We’ve thus far covered quite a few fallacies of logic. Today I’d like to change our direction a bit and start dealing with other word-borne attacks; they affect critical thinking also, and that’s what this series is really about.
And so we’ll start today on attacks that aren’t quite fallacies of logic. Continue reading “Other Attacks, Part 1”
Properly, what we’ll be covering today are fallacies of irrelevance. There are several types of these, with the genetic fallacy and ignoring refutation being the best known. Nonetheless, I tend to see them all as fallacies of elimination, and so I’ve given our coverage that name.
This fallacy, like more or less all of them, is very old. This one was first noted by Aristotle at 330 BC or so. In our time we see it mainly as political word tricks.
Let’s start with the genetic fallacy, which eliminates an idea based upon its origin, or at least its claimed origin. A common example would be something like this: Continue reading “Fallacy #16: Fallacies of Elimination”
We are watching the Enlightenment collapse before us in real time. I’ll be fairly brief in my explanation of why this is so and how it came about, but it strikes me as something we should understand.
Bear in mind that what remains of the Enlightenment is collapsing for structural reasons. I haven’t formed this discourse around political or academic theories, I’m basing it on facts and direct observations. Obviously I’m simplifying (one can’t write history any other way), but minus the inevitable exceptions and complications, this is what happened and what is happening. Continue reading “The Collapse of The Enlightenment”
Last week I was invited to the Geopolitics & Empire podcast with Hrvoje Morić. It was a great conversation.
Today we’ll cover another practical application fallacy, which I’m calling the appeal to binaries. It’s similar to the nirvana fallacy, but operates almost in reverse. Nirvana was about eliminating contrary ideas, binaries is about protecting beloved ideas. Where nirvana was a sword, binaries is a shield. Furthermore, it operates differently, being based upon a different principle.
A binary, of course, is something that divides only into opposites:
As we did last time, we’ll combine several formal fallacies in this installment. I’m doing this because I think the application of these fallacies has more practical importance than their logical derivations. That is, all fallacies are applied by real humans, against real humans; and so I want to make that the primary focus, not their formal (almost mathematic) explanations.
I have nothing against the formal renderings of these things, in fact I find them necessary, but for application in actual human affairs, usage is more central than analytics.
And so I’m calling today’s fallacy the appeal to diversions. We could include many formal fallacies under this description, but here are the primary types: Continue reading “Fallacy #14: The Appeal To Diversions”
The events of 2020 were unique in human history, and so I think it’s important to give them some perspective. What we experienced was the first televised plague. What it spawned was a unique fear machine.
Fear delivery systems go back to the first tyrants, of course, but this one featured a scale and an intimacy that went beyond all others, even those of the vile USSR.
The plague itself, COVID-19, was minor as such things go. The flu of 1919 was far worse, not to mention historical plagues that made this one look like a case of the sniffles. Nonetheless, it was enough to spawn something unique. So, briefly, let’s look at the pieces that came together: Continue reading “The Great Fear Machine of 2020”
Our fallacy #4 was the appeal to authority, the claim that being authorized makes things right. We noted a similar fallacy in our #8, the naturalist fallacy, a claim that time creates authority and truth. For today’s fallacy, however, I want to turn these around: Not third parties referring to authority, but authority itself telling us what’s right. And so I’m calling this fallacy, the argument from authority.
The things we’ll be covering in this installment involve well-known fallacies like the argument from repetition (repeating something until everyone just accepts it), the courtier’s reply (claiming that the other person’s argument is wrong because he or she lacks credentials) and the argument from incredulity (“Your argument is absurd!”). All of these work because they come from authority, and so I think it’s better to examine them in that way. Continue reading “Fallacy #13: The Argument From Authority”
As I write this, the Wall Street complex is creating a new group of radicals… a potent new group of radicals. By now, you probably know the outline of the story:
A large number of young people, many of them locked out of work, used their time to poke around the stock market, looking for opportunities; something that micro-trading apps, stimulus checks and the Internet made practical. Soon enough they discovered hedge funds doing the nasty things that hedge funds do… and turned their game back upon them. They crashed at least one of them. Continue reading “As The Oligarchy Creates A New Group of Revolutionaries”
America, 1776
The development of the American colonies moved in an arc. They began with a lot of oppression (after the old world model), shook it off as the arc rose toward 1776 and the revolution, then headed slowly back down. My job today is to give you some feel of the times, and I’ll begin with some background.
Perhaps the most important accident of the early America period was a British policy that later became known as salutary neglect. This salutary (healthful) neglect began in 1722, when a Whig named Robert Walpole became the king’s chief minister. The Whigs held what we might call libertarian opinions, and Walpole wanted to govern loosely, to avoid government meddling, and to let natural forces bring prosperity to England. Under Walpole, many of the regulations upon American trade were simply ignored. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 4”
