An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

http://www.bookofbadarguments.com

by jamesbritt • 12 years ago

238 75 12 years ago

What I would have liked is a book that presented the bad arguments in a neutral and fun way so that I could recommend it as a neutral and fun way to learn about these things for anyone. A sort of coffee book primer on logical fallacies.

What I got is a bunch of back-handed cartoon insults towards the groups the author dislikes.

Still nicely done though, and the pictures are great.

vince_refiti• 12 years ago

"What I got is a bunch of back-handed cartoon insults towards the groups the author dislikes."

Ad hominem?

baddox4• 12 years ago

Nope, definitely not ad hominem. That sentence doesn't even contain an argument.

zxcdw• 12 years ago

Which groups exactly and which insults?

mda• 12 years ago

Nice ad hominem + straw man combo you had there.

baddox4• 12 years ago

That comment contained neither an ad hominem nor a straw man.

rahimnathwani• 12 years ago

Check out 'Straight and crooked thinking' by Robert Thouless.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1444117181

Niten• 12 years ago

I agree that the topical references were pretty conspicuous, but they were also fair and served a purpose in my opinion.

I think there is value in illustrating fallacies not merely in the abstract, but also by allusion to real-world examples—especially when the author's stated goal is to prepare his readers "to identify and avoid them in practice". For the most part, those examples are actual arguments I've encountered people make: that anthropogenic climate change must not be real because addressing it now could hurt the economy, or that Christianity is true because the Bible says so. Orthogonal to the ultimate truth value of global warming or religion, these particular arguments are objectively fallacious, and it is both fair and illuminating to call them out as prominent examples.

Maybe one could argue that the author is himself erecting a straw man by (for another example) lumping together UFO conspiracy theorists with the appeal to ignorance. However, one would have to show that (1) the appeal to ignorance is not actually representative of the kind of arguments most often put forth by UFO enthusiasts (it is, in my experience), and (2) that the author's objective with that passage was to discredit UFO enthusiasts, whereas I believe his objective was simply to demonstrate the fallacy of a specific type of argument which just happens to be most commonly employed (and which the audience will most readily recognize) in that context. Rinse and repeat for all the other allusions.

Great illustrations, though: yes, I think we can all agree on that :)

gorhill2• 12 years ago

back-handed cartoon insults towards the groups the author dislikes

Did you read page 42?

Excerpt: "... circumstantial ad hominem, is any argument that attacks a person for cynical reasons, by making a judgment about their intentions ..."

baddox4• 12 years ago

That comment contained no ad hominem. There was no argument that attacked a person for cynical reasons, by making a judgement about their intention.

Natsu• 12 years ago

Fallacies apply to statements about the truth or falsehood of something, not to criticism in general. They did not say that the book was untrue in any way due to that, but rather that they disliked that aspect of the book.

MartinCron3• 12 years ago

What I got is a bunch of back-handed cartoon insults towards the groups the author dislikes.

You over-sensitive liberals just need to grow a thicker skin...

Gigablah• 12 years ago

Quick! Which fallacy does MartinCron's reply represent?

nmrm9• 12 years ago

This comment is fairly comical, since most of the groups singled out in the book are typically associated with conservative politics (religious arguments are singled out several times, for instance).

I agree with grandparent for pragmatic reasons -- suggesting this book to a religious friend could easily be misconstrued by said friend as a back-handed insult.

vacri• 12 years ago

I don't see the groups that the cartoons are insulting. Who do you see as insulted by the cartoons?

baddox4• 12 years ago

I got a kick out of this line on the first page, about argument from consequence:

One should keep in mind that such arguments are fallacious only when they deal with propositions with objective truth values

darylteo• 12 years ago

| This tiny print serves no purpose, but to make this book seem like an actual book. In printed books, one usually sees a large block of tiny print on the first or second page followed by terms like © 2013. All Rights Reserved. So and so. Printed in the United States of America. The publisher may also include prose to deter would-be pirates. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. That is typically followed by a line or two about the publisher, followed by a sequence of numbers.

lol

zhte415• 12 years ago

The sideways scrolling seems not to work in Firefox (I'm using Linux/Mint).

cube00• 12 years ago

Working on Firefox on Fedora, I don't think it would be a distribution related issue, are you using the latest version of Firefox? On Fedora at least it does not update until done by the system package manager (ie. no silent updates like Windows)

theandrewbailey• 12 years ago

Almost nothing but a long blank page appears with Noscript on. This page does not degrade gracefully at all.

honzzz• 12 years ago

I like the book, especially images. There is one weird thing though - the text in images is written in capital letters except the letters 't' and 'f' - it was really surprising to me how distracting it was. Maybe it's just me but this made the text really difficult to read - every time I encountered one of those letters my brain just stopped.

