Most common logical fallacy on the internet?
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Ignorance (Score:2, Insightful)
The Internet is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the Internet.
The biggest problem (not a logical fallacy) on the Internet is the same as the biggest problem off the Internet and it's ignorance of the people on it. Most fallacies come from that ignorance (and stupidity), probably only a small percentage of fallacies come from malicious intent.
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The biggest problem (not a logical fallacy) on the Internet is the same as the biggest problem off the Internet and it's ignorance of the people on it.
https://www.vingle.net/posts/5... [vingle.net]!
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Bum, sorry folks...
https://xkcd.com/386/ [xkcd.com]
Another big problem on the Internet is finding the real source. (If you are in too much of a hurry to spend 30 seconds doing it, that is).
My mistake.
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Yes, that one is also to the point. I hadn't seen it before - thanks!
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You should have wrote "it's a long way down the road to the server".
Bandwagon (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people refuse to think for themselves, and instead adopt someone else's opinion as their own because they want to belong to that gang more than understand the question or devise a useful answer.
But correlation == causation is rampant too. To escape this, you must experimentally validate your cause (or identify another who did), which few do.
Re:Bandwagon (Score:5, Funny)
No! The answer is "An Appeal to Authority!" Trust me, I know this stuff.
Re:Bandwagon (Score:5, Funny)
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Uh huh. Hey guys! I found the guy who cares about children so much he has to wear an ankle bracelet.
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So you finally got yourself a mirror, then. I'd say good for you, but then I realized you can now see yourself everyday, so ... maybe not so good for you after all.
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I think we're missing Guilt By Association.
Seriously, you guys are starting to sound like nazis.
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Re:Bandwagon (Score:5, Funny)
Only an idiot like you would think that "ad hominem" was not the most common logical fallacy on the Internet.
Re:Bandwagon (Score:4, Insightful)
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Only an idiot like you would think that "ad hominem" was not the most common logical fallacy on the Internet.
Oh, yeah? Well, I bet that you get all your information from _____-wing sources, which are all liars!
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I have never been lied to by an X-wing.
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> [Citation Needed] is a thinly veiled appeal to authority.
No, it's asserting the burden of proof [wikipedia.org] is on the person making the claim, which is different.
If you claim there's a teapot in orbit between Earth and Mars, and I say [citation needed], giving me a link to Bertrand Russell doesn't prove your assertion; all it does is tell me where you got the claim. The burden of proof is still on you, but I can investigate the citation further on my own.
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Hmm. Seems like you're setting up a strawman.
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The most common fallacy I see is the polarizing one whose "proper" name eludes me right now:
A != B, thus !A -> B
If you argue against, say, republican values, you can expect replies that assume that you're a democrat.
This fallacy often leads to strawman and ad hominem arguments, but it rears its head before "because you're B, what you say about C is obviously false and biased".
Re:Bandwagon (Score:4, Informative)
That would be the fallacy of the excluded middle, or false dilemma [wikipedia.org]
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My experience, which is definitely biased by being on tech sites where correlation and causation are well understood; is that debates generally consist of Appeals to Authority with some Ad Hominem added for spice. Occasionally someone will sully the waters with some actual logic, but if the logic is predicated on sources I disagree with I count it as Appeals to Authority.
Correlation and Causation only enter into it when we're dealing with a scientific study that confirms somebody's really strongly held prio
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Ad hominem (Score:5, Funny)
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You only say that because you voted for ad hominem.
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If you voted anything but appeal to emotion then your point of view encourages racism and misogyny, and lets the terrorists win.
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If you voted for anything other than ad hominem then you're an idiot.
*** bonks Atmchicago with a can of corn... ***
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You like their music? [a-ha.com]
Argumentum ad lapidem (Score:5, Interesting)
Also called "Proof by assertion", or as Steven Colbert defined it colloquially, "Truthiness". You see this absolutely everywhere. It's where people don't even bother to try to make an argument, much less one that is correct and founded in fact. They just declare whatever they're feeling at the moment to be "true", because they want it to be.
