I taught my daughters the usual logical fallacies from a young age. While doing that I learned that while occasionally, they appear in pristine form (looking at you, Slippery Slope and No True Scotsman), usually, they come rather nuanced, often clustered together, and difficult to identify.
A great way to get good at them is watch Fox News and identify them as they come. You can watch other networks and find them, but for a constant stream, Fox is a goldmine.
A great way to get good at them is watch Fox News and identify them as they come. You can watch other networks and find them, but for a constant stream, Fox is a goldmine.
Honestly a great way to learn them is to argue with people online in places like Lemmy / Kbin. When people argue against you on something you know to be right, it forces you to either a) reconsider your own stance or b) think about why they’re wrong or why their argument is invalid and how to point that out, either way it often leads to logical fallacies, and the more you intentionally try to identify examples of them, the easier they are to intuitively recognize.
All news is a goldmine, you just find them easier to identify on Fox because you disagree with them, which sets off your alarm bells. It’s A LOT harder to identify fallacies that support your own biases.
Your final statement is very true, however there is a reason that Fox News had to defend themselves by claiming they are entertainment. Anyone who believes that Fox News does not have more logical fallacies than most other news really needs to assess their own cognitive biases. I can see logical fallacies on topics I agree with and they piss me off more because I believe that they throw discredit on the perspective that can be argued on it’s own merits.
The trouble with ‘Slippery Slope’ and ‘No True Scotsman’ is that they themselves are not fallacies. Invoking them without proper justification is the fallacy. The same sort of thing happens all the time with ‘Appeal to Authority’, you can probably trust a scientific consensus about a subject in which they are all experts, but you probably shouldn’t trust an individual expert on a topic for which they are not recognized as an expert.
For an example of Slippery Slope: Fascists will absolutely try to demonize the most available target, and then because they always need an out-group, they continue cutting at what they consider the ‘degenerates’ of society until they are all that remain. (And then they find some new definition of degenerate)
“No True Scotsman” is valid in that there is at some point by definition after which you are no longer talking about something. “No true vegetarian eats meat” is valid, as this is definitional. “No true member of Vegetarians United eats meat” lacks proper justification, and refers to an organization, not a proper definition. This gets really messy when people conflate what group people are in with what they ‘are’ or what makes them a good example of a group. Especially when religion is involved.
No true Scotsmanis a fallacy, more specifically ad hoc while defending a generalisation about a group defined by another criterion. Easier shown with an example:
[Alice] Vegetarians don’t eat cheese.
[Bob] I know plenty vegetarians who eat cheese. They just don’t eat meat.
[Alice] Those who eat cheese are not true vegetarians.
If we accept the definition of vegetarian that you implied (someone who doesn’t eat meat), “not eating cheese” is at most a generalisation. As such, when Alice says “Those who eat cheese are not true vegetarians”, she is incurring in the fallacy.
The slippery slope is an interesting case, because it’s both a fallacy and a social phenomenon. And evoking the social phenomenon doesn’t automatically mean that you’re using the fallacy.
As a fallacy, it’s failure to acknowledge that the confidence in the conclusion is smaller than the confidence in the premises - so if you’re chaining lots of premises, your trust in the conclusion will degrade to nothing. Here’s a simple example of that:
if A happens, then B will happen 90% of the time. if A doesn’t happen, B never happens.
if B happens, then C will happen 90% of the time. if B doesn’t happen, C never happens.
[…C then D, D then E, E then F, in the same fashion as above]
if F happens, then G will happen 90% of the time. if F doesn’t happen, G never happens.
So if A happens, what’s the likelihood of G also happening? It is not 90%, but (90%)⁶ = 53%. Even with rather good confidence in the premises, the conclusion is a coin flip. (Incidentally, a similar reasoning can be used to back up Ockham’s Razor.)
As a social phenomenon, however, the slippery slope is simply an observed pattern: if someone (or a group, or an entity) does something, it’s likely to do something similar but not necessarily identical in the future. That covers your example with fascists.
The same sort of thing happens all the time with ‘Appeal to Authority’, you can probably trust a scientific consensus about a subject in which they are all experts, but you probably shouldn’t trust an individual expert on a topic for which they are not recognized as an expert.
The reason why appeal to authority is a fallacy (more specifically, a genetic fallacy) is because the truth value of a proposition does not depend on who proposes it. If an expert said that 2+2=5 (NB: natural numbers), it would be still false; and if the village idiot said that 2+2=4, it would be still true.