TheZenPsycho• 12 years ago

"this book is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning"

What I find in practice with these (quite popular) lists of logical fallacies, is that they are usually written with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the fundaments of logic and is able to correctly apply them.

This work is no different. While I do enjoy the style of the illustrations, we already have a glut of these things skipping to the juicy parts. What we don't have is approachable, accessible works, free of unexplained jargon, that explain for instance, what exactly a "premise" is. How to decide whether a piece of writing or speech contains an argument. How to correctly identify the conclusion of an argument, and connect it with its premises. And so on, for all the list of things that are usually misunderstood about these lists of "fallacies" by people who are… reallly.. genuinely new to logic.

porker• 12 years ago

If anyone knows of a book that does that - I want to know about it too. That would be really, really useful

marvelous• 12 years ago

This book is good at explaining these language tools: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/947256.A_Short_Course_in...

adrianmsmith• 12 years ago

There is a section "definitions" at the end of the book, which I found helpful. All the words such as "premise" and "sound" are defined there. (Perhaps it would have been better to put it at the beginning of the book.)

innguest2• 12 years ago

Introduction to Logic by Irving Copi used to be like that (back when I read it many years ago). I taught myself using that book as my main read.

acct_0053• 12 years ago

"Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide" isn't bad for a beginner: http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Logic-Graphic-Guide-ebook/...

ctdonath• 12 years ago

Amazing how many people do not understand the definition of "proof". A pithy, concise, and clear definition would be appreciated.

Kluny• 12 years ago

Agreed, this is not a book I would recommend to someone who is guilty of bad arguments, in the hope that they would learn from it. It's dense and requires the reader to fill in a lot of gaps themselves.

lafar6502• 12 years ago

Many people use such flawed logic not because they're clever, but because they arent very good at reasoning and will accept anything that matches their beliefs as truth. Discussing anything with such people is a waste of time.

coldtea3• 12 years ago

I find those "logical fallacies" lists more naive and inapplicable in any intelligent conversation compared to regular bad reasoning.

"Logical fallacies" are not formal logic, and when we're discussing we are forced to make tons of assumptions that are not "logically" guaranteed. Conversation and assessement of a complex reality has far more nuances than what can be handled with a "fallacy list".

The "ad hominen" for example is a very useful guide, because in real life, WHO says something tells us a lot about their motives, interests, possibility of hiding the truth etc, that merely WHAT they say.

Same way, "appeal to authority":

  A is an authority on a particular topic
  A says something about that topic
  A is probably correct

It might be a "fallacy" as far as absolute logic goes, but with the time constraints we have to make decisions, and not being able to master all fields and be able to check the veracity of facts in physics, medicine etc ourselves, it's a very useful guide. When I'm bleeding to death and enter the ICU, I'll sure trust the doctor as "probably correct"...

pessimizer8• 12 years ago

The "ad hominen" for example is a very useful guide, because in real life, WHO says something tells us a lot about their motives, interests, possibility of hiding the truth etc, that merely WHAT they say.

A good argument made with bad intentions is still a good argument.

Same way, "appeal to authority":

This book uses "appeal to irrelevant authority" aka "my dad says you're wrong."

yellowapple• 12 years ago

I've seen a couple lists that include argument from fallacy [0] or some derivative thereof, which I love to refer to when folks try and use the presence of logical fallacies alone to discredit or otherwise reject a conclusion that might be otherwise valid (often in ignorance of other, non-fallacious arguments).

