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Cracked talks about logical fallacies and their origin

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Copernicus said:
Generalizing article generalizes.

News at 11.
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Come on Copernicus! It's obvious those don't apply to you. Don't be silly! "Does not apply for Copernicus" should be taken for granted.
 
I love logical fallacies. Understanding and countering them, I mean, not using them.
Also, ScOULaris' fat hate thread is now famous.
 
#5...doesn't really apply to me very often. If I'm convinced of something and presented evidence that I'm wrong, I admit I was wrong. I'd rather be right than "win" an argument beause my goal is to know what the fuck is the TRUTH. Nothing else matters to me. I know that whatever I was wrong about won't be the last conversation I have about it, so getting it right means I can point other people towards truth later on.

So either I'm not a human being or the research has met an anomaly.

Edit: #3, #2, and #1 don't really apply to me either. I'm usually my own hardest critic and very blunt with myself. idk.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
#5...doesn't really apply to me very often. If I'm convinced of something and presented evidence that I'm wrong, I admit I was wrong. I'd rather be right than "win" an argument beause my goal is to know what the fuck is the TRUTH. Nothing else matters to me. I know that whatever I was wrong about won't be the last conversation I have about it, so getting it right means I can point other people towards truth later on.

So either I'm not a human being or the research has met an anomaly.
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Well, like other forms of rational thinking, seeking "truth" as opposed to "rightness" is a manual override of how most people function if left to their own devices. I don't think the Cracked article mean to imply that no one was really looking for the truth, just that it's far from the most common approach.
 
Orayn said:
Well, like other forms of rational thinking, seeking "truth" as opposed to "rightness" is a manual override of how most people function if left to their own devices. I don't think the Cracked article mean to imply that no one was really looking for the truth, just that it's far from the most common approach.
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gotcha. I was once really frustrated with a girl that hated to talk to me about things because I was always looking for some objective truth if it could be obtained...and it lead to long conversations, rather than short stupid ones. She liked short and simple. I couldn't work with that all the time. Things aren't always simple, you know?

I see how these things apply to many/most people. I wish #2 applied to me more. Life would probably be easier if I weren't critical of everything I'm doing all the time.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
#5...doesn't really apply to me very often. If I'm convinced of something and presented evidence that I'm wrong, I admit I was wrong. I'd rather be right than "win" an argument beause my goal is to know what the fuck is the TRUTH. Nothing else matters to me. I know that whatever I was wrong about won't be the last conversation I have about it, so getting it right means I can point other people towards truth later on.

So either I'm not a human being or the research has met an anomaly.

Edit: #3, #2, and #1 don't really apply to me either. I'm usually my own hardest critic and very blunt with myself. idk.
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This seems like a clear cut case of confirmation bias. Of course you don't notice when these fallacies apply to you, you're a reasonable person!

What if someone presented evidence that you went to great lengths to win an argument rather than seeking the truth? Would you attempt to prove them wrong, or would you admit a lapse in judgment?
 
UncleSporky said:
This seems like a clear cut case of confirmation bias. Of course you don't notice when these fallacies apply to you, you're a reasonable person!

What if someone presented evidence that you went to great lengths to win an argument rather than seeking the truth? Would you attempt to prove them wrong, or would you admit a lapse in judgment?
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When presented with evidence, I always acquiesce to the evidence. When the evidence isn't clear, I won't IF I think my evidence is correct.

Just yesterday I was debating hard with someone about the definition meant by the wording of a particular phrase. I thought I was right because I had seen it before and observed how it behaved over time. We were going at it and I was all in, baby. Then I went to a website that provided the specific meaning and yes, it turns out I was wrong. What did I do? I provided the link in the conversation to all parties involved, admitted I was wrong and he was right...along with a little "lol" to cover for the slight embarrassment of being super wrong. I don't have a problem with being wrong so long as I can get on the right side at some point.

I went away with the opportunity to make sure others knew the truth, so I was quite satisfied in that.
 
Anyway, the key problem to articles like this (and also on the TED talk about 'feeling ok to feel wrong') is that they do little to rescue us from the quagmire that they point out.

