Logical Fallacies That Grind Your Gears

[sora91111]

Can bandwagon be used to describe an argument of why you joined a group and why you're because you joined when it became popular are is there a another one that better describes this phenomena

 

[DarthVella]

I despise people that have the mindset that they will believe X and will ignore - not even feebly attempt to deny, just effing ignore - all evidence, logic, and reasoning to the otherwise. Especially Christians, in relation to the Bible. Excuse me while I rant.

Spoiler: Ranting

I happen to be Catholic myself, and I while I believe in God, I accept that my beliefs may be incorrect in some form or another (even though I will stick by my erroneous beliefs for lack of an alternative). However, I am pissed off by hardcore Christians who say "God wrote the Bible, and God is perfect, so it is the truth." Not to mention anti-Christians who parrot that statement and then use it to mock my faith.

Well, no, God did not write the Bible. The authors of the Bible are variously described as prophets and saints, and they wrote it based on what happened to them or what God told them. Prophets and saints are not God, they are people. People make mistakes, and/or interpret things differently. Not to mention that it has had to go through translations and what for simplicity's sake I'll call "clarity rewrites" by the Vatican. Ergo, the Bible may - nay, will - contain some mistakes.

To which, of course, the standard response is, "God wrote the Bible, and God is perfect, so it is the truth."

Wow, I feel a lot better now. Sorry about that.

 

[Lexodus]

Literally anything said by a Creationist, ever.

 

[Nyaliva]

I love logic and mathematics and so pretty much any logical fallacy often physically hurts me. I haven't done any philosophy so logic pertaining to morality or belief is something I tend to avoid but I'm thinking of getting into it.

What irks me most is not so much a logical fallacy though, it's people's unwillingness to change their beliefs. I'll call it the Ego Fallacy because people will feel they need to make their bed with the opinion they've chosen or seem cowardly in their convictions. This not only causes most internet debates to devolve rapidly into ad hominem and fallacious arguments, but it divides people based on the simplest things. Not to mention when someone is faced with an obvious choice which is based on fact rather than opinion they avoid and ignore the logical arguments against their opinions. On the other hand, when a person's opinion is supported by a small logical point they use that point as fact against everyone they can even though it's still only opinion.

Basically, in my opinion (are you happy, Filliecs? ), Pride is the greatest of all evils.

 

[JeffBergGold]

The Fallacy fallacy - Your argument is incorrect therefore your conclusion is incorrect - not necessarily true, it just means that this particular argument should be dismissed.

Also trigger happy fallacy spotting. For instance, slippery slope arguments aren't automatically fallacious, it depends heavily on the details of the situation.

If an argument is incorrect it is extremely likely that the conclusion drawn is incorrect.

It's extremely hard to draw a correct conclusion with the wrong variables. Stumbling on a correct conclusion just because of dumb luck should still be dismissed just due to the idiocy factor.

 

[Thaa'ir]

Non sequitur: it does not follow. Example: Yakob believes that God exists, therefore he is an asshole. Jens lies to his parents frequently, therefore his artwork is terrible.

 

[Nimzabaat]

The Slippery Slope argument. Mostly when it's used to argue against gay marriage.

How the hell is allowing gay people to marry going to lead to beastiality or men marrying cars?

Actually, bestiality is legal in more states than gay marriage. Just had to point that out.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Literally anything said by a Creationist, ever.

So if I said "it is wrong to rape children" and am a creationist...then what are you saying here?

 

[Viking67]

The Just World Fallacy, the refusal to accept that Bad Things could happen to you or yours, so anyone who has Bad Things happen to them must be to blame somehow.

I didn't know enough about logic to know that that was a logical fallacy, but in psychology we call that the fundamental attribution bias (or actor-observer bias), and it's something we humans do all the time without realizing it (some people more than others, of course). If you're interested in this sort of thing you should check it out and do some reading. Essentially it means that we are more likely to attribute others' behavior and the results thereof to their personality and abilities, while we tend to attribute our own behavior to the situation we were in at the time.

To give a fairly blatant example, if someone else gets in a car crash, it's because they're a lousy driver, but if *I* got into a car crash, it's because it was dark and the road was slick and he slammed on his breaks out of nowhere.

Best we can tell, it's used to help protect our sense of self-worth (as in your example, "it happened to them, but it couldn't happen to me!"), and I think it may also be due to our need to figure out the people around us to make them more "known quantities" as it were. But that's just conjecture on my part.