Avoiding logical fallacies

- When my son was three or four, we took a flight over to Sweden. And three times in a row, the captain turned on the seat belt light, said that we were coming up on some turbulence. And then, sure enough, we hit some turbulence. After the third time this happened, my son looked at me and asked, "Why do they turn that light on if it's going to cause the plane to shake?" Now, I know this sounds totally silly to us, but misuses of logic trick each and every one of us occasionally. I want to help you see a few common logical fallacies so you can avoid using them yourself and you can recognize them when others try to use them on you. One of the most common is the ad hominem attack. This is an attack on an opponent's character rather than an answer to the contentions made. We see this all the time in politics. Candidates on a debate stage will call each other crooked or a con man or just plain dumb. None of these phrases offer any true reasoning for belief or disbelief. They're designed to paint a character portrait and trigger an emotional response in the voters. These are pretty blatant examples, but ad hominem attacks can get pretty subtle. Things like, "As an academic, it must be hard to see things from the point of view of the working class." Or, "As a women in leadership, it must be hard to keep your emotions in check." There are a lot of assumptions happening here. Another common fallacy you'll likely face is the strawman argument. This is where someone attacks your position by creating a similar claim that's easy to attack. They can do this by either oversimplifying your claim, leaving out key parts of your claim, or focusing on only one key part. An old argument is the argument against evolution. How can we evolve from chimpanzees if chimpanzees are still around? Well, that's not really the point, because the argument isn't about the evolution of chimpanzees. Strawman arguments can be hard to catch and hard to refute. To defend against them, be ready to restate your claim and call out the strawman argument for what it is, irrelevant and a non sequitur. Another logical fallacy you may encounter is the appeal to ignorance. If the same argument can be used to support both sides, it's an indication that there's a flaw. No one has ever been able to prove that Bigfoot exists, so he must not exist. Or no one has ever proved Bigfoot doesn't exist, so he must exist. It's a Catch-22, and frankly, a waste of time. Ad hoc fallacies, or false causation is another common flaw in logical thinking. This is what my son was using on the airplane. Just because something happens after something does not mean it was caused by it. There are plenty of logical fallacies that use others' actions or opinions as evidence. These are called bandwagon appeals. The everyone is doing it argument, that the majority must be right. Additionally, halo appeals and horn appeals fit here. Halo and horn appeals point to people you either look up to or people you don't to persuade you. Unless that person or the group of people are experts, you should generally question these types of appeals. There are many other logical fallacies out there, and I encourage you to familiarize yourself with them. There are even great courses on this platform that can help you improve your critical thinking and debate skills. Oftentimes, people actually don't realize that their logic is flawed. The more you understand the various types of logical fallacies people can and will bring against your ideas, the more likely you are to be able to avoid being convinced by them and by doing it yourself.