That makes sense to me, when a child is young and still developing they can draw on new ideas without resistance. The more you think you know and the more habits you form, the more of a barrier there can be to examining the very fundamentals of your thinking.

For example, I've had to train myself out of the tu quoque fallacy, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Someone who didn't care as much as me probably wouldn't bother. Even now it does take a mental effort to police myself. The effort has become less over time, and hopefully it will become second nature. Tu quoque in particular seems to be some sort of reflex, any time the criticism can be brushed aside efficiently, it is a tempting option.

Some people on this forum either will not or cannot grasp tu quoque. I'll have to do a video on that one as well, as it's so "popular".

(July 27, 2015 at 9:47 am)robvalue Wrote: That makes sense to me, when a child is young and still developing they can draw on new ideas without resistance. The more you think you know and the more habits you form, the more of a barrier there can be to examining the very fundamentals of your thinking.

For example, I've had to train myself out of the tu quoque fallacy, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Someone who didn't care as much as me probably wouldn't bother. Even now it does take a mental effort to police myself. The effort has become less over time, and hopefully it will be second nature. Tu quoque in particular seems to be some sort of reflex, any time the criticism can be brushed aside efficiently, it is a tempting option.

Some people on this forum either will not or cannot grasp tu quoque. I'll have to do a video on that one as well, as it's so "popular".

Yes, once bad habits are developed, it is hard to stop.  This applies to pretty much every kind of habit.  It is easier if one does not start a bad habit than it is to stop having a bad habit.


Also, it isn't just informal fallacies that people have trouble with.  Formal fallacies, like affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent are extremely common, which is easily explained by their resemblance to the valid forms modus ponens and modus tollens.  The thing is, even after people have these things explained, many still mess these up with great frequency.


Forming good habits early on makes life easier.  Trying to fight against bad habits later on makes life more difficult.

Yeah, I see particularly affirming the consequent a lot on this forum. The thing is, the person has to really care whether their arguments are valid in order to learn and improve. And for many apologists, I don't think they care; or they are so arrogant that they presume they can't be wrong. They'd rather throw up the next bullshit argument than learn why this one is wrong.

I've been trying to get certain people to understand the same logical fallacy for months. I can only conclude that they don't give a shit if their arguments are correct. I'm trying to help them get taken seriously.

It can be difficult to distinguish between someone who does not care about the mistake, and someone who does not understand the mistake that has been made.

(July 27, 2015 at 9:47 am)robvalue Wrote: That makes sense to me, when a child is young and still developing they can draw on new ideas without resistance. The more you think you know and the more habits you form, the more of a barrier there can be to examining the very fundamentals of your thinking.

For example, I've had to train myself out of the tu quoque fallacy, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Someone who didn't care as much as me probably wouldn't bother. Even now it does take a mental effort to police myself. The effort has become less over time, and hopefully it will become second nature. Tu quoque in particular seems to be some sort of reflex, any time the criticism can be brushed aside efficiently, it is a tempting option.

Some people on this forum either will not or cannot grasp tu quoque. I'll have to do a video on that one as well, as it's so "popular".

At first, the tu quoque, seemed strange to me why it would be a fallacy, but after a minute of reading, it made sense. To me, it still seems necessary to bring up the contradiction to the person who said it, but, it makes sense not to base your rebuttal off of someone contradicting his/herself. One must stick to the argument itself, to be an honest debater.

I would strongly advocate an Intro to Logic course in high school. In our high school, formal logic was taught as a chapter in PreCalculus. This was a reasonable start, but maybe only 20% ever took precalc. I took Logic 101 and Symbolic Logic in college, as well as Intro to Algebra (the college algebra, not high school algebra 1), which was largely a logic course.

This is related to a similar topic that I often mention. Having been a math whiz, with a degree in math, people now ask me "do you think everyone should have to take calculus/geometry/algebra"? Because you will get some math people who think everyone should have to take calculus. No, I say, I don't think everyone should have to take calculus. I don't think everyone should have to take geometry, although a very basic familiarity with shapes and such is good. And, even with algebra, as long as you can work with a single-variable word problem equation (like "hmm... if four tires cost $488, how much does one tire cost?), I don't think everyone needs algebra at the quadratic equation level. WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE, THOUGH, IS A BASIC COURSE ON STATISTICS. Not everyone needs to know how to create or present information or calculate figures, but EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW HOW TO INTERPRET FIGURES PRESENTED TO THEM. Every consumer should know exactly how they're being lied to/manipulated, should have a basic understanding of correlation v. causation, and should be able to read a line graph.

Logic is worthless if the premise is fucked up.

(July 27, 2015 at 2:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Logic is worthless if the premise is fucked up.

That's very true. Good point. If, your premise is christianity, and you try to make sense of the world around you, basing your critical thinking off of that book, then the logic isn't all that great, in my opinion. If you are capable of throwing that completely to the side, keeping it in the house or church, then that's not too bad. Although, most christians, can't seem to completely grasp that concept.

(July 27, 2015 at 2:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Logic is worthless if the premise is fucked up.

That is where the critical thinking part comes in.

Also, without logic, it won't matter whether one starts with good premises or not, as one will be apt to 'infer' all sorts of nonsense.

Quote:as one will be apt to 'infer' all sorts of nonsense.

Yup.


Torah, bible, koran.  All shit.