8 ms·

Show HN: Aristotl – an intuitive logical fallacy lookup tool

173 points by andrewscwei 7y ago

iamuser 7y ago
Finally, a A-Z list of logical fallacies!
prashanth1k 7y ago
Thank you for doing this!
andrewscwei 7y ago
Motivation: We live in a digital world full of (m/d)isinformation. On one end we should fight to eradicate the source, but on the other end we should exercise strong critical thinking skills so we don’t fall victim to false narratives. I created this tool to help people easily look up 100 common logical fallacies.
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  Cool idea, and nice looking site as well! Really neat on mobile.
z5h 7y ago
Nice work. Added to Favourites.
GrifMD 7y ago
It's really pretty and responsive. Great work!
fbrncci 7y ago
A random button would be a nice addition.
- andrewscwei 7y ago
  That's a cool idea!
dvt 7y ago
I strongly suggest using better sources for this. You should avoid using Wikipedia when things like the SEP[1] and IEP[2] are available. Also, "probabilistic" fallacies are not formal fallacies. E.g. something like the "gambler's fallacy" is not a de facto formal logical fallacy. Further, the "Naturalistic Fallacy" isn't what you think it is. There's a difference between "argument from nature" or "the appeal to nature" (which is what you think it is), and G.E. Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy[3]. This is a pretty embarrassing mistake, especially if you'd like to be treated like an authority on the subject. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/ https://plato.stanford.edu/ [2] https://www.iep.utm.edu/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/ [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#Nat...
- andrewscwei 7y ago
  Noted. Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I totally agree that to create a tool like this the content must be accurate. I tried to avoid taking content from Wikipedia as much as possible as I'm also wary of its authenticity, so I've limited Wikipedia content to fallacy summaries only—as opposed to the detailed description (the panel that appears when you select a fallacy), in which case I used IEP and The Fallacy Files[1] as the major sources. Will certainly check out SEP. I still need to do more homework regarding your claim regarding "probabilistic" fallacies, but you are correct about "Naturalistic Fallacy" so I have removed it as an alias of "Appeal to Nature". Thanks again for taking the time to point it out. [1] https://www.fallacyfiles.org/ https://www.fallacyfiles.org/
  - dvt 7y ago
    "Probabilistic fallacies" aren't "formal fallacies" because formal fallacies have a very narrow definition: they are fallacies of formal logic -- be it FOL, SOL, infinitary logics, modal logics, etc. -- e.g. illegal "moves" that break particular rule-sets. Probabilistic fallacies deal with incorrect conclusions drawn from looking at data. Or, in other cases, misapplications (or misunderstandings) of mathematical laws. These kinds of mistakes have nothing to do with "formal logic."
gitgud 7y ago
Looks great. I think everyone should have an understanding of how arguments can be fallacious. But one thing I noticed - going down the fallacy rabbit hole - is that you can find fallacies in almost any written opinion... I think this is because fallacies are somewhat subjective and some fallacies can even oppose each other, so there's no way to avoid them... But that's just my (fallacy-riddled) opinion
- rr-geil-j 7y ago
  My memory is hazy but I remember reading or hearing somebody say that "at the end of the day, everything is just an appeal to authority."
- thisBrian 7y ago
  Exactly why the fallacy fallacy[0] exists. Just because an argument has a fallacy does not make its conclusion false. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
adim86 7y ago
I really loved the site, great work. My only feedback is to make the pagination more apparent...I at first thought it was a work in progress and you only had the first 20 until I searched around and noticed the pagination boxes... I think clearer pagination or pagination that beckons you to click will reduce your bounce rate
- andrewscwei 7y ago
  Noted, thanks for the feedback.
pragmatick 7y ago
I don't understand what's supposed to be especially intuitive about this? It's an alphabetic list of fallacies - how do I "lookup" one if not by just scrolling down the list? I have no idea what the symbols below the search bar mean and was surprised that the "i" button doesn't give me more information about the site or showed help but instead just apparently switched between descriptions and synonyms.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Perhaps the title could be read as “a tool for looking up logical fallacies that can arise from relying on your intuition”.
RichardHeart 7y ago
You might appreciate this site: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
Smaug123 7y ago
It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing to have. I predict that its primary usage will be as a generator of fully-general counterarguments: people will use it to look up how best to defeat their opponents without having to exercise any thought at all. There's a reason that the "fallacy fallacy" is on the list.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Ya, a reply with a pure "that's F(4)" makes the same mistake (sidestepping the subject) it's pointing out. Some rely on hijacking common sense. The slippery slope for example, I'm 95% sure it's the most common "pretend it's fallacious" reply, even though it's actually "by no means invariably fallacious" because it is a physics problem, and the grey area between it and political incrementalism (for example) starts with true, not the opposite.