It's like - hey everybody, your thinking is flawed. KTHXBYE.

Sure the cracked article offers suggestions - but they amount to little more than "here's the problem, now self deprecate and doubt more, you jackass."

Which are fine qualities, but they don't really help you reach the correct conclusions.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
#5...doesn't really apply to me very often. If I'm convinced of something and presented evidence that I'm wrong, I admit I was wrong. I'd rather be right than "win" an argument beause my goal is to know what the fuck is the TRUTH. Nothing else matters to me. I know that whatever I was wrong about won't be the last conversation I have about it, so getting it right means I can point other people towards truth later on.

So either I'm not a human being or the research has met an anomaly.

Edit: #3, #2, and #1 don't really apply to me either. I'm usually my own hardest critic and very blunt with myself. idk.
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So in an article dedicated to showing how most people think that shit doesn't apply to them because they're ahead of the curve but in fact aren't, you found out that 4 out of 6 don't apply to you?
 
josephdebono said:
So in an article dedicated to showing how most people think that shit doesn't apply to them because they're ahead of the curve but in fact aren't, you found out that 4 out of 6 don't apply to you?
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No, i said they don't apply to me very often. Most of the time I'm quite self-checked and prefer to truth to winning, because in my mind truth IS winning. I don't really know any other way to function and I'm regularly bothered by people who'd rather when than remain objective in the search for truth.

Cheers.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
No, i said they don't apply to me very often. Most of the time I'm quite self-checked and prefer to truth to winning, because in my mind truth IS winning. I don't really know any other way to function and I'm regularly bothered by people who'd rather when than remain objective in the search for truth.

Cheers.
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Many people would agree with you. The point of these fallacies is that most can't disentangle "truth" from "winning" in their minds.
 
Good article. Of course I immediately think to myself "well I don't do any of those things and other people are just illogical" in a text-book example of #2.
 
I'm not saying you're lying or anything. Far from it. I just find it strange that upon reading such an article your conclusion is that most don't apply to you.

I consider myself unbiased, as does everyone else, but I know it just isn't possible to be completely bias free and so admit that I am not. Just knowing about fallacies or biases doesn't mean you don't subconciously fall victim to them, mostly because, as the article explains they're hard wired into us.
 
josephdebono said:
So in an article dedicated to showing how most people think that shit doesn't apply to them because they're ahead of the curve but in fact aren't, you found out that 4 out of 6 don't apply to you?
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I've seen him bucking some of these assertions on the boards more than once, actually. It's funny because as you're being skeptical of someone making that claim, you're pretty much committing fallacy #3.

I consider myself being good at avoiding most if not all of these fallacies, but I think it's also true that most people are emotionally driven to commit them and some active mental exercise is required for one to not do such things. You aren't above biases, but you can push yourself to be act above them.


Zaptruder said:
Anyway, the key problem to articles like this (and also on the TED talk about 'feeling ok to feel wrong') is that they do little to rescue us from the quagmire that they point out.

It's like - hey everybody, your thinking is flawed. KTHXBYE.

Sure the cracked article offers suggestions - but they amount to little more than "here's the problem, now self deprecate and doubt more, you jackass."

Which are fine qualities, but they don't really help you reach the correct conclusions.
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And this is true as well. This article sounds like an exercise in truth speaking but very much serves the purpose of making one's flawed thinking feel more acceptably reasonable than it actually is. Developing internal logical and rational consistencies is a big part of avoiding the things on this list, but there's of course the argument over the tangent of whether or not that's actually desirable.
 
josephdebono said:
I consider myself unbiased, as does everyone else, but I know it just isn't possible to be completely bias free and so admit that I am not. Just knowing about fallacies or biases doesn't mean you don't subconciously fall victim to them, mostly because, as the article explains they're hard wired into us.
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Of course since you are probably a notoriously bad judge of your own biases and flaws, saying that you subconsciously fall into the same traps as everyone else means that you probably don't, and you are in fact ahead of the curve.
 
