Logic Fallacy Game: Let's Get Smarter!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s make ourselves smarter. To do so, I propose a game. We choose a news/discussion program that we will all watch, say, once a week. The game works as follows: we all watch the show, during or after the show we post a thread where we list and discuss the logic fallacies made by the participants in the show.

There are a few reasons why I think this is a good idea. First, many of us—including me—are not nearly as proficient in logic as we should (and I hope, want) to be. Second, we need help learning logic. Frankly, I read logic for fun, I’ve even become an end note in Logic Made Easy, yet I find myself to be grossly inadequate, and I want to find help learning more. I’m not using false humility, by the way. The third reason, in my opinion, warrants a whole new paragraph.

Hi, welcome to the next paragraph, which introduces my third reason: we need to learn to identify logic fallacies quickly. That’s right, quickly. On the fly! Why? Let me give an example: I’m zoning administrator for a small township with big problems. I have to go head-to-head with very, very highly paid lawyers who are dyed-in-the-wool sophists* (seriously, see the footnote, 'cos I do not dislike lawyers at all). These guys are as close to a rational worst-case scenario as you can get. One of the things that helps me immensely is being to identify and explain—preferably using a fancy term—logic fallacies they’re making. (Trust me, post hoc ergo propter hoc sounds more impressive than “just 'cuz it comes after, done meen there’s allinck.” YMMV, of course.)

Even in non-adversarial situations, recognizing and understand fallicies is quite helpful, since we can identify errors in our thinking**, and we can understand errors in others’. And, choosing our battles wisely, even if we do not wish to confront another with her fallacies (note: I like the feminine pronouns, I don’t mean that women are less logical…trust me on that one…), we can at least understand the mistakes the other person is making. Thus, instead of getting frustrated and angry, we can can say c’est la guerre and understand what they’re thinking.

So, with the above in mind, I propose we pick a show in a time slot most of us can watch. I don’t want to go with something like FOX News***, because that is probably too thick with nonsense; however, something serious like Lerher (sp?) is probably too well done to give a lot of opportunity. My problem at this point is that I don’t watch any television news/discussion programs, and so I don’t know what there is to choose from. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, something that involves the exchange of opinion, since those seem to be most open to sophist error.

What shows would be good candidates; i.e., not way off base, not too good, at a good time, and providing reasonable material for discussion?

Please let me know, because I think this could be a great exercise for all of us. And there’s a bonus: It will make a great drinking game!

For those who wish to learn more about logic fallacies, I think the Internet Infidels has an outstanding list & discussion of fallacies. I’ve learned quite a bit from it.
*If even one lawyer is willing to defend me, I’ll defend them all. Besides that, working with the honest ones makes you realize how important the profession is.

**Always painful, and I’m billions and billions of light years from living the examined life. But in my own small way, I do try.

***If you disagree with this characterization, then please read Jamie Whyte’s Crimes Against Logic. When you’re done with that, join the game.
Oh, and p.s.: I’m serious. I could totally benefit from this, and I think many of us could as well. So, please, let’s give it a whirl.

2

For some reason The McLaughlin Group immediately sprang to mind as a possible candidate.

This game sounds like fun–but how do you gain levels?

“You pointed out a tautology, gaining access to the Chalice of Socrates!” :wink:

3

Logic Made Easy?

Oddly enough, it’s next on my reading list.

4

History repeats!

But no, unfortunately I don’t have anything to contribute to the thread. I don’t have TV, let alone American TV.

5

I hadn’t really thought about it. Do you think there should be a scoring system? How would it work?

I’m in the paperback version. The point was rather trivial; however, it seemed worth mentioning.

Hmm…we can find something that is webcasted as well, or archived online to allow more flexible viewing. Plus that way, it’d be easier to go back and check. The McLaughlin group doesn’t seem to have video or audio files. Anybody have other suggestions?

C-SPAN’s Washingtion Journal? It has a streaming protocol my work computer doesn’t recognize, but it might work at home.

6

We oughtta just pick random GD threads. At least we’ll be guaranteed lively discussions!

“Oh, the ad hominems are a’ flyin’ now!”

7

Ooh, I’ve got one! It burned me up so much at the time, I still remember it…
There was a lengthy segment on a major-network prime-time program, about three months ago, on what was openly deplored as the historically unprecedented and still-increasing degree of political polarization of America. The contention was that us 'Merkins are increasingly living in ideologically segregated communities (and states) and socializing in similarly polarized circles, with disturbing ramifications for the long-term political stability of our republic.

