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Comment by Uehreka | Hacker News Reader

When I see someone on Facebook/Twitter link to a site like this to demonstrate that the person they’re arguing with is “doing a fallacy”, I just accuse them of Appeal To Authority. I feel like these kinds of sites are often just used to shut someone down by saying that they’re doing something wrong, without actually going through the work of following through with why the “fallacy” makes their argument weak. Also, in my experience fallacies/biases are often more indicative of a weak argument than a wrong one.

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Well, if you really want to go this route, you can beat them at their own game and accuse them of Arguing From Fallacy. (A nice illustration: https://theupturnedmicroscope.com/comic/logical-fallacies-ar...)

That being said, I do think it’s important to avoid fallacious reasoning — it helps in making arguments clearer. As mentioned above, just because someone uses a fallacy doesn’t mean their conclusion is wrong, but it does mean that you can prove their argument wrong. (And any reply should ideally be phrased in these terms: ‘your argument has problem X’ is easier to respond to than ‘your argument has fallacy Y’.) Furthermore it means they are thinking less clearly than they perhaps should be.

The Fallacy Fallacy doesn't actually do anything because it is covered by itself and creates a loop.

I'd say the bigger problem is that it's roughly equivalent to saying, "Just because my argument is bad doesn't mean I'm wrong."

I mean, yes, that's true, but you have yet to prove yourself correct, so why should anyone change their mind?

And that’s how you get a stack overflow.

Always remember your exit condition when doing recursion, folks!

> accuse them of Arguing From Fallacy

But then, you're just doing an ad hominem...

I know I am, but what... am... I?

That's not an ad hominem. You're attacking their argument, not them as a person.

An ad hominem would be like saying, "Oh yeah, well you're an alcoholic", for instance, as though that could discredit their argument even if it were true.

> just because someone uses a fallacy doesn’t mean their conclusion is wrong, but it does mean that you can prove their argument wrong.

One way this can go wrong is if the two people are thinking at different levels of abstraction or dimensionality (variables), especially when one or both participants don't understand what that means (which seems to be "most" people in the general public).

What do you mean?

And by extension, fallacious reasoning means that you have no good reason to take what the reasoner is arguing as true (unless they can a non-fallacious argument) – right?

The fact that an argument is fallacious doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusion is wrong, but there does (logically, by necessity) exist (at least) a non-fallacious argument for a correct conclusion.

Yes, exactly this. It’s useful to understand biases: cognitive diversions from the truth.

Echoing OP’s sentiment: How one uses/weaponizes such knowledge depends on one’s goals: to win petty ego battles in debate or seek the truth?

Yeah I remember seeing a lot of people deploying the fallacy list(s) as an argumentative tool to say "ha! you're argument vaguely resembles this 'fallacy' so you're instantly wrong." It's a lot less now I think, they've fallen out of style I guess, or I'm just getting in/reading less pointless arguments.

The lengths people will go to, to avoid thinking, is impressive.

I call this the "fallacy" fallacy.

Also, a cognitive bias isn’t necessarily a fallacy.

It’s only a prism that deforms our perspective of the world.

Fallacies are a different beast altogether.

It's a bit funny because Appeal to Authority isn't a fallacy. The actual fallacy is Appeal to Incorrect / False Authority:

"An appeal to false authority is a fallacious argument that relies on the statements of a false authority figure, who is framed as a credible authority on the topic being discussed."

https://effectiviology.com/false-authority/#:~:text=An%20app....

> The actual fallacy

... according to linguistics researcher with a website. He sounds like as much a false authority on philosophy as anyone else.

From the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

9. The ad verecundiam fallacy concerns appeals to authority or expertise. Fundamentally, the fallacy involves accepting as evidence for a proposition the pronouncement of someone who is taken to be an authority but is not really an authority. This can happen when non-experts parade as experts in fields in which they have no special competence—when, for example, celebrities endorse commercial products or social movements. Similarly, when there is controversy, and authorities are divided, it is an error to base one’s view on the authority of just some of them. (See also 2.4 below.)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

The point the parent was making is that citing authority isn't a bad thing to do. Citing authorities in _a different field_ often is, though.

(Citing a doctor on the common cold is not a fallacy, but citing a doctor on global economics is)

And in doing so they cited a linguist about philosophy.

And it doesn’t matter anyway - thankfully we use science now and not philosophy to determine truth.

Does it actually matter?

An argument doesn't get any more or less fallacious based on who believes in it (the authority, in this case) – that's not an argument in itself.

It might be reasonable (a useful heuristic) to lean to the side of the expert, but the fact that an expert believes something doesn't in itself make the conclusion correct.

To the contrary, if someone is a correct authority, their statements have more weight on their domain of expertise. While all of us on HN are very clever and could think of a number of exceptions, I would trust a climate scientist as a legitimate authority on climate change over a religious leader or a PR person.

I too would trust a climate scientist as a legitimate authority on climate change over a religious leader or a PR person – but that's not what I'm discussing.

I'm saying global warming isn't true because scientists believe it to be true (this would be a fallacious argument).

That would be a fallacious argument because it does not follow (non-sequitur) that the beliefs of scientists can cause shifts in reality, but nobody was arguing that.

They were arguing that it is logical to conclude that climate change is real because the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists (the actual domain experts) is that it is real.

That's not an argument that deals with whether climate change is real or not – but whether it's reasonable to believe it is, based on one's own lack of understanding in combination with making (reasonable) assumptions.

It is an argument that the consensus of the overwhelming majority of experts on any given subject with such a consensus is strong evidence for that position.

It also tends to derail the conversation and you end up arguing about fallacy definitions instead of the actual point.

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