Zaptruder said:
Which are fine qualities, but they don't really help you reach the correct conclusions.
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For the most part, I actually like the conclusions of the article. Yes, I agree that critical thinking is a skill more people should strive to utilize more frequently. And math is something people would do well to understand. Striving to be more intellectual as opposed to emotional can aid in debate as well.

However, sometimes I think advocacy for that gets a little carried away and loses a human element. I've seen debates here and elsewhere -- be it on the internet or real life -- where even though I might agree with the conclusions, the methodology employed to reach the conclusion is just so cold and lacking in anything vaguely resembling human empathy that even though you know the argument is technically sound, you just don't care.

More to the point, though I don't think arguments should rely on emotion to make the point, I also think it's somewhat silly to completely disregard emotion in favor of the purely rational. In that regard, I really like the encouragement of empathizing with an opposing viewpoint even one shouldn't be encouraged to agree with it.
 
Steve Youngblood said:
For the most part, I actually like the conclusions of the article. Yes, I agree that critical thinking is a skill more people should strive to utilize more frequently. And math is something people would do well to understand. Striving to be more intellectual as opposed to emotional can aid in debate as well.

However, sometimes I think advocacy for that gets a little carried away and loses a human element. I've seen debates here and elsewhere -- be it on the internet or real life -- where even though I might agree with the conclusions, the methodology employed to reach the conclusion is just so cold and lacking in anything vaguely resembling human empathy that even though you know the argument is technically sound, you just don't care.

More to the point, though I don't think arguments should rely on emotion to make the point, I also think it's somewhat silly to completely disregard emotion in favor of the purely rational. In that regard, I really like the encouragement of empathizing with an opposing viewpoint even one shouldn't be encouraged to agree with it.
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I frequently engage in the empathizing of an opposing viewpoint - if only as to allow me to find the structural deficits that allows a person to come up with such a view point in the first place.

Of course from time to time, it also allows me to realise that I'm the wrong side of the fence.

Emotion shouldn't and can't be divorced from rationality. But what one should realise is that emotion should simply help to direct the search for rationality.

Emotion is the tool to engage in quick thinking - and rationality the tool to engage in correct thinking. They work together to help us optimize our behaviour.

If we deny our emotion, we may find ourselves bogged down on irrelevancies.
 
tokkun said:
Bit of a misleading title since none of the things listed are logical fallacies. Moreover, the "evidence" of each fallacy consists of there being a social theory associated with it, and those theories are a dime a dozen.
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You're right regarding the title, but seem to want to dismiss the underlying point. Hmmmm!
 
RevDM said:
holy shit it links gaf!
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I believe Cracked's editor in chief posts on GAF under his novelist pen name 'David H Wong'. He's a junior member and posted a bit of snark directed at an overenthusiastic Bowflex on "Ernest Becker been the most important thinker/writer of all time."
 
Zaptruder said:
I frequently engage in the empathizing of an opposing viewpoint - if only as to allow me to find the structural deficits that allows a person to come up with such a view point in the first place.

Of course from time to time, it also allows me to realise that I'm the wrong side of the fence.

Emotion shouldn't and can't be divorced from rationality. But what one should realise is that emotion should simply help to direct the search for rationality.

Emotion is the tool to engage in quick thinking - and rationality the tool to engage in correct thinking. They work together to help us optimize our behaviour.

If we deny our emotion, we may find ourselves bogged down on irrelevancies.
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I agree with you here. I think my point was just I think the article as presented makes for a good read that can be eye-opening for some. As to your assertion that it doesn't aid in helping one achieve the correct conclusions, I don't disagree but think such a thing is outside the scope of such an article. They might require a fundamental change in how one attempts approaches matters as opposed to the easy-to-understand illustrations that we are all human, and all humans are capable of irrational thought.

Teaching skills like critical thinking and risk management are wonderful ideals, but probably outside the scope of the article. Furthermore, I don't think the crux of the issue was to teach people how to employ rational thought in as much as it was to point out how people can very often be hypocritical in their conclusions about why arguments often don't bear fruit.
 