trevyn 7y ago
See also Wikipedia’s “List of fallacies”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
aerodynamika 7y ago
Seems like a good collection of various logical constructs. I wonder if the authors have any plans to program it into something that could identify or use these same patterns in text.
somishere 7y ago
In a similar vein https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com was put together back in early 2012. Not quite exhaustive, but meant to cover off the big hitters. Main benefit was that it allowed for linking to specific fallacies through comments, etc. "Your logical fallacy is Strawman" kind of thing. The site's dated for sure (hasn't been touched in many years), but it still pops up every now and then! [edit / disclaimer - I helped out on the first few versions of ylfi, really enjoy seeing how people re-envision these kind of things]
foobar_ 7y ago
Is anyone working on a fallacy, lie detecter using NLP ?
brigandish 7y ago
I liked the style of the site and the clear presentation (I've bookmarked it, you have repeat business:) but I'd appreciate it if there was a fallback for those without javascript enabled.
cryptozeus 7y ago
I appreciate the effort you put in for designing the site but as a user it’s confusing for me. Before using the content i have to learn how to use your site ? Why not keep the basic layout with labels. For example i which is on top of the page toggles the description of each fallacy, that was hard to detect on my phone screen.
Khanhanhan 7y ago
are there any successful attempts to programatically detect fallacies in text?
ltbarcly3 7y ago
I think understanding logical fallacies is wonderful, especially if you seek to understand why they are fallacies and improve your own thinking and arguing to avoid them. However, people that pull logical fallacies out in an argument are probably not arguing in a convincing way! Either the person they are arguing against is actually succumbing to the fallacy, and in that case they would rarely even know what is going on when you name it, or they totally understand it and were using shorthand or just phrasing it in a way that opened them up to that attack, but a less intentionally close reading would reveal a deeper argument. Of course, I'm setting up a false choice here!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mohamedhayibor 7y ago
I think this is an awesome project. Any effort facilitating the understanding/recognition of common fallacies leads to a better world. After "name", "description" and "example" should be right next. "Alias", "Type", "Inheritance", "SUBYPE" should be much lower, as they make the user scroll to read those 2 which imo, are the most important. In terms of design, I wonder why you didn't go for a full-screen modal, I'm using a laptop and only 40% of the screen to the right is used. Maybe use a modal that utilize 90%, or 80% when a fallacy is clicked upon. Keep up the great work :)
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
I'm afraid that a resource like this will make internet debates even less pleasant and productive than they already are. To my experience, calling out an internet interlocutor for committing a formal logic fallacy only serves the purpose of shutting down conversation. After all, formal logic fallacies apply to formal logic statements- but internet conversations are not carried out in the language of formal logic. They are carried out in natural language (natural English, most often). Therefore, formal logic rules do not apply. One might as well accuse an interlocutor that they have miscalculated the gradient of their comment. We comment on the internet. We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference. We are not little lay philosophers trained in formal logic, engaged in rigorous debate. We sound clueless and pretentious when we try to sound as if we were. We should learn to not take the name of logic in vain.
- kensai 7y ago
  I disagree. Critical thinking using logic and sound reasoning should be taught and learned in an early age. Although it has been now discontinued, I had really liked in the past the specifications of the British AS/A Levels in Critical thinking. https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/73470-specification.pdf https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/73470-specification.pdf
- sundayedition 7y ago
  That's a slippery slope.... /s
- dwild 7y ago
  > We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference. Sure we aren't, but a mistake is a mistake, even if it's one that come from logic. Wouldn't you correct me if I said that the sky is green? Why wouldn't you correct me if I made a formal logic error then? The funny thing is that unlike logic, my sentence could be actually true. For sure there's ways to do it that's wrong, like doing it to feel superior, but it doesn't means that it's wrong to point out logical mistake altogether because of that. I think fallacies should be taught earlier in life. When I learned them, I found out so many mistake I made regularly in my ways of thinking, and even from a quick glance of that website, I found many more of them that I clearly did from time to time. It's okay to makes mistake, but the impact of the mistake I may have made in some case is certainly not okay.
