something that's quite common these days, even among the intelligent.
the Genetic Fallacy.
@holon42 I'm not sure the examples they gave were great ones, but sure.
yes, not the deepest examples, i agree. KISS, i suppose.
there are fuller examples available with google, if anyone wants to pursue it.
@holon42 I heartily support anyone reading up on logical fallacies.
Every fallacy has a basis in cognitive bias, and cognitive biases have instincts behind them. So they occur in parts of the brain that we don't realize are working on us.
We can compensate by understanding those biases so we can recognize them in ourselves and others.
@AskTheDevil @holon42 I have a few pages of notes dedicated to them in the journal I study when I'm upset, I started to try to write down all the main ones and realized I'd be devoting quite a large chunk of my book to them, there are a lot, lol. If you pick up on the feel of a few though, you can start to realize when something is amiss in the logic without memorizing all the formal distinctions.
yes, that's true. it's helpful to have the most frequent ones on tap. if you're suspicious of a text, you can look up definitions at that point. after awhile, you recognize the various species.