We make fun of more sophisticated logical fallacies, but at least those who use them actually get to the "because" part. "Obama is worse than Hilter... because Hitler took away everyone's guns.." The justification isn't at all true [motherjones.com], but at least it's an attempt. More typically all you see is this: "Obama is worse than Hitler". End of sentence and thought, as if the writer didn't have any. Which in all fairness, in these sorts of situations is probably true.
Re:Argumentum ad lapidem (Score:5, Insightful)
A very common example is "taxes are too high". No argument, no comparison, no reference point, no data from other countries, or cost of services provided.
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Because there really isn't an argument to be made.
Other countries - what difference does that make there is basically no other country that is especially similar to ours in terms of geographic area, natural resources, defensibility (sea to sea), etc. There is no other country that has a role in the modern world quite like ours. American exceptional-ism is true in that we are very much an exception, even if you strip away the positive value judgment that usual goes with that.
cost of services provided - aga
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Another one is 'the sky is blue'.
I fucking hate that shit!
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very common example is "taxes are too high".
I've never seen that as a fallacy, but instead a subjective opinion. Just like asserting "chocolate ice cream tastes bad" or "a sunny day is pleasant". There's no objective truth there, and you can't argue with taste. And such assertions are relevant in a democracy.
If you add a "because" then it's an actual argument.
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While it is a subjective call, it is not immune to argument. For example America has the lowest tax burden among developed nations.
Second, if it is subjective then all the more reason why the statement is incorrect. Your example is a good one "chocolate ice cream tastes bad" is not a fact. The correct thing to say is "i don't like chocolate ice cream".
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A very common example is "taxes are too high". No argument, no comparison, no reference point, no data from other countries, or cost of services provided.
People don't mind taxers if they perceive benefits coming from them. Unfortunately in the U.S the feeling among Conservatives is that a large part of the taxes they paid are being spent on wasteful government bureaucracy and handed out to lazy welfare queens.
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You are confusing two sentiments. No one likes paying fees, be them taxes or your golf club membership. However this does not make them automatically too high.
I'm quite happy paying over $100K in taxes a year in exchange for living in a society with low crime, free health care and functioning public schools. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
Now of course some people prefer to live in a country where public schools are horrible in exchange for lower taxes (though they pay them right
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Nope, it's taking a personal subjective opinion and trying to make it into a universal truth, a universal truth that can if fact be supported or undermined by argumentation.
For example, Federal outlays as percentage of GDP are now at the lowest level in 40 years (for real, look it up). We might still want to bring them down further, but the statement "taxes are too high" is not immune from objective argumentation.
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The statement "taxes are too high" can be made objective, provided that it is tied to specific instances or it can be shown that real damage is being caused by high taxes. For an example of the former, let's assume that a district has a water and sewer tax that brings in 1 million dollars a year to cover ALL expenses that come to only 100,000 dollars a year (and the rest of the money is stolen). That tax would be objectively too high.
From a financial standpoint, taxes can be too low or too high for the sole
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They just declare whatever they're feeling at the moment to be "true", because they want it to be.
Ah, yeah, you mean like 'Good guy with a Gun'.
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(It's not just Twitter. One thing that infuriates me about comments on the BBC News website is the character limit to what you can say. All you have room for is an assertion rather than an argument. On the other had it's actually one of the things I like about Slashdot, with no comment length limit. This does
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We make fun of more sophisticated logical fallacies, but at least those who use them actually get to the "because" part. "Obama is worse than Hilter... because Hitler took away everyone's guns.. "The justification isn't at all true, but at least it's an attempt.
I'd say this is not so much an argument as much as a disguised ad hominem. Let's say Hitler was a bad tipper and that Obama is worse and the argument goes pretty much "OMG no tip! Obama is worse than Hitler" which happens to be technically true in the very limited area of tipping, but you're only namedropping Hitler because everybody hates him and it's pretty obvious you don't reallly believe that being a bad tipper is the greatest sin they ever committed. You just want your opponent to start arguing why Ob
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None of the above, read below: (Score:2)
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IEAnything, really. And Edge is even shittier: you can know longer 'save link as' to rename the file and/or change its' destination.
Must accept its' depositing into a default download folder then go fish it out to rename and relocate it elsewhere. What a waste of time.
