Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Three More Simple Reasoning Hacks


  1. Fallacious premises fail to support conclusions. Fallacious premise recognition is a rotten reason to auto reject a conclusion. We have a duty to weigh the good points of an argument against the good points of other arguments on an issue. Arguments with many fallacies sometimes outweigh arguments with fewer fallacies because the former sometimes have good points worth more weight than the other arguments' good points. 
  2. The word not is sometimes a warning that a claim is a straw person attack, especially the phrase not all. The words perfect, panacea, and guarantee are similar warnings. Examples: "There's no guarantee that the policy will work. Not all Lutherans support that."
  3. Criticizing the preposterous political belief of a stranger having almost no political power, even when quoted exactly and in the correct context, is a straw person attack. Our duty is to find important truths, not to entertain ourselves attacking easy targets or to attempt to fanatically defend poorly reasoned beliefs by comparing ourselves to worse individuals.

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