I remember in high school when we were learning about logical fallacies in an English course and subsequently had a class debate about some subject (don't remember what it was). I was one of the two judges, and the teacher assigned two more students to "watch out for logical fallacies". The entire debate devolved into half-baked accusations of logical fallacy (especially accusations of false analogies for literally every analogy presented, regardless of whether or not the analogy was actually valid). It was at that point I figured out that sitting on one's haunches and whining that every argument is a logical fallacy does not an argument make.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

salmonellaeater• 12 years ago

Several of the fallacies remind me of the ESP example from "Queer Uses for Probability Theory" [1][2]. Arguments often involve trusting that the proponent is not lying or misleading us, especially when there is a need for experts to interpret complicated data. You might have two initial hypotheses:

  * H is false
  * H is true

When some actor A introduces new evidence in support of H, there are additional hypotheses that must be introduced:

  * H is false, and A is lying
  * H is true, and A is telling the truth
  * H is true, and A is lying
  * H is false, and A is telling the truth

Any evidence that A introduces in support of H equally supports the first two new hypotheses, while any evidence that A introduces refuting H supports the last two. The result is that, depending on your priors on H and on A's trustworthiness, A's evidence might never be able to convince you that H is true. This means that logical fallacies such as the genetic fallacy are not applicable when there is expertise involved.

If we were all experts or had unlimited time and access to the same information as an argument's proponents, then the genetic fallacy would be hugely useful. With real-world constraints on time and information, it's almost always impossible to evaluate an argument separately from its proponent's commitment to truth.

[1] http://omega.albany.edu:8008/ETJ-PDF/cc5d.pdf [2] Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7929203

rprospero• 12 years ago

You brought back flashbacks on a frustrating afternoon spent trapped with a masters student in philosophy. I was a physics grad student at the time and he was quite keen to share with me his brilliant advancement of quantum theory. He'd essentially stumbled upon the idea of local hidden variables. I explained to him about Bell's inequality and the experiments that followed.

His eyes lit up as he condescendingly explained to me that I had committed the fallacy of argument from authority. I hadn't PROVED that his system was wrong. I had merely stated that the natural world did not agree with his system. All I had done was show that the universe disagreed with him on quantum mechanics - there was no evidence that the universe was right and he was wrong. There's no reason to assume that the universe gets all the laws of physics right.

By the end of the afternoon, I'd managed to get him to firmly agree that no dog has four legs. His logic:

All cats have four legs. Therefore, anything that isn't a cat doesn't have four legs. All dogs are not cats. Therefore, all dogs do not have four legs.

I pointed out that it was fairly obvious that there do exist dogs with four legs and that the argument was obviously fallacious (specifically at line 2). He chided me for making an Argument from Consequences. Just because his proof that no dog has four legs forces me to abandon my belief that I've encountered dogs with four legs doesn't mean that his proof is wrong. I must simply get used to accepting that I miscounted the number of legs on every dog I've ever met, no matter how unlikely that may seem.

You probably assume that this guy was trolling me. Heck, if someone told me the story, I'd assume that same as well. Unfortunately, he was deadly serious and was exuding a palpable excitement as he made increasingly brilliant and counter-intuitive discoveries during our discussion.

To any philosophy students who wonder why your major has such a dismal reputation, despite having the highest GRE scores of an undergraduate major and producing some truly interesting students, the answer is Greg.

TeMPOraL• 12 years ago

Reminds me of [0] and [1]. Quoting from the latter:

I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like. And that problem—too much ready ammunition—is one of the primary ways that people with high mental agility end up stupid, in Stanovich's "dysrationalia" sense of stupidity.

[0] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Dangerous_knowledge

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...

mikeash• 12 years ago

Normally I would object to placing blame for the reputation of an entire field on the shoulders of a single person. But in this case, I fear you may be right to do it.

itsybitsycoder• 12 years ago

"All cats have four legs. Therefore, anything that isn't a cat doesn't have four legs."

Maybe Greg was just learning about logical fallacies and hadn't gotten all the way through? (Although in that case I don't think his philosophy undergrad was very good, since I think you're supposed to learn that during your bachelor's...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

mzs• 12 years ago

Wow that was almost like something by Stanislaw Lem in real life.

iopq• 12 years ago

I wish the images would be self-explanatory without the chapter.

bshimmin2• 12 years ago

This looks like it would be a nice book to put on a coffee table. Alas, it appears it's not available as an actual physical book.

okize• 12 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/An-Illustrated-Book-Bad-Arguments/dp/1...

bshimmin2• 12 years ago

Thank you! Am I an idiot - is this linked someone from the .com site?

tpeo• 12 years ago

The "argument from fallacy" is sadly missing.

rfrey• 12 years ago

I liked that what is often invoked as "Appeal to Authority" is here called "Appeal to Irrelevant Authority".

