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Comment by WheelsAtLarge | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered about the usefulness of books that point out argument fallacies. The reality is that most people don't follow any rules when it comes to arguments. They just follow what feels good, ie what they(we) have learned via social immersion. They are as useful as using a tea cup to rescue a sinking ship. Recognizing an argument fallacy may make us feel good but it does little towards persuading someone towards your side of the argument. I can tell you that most people don't care about their argument fallacies they just know that they have chosen a side in an argument and they are right.

I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.

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> I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.

First, the point of a discussion isn't necessarily to change the mind of opposing parties. There is very often an audience, often including members receptive to a changed opinion. We need to discuss things rationally and reasonably for the sake of the broader community if nothing else. And, barring influencing third parties, there's something to be said for making proponents of bad arguments work for all the rhetorical ground they take.

Second, even in smaller discussions, I feel it's honorable to continually give people the chance to think better and make better decisions. It's respectful to them to do so, and it's deeply disrespectful to write someone off as unpersuadable or hopeless, not matter how accurate that sentiment is.

Third, it's good for us to give ourselves the chance to improve as well. If we fail to engage with different viewpoints, we only entrench in our current thought patterns. We owe it to ourselves to expose those thoughts to the light of day and see if they can be improved or if they need to be abandoned altogether.

Being able to correctly identify logical fallacies is an important skill in and of itself. Persuading someone that they are wrong is a totally separate exercise.

> Being able to correctly identify logical fallacies is an important skill in and of itself.

It's not, really. A person who understands the notions of necessity and sufficiency, knows what a counterexample is, and knows their truth tables (with or without really knowing the textbook definitions of these things) should be able to function just fine without knowing the names of all the various fallacies.

(consider how many people who are inclined to complain about logical fallacies do not understand these things, and therefore misapply the labels)

You are confusing physics with biology, if you will. You could say the entire field if biology is redundant -- it's all consequences of basic physics -- and yet biology is a very useful science.

Arguments aren't presented mechanically step-by-step with a citation of rule at each step; they elide and summarize information, and skip logical steps. The fallacies show you where to look for insufficencies, to avoid being misled by invalid shorthand arguments.

Well, no. We can trivially identify the presence of a fallacy by knowing a few things about logic and so on. The same is not true of biology: an experienced physicist won't necessarily have much ability solving biology problems, as you know.

(I don't remember thinking about the individual fallacies by name very much at all except when I was learning logic, where they were used as examples. Once you're a little more experienced, it would be akin to saying to oneself "okay, now I am using the present tense" while writing.)

> A person who understands the notions of necessity and sufficiency, knows what a counterexample is, and knows their truth tables (with or without really knowing the textbook definitions of these things) should be able to function just fine without knowing the names of all the various fallacies.

Not really. They help for the same reason memorizing formulas in math help - they save the work and time needed to derive the formula again and again. That matters an awful lot in real time discussion. Also, if you know what fallacies exist it is much easier to recognize and encounter them compared to when you have to process the fallacy for the first time. You can even think them through in advance and prepare the argumets.

> They help for the same reason memorizing formulas in math help - they save the work and time needed to derive the formula again and again.

The rules surrounding syllogisms are so simple that I cannot believe anyone would use the word "derive" to describe the process of recognizing a problem with the logic with something like that (the syllogistic fallacies). I'm not sure most people even need to think consciously about the logic, let alone the taxonomy of possible problems with the logic.

On the other hand, informal fallacies, or inductive fallacies... you've got a point there in some cases, I suppose.

> The reality is that most people don't follow any rules when it comes to arguments. They just follow what feels good, ie what they(we) have learned via social immersion.

> I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.

I’m confused. You say normal people follow no rules in arguments, but then you say you’d like to learn more about how normal people argue. The two ideas seem mutually exclusive to me.

> I've always wondered about the usefulness of books that point out argument fallacies.

Presumably, the author would like people to approach arguments more methodically all around.

It would be nice if people were logical in their arguments but I've learned over time that logic seldom changes people's minds once they've locked their point of view. I think that you have to appeal to their emotions to move the argument forward. I guess that's the type of book I'd like to see.

Tragically, I think a pure "appeal to emotions”[1] argument will lead to a fragile victory at best. Emotions are awesome at being irrational (by definition?). Perhaps you could start with emotions and then migration people over to a rationalist perspective? Otherwise you’ll get stuck in the all-too-common emotional “race to the bottom” with anger, fear, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

The way I see it, there are two paradoxes implicit in most (or all) arguments:

1. If the outcome of an argument matters, it matters in the sense that we are emotionally invested in the outcome. The word argument itself implies an inextricably emotional component.

2. Most apparently fallacious arguments boil down to abuses of analogy. But analogy is also, fundamentally, how induction works. Unless the premises of the argument are completely unambiguous (and they rarely are), "rationality" only gets us so far.

IMO, the most important part about learning these "fallacies" is learning when they aren't fallacies at all, but actually the best tools we have for grappling with a complex problem, and hopefully arriving at some unexpected clarification.

The book you're looking for is Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. (Act 3)

You might like Jonathan Haidt's book 'The Righteous Mind' - http://righteousmind.com/

It has a lot on how people make ethical arguments in particular which I found quite eye opening (if a bit bleak in terms of its consequences for civic society).

Thanks for the link, I'll look into it.

Rules of any kind are a lot harder to apply in the heat of action, but when you have time to plan and review I think they're very useful.

Then you probably want to combine logic with rhetoric.

> I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.

Rule #0 for changing someone's view is that they have to actually be open to changing their view. It's surprisingly common that people will explicitly admit, if you ask them, that there is no realistic evidence or argument that could possibly change the side that they're on.

They can be useful when you are arguing with yourself.

I can't argue with that.

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