Now, the narrow claims concerning an increased, and verifiably quantified, political polarization may indeed be valid, but I don’t think that that program offered a persuasive argument proving as much. At one point, a large graphic filled the screen. Its oh-so-alarming factoid: 48% of Americans now live in such polarized communities! (But by implication this also means 52% of us do not! Even today! Even by the fuzzy criteria of this segment’s producers!)

In fact, most of the segment was devoted to illustrating the principle, seemingly played out in real time in several different groups of people as it was slowly revealed, of the sociological phenomenon known as confirmation bias. The argument being that just as c.b. is bad in small groups (such as Bible-study circles) because it hardens ideological cohesion and extremism while discouraging dissent, so it bodes ill for our body politic if simply allowed to proceed apace, through ever-increasingly homogenous Blue States and Red States (although the program seemed much more alarmed about the prospect of the “Red State” mentality, such as it is, running roughshod over the rest).

I also don’t recall any historical contextualization or critical interrogation of this show’s solemn pronouncements. Recall that the American Colonies were established along markedly divergent religious, ideological, cultural, and legal frameworks from the get-go, and the resultant cultural patchwork not only persisted into the period of our nascent national independence (when it was a compelling rationale for the federalist form of governments attempted, first to an extreme degree under the failed Articles of Confederation, and eventually to greater success under our more centralized form of representative democracy), but was to be further repeated as the nation grew through a varied pattern of territorial acquisition? (To this day, the civil laws of Louisiana remain patterned after the Napoleonic Code.) Name one moment in our country’s history when it can be said that Americans generally lived in communities that could have been drawn by lots, with the classes, faiths, races, ethnicities, languages, and, yes, political ideologies and party affiliations more or less randomly distributed throughout… let me save you some trouble. It was never thus.

And are we really to believe that our lives are more ideologically segregated today than were Americans’ lives, in, say, the “white-flight” Fifties and Sixties? The Great Depression? Reconstruction? How about the Revolutionary War period, when the colonials were very sharply divided into three factions, Loyalist, Nationalist, and undecided and/or opportunistic fence-sitters?

And this show failed to engage perhaps the most trenchant question: even if true, why is self-selected ideological segregation necessarily such a bad thing? (The honest if unacknowleged answer: because all those right-wing, religiously devout Red State people are scaaaaary.) Aren’t most of the factors allegedly feeding that trend consumer-and-lifestyle-driven (i.e., people choosing to live, work, worship and socialize where they want to, with whom they want to, to a considerable if never absolute degree), and isn’t this trend basically driven by – [gasp] – free will and the pursuit of happiness?

I suspect that this show segment was approved and developed less as a direct response to an actual increase in political partisanship beyond the halls of Congress than out of a generalized sense of anxiety amongst the show’s producers, who have, in recent years, been forced to confront increasing evidence – i.e., falling ratings – charting the limits of their cultural and intellectual clout in our culture. The culturally hegemonic influence of the “Big Three” networks peaked around 1980. Ever since then, their story arc has been one of slow but steady declension, in both capital and cultural relevance. A cluster of competing agents – home theater (LD/VHS/Beta, now DVD), cable TV, video games, personal computers and the Internet – has dislodged the broadcast networks’ preeminence as movers and shakers of public opinion and their privileged position at the center of our collective attention (and focus of consumers’ “eyeballs”) – and nowhere more so than in the declining audience for their daily evening news programs. Our entertainment options and habits of media consumption are more decentralized and heterogeneous (or as some cultural critics like to assert, “fragmented”) now, irretrievably so, and the networks are still struggling to survive the competition. So far, their reaction seems to largely consist of a flood of cheaply-produced “reality” programming and derivative ripoffs of other successful shows [“CSI: Fresno,” anyone? “Law & Order: Juvenile-Delinquent Misdemeanors”?]. The persistence of subcultures and communities, such as they are, that happily go their own way and do their own thing in blithe disregard of consensual leftist opinion probably drives some people in the network news divisions nuts – even as their entertainment division colleagues are casting a handful of the more unusual individuals as walking cultural stereotypes for their reality shows.

How anyone at a broadcast network can presume to lecture the public on the rightness or fitness of our beliefs, convictions, or lifestyles strikes me as hubristic beyond belief.

8

Yeah, I was joking about that. :smack:
I can’t imagine a scoring system any more in-depth than acclaim (or, extending the D&D analogy, DM’s discretion).