I probably liked that because appeal to authority is the one I get called out on most often, and now I can post a link in reply, from a Real Logician.

Which would be begging the question, of course, but at least I'd be mixing it up a bit.

innguest2• 12 years ago

It would not be begging the question, it would raise the question "does it make sense to quote the author of a book on logic to support an argument about logical fallacies" and the answer for that seems to be 'yes' (as he's a relevant authority in this case).

pessimizer8• 12 years ago

Begging the Question: A well-known authority on logic has assured me that an appeal to an authority relevant to the subject being discussed isn't a logical fallacy.

riffraff• 12 years ago

I disagree that the two are the same.

Appeal to authority is _still_ a logical fallacy even if the authority is somehow relevant (the high priest says $DEITY exists, and he's clearly an expert of it. Or, the plumber says I need to change the pipes even though I can see they are not broken).

EDIT: the book author would probably argue the appeal to relevant authority may be a good argument, even if not a logical proof.

fiatjaf• 12 years ago

The world is missing a way to judge who is right or wrong in discussions, because sometimes there are things a lot wrong, but even then people are unable to perceive them.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

Since this is the nth time I've read lists like this on HN, I feel like there should be a standard disclaimer here.

The author starts down this road in his introduction: the rules of logic are not laws of the natural world nor do they constitute all of human reasoning.

Yep, and it's worse than that. Life is not a formal system where the quality of an argument is in any way associated with whether or not it should be heard. That sucks, but that's the way it is. Many terrible arguments are for things you should do. Many seemingly perfect arguments are in support of horrible things.

Human conversation is around persuasion. What these tools of rhetoric give you is a good way to identify cheap ways used to persuade folks -- and call them out on it. It doesn't prevent them from being used at all. In fact, every argument that's not about formal systems has some sort of fallacy as part of it. At the end of the day, you're sitting around weighing the imperfections of each side. And, because the quality of the argument doesn't really reflect the quality of the position being argued, putting too much work into this is a fool's game.

I love these lists, because they show people how others can manipulate them. For the same reason, I think folks should be exposed to a course or two on how legal arguments are made. I see a lot of lawyers on TV who are ready and willing to take any side of any argument -- and convince 90% of the folks watching that they're right. If we want a functioning democracy, we need to fix this.

But for technology folks who tend to think of things in boolean terms, we should remind ourselves that human issues are not geometric proofs for which we are searching for fallacies in an attempt to get the right answer. Instead it's a much tougher situation than that.

TheOtherHobbes2• 12 years ago

Many terrible arguments are for things you should do. Many seemingly perfect arguments are in support of horrible things.

That mixes up the quality and sophistication of the arguers with general validity.

The problem is more that decision-making - especially political and economic decision-making - isn't evidence-based.

The fact that economists and politicians use rhetoric instead of reason suggests that you can't have a workable democracy without evidence-based policy.

I'd go further and suggest that knowingly lying to or misleading the public should be a serious crime punishable by jail time.

Lists like the one in this book aren't enough, because so few people understand there's a problem.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

You have a lot of explaining to do to yourself. I would start with the question "What is the difference between evidence and conclusions?"

Eventually you should move on to the Bayesian/Frequentist definition of Science, but I'd start with the problems with empiricism. Maybe go on to the problems with induction after that. Might want to ask yourself why so many of the most brilliant people in history believed wrong things.

chippy• 12 years ago

I enjoyed the text and the cartoons, although the reflection detail of the characters in the eyes (The triangular bit) was a bit offputting to me. Let me try to explain. This was because the reflection was relative to the direction of the head, rather the direction of the light. Sometimes if the head was sideways to the viewer, the reflection triangle actually bisected the eye and made it look as if the character had two eyes. in each socket

Edits - there is another thing I do not understand. The breadcrumbs in the top left. Are they breadcrumbs? The > implies direction. Are the middle categories sorted? Is it a list of categories without hierarchies?

Informal Fallacy › Unwarranted Assumption › False Dilemma

All pages have Informal Fallacy.

stronglikedan• 12 years ago

All pages have Informal Fallacy.

Not 34. ;-)

dj-wonk• 12 years ago

The composition / decomposition cartoon needs a caption. Suggestions?

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

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