book 46 – An Illustrated book of Bad Arguments
When I was in university I took a course on logic which ended up being about logical arguments. I loved it, but, although I retained a few things (begging the question, ad hominem), I have since forgotten lots of it. This book provides a perfect synopsis of 19 logical fallacies, along with cute little illustrations to help with comprehension and memory.
What I enjoyed while reading the book was trying to come up with an example of each fallacy. I started out trying to pick events in the current presidential election, but this proved to be WAY too easy, so I went a different way …
1. Argument from Consequences- “You must agree with the pipeline project, otherwise what? You want us to all go back to living in caves??” Popular with people who don’t know how to construct a logical argument but desperately want you to believe their proposition.
2. Straw Man- “You say evolution is true, so you obviously believe we all evolved from apes!” Popular with anti-evolutionists and fear mongers.
3. Appeal to Irrelevant Authority- “Acupuncture works because it has been practised by ancient Chinese medicine for thousands of years.” Popular with new-age medicine and therapy practitioners.
4. Equivocation- “The sign said ‘fine for parking here’, and since it was fine, I parked there.” Popular with husbands when arguing with their wives.
5. False Dilemma- “Did you complete the work assignment, or did you leave your brain at home?” Very popular with me 🙂
6. Not a Cause for a Cause (post hoc ergo propter hoc and cum hoc ergo propter hoc for you Latin lovers out there)- “Whenever I wear this sweater, our hockey team wins, therefore I will always wear this sweater on game day.” Popular with sports enthusiasts and players who insist on growing horrifying grizzly-adams beards during playoff season.
7. Appeal to Fear- “If you don’t believe in God then you will burn in the fiery pit of HELL for all of ETERNITY.” Really popular with fundamentalists.
8. Hasty Generalization- “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste, which means it’s the best.” Popular with commercial advertising firms.
9. Appeal to Ignorance- “There was this strange light in the sky that moved around in a weird way. I don’t know of anything that moves like that, so it’s obviously a UFO.” Popular with Ufologists. And yes, that’s actually a thing.
10. No True Scotsman- “If you support the killing of unborn babies, you are not a true Christian.” Popular with organized religions.
11. Genetic Fallacy- “The sling is the best way to carry a newborn baby, because our ancestors used to carry their babies this way when they worked in the fields.” Popular with ‘natural’ childbirth proponents.
12. Guilt by Association- “The candidate wants to deport all Muslims. You know who else deported religious groups? Hitler!!” Popular in politics, especially election campaigns. It’s shocking how many new Hitlers we have out there.
13. Affirming the Consequent- “The flu makes you throw up, and I was up all night vomiting, therefore I have the flu.” Popular with self-diagnosticians.
14. Appeal to Hypocrisy (Tu Quoque)- “You say eating animals is immoral but you are wearing leather shoes, so apparently it’s not really true.” Popular with anti-vegetarians.
15. Slippery Slope- “If we let gay people marry, next thing we’ll have people wanting to marry their farm animals!” Popular with most anti-social movements.
16. Appeal to the Bandwagon- “It must be awesome, because everyone else is doing it.” This is what made your mom ask if you would also jump off a bridge just because all your friends did it. Mom was right in this case.
17. Ad Hominem- “She would make a very bad president because she’s a very nasty woman.” Popular with Donald Trump.
18. Circular Reasoning- “The bible is true because it’s the word of God, We know this because the bible tells us so.” A popular one from Sunday School.
19. Composition and Division- “You like beef, potatoes, and green beans, so you will like this beef, potato, and green been casserole.” Popular with my mother, but oh, soooo wrong.
Rating: Buy it. Or get it as a gift (thanks Ken!)