dandare 7y ago
If I could recommend something: the ability to share a specific fallacy to social media in response to a comment or tweet will bring you a lot of traffic. I would sometimes link to a subpage from https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ when the person I discuss with commits a fallacy. Also, you need more examples - examples are crucial for people without formal education, like me, to understand the fallacy.
ben509 7y ago
I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result. Discussion is subject to an information problem when we're trying to strike a balance between underexplaining and overexplaining. I have a mental catalog of things A, B, C, D, E. You have a mental catalog of things C, D, E, F, G. Neither of us is aware of the other's catalog. So we have to guess. Say I argue X -> B -> Y, but I assumed you already knew B and glossed over it. That's going to look like X -> ?? -> Y, and you'll likely percieve that as a non sequitur because you can't follow how I got from X to Y. Your best recourse is to say, "hold on, I don't follow how you get from X to Y," whereupon I can guess you don't know B and explain it. Even if you're sure someone is committing a fallacy, it's not reliable to cite the name of the fallacy. As fallacies have entered general usage, they've taken on a much broader meaning than what references cite. A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations. Instead of saying something is a strawman, "I think you're exaggerating my position here because I don't believe X, Y or Z," makes clear what the problem is.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  > I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result. Formal debate structures go all the way back to the time of Aristotle and there certainly have existed places where bringing up a fallacy directly was meant to encourage an interlocutor to explain how the fallacy doesn't apply or take the time to restructure their argument to not rely on a fallacy. Most formal debate has fallen out of fashion. About the last place you may see it is "Debate Clubs" and (sometimes) Law practice. Certainly the internet has pushed things almost extremely informal with respect to debate. Indeed a reference to a formal fallacy can derail an internet discussion because few internet interlocutors understand or care if they make a fallacy in their arguments, and sometimes things like cognitive dissonance seems to implore them to hold fast and tight to their fallacies rather engage in eliminating them. But that's not necessarily an argument against bringing up fallacies when you see them. Illiteracy of formal debate logic [1] might be a problem on the modern internet. (Arguably it's a large part of why the modern US "Presidential Candidate Debates" are similarly so terrible, because they aren't formal debates, fallacies are never challenged, nor allowed to be challenged, and the average amount of debate literacy has just been tossed out the window for extremely informal dog and pony shows that fail to be useful debates in terms of what debates were intended to do: debate.) > A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations. The [I] button in the corner of this particular reference site shows the English explanations in the "periodic table" directly. (The site also shows the English explanations for them in details popups.) That this is not the default or that most of buttons are not well explained (and there's no differentiation between buttons, text, and links in the stylesheet) certainly does leave the reference site a long ways from intuitive (or accessible for that matter), but it does have the useful tools even if they are hard to find at least. [1] Which is not far from Logic/Programming, as indeed a lot of Boolean Logic isn't far removed. It's almost a wonder there aren't more Programmers extremely passionate about Debate Fallacies.
kodablah 7y ago
Would appreciate a similar one for "laws" and "adages", I can never find a decent resource that makes them easy to find the name when you already know the concept (recorded as an idea here[0]). 0 - https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/17 https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/17
rambojazz 7y ago
Should rename to Aristool
maximente 7y ago
this looks to largely be a "cool" UI on top of this page (the few examples etc that i checked are copied verbatim from here): https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#RedHerring https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#RedHerring i prefer the original site because i can use ctrl + F to search, vs their weird async flashy search. since the content seems largely the same, there's no value added in this site.
johnisgood 7y ago
Hmm, will it include cognitive biases, too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- ptah 7y ago
  it should. in the real world and online, logic is useless at convincing people. probably because empiricism is more effective at discovering useful knowledge epistemologically speaking
no_identd 7y ago
I prefer http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonnew.htm http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonnew.htm, albeit that page could really do with some DRAKON-derived layouting rules.