Examples, please? (Score:2)
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EXAMPLES (Score:2, Informative)
Straw man - IT is bad, because if everybody did IT and nothing else, bad things would happen and we don't want bad things to happen.
Ad hominem - That person is ugly and a NAZI, therefore you cannot agree with anything they say.
Appeal to authority - I'm a medical doctor, so you can trust my opinion on climate change.
Appeal to emotion - Think of the children!
Band wagon - All good Americans believe in this.
Correlation vs. causation
Slippery Slope - “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to
Re:EXAMPLES - Car Allegories (Score:5, Insightful)
Straw man - Fuel additives don't work. Fill you gas tank up with nothing but fuel additives and see how your engine runs then.
Ad hominem - What he says is wrong because he likes motorcycles.
Appeal to authority - I'm a doctor, you can trust my advise on which car to buy.
Appeal to emotion - Without our tires, you may not be able to stop in time and your kids will die in a horrible car crash.
Band wagon - More people own Chevy than Fords, so Chevys are better.
Correlation vs. causation - Every time I've had a wreck, Elvis has been playing on the radio. Playing Elvis on the radio causes wrecks.
Slippery Slope - If I let you borrow my car, then you'll just want to borrow it more and more, and eventually never give it back.
Appeal to CowboyNeal - Cowboy Neal, please buy me a car!
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Appeal to authority - I'm a doctor, you can trust my advise on which car to buy.
Appeal to Grammar Nazi - I advise you on how to use my advice, also I want to run over you in my car (but wont because blood is hard to get out of an S15 front splitter).
Re:EXAMPLES - Car Allegories (Score:4, Interesting)
Appeal to Muphry's Law [wikipedia.org]. won't not wont.
Re:EXAMPLES - ./ Edition (Score:2)
Straw man - If you use a single line of Open Source Software, you'll lose control of all your code.
Ad hominem - You can't believe him, he's a shill for Dice.com.
Appeal to authority - My Slashdot ID is lower than yours.
Appeal to emotion - If you love free software, you'll buy my proprietary product.
Band wagon - Most people use Windows, so that must be the best OS.
Correlation vs. causation - Netcraft says.
Slippery Slope - If people use Open Source Software, it will eventually infect all software and we'll end
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Mine is lower than yours, therefore your entire list is full of shit.
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Mine is lower than yours, therefore your assessment is bogus and I declare in favour of the GP.
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I dunno, his/her number is also a prime. I think that means his/her nerd authority trumps yours.
Re:EXAMPLES - Finished Version (Score:2)
Straw man - IT is bad, because if everybody did IT and nothing else, bad things would happen and we don't want bad things to happen.
Ad hominem - That person is ugly and a NAZI, therefore you cannot agree with anything they say.
Appeal to authority - I'm a medical doctor, so you can trust my opinion on climate change.
Appeal to emotion - Think of the children!
Band wagon - All good Americans believe in this.
Correlation vs. causation - Every time that song comes on the radio, it rains. That song must be causing
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Here's a much, much better example from real life: We have a consensus! The science is settled! Why don't you just stop arguing and accept it?
Logical Defence (for Android) (Score:2)
Here's something that might come in handy:
An open source Android app that displays a list of the logical fallacies that haunt every rationalists' world
https://f-droid.org/repository... [f-droid.org]
I see where this is going (Score:5, Funny)
The only reason you idiots didn't vote "straw man" is because so many others were voting for "correlation vs. causation". I'm an expert on this, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves. It's only a matter of time before this leads us to stealing Cowboy Neal's horse.
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Actually in terms of correlation versus causation, this poll is a falacy, as it does not reflect the general nature of the internet but the particular cluster points of interaction of particular users. Some groups on the internet tend to cling to a particular falacy more than any other ie typically right wing politics will resort to the ad hominem attack, nearly every time, some times they will start with others but inevitably they go for the ad hominem in the end. More accurate poll would seek to group sp
Honorable mention: circular reasoning, or begging (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Honorable mention: circular reasoning, or beggi (Score:5, Insightful)
Also worth noting: almost no one on the internet seems to know what begging the question actually means.
Well, actually, they know perfectly well what it "actually means" in 2015.
