If you work hard day in and day out and always strive to put your best foot forward at anything you’re doing, you will probably be surprised to know that your brain…is lazy. On the other hand, if you’re familiar with the “exercise paradox” — the contradiction that despite increasing knowledge about the importance of … Read more
In literature circles, a red herring is a narrative element that is meant to mislead readers by providing irrelevant information. For example, an author might introduce some plot point to distract the reader and mislead them so the ending is more surprising. Red herrings also pop up in rhetoric and argumentation. A red herring fallacy … Read more
What is “truth?” Truth has been a topic up for discussion for thousands of years, especially in the eyes of philosophers. But when it comes to everyday people, we typically accept truths as being any ideas or concepts that aim to represent reality or correspond to it in some way. The truth is represented by … Read more
In general, drawing comparisons between things can be useful. However, comparisons are not always apt and we sometimes end up drawing comparisons between things that are actually not alike. A false equivalence is a type of logical fallacy in which a person attempts to draw an equivalence between two things based on the presence of a few … Read more
When in his 80s, a friend’s grandfather (Pappy) told me that he’s smoked a pack of cigarettes a day since he was a teenager and he turned out just fine, so it can’t really be that bad for you. Now, for any of you who can think back to statistics 101, n=1 in Pappy’s little … Read more
In the context of a debate, it’s always good practice to make sure you clearly understand your opponent’s position before you respond, so you can argue against their actual views. Unfortunately, good practice doesn’t always come through and people end up misrepresenting other people’s views. A straw man fallacy is a kind of logical fallacy … Read more
In 2001, then-president George W. Bush was quoted making the following statement to Congress in response to the attacks on 9/11: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” In the time since, President Bush has been criticized for his all-or-nothing … Read more
Say you’re debating a friend over the topic of marijuana legalization and they say this: “If we legalize recreational marijuana, then marijuana will become normalized in public life. If marijuana is normalized, that will make it more likely that children and other impressionable people will partake. Before you know it, everyone will be doing drugs! … Read more