173 points by andrewscwei 7y ago

iamuser 7y ago

Finally, a A-Z list of logical fallacies!

prashanth1k 7y ago

Thank you for doing this!

andrewscwei 7y ago

Motivation: We live in a digital world full of (m/d)isinformation. On one end we should fight to eradicate the source, but on the other end we should exercise strong critical thinking skills so we don’t fall victim to false narratives. I created this tool to help people easily look up 100 common logical fallacies.

kuzimoto 7y ago
Cool idea, and nice looking site as well! Really neat on mobile.

z5h 7y ago

Nice work. Added to Favourites.

GrifMD 7y ago

It's really pretty and responsive. Great work!

fbrncci 7y ago

A random button would be a nice addition.

andrewscwei 7y ago
That's a cool idea!

dvt 7y ago

I strongly suggest using better sources for this. You should avoid using Wikipedia when things like the SEP[1] and IEP[2] are available. Also, "probabilistic" fallacies are not formal fallacies. E.g. something like the "gambler's fallacy" is not a de facto formal logical fallacy. Further, the "Naturalistic Fallacy" isn't what you think it is. There's a difference between "argument from nature" or "the appeal to nature" (which is what you think it is), and G.E. Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy[3]. This is a pretty embarrassing mistake, especially if you'd like to be treated like an authority on the subject. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/ https://plato.stanford.edu/ [2] https://www.iep.utm.edu/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/ [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#Nat...

andrewscwei 7y ago
Noted. Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I totally agree that to create a tool like this the content must be accurate. I tried to avoid taking content from Wikipedia as much as possible as I'm also wary of its authenticity, so I've limited Wikipedia content to fallacy summaries only—as opposed to the detailed description (the panel that appears when you select a fallacy), in which case I used IEP and The Fallacy Files[1] as the major sources. Will certainly check out SEP. I still need to do more homework regarding your claim regarding "probabilistic" fallacies, but you are correct about "Naturalistic Fallacy" so I have removed it as an alias of "Appeal to Nature". Thanks again for taking the time to point it out. [1] https://www.fallacyfiles.org/ https://www.fallacyfiles.org/
- dvt 7y ago
  "Probabilistic fallacies" aren't "formal fallacies" because formal fallacies have a very narrow definition: they are fallacies of formal logic -- be it FOL, SOL, infinitary logics, modal logics, etc. -- e.g. illegal "moves" that break particular rule-sets. Probabilistic fallacies deal with incorrect conclusions drawn from looking at data. Or, in other cases, misapplications (or misunderstandings) of mathematical laws. These kinds of mistakes have nothing to do with "formal logic."

gitgud 7y ago

Looks great. I think everyone should have an understanding of how arguments can be fallacious. But one thing I noticed - going down the fallacy rabbit hole - is that you can find fallacies in almost any written opinion... I think this is because fallacies are somewhat subjective and some fallacies can even oppose each other, so there's no way to avoid them... But that's just my (fallacy-riddled) opinion

rr-geil-j 7y ago
My memory is hazy but I remember reading or hearing somebody say that "at the end of the day, everything is just an appeal to authority."
thisBrian 7y ago
Exactly why the fallacy fallacy[0] exists. Just because an argument has a fallacy does not make its conclusion false. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

adim86 7y ago

I really loved the site, great work. My only feedback is to make the pagination more apparent...I at first thought it was a work in progress and you only had the first 20 until I searched around and noticed the pagination boxes... I think clearer pagination or pagination that beckons you to click will reduce your bounce rate

andrewscwei 7y ago
Noted, thanks for the feedback.

pragmatick 7y ago

I don't understand what's supposed to be especially intuitive about this? It's an alphabetic list of fallacies - how do I "lookup" one if not by just scrolling down the list? I have no idea what the symbols below the search bar mean and was surprised that the "i" button doesn't give me more information about the site or showed help but instead just apparently switched between descriptions and synonyms.

trevyn 7y ago
Perhaps the title could be read as “a tool for looking up logical fallacies that can arise from relying on your intuition”.