Language is fundamentally a type of communication, not a formalized system of rules. If a phrase no longer communicates meaning X even to an educated audience, but instead communicates meaning Y to an educated audience, then the phrase has actually changed its meaning.
Grammar Girl [quickanddirtytips.com] originally tried to "fight the good fight" back in 2008 and argue for the correct meaning, but by 2014 in her update she had realized it was a lost cause. In researching a book, she went through THOUSANDS of internet search results trying to find an example of correct usage and failed.
Over at Language Log [upenn.edu], they tried looking at recent usages even in edited prose like the New York Times, and in 20 hits, they found 15 misuses, 4 people complaining about how nobody uses the phrase correctly anymore, and apparently only one correct use. Moreover, as they point out, the phrase was doomed from the start -- it was a bad translation of a Latin phrase which was already a bit removed from the original Greek. It didn't really make sense even when it first appeared in English, and it certainly doesn't today.
So, what to do? When 99+% of uses are incorrect, and of the remaining 1%, at least 90% of them are just people complaining about people who don't use it correctly (rather than actually... well, using the phrase correctly), then the battle has been lost.
Both of my links (and many other usage experts) suggest that it has become what usage expert Brian Garner would call a "skunked" phrase. That is -- if you use it "correctly" (according to the old meaning), nobody will understand you except philosophers and pedantic grammar wackos. If you use the modern and current meaning, the philosophers won't care, but the grammar wackos will declare you to be an uneducated heathen moron.
Good writers want to COMMUNICATE, not win impossible grammar battles. Thus, if you want to say "raises the question," say "raises the question." If you want to reference the logical flaw of petitio principii, then use the Latin (which makes more sense than the English phrase anyway), or use something straightforward like "assuming the conclusion."
"Begging the question" just doesn't mean petitio principii anymore, except in philosophy journals. People on the internet DO know what it means -- for values of "means" that involve actually communicating meaning through language to an audience -- it just now means something different. Language is a cultural construction which is subject to evolution. Deal with it.
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Um, no, it doesn't. It means, and has always meant, being tried by your equals. In Britain, it used to be that a commoner would be tried by a jury of commoners, while a noble had to be tried by the House of Lords (i.e., other nobles). In both cases, that was "a jury of your peers". It's true that "peer" can be used to mean noble or lord, but
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This is normal. "A jury of your peers" used to mean being tried by your betters - a jury who are members of the nobility, as apposed to a jury composed of common schmucks like us.
That's completely bogus. The word "peer" never meant "someone better than you." Its original usage was "an equal" in social or legal status, ultimately derived from the Latin "par" (like in the phrase "on par with").
When the idea of having something like a "jury of one's peers" came into existence around the time of the Magna Carta, the protection was for noblemen (barons, etc.) ALONE, not common people... like most of the rights in the Magna Carta.
It was only a couple centuries later that the word "p
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The world didn't begin with the Magna Carta.
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By the way, your other implicit claim about how "betters" should know better in grammar also seems problematic. A few brief searches show the use of "begging the question" by good writers for all of the 20th century, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage actually lists Henry Adams (descendent of two presidents and future president of the American Historical Association) as its earliest citation of this use in 1860.
A few minutes in searches on Google Books also showed me a number of such use
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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to meanâ"neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be masterâ"that's all."
Rules are written in words. Change the meaning of the words, change the meaning of the rules.
What does the word "marriage" mean?
Data is recorded in words. Change the meaning of the words, destroy the dat
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Internet? I'm not sure what you're talking about. The general common usage of the phrase has changed and that has nothing to do with people on the internet.
Funny thing with the english language is something is given meaning by how people understand it. So when a phrase is misused as spectacularly as "begs the question" is, as long as people have a common understanding of what is meant by the new usage then the new usage becomes a standard without any authority required to approve it.
It's ad hominem (Score:2)
Anyone who didn't pick ad hominem is a blind idiot. Look at the trolls! Look at the insults! If you aren't on the ad hominem train, you are clearly too stupid to see the truth!
False Dichotomy (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is "False Dichotomy" not an option? Or is it not considered a logical fallacy.
Re:False Dichotomy (Score:5, Funny)
Why is "False Dichotomy" not an option? Or is it not considered a logical fallacy.