We can still use authority however, but that requires inductive reasoning (like the one I did for the slippery slope), that is considerably weaker than deductive reasoning. And it can be still contradicted if you manage to back up an opposing claim with either 1) deductive logic, or 2) inductive logic with more trustable premises.
I think part of it is they’re logical fallacies. For instance, the scientific consensus on climate change is not technically proof of climate change; rather, it’s all the observations, statistics, etc. that are the evidence for climate change. Thus, it is true that claiming an argument is true solely because of scientific consensus is indeed a logical fallacy, as logical fallacies are relating to, well, logic.
For all practical purposes, however, we live in a complex world with lots of uncertainty, and we can generally trust expert consensus if for no other reason than they’re more likely to understand the facts of a certain technical matter better than us, and thus more likely to be able to ascertain the truth. And when discussing complex, technical concepts, I’m generally going to trust expert consensus so long as I am reasonably assured that they are indeed experts and that they have no systemic conflict of interest.
‘Appeal to Authority’, you can probably trust a scientific consensus about a subject in which they are all experts, but you probably shouldn’t trust an individual expert on a topic for which they are not recognized as an expert.
That in itself is the ad hominem fallacy: you need to judge the claim based on its merits, not the merits of the person making the claim.
For example when David Suzuki talks about climate change and people say “well he’s just a biologist, he’s not qualified!” That may be true but it doesn’t invalidate his statements.
When I get a cut on my hands and they are very dry my skin heals over the wound, but the wound still stays there. Callouses just kind of grow over it and it gets painful and shitty. I put a glob of Vaseline on it and cover it with a bandaid or something and I a few days it’s back to normal.
Now I wonder if it would work on those tiny painful as fuck cuts that you get around your fingernails during winter when your skin is dry. I’ve been using those expensive Compeed bandaids which do provide instant relief but if it’s just about blocking the air then maybe Vaseline could be just as good.
Absolutely it does. I work with chalk and know exactly what you’re talking about. The super treatment is to lube up and wear cotton gloves. Really works quick.
When I would have a problem with my body like shoulder impingement and ask for advice, I would often be told by people “nah, you’re too young too have that”
Hey, what did you end up doing about that? I allegedly have one in my left shoulder and the doctor is acting like there’s not really anything I can do about it.
I had quite bad impingement from months of poor exercise selection at the gym. Changed the routine to be balanced internal/external rotation, did 1/2 above 1-2 times a day. Took a few months but now it’s completely better. I still do the stretching as a prehab now.
It bugs me when told “nothing you can do” what they really mean is “the problem is chronic so the recovery will take a long time. Patient compliance is often very low and most people won’t last the months required for a solution so I’m not going to waste my time. I can help more people if I focus my efforts elsewhere.” If you’re willing to put in the time, you can fix this. And I suggest you do, if you do nothing impingement inflames each time it happens, decreasing the space in your shoulder, increasing the likelihood, etc.
That’s improved now, though, with the steam release. Before the Steam release I exclusively played DF with Ascii graphics. Honestly, I thought it was pretty.
It does have a certain charm. I never really played that much tbh, my favorite part was reading the sagas of fortresses on the forums. Those were always so unpredictable and hilarious.
Same, and also “this has already been said in this thread. You should have upvoted the existing comment.” Basically a tool to improve signal-to-noise ratio of the discussion.
Support content seems to be most of what’s posted here now. It’s mind boggling really. A huge number of us are Reddit refugees and AskReddit was always about community engagement and not about support. I really don’t know what makes people think this is any different.
My PC only gets used for gaming and I was fed up of switching into Windows for every other game. I WANT to use Linux but game developers just aren’t allowing me.
You should look into VFIO. I was in the same place where I wanted to have a Linux desktop but I don’t want to dual boot to play games because that shit is CRAZY annoying. However, there’s a way to virtualize Windows inside of you Linux desktop and get 99% of your GPU’s performance due to VFIO. I think if you use Kubuntu specifically there’s a really strong guide for setting it up, although admittedly it’s not trivial. Good luck!
Classic gojo with pumice. Was like washing your hands with sharp wet gravel. Pretty sure it just removes the top layer of skin more than it cleans anything. Can’t be dirty if it’s gone.
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