RichardHeart 7y ago

You might appreciate this site: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Smaug123 7y ago

It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing to have. I predict that its primary usage will be as a generator of fully-general counterarguments: people will use it to look up how best to defeat their opponents without having to exercise any thought at all. There's a reason that the "fallacy fallacy" is on the list.

jakeogh 7y ago
Ya, a reply with a pure "that's F(4)" makes the same mistake (sidestepping the subject) it's pointing out. Some rely on hijacking common sense. The slippery slope for example, I'm 95% sure it's the most common "pretend it's fallacious" reply, even though it's actually "by no means invariably fallacious" because it is a physics problem, and the grey area between it and political incrementalism (for example) starts with true, not the opposite.

trevyn 7y ago

See also Wikipedia’s “List of fallacies”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

aerodynamika 7y ago

Seems like a good collection of various logical constructs. I wonder if the authors have any plans to program it into something that could identify or use these same patterns in text.

somishere 7y ago

In a similar vein https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com was put together back in early 2012. Not quite exhaustive, but meant to cover off the big hitters. Main benefit was that it allowed for linking to specific fallacies through comments, etc. "Your logical fallacy is Strawman" kind of thing. The site's dated for sure (hasn't been touched in many years), but it still pops up every now and then! [edit / disclaimer - I helped out on the first few versions of ylfi, really enjoy seeing how people re-envision these kind of things]

foobar_ 7y ago

Is anyone working on a fallacy, lie detecter using NLP ?

brigandish 7y ago

I liked the style of the site and the clear presentation (I've bookmarked it, you have repeat business:) but I'd appreciate it if there was a fallback for those without javascript enabled.

cryptozeus 7y ago

I appreciate the effort you put in for designing the site but as a user it’s confusing for me. Before using the content i have to learn how to use your site ? Why not keep the basic layout with labels. For example i which is on top of the page toggles the description of each fallacy, that was hard to detect on my phone screen.

Khanhanhan 7y ago

are there any successful attempts to programatically detect fallacies in text?

ltbarcly3 7y ago

I think understanding logical fallacies is wonderful, especially if you seek to understand why they are fallacies and improve your own thinking and arguing to avoid them. However, people that pull logical fallacies out in an argument are probably not arguing in a convincing way! Either the person they are arguing against is actually succumbing to the fallacy, and in that case they would rarely even know what is going on when you name it, or they totally understand it and were using shorthand or just phrasing it in a way that opened them up to that attack, but a less intentionally close reading would reveal a deeper argument. Of course, I'm setting up a false choice here!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mohamedhayibor 7y ago

I think this is an awesome project. Any effort facilitating the understanding/recognition of common fallacies leads to a better world. After "name", "description" and "example" should be right next. "Alias", "Type", "Inheritance", "SUBYPE" should be much lower, as they make the user scroll to read those 2 which imo, are the most important. In terms of design, I wonder why you didn't go for a full-screen modal, I'm using a laptop and only 40% of the screen to the right is used. Maybe use a modal that utilize 90%, or 80% when a fallacy is clicked upon. Keep up the great work :)

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

I'm afraid that a resource like this will make internet debates even less pleasant and productive than they already are. To my experience, calling out an internet interlocutor for committing a formal logic fallacy only serves the purpose of shutting down conversation. After all, formal logic fallacies apply to formal logic statements- but internet conversations are not carried out in the language of formal logic. They are carried out in natural language (natural English, most often). Therefore, formal logic rules do not apply. One might as well accuse an interlocutor that they have miscalculated the gradient of their comment. We comment on the internet. We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference. We are not little lay philosophers trained in formal logic, engaged in rigorous debate. We sound clueless and pretentious when we try to sound as if we were. We should learn to not take the name of logic in vain.

kensai 7y ago
I disagree. Critical thinking using logic and sound reasoning should be taught and learned in an early age. Although it has been now discontinued, I had really liked in the past the specifications of the British AS/A Levels in Critical thinking. https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/73470-specification.pdf https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/73470-specification.pdf
sundayedition 7y ago
That's a slippery slope.... /s
dwild 7y ago
> We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference. Sure we aren't, but a mistake is a mistake, even if it's one that come from logic. Wouldn't you correct me if I said that the sky is green? Why wouldn't you correct me if I made a formal logic error then? The funny thing is that unlike logic, my sentence could be actually true. For sure there's ways to do it that's wrong, like doing it to feel superior, but it doesn't means that it's wrong to point out logical mistake altogether because of that. I think fallacies should be taught earlier in life. When I learned them, I found out so many mistake I made regularly in my ways of thinking, and even from a quick glance of that website, I found many more of them that I clearly did from time to time. It's okay to makes mistake, but the impact of the mistake I may have made in some case is certainly not okay.

