I am looking for books that point out and explain common fallacies. So far I have Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes by Bryan H. Bunch and will soon get Inevitable Illusions by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (look at the creepy choices made by other people who purchased that particular book!).
Do any of you know of any good books that cover the same subject area?
Straight And Crooked Thinking by Robert Thouless - it may not be in print any more, but it’s worth reading.
Also Water logic by Edward De Bono (although as might be expected this is more of an exploration of thinking processes than a treatise on ‘wrong’ thinking).
Gardner, Martin: Fads and fallacies : in the name of science
Gardner, Martin: The new age : notes of a fringe watcher
Gardner, Martin: Science: good, bad and boogus
Burnam, Tom: The dictionary of misinformation
I agree with Floater’s choices, and add a few oldies but goodies:
On the Spoor of Spooks and A Natural History of Nonsense by Bergen Evans, the proto-Cecil
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
A Budget of Paradoxes by Augustus de Morgan
It’s a classic. You can read it in a day (you don’t need to know anything about statistics) and you’ll see these “lies” for the rest of your life. They are everywhere.
Also, go to www.skepdic.com and see “suburban myths” or “suburban legends”.
Since we’re here, I had an convo with someone who told me that the accident rate for trucks had dropped 3% since they started forcing trucks to use the far right lanes on some local bridges.
How do statistics lie?
Well, every year up to that the accident rate dropped 3% anyway.
How can they lie further?
Well, since many accidents are now truck to truck accidents (since they are all in the same lane) many truckers don’t report these accidents because they are working it out themselves and protecting eachother’s driving records.
So, pushing all the trucks into one lane, and forcing them to make lane changes into that lane may have INCREASED the accident rate.
Gotta love statistics!
Somewhat related is “Why People Believe Weird Things” by Michael Shermer and “Flim Flam!” by James Randi. For the urban legend breed of fallacy, there’s “Too Good to Be True” by Brunvand.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
John Paulos’ books, especially ‘Innumeracy’ are also worth looking at.
Hey! I just finished Bunch’s book about a month ago. I really enjoyed it.
If you’re interested in logical fallacies, you can check out this Logic & Fallaices web page. It has some links and book suggestions.
Compare those choices to the ones on Amazon. I wonder if there is a big difference in the sorts of people who shop at the different stores…
Look for an Adams, Cecil.
I have some problems with that book. Some of the entries seem to be accurate. But, others appear to be Burnam’s opinion.
- Burnam claims that the play makes it clear that Hamlet is only pretending to be mad. He cites two seperate occasions when Hamlet tells other characters this. But, this only proves that Hamlet does not think he is insane. My view of the play is that at some point Hamlet passes from a sane man pretending to be mad, to a mad man who thinks he is still sane. Note that when the ghost first appears, the guards can all see it. Thus when Hamlet sees it, it is likely a real ghost. Later, however, Hamlet can see it although his mother cannot. This suggests that this time the ghost is a product of madness, just as Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s feast. My opinion is better researched and supported. But, it’s still an opinion
In some other cases, Burnam is simply wrong. He states that Cinderalla’s slippers were originally fur and became glass only because a translator confused the French words for glass and fur. The Master has stated that the slippers were always glass.
With all due respect, statistics don’t lie–people do. Sometimes people make mistakes, too, like thinking that probability & statistics, as disciplines, are intuitively understandable and require no real training. And while it is easy to lie with statistics, it is alot easier to lie with a few well chosen examples.
I don’t dispute your conclusion that truck accidents have risen, merely that statistics are responsible for the misunderstanding rather than the people who use them without understanding how to do so properly.
Best regards.
This maybe doesn’t fully qualify as far as exposing fallacies, but it helps expose common errors. I use it as a reference guide and love it.
Just wanted to share
Thanks for your suggestions, I am going to look up many of these, but some of you have gotten misinformation mixed up with fallacies.