Ignatz Mouse said:
You're right regarding the title, but seem to want to dismiss the underlying point. Hmmmm!
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Many of these points aren't even issues of irrationality, either. For example, there's nothing irrational about having a different standard for obesity as for quitting smoking. Cracked is the one guilty of the logical fallacy - false equivalency.
 
Davidion said:
I've seen him bucking some of these assertions on the boards more than once, actually. It's funny because as you're being skeptical of someone making that claim, you're pretty much committing fallacy #3.
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Not necessarily. Let's simplify a little and say there are two groups of people--those who are good at introspecting and overcoming their own irrationality, and those who aren't.

Let's say that of those who are good introspectors, 99.9% will read this article and correctly claim that it doesn't apply to them. And let's say that of those who are poor introspectors, maybe 25% are so bad at it that they will read this article and incorrectly claim that it doesn't apply to them.

If we further assume that good introspectors occur with an incidence of ~1%--well, it's highly unlikely that anyone reading that article and then claiming it doesn't apply to them is actually correct.

Yes, I pulled those numbers out of my ass, but you get the idea.

Also, D-V's later posts provided further evidence than just his initial claim, so maybe he's right. But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that someone claiming these don't apply to them is wrong.
 
Zaptruder said:
I believe Cracked's editor in chief posts on GAF under his novelist pen name 'David H Wong'. He's a junior member and posted a bit of snark directed at an overenthusiastic Bowflex on "Ernest Becker been the most important thinker/writer of all time."
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In that case, boo for linking Reddit first.
 
The_Technomancer said:
Good read, even if I was aware of these before. Discovered most of them piecemeal over the last few years, and I work to actively combat those tendencies internally, even if I can't succeed.
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Cracked's fatalism is pretty annoying. We might not ever be able t fully overcome these biases, but knowing about them and consciously attempting to overcome them is abetter option than shrugging our shoulders. The guys over at overcoming bias (http://www.overcomingbias.com/) are pretty good at this kind of thing.
 
Cyan said:
Not necessarily. Let's simplify a little and say there are two groups of people--those who are good at introspecting and overcoming their own irrationality, and those who aren't.

Let's say that of those who are good introspectors, 99.9% will read this article and correctly claim that it doesn't apply to them. And let's say that of those who are poor introspectors, maybe 25% are so bad at it that they will read this article and incorrectly claim that it doesn't apply to them.

If we further assume that good introspectors occur with an incidence of ~1%--well, it's highly unlikely that anyone reading that article and then claiming it doesn't apply to them is actually correct.

Yes, I pulled those numbers out of my ass, but you get the idea.

Also, D-V's later posts provided further evidence than just his initial claim, so maybe he's right. But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that someone claiming these don't apply to them is wrong.
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Using statistics in instances like this is problematic, I think, because it rules out outliers when we are in fact talking about individual instances and not more macro trends.

And I think this is where its problem is: while the article's analysis is on point in many ways, correctly identifying emotional triggers for arguments and related inconsistencies, it presumes a purely emotional approach and doesn't advocate nor even explore alternatives. Therefore a reader is left with only that one perspective.
 
Quite apt. I see this a lot.

So During Your Next Argument, Remember ...

Do you support the Occupy Wall Street movement? If so, do you find it frustrating when opponents claim the protesters have a hidden agenda and are just tools of the communists?

Do you support the Tea Party? Do you find it frustrating when opponents dismiss the movement as a bunch of racists?

No matter what side you're on, you've played that game, and all it does is give you an excuse to ignore everything the other person says. You're dismissing their points as lies, they're doing the same to you, so why are you even having the conversation? Because you like making everyone else at the dinner table feel tense and awkward?

Either admit that maybe this person honestly thinks what they're saying is true, or just talk about sports.
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Steve Youngblood said:
However, sometimes I think advocacy for that gets a little carried away and loses a human element. I've seen debates here and elsewhere -- be it on the internet or real life -- where even though I might agree with the conclusions, the methodology employed to reach the conclusion is just so cold and lacking in anything vaguely resembling human empathy that even though you know the argument is technically sound, you just don't care.
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The "reasoning for argument theory" papers referenced in the article for fallacy #5 actually talked about this.

