Logical fallacies

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LogicExplorer
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Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

Hey there!
I am considering to make another website about logical fallacies. Can you give me some funny examples of the Personal Incredulity Fallacy that happened on this forum (or some other forum you are active on)?
Thanks in advance!
teo123
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by teo123 »

I don't know if this will be funny to people who don't know much about linguistics, but to me this was hilarious:
http://linguistforum.com/outside-of-the-box/croatian-toponyms/60/
My nickname there is FlatAssembler. That thread happens to show how science reads oddly to the uneducated, and why many people would rather listen to pseudoscience than to the actual science.
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

I think I understand it, and it's funny to me, but I think it's too technical for most of the people who'll be reading my blog. Thanks anyway!
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

Someone else?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by brimstoneSalad »

We don't get a lot of claims to personal incredulity here.

Teo makes a few in this thread somewhere, like not understanding how airplanes work:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?t=1829

You get more of those claims in religion discussion. Here we have more of an issue with assertions that go against known science or are logically inconsistent.
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

He claimed that because he didn't understand how the airplanes work that airplanes didn't exist? That's hilarious. It's quite a bit of a long thread for me to search, could you give me some quotation please?

Kind of weird that the same guy is capable of discussing advanced linguistics and making a website with, among other things, some HTML5 games he made (he linked to it on the linguistforum thread) and is capable of thinking that airplanes don't exist.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by brimstoneSalad »

LogicExplorer wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 12:05 am He claimed that because he didn't understand how the airplanes work that airplanes didn't exist? That's hilarious. It's quite a bit of a long thread for me to search, could you give me some quotation please?
Sorry, I don't know what page it occurs on.

It was basically that he thought airplanes were too complex, since he couldn't understand them, so it's more likely that they don't exist and people are lying about them (which seemed to him simpler to understand).
He thought he was abiding by Occam's razor in denying the existence of airplanes rather than accepting a "more complicated" explanation that they are real.
LogicExplorer wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 12:05 amKind of weird that the same guy is capable of discussing advanced linguistics and making a website with, among other things, some HTML5 games he made (he linked to it on the linguistforum thread) and is capable of thinking that airplanes don't exist.
He doesn't still think airplanes don't exist.
Smart people can convince themselves of some pretty stupid things.

I talked him out of believing the Earth is flat and that Airplanes are not real... although that wasn't really useful.
Now he has convinced himself of radical anarchism, and that the world would be a better place without any laws or government and that even murder should be legal.

It's basically Whac-a-mole. I'm not going to talk him out of that one because he'll just find something else crazy to believe.
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

He thought he was abiding by Occam's razor in denying the existence of airplanes rather than accepting a "more complicated" explanation that they are real.
Well, what can you do? A small amount of thinking about something can sometimes be worse than not thinking at all. Descartes similarly used his philosophy to come to a conclusion that animals weren't capable of feeling pain.
Though I don't see how can somebody think airplanes don't exist. I mean, you see them almost every day in the sky.
OK, I will add it to my website, even though it's on the line of trolling, and I intended to add real-world examples.
Now he has convinced himself of radical anarchism, and that the world would be a better place without any laws or government and that even murder should be legal.
Why would that be crazy? Many philosophers thought that way, including Rousseau. And the science is not yet quite clear. As far as I'm aware, nobody has ever done an experiment in which he legalized murder to see what would happen. Personally, I wouldn't expect much to happen, rational people wouldn't murder no matter if there is a law preventing them or not, and irrational people aren't really affected by laws in the first place. The actual problem with anarchism appears to be how to achieve it: people like the false sense of justice and safety the government gives them.

So, you think the fallacy of personal incredulity isn't very common. Which ones do you think are? Can you give me some examples of them?
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by teo123 »

You guys here seem to remember only the bad stuff about me. Can't you at least praise the effort I made to learn English so well?
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by LogicExplorer »

This forum doesn't appear to be so "philosophical", does it? You don't appear to think much about logic and philosophy here.

Based on what I've seen, I'd say that a common logical fallacy here is basing oneself too much on empricism and too little on reasoning. Thinking that the Earth is flat is a perfect example of that. Do you agree?
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