has been helpful happy conversing the black and white fallacy a black and white fallacy is where you present limited choices as the only choices when in fact additional options do exist it's time to choose sometimes called the false dichotomy or false dilemma the black and

white fallacy is a really easy way of eradicating complexity and Nuance the most common black and white fallacy is the old saying either you're for us or against us when in fact it's highly likely one might find arguments on either side of a position appealing and therefore occupy some previously unannounced space on a Continuum between the two positions much of governmental and gender politics for example operate on a very widely spread adoption of a black and white fallacy sometimes the black and white fallacy presents a dichotomy between two things that are not actually opposites or

mutually exclusive no Continuum exists between those two things because they are not related to each other in the way that the black and white fallacy presents them to be for example it would be nice to have more well-written playable female characters in video games if you want more playable female characters that means you must want fewer male characters and those are the ones that I like the most are you trying to ruin games in this situation St Mike's black and white fallacy is that in games either specifically or generally there can only be male or

female characters having more of one automatically means that there is less of the other that is not the case more of something is not always automatically less of its opposite and so this dichotomy is false the black and white fallacy presents nuanced arguments as being well black and white and presents only extremes as being a available for further discussion even when that's not the case what are you doing are you backing down from a challenge that's not like you I hope this description of the black and white fallacy has been helpful happy conversing The Authority

fallacy The Authority fallacy holds that because someone in a position of assumed Authority has said something that thing must be true however the authority fallacy is just as important for what it isn't it isn't meant to defeat statements made by experts or by scientific consensus saying that global warming is true and man-made because the vast majority of scientists that study it produce evidence that support this claim is not an example of the authority fallacy neither is stating for instance that all medical technology is blind to race based on Lundy Bron's exhaustive research of the spirometer

the scientific community and experts in their field of study are authorities The Authority fallacy applies this level of respect for authority to people who don't actually possess it the firsthand accounts of our friends family members and co-workers do not constitute Authority and therefore truth unless of course they also happen to be experts for example Mike and straw Mike are talking about automobile manufacturing whoa Korean cars in America are so cheap I wonder how they do that well my uncle is a mechanical engineer and he says that it's because they use terrible cheap parts you literally

trading money for safety St Mike's Uncle might be an engineer and that's awesome but it doesn't necessarily give him the authority to talk about the construction of certain parts in vehicles this is an authority fallacy unless unless it turns out St Mike's uncle is an independent researcher conducting a peer-reviewed study on the international automobile industry and its effects on safety The Authority fallacy trades actual points for external non-expert anecdotes the plural of which you might have heard is not data your uncle seems like a really cool guy but I bet you can win this argument

without him I hope this description of the authority fallacy has been helpful happy conversing the no true Scotsman fallacy the no true Scotsman fallacy calls into question the Purity or actess of something as a way to refute an argument usually it works like this you claim some set of things has a universal characteristic someone then provides an exception to the rule making your claim Universal no longer and then you respond by saying well only true things in that set possess that characteristic the no true scotsman's user defends their claim based on a reactionary subjective notion

of what category something belongs in or to what degree that thing truly belongs in that category classically no true Scotsman is used to exclude Bad actors from a group Anthony flu who coined this fallacy described a Scotsman who upon learning that one of his countryman committed a violent act said no true Scotsman would do such a thing however there are a couple what you might call versions of no true scotsmen one of them has to do with in-group maintenance claiming that no true gamer comic book reader Republican or feminist would say or believe a certain

thing this tactic avoids confronting a counterargument by saying the person who exhibits it is not truly the thing they claim and so the exception they provide is null and void no true Scotsman also works to exclude ideas and objects not just people for example Mike and straw Mike are talking about video games all video games must have clearly stated goals and a win lose condition gone home doesn't have either of those things and it's a video game right but gone home is not a true video game the more productive conversation would be what happens to

the category of video game when we consider gone home part of it or to discuss what about the category of video game for straw mik at least absolutely requires that it have clearly stated goals and we lose conditions instead the conversation is stopped dead in its tracks because the entire Point hinges upon one side's subjective sense of what is and is not truly whatever and now we're just arguing opinion which will only ever end in Godwin's law you Scot sure are a contentious people just made an enemy for life I hope this description of the

no true Scotsman fallacy has been helpful happy conversing and with that we come to the end of our set of fallacies though as it turns out not the end of all fallacies there are a lot of fallacies out there and if you like this kind of thing if you want to see us make more videos in this style where we describe fallacies and put them in tiny videos for you to send to other people let us know um and maybe we'll do more there are plenty we're going to be doing full comment responses for the

game mechanics episode at the end of next week's video but there is one thing I wanted to talk talk about for a second just as a closing thought for this video there were some people who wrote comments on last week's video which was a collab with extra credits saying that they weren't going to watch the episode because Dan from extra credits uh has come out as being vocally anti- gamergate and I just want to be super clear I know we haven't made a video about this and I'm struggling with whether or not we will um

but if a necessary precondition for your continued viewership of idea channel is that we are in any way Pro gamergate I have some bad news for you I understand that the party line is gamergate has ethical concerns at its Forefront and that it is about games journalism but for me gamergate is very much defined by uh the harassment of women and its just terrible exclusionary tactics um to keep people out of gaming to keep people talking about gaming you can tell me all day long that social justice Warriors engage in the same tactics or that

gamer Gator set up a campaign to donate to an anti-bullying charity it kind of doesn't matter because gamergate has become so connected to so defined by harassment and vitrio there are ethical concerns in gaming and games journalism we've made videos about them Lee Alexander wrote a very helpful list of them but none of them are worth the terrible things that are happening in the name of Ethics in games journalism and so for that reason and many others I am not pro gamergate not even a little and if that's a problem for you so be it

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