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Your argumets and links are interesting, I hope to study these materials some day. But. To be useful in practice the approach does not need to work in all cas

Your argumets and links are interesting, I hope to study these materials some day. But. To be useful in practice the approach does not need to work in all cases of natural language usage. Even if works in some limited cases there may be useful applications. The authors evaluate their approach on two datasets. One is LOGIC consisting of learning examples of logical fallacies. The other is LOGICCLIMATE, consisting of logical fallacies collected from real world news articles about climate change. The datasets are here, if anyone is interested to see the type of natural language they try to adress currently: https://github.com/causalNLP/logical-fallacy https://github.com/causalNLP/logical-fallacy I guess this csv contains the LOGICCLIMATE: https://github.com/causalNLP/logical-fallacy/blob/main/data/climate_all.csv https://github.com/causalNLP/logical-fallacy/blob/main/data/... So a possible practicle utility for the approach - spot individual wrong sentences in a long article and highlight them. Another real world example. I propose a solution at work, based on some statistics. And a colleague dismisses it by saying that there is a book "6 Ways to Lie with Statistics". If there was a smart assistant in the room who gently explained his logical fallacy to the colleague, it would save a lot of efforts for me and made the discusdion more productive. I doubt the difficulties you mention apply to this simple case.

nickpsecurity 2y ago
"And a colleague dismisses it by saying that there is a book "6 Ways to Lie with Statistics"." Except, that's going in the right direction towards a better argument: empiricism requires your statistics to be peer reviewed for errors or deception before being believed. That takes a skilled individual. So, you either think they're very good at statistics or you want them to put faith in your work. Otherwise, they need a smart assistant they trust to review the statistics. Then, they have increased confidence in your solution but it still might be wrong.
- avodonosov 2y ago
  He was not calling for better statistics, he suggested to ignore statistics. It was a simple case and actually I was not presenting a statistics I collected, I just suggested to try using some numerical evidence to chose a decision. On another occasion I mentioned to somebody that it's necessary to chose drugs or medical approaches verified with medical trials and double blind method. And they replied that there is a book about how to lie with statistics and continued to consider unverified methods. I mean that in real life sometimes very simple fallacies happan. Some statistics-based deсisions may be wrong => right decision must avoid statistics. These cases could probably be adressed with automated tools of the near future.
  - randomNumber7 2y ago
    Idk. When I see something like that in real life my conclusion is that people have different levels of intelligence. Also I don't know what or how to teach someone who falls into this pitfalls.
    - GTP 2y ago
      I think it is easy to highlight the mistake by rephrasing the argument as OP did. By rewriting it that way, I think it is easy to see that the fallacy lies in taking some specific observations and saying that those are valid in general, without providing a solid explanation as of why that should be the case. Another way of rephrasing it could be, "I have evidence of some statistics-based decisions that were wrong, therefore all statistics-based decisions are wrong". If a person still doesn't get it, put it as "I have evidence of you being wrong once, therefore you must be always wrong (including in this specific case :D )".
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        I believe that is a misunderstanding of what the other party is expressing in this case. It's not "wrong once, so always wrong" but rather "intentional deception in the past, therefore might intentionally deceive again, and I don't know how to verify, therefore I shouldn't trust it".
        GTP 2y ago
        Uhm, but then, it would work only if applied to the same entity that was deceptive in the past. Applying this to some other party would still make little to no sense, unless you've got some reason to believe this other party wants to deceive you as well.
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        Unless someone obviously shares common goals with you they are a potential adversary. When faced with a tool that you are confident can be used to deceive you, and a potential adversary who you are confident is aware of this fact, you should then clearly distrust that tool in that context.
dullcrisp 2y ago
Maybe I’m missing something, but how is calling out every time a news article cites a government agency as an appeal to authority a list of logical fallacies?
fmbb 2y ago
What were the alternative solutions you discussed? Did a worse one get picked? Did you already have a solution in place, and you were actually suggesting a change?

nickpsecurity 2y ago

"And a colleague dismisses it by saying that there is a book "6 Ways to Lie with Statistics"." Except, that's going in the right direction towards a better argument: empiricism requires your statistics to be peer reviewed for errors or deception before being believed. That takes a skilled individual. So, you either think they're very good at statistics or you want them to put faith in your work. Otherwise, they need a smart assistant they trust to review the statistics. Then, they have increased confidence in your solution but it still might be wrong.

avodonosov 2y ago
He was not calling for better statistics, he suggested to ignore statistics. It was a simple case and actually I was not presenting a statistics I collected, I just suggested to try using some numerical evidence to chose a decision. On another occasion I mentioned to somebody that it's necessary to chose drugs or medical approaches verified with medical trials and double blind method. And they replied that there is a book about how to lie with statistics and continued to consider unverified methods. I mean that in real life sometimes very simple fallacies happan. Some statistics-based deсisions may be wrong => right decision must avoid statistics. These cases could probably be adressed with automated tools of the near future.
- randomNumber7 2y ago
  Idk. When I see something like that in real life my conclusion is that people have different levels of intelligence. Also I don't know what or how to teach someone who falls into this pitfalls.
  - GTP 2y ago
    I think it is easy to highlight the mistake by rephrasing the argument as OP did. By rewriting it that way, I think it is easy to see that the fallacy lies in taking some specific observations and saying that those are valid in general, without providing a solid explanation as of why that should be the case. Another way of rephrasing it could be, "I have evidence of some statistics-based decisions that were wrong, therefore all statistics-based decisions are wrong". If a person still doesn't get it, put it as "I have evidence of you being wrong once, therefore you must be always wrong (including in this specific case :D )".
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      I believe that is a misunderstanding of what the other party is expressing in this case. It's not "wrong once, so always wrong" but rather "intentional deception in the past, therefore might intentionally deceive again, and I don't know how to verify, therefore I shouldn't trust it".
      - GTP 2y ago
        Uhm, but then, it would work only if applied to the same entity that was deceptive in the past. Applying this to some other party would still make little to no sense, unless you've got some reason to believe this other party wants to deceive you as well.
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        Unless someone obviously shares common goals with you they are a potential adversary. When faced with a tool that you are confident can be used to deceive you, and a potential adversary who you are confident is aware of this fact, you should then clearly distrust that tool in that context.

dullcrisp 2y ago

Maybe I’m missing something, but how is calling out every time a news article cites a government agency as an appeal to authority a list of logical fallacies?

fmbb 2y ago

What were the alternative solutions you discussed? Did a worse one get picked? Did you already have a solution in place, and you were actually suggesting a change?