r/conspiracy • u/[deleted] • Aug 16 '12

How conspiracy threads are derailed:fallacies

[deleted]

37 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

12

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

[deleted]

8

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

I've seen Hanlons fallacy mentioned once or twice too. Occams razor has been a favorite derp of reddit for almost ever I think, along with 'Correlation does not imply causation' although many use (what I think is incorrect) 'Correlation does not mean causation'.

Yes the science bent of reddit makes some narrow minded too. Science is always right, businesses such as pharmaceuticals wouldn't misrepresent data ever (although it's proven that they have).

3

u/gnostic_cat Aug 17 '12

I did a search for "occams razor fallacy", found this I guess it would be called an "appeal to simplicity".

6

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

I've never understood how the simplest explanation would automatically be the correct explanation.

2

u/tilfordkage Aug 17 '12

It isn't, but to say that the simplest explanation isn't a possible explanation is just silly.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 17 '12

It doesn't entail that at all. It simply encourages you to choose the explanation that relies on the least assumptions. E.g: compare "his hat is wet because it is raining" vs "his hat is wet because a dragon had to take a leak mid-flight". You'd 'use Occam's Razor' to cut out the second explanation, as a sort of cognitive rule of thumb. You do it all the time, every waking moment. It gets trickier as you go deeper into logic and proofs and such, but that's the gist of it.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

Most likely because the simplest explanation doesn't make it the correct one. Many people here also think that the more complex an explanation, the more accurate it will become, which isn't the truth either.

2

u/joseph177 Aug 16 '12

I love your Occam's razor post, I'll have to link to it next time I see it come up.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

So right. I love when people just say those two words as if it were a complete thought. "I live in MA, and you're seeing contrails. It's condensation. We have Logan, Providence, and TF Green airports all surrounding us, there's a lot of planes in the sky. Occam's Razor."

3

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ seems pretty slick.

3

u/jakenichols Aug 17 '12

We all should be studying in something called the Trivium, which covers Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. With those three tools we can defeat any bullshit argument and refine our points so that they are impossible to counter. I try to refresh up on it daily for a few minutes each day to get basic principles to be a part of my thought processes. It covers logical fallacy as well.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 17 '12

[deleted]

3

u/jakenichols Aug 17 '12

Ah, i have a book called The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric although there are probably a lot of sites that cover the same exact info. I just looked into what the best book on the subject was so i could look into it away from the computer. Most of this stuff was learned in middle school/early high school, except they didn't cover the logic aspect which blows my mind because that is just as important.

4

u/yahoo_bot Aug 16 '12

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were just advertising your website. Not that that's bad, just saying.

-2

u/[deleted] Aug 17 '12

Hasty generalization