Don’t Let Fallacies Torpedo Your Thinking
The following is taken from Ch. 6 of my book, Write like they’re your last words.
A fallacy is defined as a mistaken belief or a failure in reasoning. Though most people make an effort to avoid mistakes, no one is infallible, not even those who act like they are.
You can download a chart of common fallacies here. The online chart is hyperlinked to each of the fallacies.
I break fallacies into two major groups:
A. First, we have traditional fallacies you might remember from Philosophy 101. In these, the reasoning is obviously absurd, though we might be at a loss to explain the specific violation involved:
Your dog has puppies.
Your dog is a mother.
It is your dog, therefore it is your mother.
Every distance, no matter how short, consists of an infinite number of points
For a body to move any distance requires covering an infinite number of points.
Nothing can move an infinite distance.
Therefore, all movement is deceptive.
B. More frequently we find these, where the fallacies are more subtle:
“The country’s top economists are in agreement that the Federal Reserve is necessary for economic prosperity.”
“The country’s leading experts agree that X is harming the environment. Therefore, the government should regulate or ban X.”
Let’s address the first statement found under B.
Is it true? In a literal sense, yes — the top economists wouldn’t dream of doing without a central bank. Or if they did it would be considered a nightmare.
So is our work finished? Do we affirm it as true and move on?
No, because the statement suggests that unless you’re a top economist, you have no grounds for disagreeing. I call it the “Who are you?” (Quis es?) fallacy. History tells us experts can be dead wrong, so let’s at least mount a challenge, shall we?
The country’s top economists hold advanced degrees from universities that support central banking. The universities, in turn, receive funding from the federal government, which created the federal reserve system and relies on it heavily for monetary support. Is it o
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
