New vid: argument from ignorance explained through mining

[CapnAwesome]

To be honest, the most common logical fallacy I've seen on these forums is misapplication of logical fallacies to where there are none (which is a form of a straw man) by giving the sense the person is saying this and this which is a form of a fallacy.

Actually it's called the fallacy fallacy and yeah, it's definitely the most commonly used logical fallacy on this forum and probably on the internet. Learning about logical fallacies is fine but often times people will point out them in this sort of scenario:

Person A: Well Glen Beck is in favor of the Iraq war, and he's an idiot so I think the war is bad.
Person B: That's a logical fallacy: ad hominem!

Ironically just calling someone out on a logical fallacy and not attempting to address their root idea (in the example you would still have to prove that the war is good) is the fallacy fallacy. It's frequently an attempt to kill the discussion and smugly feel intellectually superior to the other person without actually having to present any ideas. There have been some people on these forums who were terrible about this. Back when DeistPaladin posted he would scan every post that he disagreed with for anything that might be a logical fallacy and then point them out, but very rarely address the actual point. There are lots of other people who do it to a lesser degree too. Again the irony is that by lazily pointing out logical fallacies the person is committing one. That's why even when someone annoyingly strawman's me or something I don't say 'Strawman!!! Wah wah waaah" Instead I would say something like 'you are misrepresenting what was saying, here is what I actually meant' That pushes the discussion forward, most of the time crying logical fallacy is more of an end to a discussion that upsets the other person and degenerates to name calling.

It's also important to note that just because someone uses logical fallacies doesn't make them wrong nor does being careful about not using them make someone right.