Yeah. Like those are the only two choices. :p
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Well, it's a matter either listing every damn fallacy anyone's ever named or just getting a few common ones in there.
True vs funny (Score:2)
Had I voted truthfully I would have had to go with "Ad hominem", but given that this poll had the funniest "Cowboy Neal" option in a long time, I was forced to vote that way.
The Corny Option Is Missing (Score:3)
Shame they left out the one where you fling corn at your opponent... the ad hominy attack.
Slippery slope (Score:2)
The virtual lack of slippery slope votes is why we can't have nice things.
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is cowboyneal an abstraction? (Score:2)
Frequencies (Score:3)
Ad hominem isn't used in earnest as often as the others mentioned, since most people aren't wholly convinced by it per se. One non-fallacious usage of ad hominem is to point out a potential conflict of interest. It can be convincing if used in a "he's a dirty [outgroup membership here]" way, to certain people.
Appeal to authority is used an average amount, often in quotation wars, but frequently devolves into an argument of which authority is more authoritative. Likely to lead to ad hominems against the authorities.
Appeals to emotion are probably the second-most-used fallacies on the Internet, due to the wide variety of emotions to appeal to and ways to appeal to them, some of which people can't even name ("think of the children!" etc.). They can be combined with nearly any other fallacy, as well.
Bandwagon isn't intentionally employed that often, since most people learn it's fallacious by adulthood. In any isolated groupthink environment it's likely to be implicitly in effect, perhaps with a "side with your friends rather than the outsider" angle.
Correlation vs. causation is only really in play when discussing statistical studies which don't involve controlled experiments; studies and even experiments are generally accompanied by appeals to authority ("ivy-league scientists say...") and bandwagon ("scientific consensus says...").
Slippery slope is likely the rarest, since it doesn't apply to historical discussions (if society slipped down the slope or not is a matter of fact) or binary decisions with no arbitrary cutoff. There has to be a slope to slip down, and many issues don't have one that would make sense.
I'm pegging Strawman arguments as the most common Internet fallacy (listed), by quite a bit, due to how easy it is to employ completely accidentally, even if one is wary of strawman arguments and tries to avoid them. Merely by failing to properly understand a position, one is likely to make a strawman argument in an attempt to clarify the issue under discussion. Trying to take a devil's advocate position for something you disagree with, without employing a strawman argument for it, is HARD. It's so easy to try to boil down the opposition to save time and mental energy, even if it loses the crux of their arguments, that one is likely to do so. :P
Perhaps, making my case for this, I'm strawmanning the other fallacies; even if true, wouldn't this prove my point?
I see a corellation (Score:2)
Argument from incredulity (Score:2)
I can NOT believe they would make a list and not include an argument from incredulity!
No true nerd (Score:2)
No true nerd would have left out that fallacy with the Scotsman.
Ignoratio elenchi (Score:2)
Ignoratio elenchi.
Everybody who confuses correlation with causation (Score:2)
Everybody who confuses correlation with causation eventually dies.
Which begs the question... (Score:2)
Most common fallacy is wrongly claiming a fallacy (Score:2)
Systemd! Wayland! (Score:2)
Surely Systemd/Wayland is better than sysvinit/X because they're being adopted by People Who Know What They're Doing.
Systemd is better than sysvinit because sysvinit is icky.
Network transparency isn't important because I don't use it.
The list goes on.
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correlation does not imply causation (Score:2)
Inverse errors (Score:2)
Confusing necessary and sufficient conditions is the most common in my experience, particularly inverse errors. Even people who are relatively intelligent.
Take the following example:
If he tried to flee first, then he had right to use lethal force in self-defense.
He did not try to flee first.
Therefore, he did not have the right to use lethal force in self-defense.
People think arguments of this form are valid, but it is a logical fallacy known as an inverse error. Even when you point it out to them, they st
No love for "No true Scotsman"? (Score:3)
No /. user would overlook that one. No true Slashdotter, anyway.
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Slippery slope is a logical fallacy because it's not logical. It's an appeal to emotion, not reason. And as you say, it may be right or wrong, so using it in an argument doesn't make the argument stronger. It's generally used as a form of ad hominem.
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