learn the 42 logical fallacies

A red herring is the use of a diversion to win an argument. The statement made is not pertinent to the issue, yet is presented as evidence to support or refute the claim and thus is logically unsound.

Fallacy status aside, this is the best argument tool for dealing with my family.

I picked this one at random to look at, because I had no idea what it was about. Now I really, REALLY, want to find out! I love knowing stuff like this!

The artificial constraint makes the goal seem possible.

I had this on my list of future things to do. I actually finished a major goal I’ve been working on for ages. So I think I’ll start on this now.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html

...but I really don’t have the cognitive energy to dedicate to such a demanding project. Maybe I’ll pick this one back up. Especially, if I find the time to get back into reading more of the Greek philosophers.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

This was an interesting exercise that actually came in handy this weekend. During a political discussion that turned into a rather heated debate, I trumped my opponent, er, friend, by saying, “Well, now, that’s a slippery slope argument!” He pretended he had no idea what I was talking about and changed the subject (I think he was attempting to throw me off track by tossing out a red herring ….)

“Ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.

This type of "argument" has the following form:

Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A’s claim is false.

It is a fallacy that takes evidence from several, possibly unrepresentative, cases to a general rule; generalizing from few to many. Note the relation to statistics: Much of statistics concerns whether or not a sample is representative of a larger population. The larger the sample size, the better the representativeness. Note also that the opposite of a hasty generalization is a sweeping generalization.

Is it a fallacy?
This fallacy is actually an extremely effective persuasive device. As many people have argued, peoples’ emotions often carry much more force than their reason. Logical argumentation is often difficult and time consuming and it rarely has the power to spurn people to action. It is the power of this fallacy that explains its great popularity and wide usage. However, it is still a fallacy