dandare 7y ago

If I could recommend something: the ability to share a specific fallacy to social media in response to a comment or tweet will bring you a lot of traffic. I would sometimes link to a subpage from https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ when the person I discuss with commits a fallacy. Also, you need more examples - examples are crucial for people without formal education, like me, to understand the fallacy.

ben509 7y ago

I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result. Discussion is subject to an information problem when we're trying to strike a balance between underexplaining and overexplaining. I have a mental catalog of things A, B, C, D, E. You have a mental catalog of things C, D, E, F, G. Neither of us is aware of the other's catalog. So we have to guess. Say I argue X -> B -> Y, but I assumed you already knew B and glossed over it. That's going to look like X -> ?? -> Y, and you'll likely percieve that as a non sequitur because you can't follow how I got from X to Y. Your best recourse is to say, "hold on, I don't follow how you get from X to Y," whereupon I can guess you don't know B and explain it. Even if you're sure someone is committing a fallacy, it's not reliable to cite the name of the fallacy. As fallacies have entered general usage, they've taken on a much broader meaning than what references cite. A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations. Instead of saying something is a strawman, "I think you're exaggerating my position here because I don't believe X, Y or Z," makes clear what the problem is.

WorldMaker 7y ago
> I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result. Formal debate structures go all the way back to the time of Aristotle and there certainly have existed places where bringing up a fallacy directly was meant to encourage an interlocutor to explain how the fallacy doesn't apply or take the time to restructure their argument to not rely on a fallacy. Most formal debate has fallen out of fashion. About the last place you may see it is "Debate Clubs" and (sometimes) Law practice. Certainly the internet has pushed things almost extremely informal with respect to debate. Indeed a reference to a formal fallacy can derail an internet discussion because few internet interlocutors understand or care if they make a fallacy in their arguments, and sometimes things like cognitive dissonance seems to implore them to hold fast and tight to their fallacies rather engage in eliminating them. But that's not necessarily an argument against bringing up fallacies when you see them. Illiteracy of formal debate logic [1] might be a problem on the modern internet. (Arguably it's a large part of why the modern US "Presidential Candidate Debates" are similarly so terrible, because they aren't formal debates, fallacies are never challenged, nor allowed to be challenged, and the average amount of debate literacy has just been tossed out the window for extremely informal dog and pony shows that fail to be useful debates in terms of what debates were intended to do: debate.) > A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations. The [I] button in the corner of this particular reference site shows the English explanations in the "periodic table" directly. (The site also shows the English explanations for them in details popups.) That this is not the default or that most of buttons are not well explained (and there's no differentiation between buttons, text, and links in the stylesheet) certainly does leave the reference site a long ways from intuitive (or accessible for that matter), but it does have the useful tools even if they are hard to find at least. [1] Which is not far from Logic/Programming, as indeed a lot of Boolean Logic isn't far removed. It's almost a wonder there aren't more Programmers extremely passionate about Debate Fallacies.

kodablah 7y ago

Would appreciate a similar one for "laws" and "adages", I can never find a decent resource that makes them easy to find the name when you already know the concept (recorded as an idea here[0]). 0 - https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/17 https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/17

rambojazz 7y ago

Should rename to Aristool

maximente 7y ago

this looks to largely be a "cool" UI on top of this page (the few examples etc that i checked are copied verbatim from here): https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#RedHerring https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#RedHerring i prefer the original site because i can use ctrl + F to search, vs their weird async flashy search. since the content seems largely the same, there's no value added in this site.

johnisgood 7y ago

Hmm, will it include cognitive biases, too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

ptah 7y ago
it should. in the real world and online, logic is useless at convincing people. probably because empiricism is more effective at discovering useful knowledge epistemologically speaking

no_identd 7y ago

I prefer http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonnew.htm http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonnew.htm, albeit that page could really do with some DRAKON-derived layouting rules.