Based on the dominant, Cartesian view people have been trying for many years to reform reasoning: to teach critical thinking, to rid us of our biases, to make Kants of us all. This approach has not been very successful. According to our theory this is not surprising, as people have been trying to reform something that works perfectly well—as if they had decided that hands were made for walking and that everybody should be taught that.
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Basically in my simplified terms, reasoning is not done for an objective purpose, rather a social and subjective purpose of arguments (whether internally or externally).
Hence why when taken out of the context of arguments, reasoning doesn't fare too well.
 
TheLastCandle said:
Seeing Fat Hate-GAF called out is legendary.

Good read, btw.
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Smokers actually get worse treatment on the GAF.

And most people weren't arguing that weight loss is easy. It's not. It's just that it requires more willpower and motivation than most people have for it. The excuses let people feel better about themselves. It's essentially the opposite case, where people tend to over-attribute circumstances for their problems and downplay their own role.

The other examples are a lot more circumstantial so they fit the model better, but it's rarely all one or the other.
 
Orayn said:
Well, like other forms of rational thinking, seeking "truth" as opposed to "rightness" is a manual override of how most people function if left to their own devices. I don't think the Cracked article mean to imply that no one was really looking for the truth, just that it's far from the most common approach.
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I really hate talking to people who I know are wrong and are presenting stupid arguments with no grounding in reality, but who on some level I'm expected to respect and listen to due to societal requirements. This is usually people in my family talking about political issues or bringing up news stories about semi-scientific stuff. I want to tell them that they are stupid, but I know that the argument will just boil down to this kind of "rightness" issue rather than any objective truth.
 
tokkun said:
Bit of a misleading title since none of the things listed are logical fallacies. Moreover, the "evidence" of each fallacy consists of there being a social theory associated with it, and those theories are a dime a dozen.
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Yep, social theories and not logical fallacies. "We're bad at probability because there weren't any evolutionary imperatives" is not a logical fallacy.

Nice NeoGAF link though!
 
I love this gem

somebody who still thinks Obama's birth certificate is a fake or that Dick Cheney arranged 9/11 to cover up his theft of $2.3 trillion from the government

Read more: 5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_1946...-wrong-more-than-you-think.html#ixzz1cWsQiWED
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Because believing someone faked a birth certificate in 1961 before there were computer records or the current anti counter fit security that we have today is a big of a far fetched story as thinking Dick Cheney set up 9/11 to hid 2.3 trillion dollars that he stole.

Yea those two things go hand in hand .
 
eastmen said:
Because believing someone faked a birth certificate in 1961 before there were computer records or the current anti counter fit security that we have today is a big of a far fetched story as thinking Dick Cheney set up 9/11 to hid 2.3 trillion dollars that he stole.

Yea those two things go hand in hand .
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I hear a whistle and some noise on the tracks - Like it or not, the express train to Truthertown is pulling into the internet station. CHOO CHOO!

The above comment is just about the direction I think the thread will go now that you brought up the topic. In principle, you're right - Not all weird conspiracy theories are equally implausible. It's just that in this case, both conspiracies have been thoroughly disproved to the point where neither should be seriously considered with current evidence.
krameriffic said:
I really hate talking to people who I know are wrong and are presenting stupid arguments with no grounding in reality, but who on some level I'm expected to respect and listen to due to societal requirements. This is usually people in my family talking about political issues or bringing up news stories about semi-scientific stuff. I want to tell them that they are stupid, but I know that the argument will just boil down to this kind of "rightness" issue rather than any objective truth.
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That's the other thing - We are so damn good at trying to be right that we often can't even tell when we're doing it, or whether it's even worth carrying on the debate.
 
Zaptruder said:
So is gay furry hentai
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Bara, not hentai, and kemono, not furry :P

macuser1of5 said:
why didn't the article focus on that instead? i'm fairly sure you can find a lot of furry hate on the internet.
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Cracked has actually has furry stuff in it. Hell, some of their banners are.

Note that I'm against fat bashing too, I just simply stated why it's easy to do so. :P
 
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