Because we are entering a particularly rancorous election season I thought I'd post a couple of links to sites that offer lists and explanations of logical fallacies. These are rhetorical tricks that speakers (read politicians) use to fool their listener into thinking that they've made an important point in a debate when in reality all they've done is crafted a falsehood that is designed to sway your opinion.
Here's one of my favorite - Argument By Laziness (also known as Argument By Uninformed Opinion): the arguer hasn't bothered to learn anything about the topic. He nevertheless
has an opinion, and will be insulted if his opinion is not treated with respect.
Here are the two of the sites that I like the most. You might want to print them out and have them by your chair when the televised debates start and the half (or quarter!) baked ideas start to flow.
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
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