When I googled “what is a logical fallacy”, I was told that “people also ask what are the 10 logical fallacies? What are the 15 logical fallacies? What are the 24 fallacies logical? “.
I was googling for logical errors because my ears and my mind were ringing. My ears and my mind were ringing because sometimes they are not quick enough to recognize the why and how of the error, only that an error is there.
In an increasingly polarized and mediatized world, we are all manipulated by language.
I’m not sure they taught me this in school, but I read The Enormous Crocodile and loved the way the animals chase him for hiding in plain sight and how he got his reward when his secret plans and clever tricks were exposed.
A logical mistake, Google tells me, is when the conclusion of an argument doesn’t flow from the premise.
There are errors in formal logic, which means that an argument is poorly structured. Informal errors arise when the reasoning of the argument is, well, unreasonable or unreasonable.
An argument doesn’t have to be heated or violent, I learned. It can be a debate. And / or the premise, or the conclusion, some sort of sale.
In the early 2000s, I studied what is called neurolinguistic programming, and on one of the courses I attended, with salespeople, counselors, life coaches and me and my friend Rachel, there was a pastor who wanted to know the tricks of the brain and the tongue so that she could use them to bring people closer to Jesus.
One of the things I remember learning was something like “the rule of yes”, that if you get people to say “yes” twice, they are more likely to agree a third time. . So you give them two easy yeses and then you hit them with your ideology. Something like:
“So, are you worried about what’s going on in the world?”
YES.
“So, do you think nobody understands you?”
YES.
“So you need Jesus / that anti-vax message / a TERF bull **** / to buy what I’m selling you right now.” (Delete if applicable, which means all of the above.)
You probably know Jesus but in case you didn’t know about TERFs, they are transphobes which are acronyms “trans exclusionary radical feminists” (TERF), and in their crusade to make us think that trans people are a danger to people. society, rather than the factually verifiable truth that society is a danger to trans people (see
http://countingourselves.nz), TERFs use a lot of logical errors and linguistic tricks.
They hide their harmful messages under the pretext of defending women’s rights.
When TERF’s chief organization Speak Up For Women New Zealand saw their reservation at the Dunedin City Library canceled this week, there was a predictable outcry over their freedom of speech (also a logical mistake ), as if it somehow supplants the freedom of trans people to exist. .
Anyway, in case you stumble upon a TERF or two, know that they use the “yes rule” to suck you in by all being like:
“So you care about women and girls, don’t you? “
YES.
“So, do you think they should have safe spaces?” “
YES.
“So now let me tell you this incredibly narrow biological essentialist definition of a woman and how we should actually exclude anyone who does not fit that definition.”
What? NO NO NO NO NO.
Sorry for yelling but sometimes it’s like that with huge crocodiles.
And I think maybe I made my own logical mistake in attacking the crocodiles rather than the argument.
This is called “ad hominem”, if you want it in Latin. If I wanted to do more secret plans and clever stuff, I could also “ad populem” appeal to people.
I could spin you around, shred and burn peripheral parts of your argument like straw or knock you over like a domino. I hope I wouldn’t, if I could, and yet I wish I had learned to recognize all of this in school.
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