#logical fallacies

Spend less time digging your heels in on dumbass hills and try putting all that purity culture down so you can put energy towards being a benefit to the community, dickhead.

I have no idea who you are

I have only a vague idea what you're referring to, I think it's the tags I reblogged on something regarding JKR earlier?

Yes, the far bigger issue is the oppression of genderqueer people, not the semantics of labels. This is why I reblogged the post and only put that in the tags, because the message is far more important than the wording

I can see how my wording might have come off as angry, but I intended it in a half-joking tone because I'm pretty sure most people know enbies are also under the trans umbrella and are being effected, too.

I didn't say that everyone was equally oppressed, I said that everyone was effected. For example, trans men in the UK are currently banned from all gendered spaces. I am nonbinary, so I wanted to explicitly state that enby people are also effected by transphobia.

Out of the two of us, you are the one who sent an anonyms incoherent message to a trans woman calling her a dickhead. In your own words, "the incessant need to downplay a point because you feel the need to be a contrarian is exactly why shit never gets done."

If you have a real concern, please express it like a civilized person instead of sending me a mean-spirited rant that commits at least two logical fallacies. (Ad hominem and staw man).

I genuinely think everyone should spend at least a little time learning about logical fallacies and cognitive biases.

Not because you’ll magically become right all the time.

You won’t.

Neither will I.

Our brains evolved to keep us alive, not to be tiny peer-reviewed truth machines. They’re full of shortcuts, assumptions, pattern matching, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and the occasional absolute gremlin behavior.

The goal isn’t to become immune to bad thinking.

The goal is to catch yourself saying,

“Hang on… is this actually good evidence, or does it just feel true?”

Once you start recognizing logical fallacies, you stop getting swept away by arguments that are emotionally compelling but structurally hollow.

Once you start recognizing cognitive biases, you realize the person most capable of fooling you…

…is you.

There’s something deeply humbling and deeply freeing about knowing your own brain comes with factory-installed bugs.

It’s not a flaw.

It’s being human.

Also, if someone tells you they’re completely objective and free from bias…

Congratulations.

In Matthew's gospel Jesus confronts the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He goes after them which such intensity over their claim to be scandalized by mere trifles while disregarding justice and mercy. Jesus is, as I said in an earlier post, a prohetic pest and in this role he yells at the hypocritical pharisees calling them:

Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! (Mt. 23:24)

These are bold words that attack religio-political hypocrisy confronting Jesus and the early Church. This type of hypocrisy continues in our own day. Fourteen years ago in 2012 Republicans promoted a series of investigation over an attack on Benghazi claiming that the government allowed this to take place. Numerous investigations were held that ultimately proved nothing but the point of that particular scandal was to embarrass Hillary Clinton who was running for office and would lose to Donald Trump thanks to this hypocritical campaign.

And now we are seeing this again with the abuse and series of investigation on Dr. Fauci for his handling of the COVID pandemic. This is the standard Republican playbook, to claim a Pharisaical scandal and then to yell and investigate it even while they are burning down the foundations and programs of our great nation.

This, for me, is intolarable. As a patriot who loves what this nation stands for I cannot sit idly by and witness such an act. Dr. Fauci did a yeomen's job keeping us protected during the COVID pandemic and his strategy kept many of us safe during those days. When invited to join the faculty of Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia called him “a dedicated public servant,” who “has embodied the Jesuit value of being in service to others throughout his career, and we are grateful to have his expertise, strong leadership and commitment to guiding the next generation of leaders to meet the pressing issues of our time.” As one who has also adopted a Jesuit spirituality hope that I can discern difficult social decisions as Dr. Fauci has. I appreciate how difficult it is to make policies that affect social health. No one can be expected to be perfect. I think Dr. Fauci did the best he could and successfully kept us safe during the pandemic.

Frankly I find it disgusting how Republicans are trying to besmirch the name of this wonderful public servant. At the congressional hearings Dr. Fauchi, on the advice of his lawyer, refused to respond to Republican allegations and instead pleaded the fifth over a hundred times. Jessica Roth, a former Federal Prosecutor, explains why this was necessary:

Now, Fauci, based on the statements that Senator Paul and has made that make it clear that he is very much interested in prosecuting Mr. Fauci based on his past conduct, may reasonably anticipate that his testimony before this panel could be used in an effort to investigate future lines of inquiry and subject him to a prosecution for perjury based on his prior statements.

As the (London) Times article stated with regards to this hearing the one insightful comment made came form Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey who said that:

I worry about what kind of trajectory we’re on as a country and what this causes when it comes next for public service and those willing to step up for our nation. It’s not just in the attacks but we see it brought out with the cuts to funding, to the firing of federal workers, to the demonisation of their motivations, people calling our public servants criminals … it’s undermining the very nature of the work of governance.

It amazes me that my conservative brethren can make a huge stink about the fact that Dr. Fauci protected himself from this investigation by pleading the fifth when the administration that they support has pleaded the fifth 440 times and has been convicted on 34 felonies.

Thankfully, Snopes has brought clarity to many of the accusations that Republicans and the far-right conspiracy theories have suggested about Dr. Fauci.

So all that is left to say is that I want to define further what I meant by a term I used earlier and how it represents some of the most reprehensible social media attacks on people, groups, issues, and organizations we have seen in recent years. The term "Pharisaical scandal" is a reminder that what one calls a "scandal" can sometimes proceed from ill will, from an intention to cause political gain through a fallacious argument. These arguments employ confirmation biases and promote a combination of false equivalance/dichotomies along with either straw man or red herring arguments to generate what some call a "no true Scotsman" (appeal to purity) position.

In a Christian context we are obligated to persist in defending the good in lieu of a "Pharisaical scandal." We have a duty to call this out and to defend what is right if we recognize that the perceived scandal is willing to scapegoat a person, group, or organization for their own political or ideological purposes. Jesus did not find that behavior acceptable and he went to the cross for a "Pharisaical scandal." The early Church stood their ground and recognize the scandal for what it was, a false political agenda. The Apostles were instead committed to the truth of the Gospel and their perseverance endured.

So must we.

Dr. Fauci is not only an amazing public servant and a model for many of us, he is a class act. He not only pleaded the 5th, he explained why he has to do this.

Given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary, aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, 'behind bars.’ Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions. Thank you.

why are people calling every structured argument a fallacy ?

its only a fallacy if it is false.

if i call to my own authority on a subject and back it up with say my own research, that is not a fallacy.

if i refer to a slippery slope of say censorship. thats not a fallacy, i can literally point to every censorship campaign in history and prove that they start with subversive topics before moving to minorities on the guise they are part of the subversion.

like tbh, too many idiots think their opinion matters and learned a handful of fallacies by name and structure to 'prove' it. most of them i see brought up are informal fallacies, the two examples above are informal fallacies.

an informal fallacy requires additional context to be a fallacy. arguing against gay marriage cause 'people will marry their dogs' is a slippery slope fallacy because we have proof that A does not spiral into B. Saying I have a degree and am therefore right about the migration patterns of ducks is an appeal to false authority (the 'name' of the authority fallacy) because my degree has nothing to do with animals, let alone migrating birds.

formal fallacies exist, fallacies in which the very structure disproves the argument, but they are not often pointed out. arguing that the polio vaccine causes disease because we see more sick kids with the vaccine than without is a formal fallacy.